Soil is the foundation of life. It nourishes the plants and animals that feed us, it stores huge amounts of carbon and provides a home for billions of creatures. Yet, across large parts of the world, agricultural soils have been degraded by decades of intensive farming and are in urgent need of regeneration.
But there is hope – and it lies in the way we farm. By embracing regenerative farming systems that work with nature, we can rebuild soil health and restore balance to our food systems. At the heart of this approach are well-managed grasslands and grazing livestock.
This is the key message of a new short film, created by the Sustainable Food Trust, thanks to generous funding from the Naturesave Trust. The film, due to be released this spring alongside a grazing livestock report, aims to inform public opinion about the story behind their food, with a focus on soils and the valuable role that grazing livestock can play as part of sustainable farming systems.
The SFT’s Senior Researcher, Robert Barbour, explains how the film intends to add balance to the debate around livestock:
“The critical importance of well-managed grasslands and grazing livestock for soil health is something which is not widely understood today, in part because of the understandable but overly-simplistic narrative which has emerged around cattle and sheep being bad for the planet. Whilst people are rightly concerned about the devastating impact of industrial farming, with animals often housed in cramped conditions and fed largely on grain which contributes significantly to deforestation and climate change, high welfare, pasture-based systems have the opposite effect. They can help to restore or maintain ecosystems; build natural soil fertility; provide habitats for biodiversity; maintain cherished landscapes and produce nutritious food from marginal land.”
The Sustainable Food Trust works to accelerate the transition to more sustainable food and farming systems. You can find our more about their work here.
