Environmental Benefits: Nutrients Recycled  Naturally

Grass requires little besides sunlight to grow.  Fertilizer and pesticides aren't needed.  Cows trample decaying matter into the soil, which helps keep  carbon dioxide (CO₂) underground and out of the air. The cows' food (grass) and the grass's fertilizer (manure) are made right where they are needed.

In contrast, the production of fertilizer for feed crops can emit 41 million metric tons of CO₂ a year.  Big farms guzzle fossil fuel and feed-crop demand has turned vast swaths of rain forest into farmland.  Feed transport, spanning lengthy trade routes around the world, adds to the greenhouse-gas tally. The EPA links the jump in methane emissions to factory farms and their liquefied-manure systems. Compared with feedlot cows, grass-fed ones produce more methane but have lower net emissions.

©Time Magazine June 2006