The green washing of white priviledge

The future is not the exploitation of animals on 'holistic' farms

Well, it might be, very briefly, for a few white people.

Once the blacks, hispanics, city dwellers with no access to land, the undocumented immigrants and prisoners, whose slave labour keeps the animal ag industry afloat, have all died from food shortages or the effects of human activity climate forcing; 50% of which is caused by animal ag, both industrial and farmsteads.

Once the mass migrations from the Global South, whose land and labour have been neo-colonised and exploited to the benefit of the West, have all been shot at the border or died from the famines and warming of their already warm countries; 50% of which is caused by animal ag, both industrial and farmsteads.

Then they’ll just be you.

Have your integrative holistic farm and eat ‘your’ bacon, but don’t kid yourself it’s making the world any better or more ‘sustainable’. Integrative/holistic agriculture is less sustainable as it produces just as much, if not more, emissions as conventionally farmed animals (because they take longer to reach slaughter weight) and for the same calories uses much more land.

To scale this type of farming up would require even more deforestation, even less land for wild animals and even more emissions. It would be a disaster.

You do not need animals to improve soil quality or biodiversity; this is achieved by minimum/no tillage conservation agriculture- which is responsible for the improvements seen with ‘holistic’ over conventional farming.

As regards hoof action and dung. ‘Grazing advocates suggest that cattle hoof action and dung cause increased vegetation growth. Could hoof action benefit degraded land where soil was very compacted? Maybe during the initial year of land rehabilitation, but this should be compared to other methods to achieve the same goal. Also, we have yet to see reliable studies comparing such methods. Regarding fertilization, cattle eating and defecating on the same piece of land results in no gain in net soil nitrogen or nutrient content, unless fed using feed grown from off the land sources, in which case there is transfer of nutrients from one place to another, resulting in loss from one place balanced by gain in another. On the contrary, cattle dung releases both methane and nitrous oxide, which are potent GHGs as mentioned before. The loss of nitrous oxide to the atmosphere is a potential net loss of nitrogen, as are the nutrients in any fecal matter that is washed into streams or ground water. Ecological impacts of manure are a global problem, lessened but not eliminated by optimal management.’

You cannot live in harmony with nature by exploiting animals, killing thousands of First Nation people and millions bison and wild horses to obtain land and farm it with the wealth from slave labour and colonisation. You cannot own pigs; even the concept of owning another being is a violence.

‘Grass-fed’ cattle produce even more methane than industrial, partly because they take longer, sometimes three times as long, to reach slaughter weight. They may live for 18 months to 2 years, all the while eating and drinking, whereas conventional animals are slaughtered at around 6 months. Small, ‘pasture-fed’ dairy herds produce as much methane per litre of breast milk as large herds. Any improvements in soil quality and biodiversity or decreases in eutrophication over industrial animal ag or monoculture systems (though improvements are not seen over conservation/minimum tillage mixed plant crops) using a grazing animal system is not from some inherent magical quality of farmed animals over wild animals. It’s from the management and the addition of water, plants and fertilisers (or manure from chickens fed with off-farm chicken feed).

‘However, optimized plant agriculture also increases SOC, and produces more protein and calories per unit of land. Both holistic integrated and plant ag, however, store far less total land carbon compared to rewilding and reforestation. Note that monogastric animals (i.e. chickens and pigs) also use less land than ruminants (i.e. cattle, sheep and goats) and would allow some saved land for rewilding, but not as much as plant foods for direct human consumption. In such cases, livestock is thought to have a lower impact when diversified and integrated with crop cultivation, although the net benefit is largely due to lower numbers of animals per unit land rather than more intensive grazing practices. Furthermore, grain-fed cattle use less land and feed than grazed cattle, though still more than monogastric animals, to create the same amount of food. Land use change must be quantified when calculating the carbon impact of any product.’

‘As such, Rowntree et. al (2020) did not measure carbon opportunity cost of land, which more comprehensive studies do include in Life Cycle Assessments. To understand the magnitude of this opportunity, it was shown that shifts in global food production to plant-based diets by 2050 could lead to sequestration of 332–547 GtCO2, equivalent to 99–163% of the CO2 emissions budget, 19 years of total fossil fuel emissions of upper and middle-income countries. This is very significant during our current climate crisis.’

Any papers showing that holistic farms are carbon neutral or negative are deliberately and grossly misleading and have the weight of the enormous animal ag industry behind them. Firstly, industry funded studies start with depleted soils which are very easy to show sequestration of carbon in whatever you do to them. A study on White Oak Pastures, which still falsely claims to be carbon negative, omits to mention that after 50 years the soil becomes saturated. Grass eaten by cattle doesn’t have deep roots, unlike some species that could be planted or, importantly, trees, and over time ceases to sequester any carbon. Meaning that the methane (80 x more potent than co2 over 20 years) produced by the animals, as well as from the production of tonnes of off-farm imported chicken feed that wasn’t included in the study’s calculations, goes straight into the atmosphere and causes more warming.

‘Manure from all animals, including these monogastrics (chickens), was used to fertilize the WOP land. This is important since fertilizing soil contributes to vegetation growth, which is the main cause of increased SOC (soil organic carbon). On its own, this critical missing factor in the paper’s calculations could account for the majority increase in SOC, completely skewing the results, and invalidating their conclusions about “regenerative grazing”. Such lapses are signature characteristics of industry affiliated “research”.

‘The promoters of regenerative grazing heavily criticize “row cropping” and monoculture, yet there is no indication that the feed for these animals (roughly 1.8 million kg per year in the year used in their data) was from any form of conservation agriculture. It is possible that chemical fertilizers and pesticides were used, ultimately benefiting the WOP farmland.’

From Dr Shireen Kassam in 2025 ‘Recent research has also dismantled a common narrative promoted by the animal farming industry that regenerative grazing systems are climate-friendly and promote soil health. A comprehensive study found that grass-fed beef is just as carbon intensive as feedlot beef and approximately 10 to 40 times more greenhouse gas intensive per gram of protein than common plant-based or non-beef alternatives. The authors concluded that soil carbon gains attributed to grazing are too small, inconsistent, and geographically limited to counterbalance the methane and land use emissions intrinsic to beef production. This robust modelling across diverse geographies and management practices challenges the “regenerative grazing” narrative and reinforces the need for protein transitions that prioritise low-carbon, resource-efficient foods.’

This paper from Nature Communications in 2023 concludes that ‘About 135 gigatonnes of carbon is required to offset the continuous methane and nitrous oxide emissions from ruminant sector worldwide, nearly twice the current global carbon stock in managed grasslands. For various regions, grassland carbon stocks would need to increase by approximately 25% − 2,000%, indicating that solely relying on carbon sequestration in grasslands to offset warming effect of emissions from current ruminant systems is not feasible.’

What would be helpful is actually rewilding all animal ag land. To produce one calorie of ‘pork’ requires on average 12 calories of plants, beef 33 calories, so feeding people directly with plants uses much less energy water and land (about 1/5th of it) for the same calories than animal ag.

Animal ag uses about 47% of habitable land. Especially useful is rewilding regenerative ag farmsteads, which use about 2.5 times more land than conventional animal farming. Thus about 37% of habitable land could be returned for wilding! Deep rooted trees and wild animals (whose dead bodies would remain in the system rather than being taken away to be eaten) that come with a plant based economy would even start pulling co2 out of the atmosphere and begin cooling the planet.

‘Bottom line, we should be evaluating any plant or animal agriculture for the amount of land and other resources needed to produce a set amount of protein, calories and other nutrients, using conservation agriculture techniques. The most efficient method will sequester SOC, but also use the least land, thus allowing the remaining land to be rewilded or reforested, and also prevents the conversion of more natural ecosystems into agricultural land, by meeting increased human population demands on a smaller total area of land. As such, there is data showing that an extra 4 billion people could be fed, without causing any further deforestation, if existing land used for animal foods were instead used for more efficient plant-based foods.’

The propaganda that reforesting the large amount of newly available land that’s no longer required for animal ag would somehow cause food shortages is just that; propaganda from industry. And silly. In the EU 63% of arable land is used to produce feed for animals. In the UK 85% of farmland is used for animal ag. If there are food shortages it will be because of animal farming.

You don’t need farmed animals to rewild, to sequester co2 nor to improve the soil. Not exploiting animals means that lots more co2 is sequestered, there’s improvements in soils and biodiversity all over the world, not just in your little corner of it, and much more land, water, energy and food is available for 8 billion people, not just the white people who can afford to or who have access to lots of land for these climate change producing luxuries.

Grazing uses 25% of habitable land but only produces 2% of calories, mostly for white people! This is not a sensible use of land to feed 8 billion people.

So not only does integrated animal farming omit to account for the impact of the the soil originally being exhausted of carbon nor the huge amounts of off-farm chicken feed for chicken manure fertiliser (which alone would account for the improvement in carbon in the soil) it ceases to sequester at all after about 50 years as the soil becomes saturated. However, the animals continues to emit climate forcing methane (80x more potent than co2 over 20 years) and nitrous oxide. The issue with run off and manure in water sources may be lessened but is not eliminated.

Not only does this farming use a lot of land, water and energy for few calories only available to rich whites; it also represents a huge loss for sequestration of land (2.5 times the amount than for industrial animal farming). Thus depriving everyone else relief from climate change (that animal ag, including integrated, is at least 50% responsible for it the first place). So everyone misses out on cooling because the whites like green washed bacon.

However, the myth of the holistic regeneration is so intrenched in both leftists and rightists, in both those who accept anthropogenic climate change and in those who don’t, that I can’t global adoption of a plant based diet happening.

What I can see is the rich Western elites acting like they know the climate apocalypse is coming. I see them desperately grabbing onto resources at national, regional, and local levels. I see them battening down the hatches of their bunkers, stirring anti-immigration sentiments and building walls.

The white people and their pigs might be the last to succumb to the heat, though 2+ degrees of warming is coming for you by 2035 just as much as it is for everyone else.

There’s no escape.

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