Organic, Pasture-Fed Beef, Lamb Most Damaging Farm Products

Author George Monbiot has slammed organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb as the most damaging farm products in the United Kingdom and he has fortified his assertion in his book “Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet” published by Penguin.

Photo Insert: Pasture-fed meat production, in other words, is the major cause of agricultural sprawl.

In his Aug. 16, 2022 essay for the UK edition of The Guardian, Monbiot said that arable crops occupy only 12 % of the planet’s land surface while 28% is used for grazing that produce meat and milk.

Pasture-fed animals produce only 1% of the world’s protein. He added that 100 studies have shown that when livestock are removed from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all groups of wild animals increases.

“We live in a bubble of delusion about where our food comes from and how it is produced. We’ve been dealing in stories when we should be dealing in numbers. Our gastroporn aesthetics, embedded in bucolic fantasy, are among the greatest threats to life on Earth,” Monbiot stressed.

In the UK, my estimates suggest that some 4m hectares of hill and mountain are used for sheep farming. Almost all this land, much of which would otherwise support temperate rainforest, is treeless, as tree seedlings are highly nutritious and selectively eaten by sheep.

There are more trees for each hectare in some parts of inner London than there are in the “wild” British hills where sheep graze. The remaining vegetation is badly degraded, Monbiot added.

Four million hectares is 22% of the entire farmed area. It’s roughly equivalent to all the land used to grow grain in this country, and 23 times the area used for growing fruit and vegetables. But, in terms of calories, lamb and mutton supply just over 1% of the UK’s food.

Pasture-fed meat production, in other words, is the major cause of agricultural sprawl. People rail against urban sprawl: the profligate use of land for housing and infrastructure.

But the world’s urban areas occupy just 1% of the planet’s land surface, in comparison with the 28% used for grazing. Agricultural sprawl inflicts a very high ecological opportunity cost: the missing ecosystems that would otherwise exist, he concluded.

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