LIVESTOCK IS ESSENTIAL

This double wager, environmental and health, reduce the importance of livestock in our lives, even though it is accepted by most people, it is, however, doubly false and terribly dangerous to our future and our well-being. Feed animals (bred and handled correctly) is the most healthy for us and for our environment. Although it is true that the livestock products of animals poorly managed they are destructive for both our health and the health of our environment, so, too, is that livestock is essential to restore the functionality of terrestrial ecosystems. Meat, milk and eggs from animals raised in conditions of freedom and fed properly are, without a doubt, a perfectly healthy for our diet, as they have been for millennia of our history.

We are not many (“but we are few”) which advocated that the proper management of domesticated animals is the only tool that we have to reverse the process of desertification, climate change and environmental degradation, and to feed on, in many mountainous areas, dry and poor soils. 

It does not mean that we are defending the current models of intensive livestock production, but rather the opposite. The current form of intensive farming is destructive of the environment, and feed the livestock products that come out of these models, it is not always healthy for the way in which they are raised, and handle the animals.

Suffice it to recall that the greater part of the agricultural area is intended to produce grains for the animals using destructive techniques of soil, water, biodiversity, landscapes... it must also Be remembered that the main consumption of antibiotics in the world is due to animal production, or that the pig manure and waste ranchers produce the contamination of aquifers, or that the animals are kept in conditions of overcrowding, unhealthy that generate serious epidemiological risks Are just a few among a long list of serious environmental impacts of our current model of livestock.

In the last decades, the progress in the field rancher has been exclusively designed from a unique perspective: the confinement and the confinement of animals on ships, and the artificial feeding of the same grain, feed, forage, supplements and additives. Locking the animals in ships generates an artificiality doubly ominous: a livestock without soil and an agriculture without animals.

The artificialization of the life of pets and the intensification of livestock productions through the use of infrastructure, ships, machinery and external inputs have led to some results that are in absolute contradiction with the most important challenges that we face today: climate change, the depletion of natural resources and the erosion of our soils productive (desertification).

The conviction that taking the cattle of the fields will be green landscapes and forests, is based on a very short-sighted interpretation of the results observed. It is true that, in the two-first three years of exclusion of the animals of a territory, usually produce an increase of the coverage and the vigor of the vegetation (due to the rest of the plants), but, as time passes, the environment without any animals comes in serious decline until their complete degradation. In many countries of the world, the natural areas closed to grazing for more than 25-30 years are in a state environmental deplorable, with degradation processes increasing (erosion, desertification, risk of fire, floods, etc.).

Almost all of the farmland (arable land, vineyards, fields, orchards, olive groves...) practicing to the total exclusion of livestock and therefore (together with other practices, such as tillage of the soil, and contamination with fertilizers and chemical biocides) are ecosystems that do not work and that increasingly rely on external energy (in the form of chemical inputs, fuel and machinery) to produce.

The approach of excluding livestock from rural areas, in addition to being a no solution (both from a productive point of view as well as environmental), ignores deeply the fundamental role of herbivores in the health of terrestrial ecosystems. To understand how our terrestrial ecosystems, we must put the focus on the ancestral process of co-evolution of soil, plants, herbivores and their predators.

It is not feasible to think that it is enough to leave the territories to the communities of wild herbivores (such as poses rewilding), because these communities already almost do not exist in sufficient number, nor do they move in herds, due to the fragmentation of the territories and the little or no presence of predators. The rewilding some postulate for “Spain emptied” in addition to being impractical, not to propose viable solutions to the people who live in livestock, or for the communities with which these interact or to the economy of these regions affected by the abandonment and isolation. 

The only viable solution for the conservation of natural ecosystems protected and regeneration of ecosystems, agricultural production is the use of livestock to mimic the ancestral processes coevolutivos of predation and herbivory in large herds. There is No other alternative than to imitate intelligently to the nature, because it is the only bet that does not generate unpredictable consequences and unwanted in the future. The herbivorous animals that move grouped in herds for fear of being preyed upon, generate a strong impact (grazing, trampling, composting, urine...), timely and of short duration, on grassland, herbaceous perennials, and migrate to other territories grant the necessary rest to these plants, which, with its deep roots, fasciculadas and with high rates of exudation, create living soils, porous and deep.

Both the absence of cattle in the territories and the constant presence of the cattle without handling produce (at the end of the decades) degenerative processes of the pasture, the soil and, consequently, of the functionality of the territories. The key is not the presence or absence of livestock, but what is the handling that do the same. The presence of cattle without a correct handling (continuous grazing) has generated processes of dysfunctionality ecosystem, but also of serious consequences (overgrazing).

In all of our territory we find situations degradative these two extremes: total exclusion of livestock (agricultural fields and protected areas) and continuous grazing (the greater part of the cattle ranching). We have taken this situation, we have become accustomed to their results and we do not think that the productive potentiality and the ecosystem services of these areas are rapidly deteriorating. We are not aware of the alarming regression of nature. We attended almost without inmutarnos to the loss of harmony in our environment, to the loss of the gift of their abundance, their biodiversity. Only the functionality of our landscapes will generate fertile soil, rich foods and drinking water to sustain us as human civilization.

With the continuous grazing (animals a long time locked up in the same area, or enclosure) is produced by a repeated use of the more palatable species and its flare-ups, and is favored by both the development of the species of lesser nutritional value, which leads to a degeneration of the pastures, and an increase of the coverage of the species that are less palatable and scrub. The remains of plants not eaten, and the scrub do not provide food or in quantity and quality sufficient to cattle, and increase dangerously the risk of forest fires explosives.

The flood (of clay), soil erosion, lack of productivity of plant, the dry of the holm oak and cork oak, fires, explosives, etc., are the consequences of landscapes dysfunctional for lack of a territorial management correct. This lack of a correct functionality of the ecosystems and landscapes can be given both by the presence of animals, poorly managed or poorly managed (continuous grazing) as well as by the absence of any type of grazing (prohibitions conservationists, housed animals, agriculture, without integration of animals...).

There is a convoluted conflict between environmental conservation, food production and livestock farming. We are faced with a series of crossroads complex, which we must solve intelligent and rational. On the one hand, the current model of livestock is mostly intensive, with strong environmental impacts. But even the extensive livestock also produces serious impacts on the territory, overgrazing of pastures, soil erosion, loss of regenerated trees in the pastures, dependence on external inputs, habitat fragmentation...). And, on the other hand, the absence of cattle in the territory produces an imbalance of the environment that leads to an extremely high risk of large fires, degradation of pastures and, consequently, to the loss of soil and desertification. 

Also growing up, of the one part, trends such as the “veganism” (with the supposed solution of not eating meat to solve environmental problems), the “animalism” (with the concern simplistic and sentimentalist for the rights of animals and their course well-being) and the “environmental awareness” (with the growing feeling that something momentous is us is getting out of hand). On the other hand increases the consumption of meat from intensive livestock production (macrogranjas), while rural populations leaving little to the livestock traditional, with little or no generational replacement, and with regulations and bureaucratic obstacles increasingly strong to the development of grazing.

It is true that farmers tend not to be very concerned about the care of the environment, even some of them boast of it, what does that conservationists and ecologists do not often understand the importance of cattle in the territories. It seems that, as in so many other issues, in our country we always polarizamos between the “two Spains”, with positions irreconcilable that they did not understand and who reject each other on principle, without or even make by themselves understood. It seems as if there were only two complete packages from which to choose: or be “progres” of the extreme left, with hair dishevelled, atheist, vegan, animal, feminists, antitaurinos and environmentalists, on the one hand, or “mugs” of the ultra-right, with hair slicked back, catholics, carnivores, livestock, sexist, bullfighting and producers, on the other.

Can you be a farmer and environmentalist in this country? What you might like bulls and not doubt climate change? What can you not eat meat, and to be a catholic? How to recycle correctly the trash and be the hunter?... Obviously, these pantomimes and cartoons show how far we are from a coherent vision and rational of the reality and of the necessary solutions. The absurdity of these false dilemmas and this radicalization of positions is clearly manifest. Even so, it does have a certain trait of truth for how to apply the public debates and how they face great masses of the population.

In fact, it all shows us that the best conservation strategy for all of us is the proper use of the livestock. The “animalistic”, who believe that animals have rights and that we should not kill them to eat their meat, nor ordeñarlos to take advantage of their milk, and they think that the animal welfare is to let the animals live in total freedom, with plenty of space life and die of old, are so far from the solution as well as those ranchers who think that having an animal is locked up in ships and atiborrarlos of feed and medicines. Also those who believe that being a farmer is to release the animals in a pasture, and set them free in a fenced off for weeks or months, or of those farmers who think that there is that tilling the soil and casting, chemical fertilizers for planting, or to provide grains to the herbivorous animals.

Be livestock or livestock is to know how to handle cattle, is not only to be the owner of the cattle. Being green is to understand the functioning of our ecosystems, to understand how it works our house and try not degrade; being green is not to prove a sentimentality extreme to the suffering and death of animals.

DEATH IS A NATURAL INEVITABLE PROCESS

The debate between these positions is fruitless since the time of the ecosystems they don't understand feelings, or political orientations, or ideologies, or work so simple as the human mind (especially when we use it in so irrational). Nature has its own laws, which operate beyond our ideological positions and our sentimentality. 

Nature does not understand the beliefs, only shows us its evidence. We know or do not understand them, or we, or are we the victims of our ignorance. The law of gravity is not debatable, or stop functioning when most stop believing in it, or even when a political party decides to legislate against it. Nature has many other laws, and society must understand them away from fanaticism and personal beliefs. Nature teaches us that the absence of animal is a slow way, but unstoppable degradation of the ecosystems (especially in situations semi-arid environments such as ours). The animals in the herd have gone through all the spaces of our territory for millions of years, and have only stopped in the last few centuries or decades. The plants and soil microbiology have co-evolved with the presence of this (very intense but sporadic) of herbivorous animals that migrated in large herds.

Eating or not eating meat is a personal choice. Have penalty for killing animals and be scared of blood or eating meat undercooked, have pet dogs locked up in apartments, or enjoy a spectacle of bullfighting..., just depends on the tastes, education, and the sensitivity of each. But what is not in doubt is that the terrestrial ecosystems (especially the semi-arid) require the presence of large herds of herbivorous animals in order to function properly.

According to the coevolution, the soil needs to pasture, and these in large herds. And without soil there is no civilization possible. The soil regulates the hydrology, allows photosynthesis and, therefore, the productivity of food. Without a surplus of food there is human civilization. Without soil there is no grass, and no pasture soil. Without pasture there are herbivores, and without herbivores there is no pasture. That is to say, that without herbivores soil and without soil there is no civilization possible. Without the proper effect of the large herds, it only remains to the desert, the hunger, the thirst, the conflict, the war...

There are no large open spaces so that they can recover these large herds of herbivores in the wild. Now we can only imitate these processes through actions that is confined to many animals in a small space for a short time, and then leave to rest that space for a long time. And in this way recover the lost balance.

In addition, we need this operation on the entire surface of our country. In agricultural fields, in natural areas, our forests and mountains...

It is necessary to do to see that cattle ranching is the solution and not the problem of many environmental issues; this is, without a doubt, a great challenge of our time, in which unfortunately we are not many (“but we are few”). Let's hope that little by little we are not so few.

What, then, livestock yes or livestock not? Of course, ranching, yes. But cattle ranching. No animals confined in ships, crammed without seeing the sun, breathing in stale air, consumed feed and antibiotics, generating slurry infestations and situations unhealthy. We need to all those housed animals (and possibly many more) in the open air, walking our fields, our forests and our mountains, associated with the territory; it did eat of it, visiting it regularly and improve it with their mouth, their legs, their manure and urine.

The typical strategy of conservation of natural areas based on the exclusion of livestock is totally inappropriate, ineffective and utterly wrong. Ecosystems do not function well without the presence of herbivorous animals. And the current situation of many of our natural areas, as well as confirms this. Remove the cattle from the territories to preserve them has been the proposal of many environmental groups and public managers, usually from developed countries and urban environments. There are many restrictions on the use of livestock in many of our protected areas in Spain, as in other parts of Europe and the world. The exclusion of animals as a conservation strategy is a serious mistake with disastrous consequences in the long term. But not any presence of herbivores ensures the correct functioning of the ecosystems. Only the presence of herbivores under a good management ensures and retrieves the functionality of ecosystems. This management should mimic the ancestral process of the migration of large herds of herbivores. The only way to guarantee that the ecosystems are perfectly functional.

The current belief that preserve the natural spaces is achieved by removing the herbivores, is based on the simplicity of thinking, such as herbivores eat plants, if we get to the herbivores in an ecosystem, there should be more plants and these have better health and vigor. But this is not so. In life there is a concept called coevolution, by which the species have become interdependent throughout the evolutionary process.

The maintenance of pasture lands in the ongoing fight against the scrub is usually performed periodically and repeatedly by machine and an economic and environmental cost high. Livestock (well-managed) allows you to perform the maintenance, improvement and increase of the production of pasture and the fight against the matorralización with an economic activity of production, which, in addition, generates benefits to the Administration and not expenses.