As we are starting to see the effects of climate change materialise in front of our eyes, people are looking for things they can do to help heal our planet. One common theme has been a call to stop eating meat, mainly due to methane emissions from cows.

This is a simple answer, but I suggest it is an answer to the wrong question.

How did nature get things so horribly wrong when she allowed cows to evolve? After all, they are evil weapons of climate destruction, aren’t they?

Let’s start with a few basics.

Cows are ruminant animals. This means they have a multi-chambered stomach, one part of which is called a rumen. This is a fermentation vat containing billions of microbes breaking down the plants the animal eats. As part of this process, some of these microbes produce methane.

Lots of animals produce some methane, including horses, dogs, termites, people and even kangaroos.

Ruminants evolved 50 million years ago, and today there are almost 200 different species. So ruminant animals have a rich ecological diversity and a long evolutionary history.

Other ruminants include the American elk, Chinese goral, Himalayan tahr, Japanese serow, Reindeer, Siberian ibex, water buffalo and yak. There are mountain, marsh, snow and swamp ruminants. There are American, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, even Siberian ruminants.

If nature got it wrong when she allowed ruminants to evolve, she got it wrong at a global scale.

But maybe she didn’t get it wrong after all? Maybe it’s not her, maybe it’s us?

Instead of asking “What do we humans need to do to reduce ruminant methane emissions?”, we should be asking “What have we humans done that has so unbalanced the natural methane cycle?”

Bacteria that “eat” methane live in healthy, properly managed soils beneath the feet of healthy, properly managed livestock. (Remember, nature doesn’t do “waste”.)

These methane-eating bacteria (methanotrophs) act as a balance to the methane produced by the methane generating bacteria (methanogens) in the rumens of the livestock above ground. This is the missing part of the natural methane cycle that we need to restore.

I believe there is a massive difference between “livestock” and “properly managed livestock”.

As soon as we take grazing animals off grass and put them into a feedlot or confinement dairy, we have severed their link to the land. This means that we have now prevented nature from doing what she does best, which is utilise any “waste”, cycle and reuse nutrients, and balance the system.

When we manage livestock properly, out on grass and respecting the natural relationship between soils, grasses and grazing animals, we get a cleaner, fresher and properly balanced production system. We get healthy ecosystems, healthy animals, healthy people.

If we start asking the right questions instead of the wrong ones, the answers begin to matter.

The answer to reducing our impact on the climate is not to stop eating meat, it is to properly manage land and livestock.