Rotational grazing can reduce carbon, generate revenue

We are two middle school students at Scattergood Friends School in West Branch, Iowa. Our names are Ruby and Jasper, Seventh and eighth-graders. We have a project in school: to inform the public about the benefits of rotational grazing.

But what is rotational grazing? Is it when cows spin around? No! It is a method of grazing for all sorts of livestock, where instead of the animal being confined to a feedlot, or let out to roam a massive pasture, they are confined to a small grassy square of land, and are moved to a new one each day. For example, a cow, or other grazing animal, could start on “Plot 1” of land, then move to “Plot 2” the next day, and then eventually go back to “Plot 1” after going through all the other plots. And when the animals get back to Plot 1, the grass that they ate will be regrown.

Not to mention that this method of grazing is far more ethical than feedlots, because the animals get to eat a wide variety of food, as if they were in the wild, unlike feedlots. Planned grazing has been shown to be able to get rid of around 3-10 gigatons of carbon by 2050, the earnings from this are predicted to be around 800 billion dollars.

Here at Scattergood, we do rotational grazing, and it is led by our farmer extraordinaire, Ben Heller, and he was our source for a lot of the info in this letter.

Jasper Strack and Ruby Dallas

West Branch