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SBBurzmali t1_jcfna2l wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Regrowing tropical forests absorb megatonnes of carbon by Creative_soja

I have to point out that if you have cattle grazing the land, said cattle will be collect as much carbon as they can into themselves instead of the topsoil, as well as that cattle, on the whole, are the number one producer of a different greenhouse gas that we really would like to reduce if possible.

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[deleted] t1_jcgezck wrote

Cattle grazing helps build soil through grass root shedding. They graze and the grass sheds it’s roots which ends up sequestering carbon into the soil. It takes time but works. And then the grass grows and builds more roots. And the cycle continues. The Great Plains used to be covered in FEET of topsoil.

The methane cycle of cows is actually a net neutral because it does end up back in the ground. Just takes 10 years. The carbon we worry about is the stuff we’ve burned from fossil fuels. Can we get that into the soil?

We’ve eroded so much soil over the last 100 years that maybe if we applied these strategies with technology helping to optimize them, they could sequester massive amounts of carbon. Plants are the only thing that really sequester carbon and store it. Animals will break down unless they’re all buried which livestock are not.

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