GRAZING ANIMALS in KNF
Animals can graze down weeds, so you don’t have to. Browsers and grazers all have different teeth and prefer different plants. Different species can be used together to reclaim, improve, and maintain the local ecosystem, each type of animal working on a different problem or resource.
A properly managed pasture is nothing like CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), which import feed grown in massive, chemical-laden monocultures, with their own environmental disasters. Rather, well-managed pastures turn otherwise useless grass and weeds into food and fiber while at the same time building topsoil and ecosystems.
Grass is mostly cellulose, which cannot be digested by people or most animals. For this reason, grass is completely void of direct nutrition for us and most animals. However, grazing animals are able to digest cellulose, turning worthless grass into high-quality food and fiber.
I watch my sheep eat grass, sedges, and thorny mimosa (sleeping grass) and turn those weeds into adorable little lambs. The grass miraculously turns into more sheep, which provides meat, milk, and wool. I am watching an ongoing miracle. This process turns problems into resources.
Grazed properly, the ecosystem improves. Grazing animals spread manure and urine. We are learning that the urine of grazing animals is important for a thriving ecosystem, not just the manure. The only way to include their urine is to let them graze on the land. Grazers also prune the grasses, which increases growth. Additionally, it appears that bacteria in the mouths of these animals also enhance grass growth and help build the ecosystem. These are functions and substances that cannot be applied by using any kind of added fertilizer.
Natural grasslands, like prairies, depend on grazing animals, and, of course, the grazers need grasslands to survive. They need each other. It’s a proper ecosystem. It’s Nature. These Natural systems can be translated into food-growing systems. Let’s look at some examples.
Joel Salatin, Grass Farmer
Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms calls himself a grass farmer. Joel will run cattle through a field. They leave lots of cow pies, which attracts flies. What he did was figure out how many days it takes for the flies to mature and hatch out to reproduce. After the fly grubs have grown fat on the cow manure, but before the flies hatch and reproduce, he sends in his flocks of chickens. Perfect timing. Free high-quality feed.
The chickens get a lot of free fly grubs, plus, they prevent fly problems (like disease) for cattle and people. Meat and eggs are produced from worthless grass and pesty, dirty flies. Joel Salatin had to raise his fences because his rotational grass system created so much topsoil that his fences were being buried.
Mark Shepard, Silvopasture
Silvopastures integrate trees, forage, and animals, as Mark Shepard of New Forest Farm in Wisconsin has successfully demonstrated.
Shepard commercially grows a no-till perennial operation. In addition to his main crops, chestnuts, hazelnuts, and apples, he grows many other fruits and vegetables in conjunction with animals, which include cattle, pigs, lamb, chickens, and turkeys. He is demonstrating that the destructive systems of growing vast acreage of soybean and corn to feed cattle in CAFOs are not necessary. Silvopasture can be done profitably, can benefit the environment rather than harming it, and the livestock can lead a quality, stress-free life.
Cattle on Coconut Plantations
Here in the South Pacific, cattle are allowed to roam below the coconut trees. This provides the copra (coconut) industry with the side product of grass-fed beef. The cattle are not fed anything but the natural fodder they graze. This all-natural grass-fed beef is highly sought after and is one of the largest exports in the country. Millions of dollars are being made by turning a problem (weeds in the coconut groves) into healthy food (all-natural grass-fed beef), with no feed costs and no waste or runoff produced. The coconut trees benefit not only from weed control, but are fertilized by the cattle manure and urine.
To do this artificially (without animals) would require machinery, labor, petroleum & chemicals to remove the weeds. Chopped and fallen weeds, toxic from the herbicides, would become a waste stream, and here, weeds are typically burned off into the atmosphere, polluting the air and losing carbon. The herbicides would negatively affect the coconut trees. Soil microbes would be killed. The trees would become much more susceptible to pests and disease, requiring the labor and expense of pesticides. It would also require the labor and expense of applying fertilizers, lost by removing the cattle and their droppings. Production would decrease, costs would increase, and the health of the ecosystem would decrease.
Animals, even misaligned cattle, can make an ecosystem better than it would be without them. When they are treated properly and used correctly, animals can improve the environment.
It should be clear in this case that using cattle in coconut groves is better than typical modern solutions of toxic herbicides, pesticides, artificial fertilizers, machinery, and labor. It should also be clear that using cattle in this matter sequesters carbon by increasing the biomass and soil organic matter, which are carbon-based, and eliminating the need to burn off weeds, which puts the carbon directly into the atmosphere. The animals in this Natural system roam freely. They live good lives with safety and plenty of food.
Meat can be produced without using CAFO feedlots. CAFOs are torture compounds, prisons. No animal should be kept in overcrowded conditions, wallowing in filth, and fed unhealthy, unnatural diets, pumped with growth hormones, antibiotics, and other chemicals, treated as nothing more than a widget to make a profit. Fed lot animals produce large volumes of toxic waste, and sick animals are sold at a profit as “food.” These types of animal operations are evil. In these places, the sanctity of life means nothing.
Natural farming approaches animals through love, stewardship, and symbiotic relationships. Profit comes from the efficiency of a Natural food system, which builds on itself.
Think of how much organic-rich topsoil Joel Salatin creates. If greed is the motivation, all living creatures suffer, and natural resources are depleted. Greed is not sustainable. Love builds.
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