Ruminating on ruminants

John Meadley has spent a lifetime, since 1968, engaged with rural communities in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.  Many of these communities are materially poor, although culturally and spiritually rich, and experience hunger.  Reflecting this, some 16 years ago he felt increasingly uneasy about the feeding of large amounts of grains and pulses to farm animals – particularly to ruminants (which include cattle, sheep, goats and buffaloes) for whom this is not their natural diet.   A chance conversation with two British farmers who were already raising their cattle and sheep wholly on pasture led to the decision to encourage other farmers to do the same.  A small gathering shortly afterwards in Cheltenham Meeting House discussed the way ahead.  One of the key decisions was to be non-judgemental, which proved to be pivotal to what followed. 

Out of this initial meeting has emerged the Pasture for Life movement, which champions the restorative power of grazing animals on pasture.  Now with approaching 1,500 members (mainly farmers but also vets, academics, butchers and restauranteurs) spread across the UK and into Ireland it has an extensive outreach programme, with over 130 events last year. A strong research programme works with academic institutions both in the UK and mainland Europe – led by a team of three post-graduate-trained farmers – all of whom are women.

Encountering a lot of resistance, in 2016 the publication Pasture for Life: It Can Be Done was a turning point through providing a blend of inspiring stories and hard economic data that showed that raising ruminants wholly on pasture can be both ecologically sound and financially profitable.   A series of case studies from 30 farms has demonstrated how grazing animals can nurture biodiversity, summarised in this article on Biodiversity and the Grazing Ruminant to which an introduction can be found here.

The world’s soils hold more than three times as much carbon as is in the atmosphere.  Two thirds of the world’s farmland is under pasture, making the soil beneath it the world’s largest single terrestrial store of carbon.  When soil is cultivated to produce the cereals and pulses on which we all depend its structure is damaged, the life in the soil is diminished and organic matter is lost to the atmosphere as CO₂. Since time immemorial, farmers have healed the soil by the planting and grazing of pasture – a practice that has been increasingly lost with the introduction of industrial farming but which is now being encouraged by Pasture for Life.

Pasture for Life has Quaker roots. Both John Meadley (John M) and one of the two co-founding farmers, organic farmer John Turner (John T), are Quakers.   “Quaker values have been built into the warp and weft of the movement” they note “with farming being seen as a two-way conversation with nature”.  John T remained closely involved for several years before moving on to play a pioneering role in the development of Population (heterogeneous) Crops within British farming – about which more another time.  Latterly John M has also stood back to allow a strong team of farmers to take over the strategic and operational running of the movement, confident that reverence for nature is, and will remain, integral to its ethos.  For more information, watch this short history of Pasture for Life.”