LAND DEGRADATION

The livestock sector is by far the single largest anthropogenic user of land; it accounts for 30% of the land surface of the planet.

After a refreshing weekend, I'm back for a new post on our Meatless Monday's! I hope you had a great weekend too! In today's post, we will be discussing land degradation as a consequence of the livestock sector, so get ready for some important info!

Land degradation is a direct result of the following:

i) Extensive grazing

Extensive grazing leads to a degradation of vast areas of land. Livestock production is shifting geographically, first from rural areas to urban and peri-urban, to get closer to consumers, then towards the sources of feedstuff. Due to convenience and to cut costs, this has expanded the areas affected by extensive grazing. Finally, grazing reduces the fertility of the land. This is important because it means that the quality of the soil is greatly reduced, such that plants would be supplied with less nutrients when grown on this soil. As a result, humans need to turn to other ways of production for good quality produce such as through organic farming.

ii) Deforestation

Since demand for meat production is increasing for various reasons, the land that we have for livestock also needs to be increasing. Countless acres of forest and rainforest land have had to have been cleared as an opportunity cost of raising livestock in large areas. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN has estimated that 70% of previously forested land in South America has been converted for grazing land. As a result, it leads to further problems such as a loss in habitat as well as affecting global warming by reducing the trees available to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen.

Solutions to overgrazing:

If you read the previous post, you would have come across the 'free rider problem'. Again, it pops up here. Grazing is not really priced at... well, anything. Because of this, there is a high chance of exploiting this resource. The best solution to this is to introduce grazing fees. Perhaps removing obstacles to mobility on common property pastures will allow pasture sustainability as pastoralists can rotate the crop areas whilst the degraded land can be regenerated. Finally, soil conservation methods should be put into practise more often, this may be maintained through incentives, and by placing limits to uncontrolled burning by pastoralists.

Solutions to deforestation:

Some possible solutions outlined by Greenpeace include the help from companies who have the power and control to introduce zero deforestation policies. This is where the production of the goods are based on minimalising the negative impacts on forests. Furthermore, more emphasis on the bad environmental impacts created by these companies should be put into light by consumers.

Overall, many of us may dismiss overgrazing and deforestation because we are not directly affected by these impacts; the negative knock on effects are gradual such that humans do not see the issues as urgent. However, these issues are affecting the plants, animals and the quality of our lives and future generations. I hope you took something away from this week's post, we will focus on the negative effects on animals next week, so don't forget to come back next Monday!

Happy Meatless Monday! Tune in next Monday for a new post on Biodiversity