Re-grounding the Debate: Why Critiques of Grazing often Miss the Point

Last year, George Monbiot published a characteristically provocative piece in The Guardian, responding to the Sustainable Food Trust’s (SFT) report on the role of grazing animals in sustainable food systems. As ever, his column sparked a flurry of reactions. At Pasture for Life, we welcome rigorous debate about the future of food and farming. But it’s critical that such debates are grounded in context-specific, transparent, and appropriately nuanced data. Unfortunately, Monbiot’s critique, and the global modelling studies he draws on, fail to engage meaningfully with the very systems the SFT report explores.

This matters, because those systems, pasture-based, non-grain-fed, ecologically-attuned livestock farming, are not hypothetical ideals. They are real, working farms in the UK, producing nutrient-rich food while improving soil health, effectively cycling carbon, and fostering biodiversity. To dismiss these systems using data that doesn't represent them is not just inaccurate, it risks undermining the credibility of the sustainability conversation altogether.

What the SFT and FAI Reports Really Say

Misunderstanding Efficiency

Monbiot’s argument hinges on a familiar efficiency claim: that cattle and sheep are less efficient converters of feed than pigs or chickens, and that they invariably require grain to be economically viable. He writes:

“Given that cattle and sheep in almost all systems require supplementary feeding, and are far less efficient converters than chickens and pigs, would this proposal really ensure that less grain was needed?”

But this assumption fails on both fronts. First, Pasture for Life certification explicitly prohibits the use of grain, soy, or other concentrates. Certified farms do not rely on supplementary feed. Instead, they manage land and grazing to ensure forage availability year-round, using tools like holistic planned grazing, diverse winter forage crop mixes, and conserved grass such as hay or silage.

Second, measuring efficiency in terms of feed conversion ratios alone gives an incomplete and often misleading picture. While pigs and poultry may convert feed into meat more quickly, they are predominantly fed human-edible grains and soy, frequently imported from regions where their production is linked to environmental degradation and social harm. In contrast, ruminants in pasture-based systems, such as those certified by Pasture for Life, convert inedible forage into nutrient-dense food without competing with human food supplies.

What we do know is that Pasture for Life farms have been focusing on biodiversity as an underpinning driver of their success, not as something to sell but as a fundamental set of processes that enable better, low input farming systems to thrive. It has been found that on Pasture for Life farms grassland was generally allowed to grow tall and contained a wide range of legume and forb species and relatively low proportions of ryegrass compared to Improved Grassland, they produce a wide range of public goods including healthy landscapes, habitats, soils and livestock and tend to have very low input and fossil fuel use. Benchmarking of economic productivity revealed that Pasture for Life farmers perform better in terms of cattle production than non-Pasture for Life farmers and their willingness to optimise production and minimise inputs is done so so in shared innovative processes focused on the wellbeing of their livestock, their land, their families and themselves (SEEGSLIP).

The Problem with Poore & Nemecek

A central source for Monbiot’s argument is the 2018 paper by Poore and Nemecek, often cited as a definitive analysis of food system impacts. But while it is valuable in scope, it is also deeply limited in relevance to UK pasture-fed systems. The dataset draws heavily from global industrial production models and does not disaggregate for systems like AMP grazing or UK-specific low input systems (because we are still at an early stage of data collection for those approaches). As such, its conclusions about the environmental costs of beef and lamb are based on averages that include deforestation-linked beef from Brazil and feedlot operations from North America. Furthermore, as already explored in terms of integrated land use, this paper draws upon data sets that offer simplified understandings of land use. They assume land must be cropped or grazed, when we farmers know that spring grazing of winter sown cereals is becoming increasingly popular. They assume land can be woodland or pasture, when silvopasture (the intentional integration of livestock and trees) is not only centuries old, but is supported by research that shows it can deliver across more ecosystem services than either of its component parts. 

The paper should be considered a blunt tool, unable to account for the increased carrying capacity, improved forage utilisation, and ecological benefits of rotational or mob grazing systems. The Rothamsted Research Cell Grazing Technical Report (2023) provides empirical evidence on the benefits of cell grazing systems over more conventional set stocking. The study found that cell grazing increased grassland productivity and resilience, allowing more livestock to be carried per hectare without increasing inputs, and improving soil carbon levels over time. These findings highlight the potential of well-managed grazing systems to enhance both productivity and environmental outcomes, that cell grazing increased grassland productivity and resilience, allowing more livestock to be carried per hectare without increasing inputs, and improving soil carbon levels over time.

The Poore & Nemecek paper simply doesn’t include this kind of system in its data pool. To use it to critique Pasture for Life-type farms is like criticising an electric car based on the emissions of diesel SUVs.

Evidence-Based Policy Must Reflect On-Farm Realities

Conclusion: Let’s Talk About Which Livestock Systems

The question we face is not whether livestock are good or bad. It is which livestock systems we are talking about, and how they are managed. To conflate all forms of meat production into a single category is not only lazy, it is counterproductive.

At Pasture for Life, we stand with those who want to ask deeper, better questions. Questions like: How do we produce food that nourishes people without harming the planet? How can land be managed to store carbon, build biodiversity, and support thriving farm businesses? And how can we ensure that sustainability debates don’t erase the progress already being made by real farmers in real places?

There is no perfect system. But there are many better ones. And they are already here, hoofed, rooted in soil, and growing every day.