Life Of Beef Cattle That Go To The Feedlot
There are some misconceptions about pasture-raised cattle compared to typical grain-fed cattle. When grain-fed beef cattle are born, they start by drinking their mother's milk and grazing on a pasture. Over time they will wean off of their mother's milk and rely on pasture grazing. Slowly, the farmers will introduce supplemental feed, such as corn and soybean meal. Then when the cattle are mature, they go to feedlots, where they eat a lot of food in a short amount of time. During this time they gain size faster than they ever possibly could in a natural setting, which allows them to be produced faster.
Life Of Beef Cattle That Are Pasture-Raised
Pasture-raised cattle go through a similar process at the beginning of their life. They start by drinking their mother's milk and relying on pasture grazing. They slowly wean off of their mother's milk, but they keep eating on the pasture. They get most of their nutrients from the pasture, although they may get some supplemental feed during the winter months. They will not go through a 3-month process of rapidly gaining weight, rather they will live twice as long and be rotated through pastures until they are ready for slaughter.
Environmental Benefits of Pasture-Raised Cattle
Some people might come to the logical conclusion that if pasture-raised cattle live much longer than grain-fed, so they must produce more methane. However, this dismisses a lot of other factors that are important to consider. For example, when the cattle are rotated across pastures, they encourage growth by using their hooves to trample the manure into the soil. When soil is healthy it should be sequestering carbon from the atmosphere down into the ground, creating a net negative carbon impact. Another factor to consider is how environmentally harmful it is to produce corn and soy, as mentioned in previous articles on this site. On a "best-case scenario" created by Silver Fern Farms, they calculated the carbon emissions from one cow in the feedlot, eating the minimum feed, for the minimum time. The EPA found that it would take 9 medium growth coniferous trees in an urban setting 10 years to sequester the carbon that the "best-case" cow produced. 32.8 million cattle were harvested in 2020. Even if pasture-raised cattle produce slightly more methane, there is really no competition when the environmental impacts of producing and transporting animal feed are taken into account.
Sources
“Grain-Fed Beef vs. Grass-Fed Beef – Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Silver Fern Farms, http://newzealmeats.com/blog/grain-fed-vs-grass-fed-beef-greenhouse-gas-emissions/.
Matsumoto, Nancy. “Is Grass-Fed Beef Really Better for the Planet? Here's the Science.” NPR, NPR, 13 Aug. 2019, https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/13/746576239/is-grass-fed-beef-really-better-for-the-planet-heres-the-science.
“Statistics & Information.” USDA ERS - Statistics & Information, https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/statistics-information.aspx.