What if we could achieve all of the following:

• A more humane livestock system
• Healthier and tastier meat and dairy products
• Less E. coli food poisoning
• Elimination of feedlots
• Better manure management
• Increased groundwater recharge
• More fertile soil and more nutritious forages
• More diverse and healthier ecosystems
• Enormous savings in energy
• Reduced use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides
• Reduced flooding and soil erosion

And, to top it off:

• A dramatic reduction in global warming gases.

Richard Manning in an article in Mother Earth News titled The Amazing Benefits of Grass-fed Meat argues that we can have all this. And not just for niche markets – we can scale it up. We can convert half of the 150 million acres used to grow corn and soy ?to permanent pasture and not lose one ounce of meat production.

Tastier, more humane meat – and less global warming. Industrial farming relies on huge amounts of chemical fertilizers that produce emissions contributing to global warming. Nitrogen fertilizer reacts with oxygen to form nitrous oxide (N₂O), which has become the third most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane.  N₂O has a global warming potential 296 times larger than an equal mass of carbon dioxide and also contributes to stratospheric ozone depletion.  In corn and soy production, tilling adds oxygen which promotes oxidation. Tillage also releases carbon dioxide, along with methane and nitrous oxide. While a growing corn field sucks up a lot of carbon dioxide, the carbon is soon released as the disced down stalks and leaves decay. All tillage systems have been found to be net contributors to global warming, with the worst offenders being the annual crops corn, soybeans and wheat farmed with conventional methods. Conversely, fields of perennial crops pull both methane and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it in the soil. Manning points to evidence that perennial grasslands can, under certain conditions, be even better at sequestering carbon than forests.

Manning calculates that if we converted half the U.S. corn and soy acres to pasture, we might cut carbon emissions by roughly 144 trillion pounds. That’s not even counting the reduced use of fossil fuels that would also result.

An additional benefit from the reduction of industrial corn and soybean farming not mentioned by Manning would be a reduction of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the use of chemical fertilizers upstream in the Mississippi basin.

So what’s stopping us? Redesigning our food system would require shifting, slashing, or eliminating massive federal subsidies for corn and soybean production – subsidies that end up in the pockets of the agribusiness conglomerates or the wealthy. The “health care” debate, which resulted in further entrenching the parasitic insurance industry, shows how likely that is to happen. Brian Riedl, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, calls farm subsidies “America’s largest corporate welfare program.”

Congress justifies agribusiness subsidies as keeping America’s food supply cheap and abundant. No matter that the food’s killing us while bankrupting the health care system and destroying global ecosystems.