A friend of mine has a teenaged daughter who feels strongly about combatting climate change. She has become vegetarian in order to lessen her impact on the environment, for which I commend her. I’ve wanted to do that, as well, but can’t due to a particularly taxing set of allergies. Consequently, I had to find a better way to lessen my carbon footprint while still keeping myself fed. It requires animals.

Raising animals contributes to carbon sequestration if we do it the right way. In fact, animals are the best way to strengthen soils and prevent desertification of arid grasslands. It’s no mistake that big herbivores have ranged the land in large numbers for millions of years. It’s only when we, as humans, started changing the habits of these animals, limiting their movements, concentrating their numbers or even removing them altogether, that the soil deteriorated. Careful grazing helps grasses become more robust through the distributed fertilization of the soil by livestock. We can’t leave animals completely out of farming. We need them to build the fecundity of the land under our feet.

Meredith Ellis, at G Bar C Ranch, explains how this is done much better than I ever could.

It’s time to listen to the scientists, the farmers and the ranchers who understand how these processes work. Let’s get back to making our soils strong again so that we can adapt and fight climate change.