BENEFITS: To Your Health | Quality of Life| Taking Care of the Planet| Wildlife Benefits | Smaller is Better | Taste the Difference
TAKING CARE OF THE PLANET
Farming That Cleans Up after Itself Means a Healthier Environment
There are good reasons why those who care about the environment support pasture-based farming. The pasturing of animals encourages biodiversity, improves soil fertility, and eliminates the waste-management problems associated with confinement-feeding operations. Feeding animals on grass reduces greenhouse gases in the air due to a process called carbon sequestration, wherein the grasses and legumes found in well-managed pastures are able to draw excess carbon dioxide from the air and return it to the soil as carbon.
In addition, pasture-based farming consumes fewer natural resources. Although pasture-based farms are more labor-intensive, farm inputs, such as fossil fuels, are kept to a minimum.
Most important, buying pasture-raised products from a farmer in your area helps keep an environmentally conscious farm in business. The more commercially viable your local and regional family farms are, the more likely they will continue as farms—and the more likely the land will not be turned into housing subdivisions, shopping malls, and parking lots. If you live in a region that is rapidly losing open space, consider that there are few better uses of wide-open spaces than small-scale family farms. They enhance the landscape, provide a local food source, and make good use of the land they occupy.
The information on this section of our website is reprinted from The Great New About Grass produced by: Eating Fresh Publications, 2004. A full version of this publication can be dowloaded by clicking here.
Endnotes:
1 Shannon Hayes. The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook: Healthy Cooking and Good Living with Pasture-Raised Foods. Eating Fresh Publications, New Jersey. 2004.
2 Grassland Birds: Fostering Habitats Using Rotational Grazing. Dan Undersander, Stan Temple, Jerry Bartlet, Dave Sample, Laura Paine. University of Wisconsin System. Cooperative Extension Publishing. 2000.
|
