There is no commercial food production without environmental impact. The very nature of modern large-scale food production (and yes, this includes organic, regenerative vegetable and fruit farms as well as livestock outfits) requires land to be “unwilded” and disturbed to some degree; so do our houses, schools, most workplaces, roads, energy sources, utilities and recreation.

This isn’t to make the case that we should all feel guilty for existing, or that any individual action about climate change and environmental activism lacks utility. It is to say that we live in a complex world, and simple philosophies applied to complicated landscapes, ecosystems and markets are often inadequately nuanced. 

I would posit that column writer Paul Voiland, in his opinion piece using Everyday Farm’s shift in focus to livestock as a vehicle for lobbying for plant-based agriculture, missed a few key components of the kind of farming pasture-based livestock farmers are engaging in, and the critical whys of the crops we have chosen to grow [“Toting up food value of plants vs. animals,” Recorder, April 25]. 

Our landscape, so similar to the land that Everyday Farm accesses, does not allow for tractor use, and would create major erosion problems if we did destroy the perennial vegetative pasture that protects the soil. 

To help you picture it: Our farm in Brattleboro spans a few owned and leased lots, totaling about 80 acres. About 20 of those are underneath the interstate VELCO high-voltage power lines on rugged terrain so steep we cannot drive a tractor over them. This area — sandy, disturbed, with low fertility soil — is a hotbed for invasive species, and has historically been managed with herbicides; our management and rotational grazing has eliminated the need for herbicide use on this stretch.

The other 30 acres we graze are varying degrees of significant slope. If zero pounds of produce could be grown here, it seems to me to be a huge improvement to be able to sustainably grow another crop. 

Another complicating factor is that by using rotational grazing, ruminants like sheep and cows can be used to sequester carbon in pastures and hayland. Grasses are incredible at building enormous root mats that slough off material in the soil as the plants grow. Grazing stimulates the growth and sloughing cycle in pasture species. Over time, this buildup below ground, plus the manure that is incorporated from above, can increase the stable fraction of carbon in the soil.

On our farm, our soil organic matter fraction was 4-5% of the bulk soil when we first moved here, and is now well over 6% in most fields, and as high as 7.5%. A single percentage increase is the equivalent of eight tons of carbon per acre. Of course, there’s the balance sheet of carbon sequestered vs. enteric methane production. Most of the carbon models used for animal agriculture are based on feedlots, not pasture-based operations, and there’s a dearth of research on pasture-based systems generally.

Which brings us back to the beginning: Food systems are complex, and the choices we make as consumers and community members and farmers are equally complex. Many local and regional food security plans designate different zones as being more appropriate for different agricultural practices and crops, often citing high fertility bottom land as best suited to intensive vegetable and crop production, low hills for orchards, and hill farms best suited for grazing livestock farms. 

I would finally argue that pasture-based livestock agriculture is one of the least ecosystem disruptive types of food production; our land is perpetually undisturbed and protected by vegetation at all times. We see huge numbers of wild animals, from nesting migratory birds, newts, peepers, and rare dung beetles that made a visiting entomologist giddy with delight, to deer, mink and coyotes that move across our acreage unencumbered. Many of these would not have a welcome home in a cropped field.

The membrane between the wild and the domesticated is more diaphanous on a conservation-minded grazing farm, and is one of the parts of my work that I treasure the very most. 

We need farmers of all types — pasture-based livestock farmers like us, Everyday Farm in Gill and many other farmers I hold in high esteem, especially on the hill farms where other crops cannot be grown; and farms that grow our fruits, vegetables and fiber in environmentally sound ways. A secure food system in a changing climate will require a collective and collaborative approach that can steward our varied landscape and resources to feed us all. 

Ashlyn Bristle of Rebop Farm lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, and has been farming and stewarding hill farmland for over a decade with her spouse.

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