Grazing Cattle Benefit Our Island and our Health
By CM Monteleone
submitted as an OP ED to Maui News/Lahaina News
Metabolic Practitioner to Olympic and Professional Athletes, 2019 World Champion Sprinter
Grazing ruminants, such as the cattle raised by local Maui ranchers, have benefits to the environment and our health. These benefits include sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, building essential micro-organisms in the soil to promote both soil and human health and discouraging the spread of fires.
The presence of large herbivores positively affects our beautiful island. Rebuilding of the soil creates nitrogen that takes harmful carbon out of the atmosphere. With appropriate management, grazing animals on Maui can regenerate our environment through carbon sequestration, water infiltration, soil fertility, nutrient cycling, soil formation, biodiversity, wildlife habitat, and increased ecosystem stability and resilience. (Ferguson, 2013)
When measured, grains (wheat, corn), sweets (corn again, sugarcane), and legumes (peas for pea protein, soybeans) all staples in plant based diets, and major contributors to diabetes and obesity, are thought to have lower Green House Gas Emission than meats. Actually, they had a higher overall carbon contribution due to the low nutrient density of the food. It takes more quantity, more processing and more transportation of these foods to meet our nutritional needs. Less quantity of quality meat is needed to meet our body’s health requirements. (Drewnowski, 2014, Tongwane, 2016) One of my personal favorite ways to get the nutrients Vitamin A, C, D, K2 is through a once a month 3oz. serving of local grassfed beef liver. Grassfed meats, such as those from our local Maui ranchers, are higher in nutrients than conventional beef, including Omega 3 fatty acid, which has been shown to decrease the risk of major diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
Biological control of invasive plants and pests, as well as discouraging wildfires through replenishing grasses are just a few of the ways grazing ruminant cattle help build a healthy environment. Without the need of as much toxic artificial fertilizer or pesticides, natural ruminant fertilizer (waste) helps support the soil to include insects and microbacteria that balance and rebuild the soil, as opposed to large scale plant agriculture, which adds toxins and strips the soil of nutrients and beneficial micororganisms. When the soil is stripped of nutrients, we have less nutrients in our food and also less land to use. It is speculated by some that we have only about 60 harvests left until plant based soil exhaustion. Ruminant animals and regenerative agriculture are a great solution to promote the health of our planet and our bodies.
Cynthia Monteleone
Metabolic Practitioner to Olympic and Professional Athletes, 2019 World Champion Sprinter