Eat more meat! It could be better for the environment

Contradicts notion that eating meat harms the environment

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

There are many who believe that meat consumption harms the environment, but a new joint report between researchers in Scotland and Brazil may have discovered otherwise.

The report, completed by the University of Edinburgh, Scotland’s Rural College and Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, published in Nature Climate Change, outlines that reducing beef production in the Brazilian Cerrado could lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

The report’s lead author, Rafael Silva, from the University of Edinburgh’s School of Mathematics, said that because grassland in Brazil is in poor shape, it leads to low beef productivity.

Silva said that increasing meat demands could encourage farmers to recover pastures in poor shape. The amount of carbon stored in soil could increase, require less land for cattle to graze, reduce deforestation and ultimately lower emissions.

Grass isn’t as effective as forests when it comes to storing carbon, but Brachiaria genus – grass found in Brazil, can store larger quantities of carbon because of its long roots.

Other findings in the report include:

• Increasing beef demand by 30 per cent by 2030 could decrease emissions by 10 per cent
• A 30 per cent reduction in beef demand could lead to a 9 per cent increase in emissions