Opinion: Did You Ever Get The Feeling You’re in an Episode of Schitt’s Creek?

That’s my life, trying daily to bring sanity to the busloads of anti-animal agriculture pseudo-intellectuals who now think it’s hip to embrace “soil” and “regenerative_agriculture” as climate solutions, but can’t connect enough cognitive dots to realize that ruminants are a fundamental part of it. Hello? This should be as basic as “Red means stop. Green means go.” But, no, apparently it isn’t. Instead of working with the facts of life to create a viable and verdant future, we’re stuck in a backwater motel room surrounded by House of Gucci-esque — all glitter and no brain — apostles of “less meat,” “cow farts,” and “oat milk.” Really? The wealthiest people in the world are telling us we need to grow meat in labs (where soy and corn will be the feed stocks). The once respectable environmental group, Greenpeace International, is relishing the embrace of “regenerative agriculture” while telling us at the same time to “reduce ruminant livestock numbers.” Really? How does that work?

Instead of working with the facts of life to create a viable and verdant future, we’re stuck in a backwater motel room surrounded by House of Gucci-esque — all glitter, no brain — apostles of “less meat,” “cow farts,” and “oat milk.”

Shouldn’t we be *increasing* ruminant numbers to *restore* the billions of acres of highly degraded land, and, um, maybe reducing the land in soy, corn, wheat and pea (the basis of the #plantbased diet and the cause of most soil loss)? Hello? The EAT Foundation is claiming that to be healthy, we shouldn’t have more than a half-ounce per day of red meat. Yes, you heard that right, half-ounce. That’s approximately half a meatball — per day — total — of the most nutrient dense food on the planet that for 2 million years has been the fuel of our evolution — literally — making us human in body and mind. And, where will we get the rest of the protein we need to keep our teeth from falling out? Why, or course, from plants! Feel better now?

And, not to be undone, the king of cacophony, GeorgeMonbiot, doesn’t even acknowledge that ruminants and soil are related or that grasslands are even an ecosystem at all (they’re the largest terrestrial ecosystem by both area and carbon storage, btw, — don’t tell George).

Finally, and, in keeping with the times, the hapless United Nations and the majority of its climate diplomats major NGO dignitaries who rotate in and out of executive positions with big ag corporations and lobbying groups, are participating in this sleigh ride to literal and cognitive desertification.

Why acknowledge more fundamental problems — like fertilizer — when you can blame cows and get rid of small producers and then vertically integrate all food and protein production into the hands of even fewer players, marrying food with high-tech and intellectual property? Why do the most basic thing in the world, which is to embrace and even celebrate the coevolutionary relationship that ruminants have on both the wellbeing of people and the planet and work with a few simple principles of holisticManagement to re-green the Earth while cooling the climate and providing protein for humanity? Why do that? Why have sanity? Why move to higher ground, when you can stay in the creek?

Johnny Rose is my hero.