9 www.SmallFarmCanada.ca find it upsetting to be surrounded by animals I knew would one day be sent to slaughter? And more to the point, would it make me feel guilty knowing our living came from their deaths?” she writes. “I vaguely figured I’d keep myself at arm’s length to avoid any potential discomfort.” But it’s hard to stay aloof on a farm. In the city “it had been easy to see myself as separate from the natural world.” Among the grass, sky, and birds, the cows and calves, “I became daily witness to nature’s beauty, its force and its cycles,” she says. The “physically and emotionally intense tasks” of caring for livestock became “deeply rewarding moments, etched in my memory and my soul.” She also returned to eating meat. After 16 years as a “vegetarian rancher,” Hahn Niman accepts a burger from her husband and feels a “wave of relief”. She discovers the ranch’s grass-fed beef “is more in accord with my own values and beliefs” than her previous meat-free diet. In the hands of another writer this would be a major part of the story. But true to her legal training, Hahn Niman marshals arguments like a defence lawyer. She relies on expert testimony, garnished only lightly with her own fascinating personal story. Her pacing reminded me of a night in a bowling alley, as she methodically set up the pins of the various anti- beef arguments and then bowled fact-laden chapters towards them. Cattle cause climate change. Wham! Raising cattle uses too much water. Wham! Meat is bad for you. Wham! Take climate change: Hahn Niman wades through the complex issues of methane (a byproduct of ruminant digestion), nitrous oxide, and carbon. She gets into the weeds on how greenhouse gas outputs are estimated or determined, and she cites ways cattle can help fight climate change. As she repeatedly says, the problem with cattle “is not the cow, it’s the how” – not the critter herself, but the way we manage her. Put the cow on grass and let her run in a way that mimics natural systems, and remarkable things can happen. On Georgia’s White Oak Pastures, a 3,200acre ranch raising cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and rabbits on grass, a life-cycle analysis by an independent consulting firm found every kilogram of beef the ranch produced put the equivalent of 3.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide back in the soil. Meanwhile, readers who follow this issue closely will know similar lifecycle studies found the production of two major “plant-based” meatless burgers emits the equivalent of 3.5-4 kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for every kilogram of fake meat. In this case, the grass-fed burgers are removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, while the plantbased ones are adding to climate change. When cattle and grass team up in the right way, cows “are not, in fact, a climate problem,” Nicole Hahn argues, “cattle are actually among the most practical, cost-effective solutions to the warming of the planet.” This makes Defending Beef handy ammunition for arguments with vegan friends, if you’re so inclined (not something I necessarily recommend, by the way.) But how likely is it to sway the people who prefer plant-based patties and oat milk? The court of public opinion doesn’t necessarily operate from a shared set of facts. People know what they know, and if they know that X is “bad” – and for X you can substitute animal agriculture, or vaccines, or your least favourite political party – they will find reasons to confirm that “knowledge.” So how to explain, to people who live in a static world of concrete and glass, this essential grassland dance of seasons, of decay and regrowth involving livestock and wildlife, roots and fungi, billions of insects, and microbes? Describing the mystery and wonder of grasslands requires a mix of poetry and emotion, leavened by the experience of time spent in that rustling ocean of greenery. But it also requires intellectual rigour, and that’s what Hahn Niman brings to the debate. If I could hand that young couple a copy of Defending Beef and walk them through my own pastures, maybe they would glimpse the value of engaging with local agriculture. As Hahn Niman admits, it’s hard to explain a life devoted to livestock and grass to non-ranch types. But when you’re caring for other creatures “thinking beyond yourself becomes second nature.” In a world that’s increasingly in love with its own social-media reflection, “a country benefits by having a good portion of its population in agriculture and connected to the natural world.” Amen to that. The pay isn’t great. The working conditions are hard. Few understand what it is to do labour that’s both occasionally heart- breaking and regularly soul-filling. If Hahn Niman conveys even a bit of this complex beauty to the people who now prefer milk and faux meat from distant factories, she’s doing farmers, ranchers, and the planet a favour. Listen to Nicolette talk about beef on Climate One’s podcasts. CHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING
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