The ancient, sustainable practice of pasturing animals among trees is gaining traction in the U.S. If it scales up, it could help shrink our carbon footprint.
Trees absorb and sequester large amounts of carbon over time; they’re rendered even more powerful when they’re used in concert with grazing and planted on “marginal” land that isn’t great for growing crops—what Gabriel calls the “funky edges” around, say, healthy woodlands. On the heels of the latest, dire, National Climate Assessment, ag-based climate solutions such as silvopasture could provide much-needed climate benefits—if they can be scaled up.
Project Drawdown, a group of international scientists and policymakers that modeled the 80 most effective ways to battle climate change, ranks silvopasture number nine on its list, reporting that it could reduce CO2 emissions by over 31 gigatons by 2050 if it were ramped up from its current 351 million acres to 554 million acres worldwide.
There are no good estimates of how much land in the U.S. is currently devoted to silvopasture. The amount, though, is small, which means there’s potential for the practice to play much a larger role here; worldwide, it accounts for about 15 percent of all grazing land.
This prompts the question: Can more American farmers get the message about silvopasture’s positive qualities, and can the resources necessary to get them started with it, or transition to it, be made more readily available?
Gabriel addressed at least the first part of that question in his book. It’s a primer on ways to mingle silva (Latin for forest) with the pasturing of livestock—as well as a look at ancient silvopasture methods in Spain’s dehesa and Japan’s Kyushu province, plus more recent efforts in places like Mexico, where it receives government subsidies. The method has also been adopted in Panama, Costa Rica, and Colombia.
