George Monbiot’s Critique of ‘Grazing Livestock: It’s Not the Cow but the How’: The Sustainable Food Trust Responds

In his Guardian column this week, George Monbiot raised a number of criticisms of our recently published Grazing Livestock report. Here, we respond briefly to some of them.

Dartmoor
Monbiot states: “Sheep, cattle and ponies … selectively browse out tree seedlings, preventing the return of temperate rainforest, which is extremely difficult to burn. In dry weather, the moor grass, bracken and heather covering the deforested landscape are tinder.”

Our response: Overgrazing has undoubtedly contributed to an increased risk of wildfire on moorlands, including through a rise in the dominance of Molinia – a flammable grass that now blankets large areas. But that doesn’t mean that moorland grazing is inherently bad. There is good evidence, including from SW England, to show that well-managed grazing can help reverse the dominance of Molinia, bringing benefits for wildfire risk and biodiversity. Grazing animals play a crucial role in supporting upland biodiversity more generally, with many protected habitats and species benefitting or even relying upon low intensity grazing. That’s not to say, of course, that all of our uplands need to be farmed with grazing livestock – we clearly need to make more space for trees, for example. Still, grazing animals have an important part to play in the more sustainable management of our uplands – a role that is under threat from the ongoing loss of livestock in certain areas.