Cows Save the Planet And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth, reviewed

We look at this book with the provocative and counter intuitive title by Judith Schwartz that is aimed at making you question some of your assumptions. The book is available from Chelsea Green Publishing. 

Cows Save the Planet And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth, reviewed

We recently reviewed The Reindeer Chronicles by the same author, which was published more recently than this book, but it feels like there is a common thread across both books. In this book her focus is much more specifically on soil rehabilitation, but in both books Schwartz is focussed on looking at positive examples of land restoration and conservation around the world.

The key focus of the title, leads the way by drawing attention to the idea that cows could be part of the solution too, rather than a contributing factor to the current problems the world is experiencing. It also leads us into a discussion around soil, and it’s importance, and how quickly it can both be lost, but also restored too. This does offer some potentially very positive insights and hope for us going forwards. Intensive farming is, and has done great damage to many parts of the world, but if we  become more aware of how to farm and grow things more intelligently this is not an irreversible problem.

It is a thoughtful and interesting read, and, as the author mentions, many of the solutions are possible, they just might not be ones that we have read in previous books or found in libraries.

More about the book below

In Cows Save the Planet, journalist Judith D. Schwartz looks at soil as a crucible for our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises. Schwartz reveals that for many of these problems—climate change, desertification, biodiversity loss, droughts, floods, wildfires, rural poverty, malnutrition, and obesity—there are positive, alternative scenarios to the degradation and devastation we face. In each case, our ability to turn these crises into opportunities depends on how we treat the soil.

Drawing on the work of thinkers and doers, renegade scientists and institutional whistleblowers from around the world, Schwartz challenges much of the conventional thinking about global warming and other problems. For example, land can suffer from undergrazing as well as overgrazing, since certain landscapes, such as grasslands, require the disturbance from livestock to thrive. Regarding climate, when we focus on carbon dioxide, we neglect the central role of water in soil—”green water”—in temperature regulation. And much of the carbon dioxide that burdens the atmosphere is not the result of fuel emissions, but from agriculture; returning carbon to the soil not only reduces carbon dioxide levels but also enhances soil fertility.

Cows Save the Planet is at once a primer on soil’s pivotal role in our ecology and economy, a call to action, and an antidote to the despair that environmental news so often leaves us with.