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It’s time for another catch-up with my friend and co-author of Sacred Cow, Robb Wolf.
I am fresh off a trip to Brazil where I attended a conference held by JBS, the world’s largest beef producer. The primary focus was on methane and the tactics JBS and Brazil as a whole are using to meet the 2040 goal of “net-zero emissions.”
Some of their cutting-edge research includes feed additives that reduce methane output and automated milking machines for pastured dairy. And here’s an interesting fact: when you clear land in the Amazon region, you own it. So, it’s greedy land grabs destroying the Amazon, not grazing cattle that is responsible. We’ve been misled.
The research coming out of Brazil also shines a light on positive aspects of feedlot beef and Robb and I discuss some of the pros and cons of this method of raising animals. When Robb and I catch up we often go down different rabbit holes and this conversation is no different. Listen in as we discuss:
- Ireland’s latest pledge to reduce livestock by 30%
- The hard truths about recycling
- Antibiotic usage in cattle
- My upcoming travels
- Robb’s work with CrossFit
- The latest on Robb’s company LMNT
Resources:
Frank Mitloehner, PhD – UC Davis
Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Innovation (RCGI)
Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa)
Sustainable Dish Episode 191: Frédéric Leroy, PhD
Territorial emissions policies
Is “Less Meat, Better Meat” a Threat to Food Justice? – Global Food Justice Alliance post
Wilding – the Return of Nature to a British Farm by Isabella Tree
Groundswell – Regenerative Show and Conference
Connect with Robb:
Website: The Healthy Rebellion
Instagram: @dasrobbwolf
LinkedIn: Robb Wolf
Facebook: Robb Wolf
Twitter: @robbwolf
YouTube: Robb Wolf
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connelly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Patreon supporters, and listeners.
Quotes:
[There is] this overemphasis on methane as the big bad thing, when there’s all these other ecosystem functions that cattle are contributing to. Methane output is one piece. – Diana Rodgers, RD
“Recognizing that there’s going to be changes and there will be sacrifices, and this may be really controversial, too, but at the end of the day, I put human life above and ahead of all other life.” – Robb Wolf
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD 00:01
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connelly who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance an initiative, advocating for the inclusion of animal source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now on to our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD 0:39
Welcome back to the podcast everyone. I’m gonna do a catch up today little fireside chat with Robb Wolf. Welcome, Robb.
Robb Wolf 0:46
Thank you for bringing me back. It just shows the poor decision making that you have all things, life and friendships. So thank you.
Diana Rodgers, RD 0:55
And so you and I were just chatting for about 20 minutes before I realized we weren’t recording, which is awesome. So we were just sort of catching up. And I just thought both of our listener groups would like a little update on what we’re all up to. I just got back from some travel, you’ve got new puppy and other stuff going on. So maybe you could give a quick update.
Robb Wolf 1:21
You go first. Yours is much more exciting. You’ve been the world traveler, you go first. And I think it’s cool. I don’t… I’m gonna toot my horn a little bit in that long ago, I said that regenerative ag might emerge in the developing world far earlier than it does in the United States. And it may never happen in the United States and Europe because of how *beep* up all of our systems are currently and how regulatorily captured all of these systems are. But in the developing world, people can’t print their own fiat currency, it ad infinitum. People have tried that, and it ends up destroying their culture and their economies and everything. And just as an aside, it’s interesting, like El Salvador and Honduras ended up pegging some of their financial backing to some crypto, which maybe is good maybe is bad, but like people are looking at really outside the box alternatives for what they’re trying to deal with on like economic issues and food security issues and whatnot. And you’ve traveled before to Southeast Asia trying to get out ahead of like the antibiotic topic, which remind me to talk about that, because I’ve had some, some thoughts about that. But then also, you ended up going to Brazil recently because folks are looking downstream and trying to figure out what are we going to do for our food systems so that we can support both an expanding population, a more urbanized population, but then do it in a way that we are not completely destroying the environment around us. And so I again, I will toot my own horn a little bit that I said that regenerative ag may happen everywhere else first, before it really takes root here.
Diana Rodgers, RD 3:07
Yeah, I was so lucky. I got down, I got to go down to Sao Paulo for a conference on methane. And it was sort of a joint conference with a few organizations. And so Frank Mitloehner, from UC Davis was down there. There were a bunch of other international experts. So the cattle industry in Brazil is under a lot of pressure from multiple different angles. They’ve got you know, cattle are destroying the Amazon, which we can talk about briefly too, because it’s just not true. But then we’ve also got companies being you know, blamed that they’re causing way too much methane, they gotta reduce the methane. So part of my talk, they had all these experts coming talking about how to reduce methane, and I got to see, you know, they took me all over the country. I unexpectedly did… I didn’t realize that that was happening. And so you know, I got in a car and they were just like, “Okay, we’re going” and I got to see the state of Sao Paulo Research Center on breeding and methane research. I posted a little bit on my Instagram story about these glass rumen, fake rumens that they have. So they use to in order to research methane actually cut a hole in the side, like I’m sure some people have seen this maybe on discovery or something where they, you know, you could reach into the cow, it was like this hole they cut in the stomach. That’s now considered inhumane in most places that have access to these fake rumen. And so we walked around inside the test lab with all these brilliant animal scientists. And they’re just testing different feed additives to potentially reduce the methane output. So, at this conference I went to, there were many experts talking about reducing methane. But then, I talked about this whole idea of this carbon tunnel vision and you have written about that I wrote about it a little bit on my Instagram. But basically this over emphasis on methane as the big bad thing, when there’s all these other ecosystem functions that cattle are contributing to. Methane output is one piece. But then we’ve got the methane capture that can happen and the recycling of methane into the environment, into the water cycles, into the CO2 cycle and plants and everything. I think that this over emphasis on methane is really driven by the plant-based meat alternative companies because methane emissions is really the only thing they can win on. You know, they can’t win on less water. They can’t win on soil health, on biodiversity.
Robb Wolf 5:54
Land usage.
Diana Rodgers, RD 5:55
Right. Yeah. So anyway, so we went to the state of Sao Paulo Research Center. Then we went to the Brazilian, it’s called Embrapa. And we saw some really cool silvopasture experiments where they were planting eucalyptus trees in the middle of the pastures, providing shade. And they actually found that the pasture in the silvopasture areas with the cattle grazing was actually the soil was actually more diverse than even in the rain forest. Just because the cattle action and the trees are happy, the soil’s happy, the grass is happy. Everyone’s teeming with life.
Robb Wolf 6:38
You know, we know that Grasslands are where the rubber really hits the road and real biodiversity. Like rain forests are amazing but when you really start talking about carbon capture, and like legit, broad-spectrum from microbes on biodiversity, grasslands, oddly enough, are kind of where the real action is. But it’s kind of it’s not as sexy to describe that. And then also, clearly, there needs to be thoughtful conservation efforts around rainforests and whatnot. But yeah, yeah, that’s fascinating,
Diana Rodgers, RD 7:10
Right. So they, you know, definitely the eucalyptus trees were very monoculture looking, and they were doing some other experiments with more native trees, but they’re doing all kinds of experiments which was just really cool. The cattle down there really interesting. They take longer to develop on grass, because they’re the Brahman cattle, which the genetics are originally from India. They are more heat tolerant and more bug tolerant than your typical Black Angus that we see here in the US. So these are the cattle that have the big hump on the back that you see in warmer places. I saw an automatic milking station for pastured dairy, which was really interesting. So these cows just when they need to be milked, they just walk up. And there is automatic milking happening at some places in the US too with like robots. But those are in the confined dairy. This was in a pasture dairy situation. So you just pan out you know, and they’re, they just happily walk in, you know, and while it’s getting milk, they’re eating some of the, you know, they’ve got some food for the for the animal, there.
Robb Wolf 8:15
Some choice food for them to entice them in.
Diana Rodgers, RD 8:19
Exactly. And so if one animal’s hanging out a little longer, the other one behind them just kind of nudges just very gently, it was the calmest thing. And you just, there was just a steady flow of mamas getting ready to be milked. And then you look out and you know, as they walk out of being milked, they’re just out in pasture. And then they’ve got this automatic gate opening situation on a rotation like sort of adapted multi paddock grazing situation. So they’re like doing everything that’s like super cutting edge that I’ve seen here in the US down in Brazil. And they’re so lucky down there. It’s so lush, and Brazil is feeding a large portion of the world right now. And I think it’s going to be the agriculture hub moving forward. And so, you know, they’re under all this pressure right now too with Amazon. And so there’s this big, you know, there’s been all these articles out in the Wall Street. I think it was the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and then there was another one from the New York Times, all about, you know, cattle driving rainforest destruction. And so that was another thing I was just going to touch briefly on. It is so much more complicated. And you and I write about this in Sacred Cow. It is not driven by cattle grazing. What’s happening in Brazil is when you clear land in this Amazon region, you actually get to own it. And so this is a real estate grab and what they do is they first clear lumber, and Brazilian hardwood is really valuable. So they first they make money off the big beautiful trees and then they burn it down. And after they burn it down, you still have all the scrub left and everything is not ready for much other usage. And so they bring in cattle to graze it, which is just the best use of the land at that time. Some of the cattle do illegally end up in the beef trade. It’s not a huge percentage of the beef cattle that is being exported out of Brazil, but some do make it in illegally. And then after between two and sometimes 10 years or so, it gets converted to cropland because the cattle have eaten everything down. And then they plant soy, which is highly profitable for soy oil, which goes into ultra-processed foods. And then the byproduct is soy cakes, which go to China to feed chickens. So it’s not cattle driving deforestation, it is a policy issue. It is complicated. There are a lot of people who need money in that area that are doing this. And it’s a really hard process to wrap your head around and to fix.
Robb Wolf 11:14
You know, I don’t know, if you and I talking about this or listening to someone else, it all gets kind of muddy, but Europe has already gone through this process. Like you know, there was the land grab, the expansion, the deforestation, you know, good things and bad things about the whole thing. Clearly, that has happened throughout most of North America already, you know, the expansion across the continent displacement of native peoples like, grab bag of terrible things, and also what has brought us to modern living. And then we have these areas that are developing, and folks need it. There has to be some degree – we have one of a couple of options: we figure out a way of sustainably developing these areas so that people have a standard of living that then usually drives down birth rate. And then we get kind of a virtuous cycle where people lifted up out of poverty, birth rates drop, you know, and hopefully, we have some good, you know, long-term things with that. Or we keep these people perpetually in abject poverty, or we do some sort of crazy culling of the population of the planet, which some people seem pretty fired up about. And I find kind of, you know, horribly appalling. But there is kind of an interesting kind of ethnocentrism around this whole thing that yeah, we do want there to be conscientious stewardship of these resources. But those are the Brazilians’ resources and those people and they’re trying to figure out how to lift a huge population, a large, mainly young population out of abject poverty and get to a level of infrastructure that then provides something better for everybody. Again, we’ve already in the western world have largely gone through this. And it’s just…
Diana Rodgers, RD 13:10
You’re being so diplomatic, because I know…
Robb Wolf 13:12
I am trying to be diplomatic on this. But you know, it’s, I think that stepping back and giving it like, yes, recognizing that there’s going to be changes and there will be sacrifices, but and this may be really controversial, too. But at the end of the day, I put human life above and ahead of all other life. And there’s some reasons for that. And maybe we talk about that in a future podcast. It doesn’t mean that we cripple the planet that we live on, such that we become, you know, extinct because we totally *beep* everything up. But I think that folks need to step back a little bit and have some understanding that a developing country is just that it is developing. And you either allow for that process to occur and try to mitigate some of the downside things. Like a good example is just like leaded gasoline. Like there were much of the world never went through that process because we finally learned that like, Okay, this is a Faustian bargain. This is not worth what we’re getting for not having knocking and pinging in our engines like we’re poisoning our children. We’re poisoning our environment. We can’t do this. And there’s better, you know, cell infrastructure and communications infrastructure in most of Central America than where I live in Montana, you know. So there’s all these awesome opportunities for technological advancement and understanding of our world to bypass many of the mistakes that we’ve made, but there’s still going to be give and take. There’s still going to be challenges with all that stuff. So yeah, yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD 14:43
Yeah and one of the interesting things so in Ireland, they want to reduce the livestock population by 30%. Right. And that doesn’t mean that demand for meat is going to go down by 30%. That just means it’s going to go to Brazil or the business is going to go elsewhere, there’s going to be more pressure on countries like Brazil to produce meat for Europe. And it then will mean that 30, you know, or a large portion of Irish farmers are gonna be out of business.
Robb Wolf 15:16
Right.
Diana Rodgers, RD 15:17
So it’s so short-sighted. What I see largely coming out of Europe from the anti-meat dialogue, and it is so strong now. What’s going on there. I did a podcast with Frederic Leroy on the Global Burden of Disease study. So this is, you know, there’s bias coming from science. It’s getting into government policy. And it’s going to end up where, you know, another thing too, I learned from Frank, and I’m going to do a podcast on this. There’s something called territorial emissions policies. So basically, the country that produces the emission gets saddled with the entire piece of the emission. So for example, Saudi Arabia looks pretty carbon-neutral because they’re not actually burning fossil fuels. Right. But Ireland is producing all this meat, and so Ireland’s emissions are really bad. So what does the government do? Oh, well, we need less beef. It just messes everything up.
Robb Wolf 16:17
But that’s not particularly fair. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD 16:17
It’s not fair. It’s not fair at all.
Robb Wolf 16:22
This is maybe kind of a reach. But another parallel is recycling, you know, from consumer goods, like old computers, electronics, and whatnot. It’s a dirty, messy process that is expensive, has a lot of ecological considerations. But that process has been made so difficult to do in the developed world, that it gets offshored to the developing world. And there, it gets handled in a way that is incredibly destructive. Like people, you know, kids just using carboys of solvents to pour onto a bucket of wiring to dissolve the plastic off of the wiring, and then by hand, pull the copper and silver wires out and then just dump the plastic laden solvent onto the ground. Because we have made it so difficult to do this in the developed world, then we offshore it to a place where there is no oversight. There is no OSHA, there is a, you know, and this is again, where we have to think about externalities in secondary, tertiary, you know, eventualities, do you really want… do you want this *beep* recycled? Well, we probably should. Right now we have this kind of crazy, you know, supply chain issue where it’s like, man, we should really be taking care of all the rare earth minerals and stuff like that, that we mined for solar and electronics and all these things. Okay, well, how are we going to repurpose that stuff? Well, it’s got to be broken back down and processed. It can be either an incredibly dirty and damaging process to the environment, or you have a little bit more expensive a process, but we invest in the clean side of it, but you have to allow that to happen, like somebody somewhere has to be allowed to do a plant that repurposes this stuff, and but it actually has oversight. People get paid to do it. There is an OSHA, you know, component to it. And there’s just so many parallels there between that and then just food production, you know, writ large. If Northern Europe or parts of northern Europe, which are very amenable for producing grazing animals are allowed and even incentivized to do that, then it will be less pressure to do what is happening in the Amazon rainforest. So this is where that first order thinking, carbon tunnel vision is actually worsening a whole host of issues. And it’s a lot to unpack.
Diana Rodgers, RD 18:53
Yeah. And what I mentioned on the Joe Rogan podcast too was that because Brazil needs to, I mean, they’re being ordered now to reduce methane emissions. So these cattle take longer to size up. It’s hotter down there. There’s bug pressure. They have to use this different breed. It rains a lot and everything. And so what would normally take in the US to finish on grass takes twice as long in Brazil because of the different breed and everything else down there. So now they’re moving more towards feedlot finishing, which people don’t like but the thing is, there is a whole lot of sugarcane production now for ethanol. That’s actually from the people I talked to in Brazil, it’s working for them the sugar for ethanol down there, and you can actually choose ethanol only gas or an ethanol mix gas when you go to the gas stations. What they’ve got leftover pulp from the sugarcane which can be fed to cattle. They’ve got corn stalks and everything that they can feed to cattle. And so as their crop production is expanding, they’ve got all this crop residue that actually can easily go into finishing these cattle on feed lots in a really rapid way that reduces the methane. And it makes them more money per animal than finishing totally on grass. And so people are going to eat meat and we have to figure out a way to do it. And we have to figure out a way for the folks, like you said, down in Brazil, I mean, the average income, well I’m sorry, the minimum wage in Brazil is $200 a month. These folks, I mean, when I walked around, I got to see leather production. I got to see biodiesel production down there. From leftover tallow, I got to see soap production from the tallow from the cattle. The workers are so psyched in these factories, they’re just like to have a job. It is so different than looking at a factory in the US where, you know, people just aren’t as psyched. And they’re not as proud to work. I mean, it was a tight system. And everyone’s just fired up to just be able to make money and
Robb Wolf 21:14
Better their situation
Diana Rodgers, RD 21:16
Better their situation. Yeah. So it gets so complicated when people are like I want only grass-finished beef when it actually might, you know, if you’re still going to be complaining about methane, and complaining about land usage, well, then they can do that. And upcycle crop residue at the same time, shortening the life and actually increasing income for cattle producers by feedlot finishing. So
Robb Wolf 21:43
It’s just funny, it’s literally where the sacred cows have to go and die. You know, it’s we have these, and I’m probably as guilty as anyone you know, in my Paleo Solution seminar days where I would extol the virtues of pastured meat and talk about the Omega 3, Omega 6 delta, but never did the map along the next step, which was well how much is actually there? And then when you start quibbling over this notion that you need to eat eight pounds of meat to get the same amount of omega threes, as you get from like two or three ounces of salmon, then it’s like, okay, this is not, this isn’t the hill to die on. And it’s actually creating a negative pressure on the system in such a way that it’s limiting the ability to do something that is far better, which is being able to integrate these disparate industries and systems in highly efficient fashion, that leaves very little waste, is better for the animals better for people, better for the environment. But we have to let go of what we think is the right answer. And actually, just let the science and technology kind of weigh on it.
Diana Rodgers, RD 22:52
Yeah. And you can still do regenerative grazing before they finish on a feedlot.
Robb Wolf 22:57
Right. Right.
Diana Rodgers, RD 22:59
So they can, it can still benefit soil health, you can still do these amazing silvopasture things. You know, they found that the, you know, not only is it healthier for the soil, but the cows get shade, it’s more humane for the cattle because it gets hot down there to have some shade, you know, but then they’re also grazing more because they’re feeling less stressed and they’re measuring all of this
Robb Wolf 23:22
And probably less water usage because they’re not directly in the heat all the time.
Diana Rodgers, RD 23:26
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I think also the, you know, it has to be grass-fed or nothing I actually wrote about that on global food justice about the elitism of that right because it ends up allowing companies like Beyond Burger to say, well clearly that garbage feedlot meat we can all agree that’s unhealthy but you can’t possibly get… it’s so hard to get regenerative meat into schools but here’s our solution – the Beyond Burger.
Robb Wolf 23:26
So we are it as a… I don’t know I guess we still have kind of a big tent thrown around, although it’s been fascinating the people in particular who go after you, they’ve almost uniformly been white middle-aged women who are attached in direct or indirect ways to ranching in they will go after you like pell-mell suggesting that there may actually be the most… if you want to finish them on grass by all means do that but don’t nuke this other thing over here out of ignorance. You know, like, can you actually describe soup to nuts, this integrative process of you know, it’s like in that description that you’re painting in Brazil, the finishing process is on spent sugar cane from ethanol production and corn
Robb Wolf 24:13
Or it might be the orange peels from the orange juice industry, pulp from that. I mean they are getting some grain too but the great thing is the actual grain in towards pounds out over the life of the animal is two to one in cattle. And so any basic dietitian if you just Okay, two and a half pounds of corn or one pound of beef, what do you think is better?
Robb Wolf 25:19
Right.
Diana Rodgers, RD 25:20
End of discussion right there.
Robb Wolf 25:22
Right. I do want to – I’ve been working on and I guess I’ll let some of the cat out of the bag. But basically this, um, if vegans were to complain about any element of animal production, this is the one they should complain about. And I was actually going to go through and redo you know, is it land usage? No. Is it water usage? No. Is it the ethical thing not actually no, because can you raise humans without animal products? Kind of dodgy? And then can you actually have healthy planetary ecosystems without animals? No. And so the one thing that I think is underappreciated in this whole story is the antibiotic inputs that are necessary with a lot of the current animal husbandry practices, which is correct – you’re way more the expert on this, but the lion’s share of that is allocated to poultry and pork production because of the way that they are raised.
Robb Wolf 25:26
Well, cattle do take up antibiotics as well, they’re large animals, I mean, you get more meat per pound off…
Robb Wolf 26:04
Just because of the way it changes their metabolism.
Diana Rodgers, RD 26:33
Yeah, yeah.
Robb Wolf 26:36
So we have mutual friends, John and Brittany, who run Roam Free Bison Ranch here. And with the bison, they don’t need to help them with calving. They don’t need to, they never give them antibiotics, like they never need antibiotics. My sense is that with Joel Salatin or White Oaks Pasture scenario, rare if ever, is there an application of antibiotics like where and how does that plug into this story? Because if there was still something that the confined the kind of CAFO model is up necessitating to some degree, and again, seems to be it is impossible to do industrial level chicken and pork production without significant antibiotic inputs. And there’s kind of an expiration date on the utility of these antibiotics. Like, once all the bugs have figured out how to circumvent the antibiotics’ efficacy, then we’re all super screwed.
Diana Rodgers, RD 27:29
All of us
Robb Wolf 27:29
Our concerns about global overpopulation is moot because people will start dying in the hundreds of millions from simple infections. So…
Diana Rodgers, RD 27:37
I mean, yeah, we have more people dying of sepsis now than before, just because of super bugs
Robb Wolf 27:43
Antibiotic resistance. Where does that plug into this story then? You know, as far as I guess, where is that kind of trade-off happening of we’re doing a little bit more confined area feed line finishing? Is that bumping up the antibiotic usage on the cattle side, you know, relative to this kind of idealic? You know, 100% pasture finished scenario?
Diana Rodgers, RD 28:07
Right. That’s a really good question. My understanding is that, in general, most responsible producers are actually reducing antibiotic usage in industrial production, even in pork and chicken, just by cleaning up, you know, by like, more ventilation, more vaccines, and less antibiotic usage, because people are getting stressed out. They don’t want to antibiotic usage. And so that was the conference I went to in Thailand was about you know, Asia was a little bit behind Europe and the US as far as their reduction, or they call it responsible use of antibiotics. I did meet with a lot of people that do feed additives, and there’s like cool stuff going on with tannins. And not only does it reduce methane, but it also improves their gut flora. And there’s other supplements too, other probiotics, all kinds of stuff that people are playing around with and experimenting with, to help animals gain weight. And that’s one of the reasons I didn’t know this before we started doing the research for Sacred Cow that I thought it was just to keep them from getting low-level sick all the time. Like I thought they were kind of all like, stressed out and they just needed this kind of like low dose antibiotics to just survive. But it’s more that it alters their gut flora, and increases weight gain through dysbiosis, which I think is really interesting when you look at Americans and you think of you know, our dysbiosis aren’t you know, the majority, I’m sure of humans have altered gut flora, not in the favorable category, which actually, you know, on top of overconsumption of ultra-processed foods with that combination of like acellular carbohydrates, altered gut flora, overuse of antibiotics. I mean, that’s just like a storm waiting for people to gain weight.
Robb Wolf 30:10
Right. Right.
Diana Rodgers, RD 30:11
So that’s my long-winded answer to I’m not really sure what’s going on. I mean, I’m assuming Yes, they have to use more antibiotics when they increase feedlots. But I didn’t talk specifically with them about it. But I do know that you know, what I saw was, you know, how do these additives right now, they’re just so focused on methane. That’s just like, the number one issue for everybody right now is reducing methane, or else they’re gonna have to get rid of their livestock,
Robb Wolf 30:39
Right. Or they could just put a giant finger in the air and be like, we’re not buying this. But I guess that’s not going to work currently. But it’s interesting. Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying of the Dark Horse podcast, they have a great term and other people have talked about it is the tyranny of metrics. And it’s when you can track a thing and I see this with like, Aura rings, and all kinds of stuff, you know, people will start tracking things. And they think that that is super important. And sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s a boondoggle. And it’s hard, bordering on sounding crazy to say that this focus on methane and carbon emissions out of animals is really not the place to look. Like I would argue if we could run an A/B test, we could create parallel universes and in an alternate universe, we’re able to convince people don’t *beep* even worry about that, like just optimize for economic development and growth and with an eye towards something that could be here 5000 years in the future, so you can grow and develop, but it has to be in a way that like society and the world could go on for 5000 years. The carbon issue is going to be a non-issue in this alternate world, but it is the singular issue here, which might mean that that is the flame that is attracting all of the moths to it just circling until we collapse from fatigue, and we don’t actually do the *beep* that we need to do to address the real problems. And the funny thing is that either I think it’s a mix of dumb luck, and also some crafty marketing and opportunism, but the kind of industrialized food distribution world, you know, owned by like five or six giant companies, this carbon tunnel vision plays to their strengths so well and it so does not play well to a decentralized kinda libertarian-esque you know, view of food and food sovereignty and self-sovereignty and self-governance and all that type of stuff. Like it provides this external lever that it’s like, we can come in and exert all kinds of influence on you. Probably for not that great of a reason, but you know, something that you look like a crazy person arguing against it, but it may literally be like bloodletting or something, you know, leeches appeared to provide at least some benefit under some circumstances, you know, and this, I’m gonna argue is not like even these efforts, I would be so interested to understand a little bit more of the organic and the biochemistry if they’re mitigating methane released, and they must just be enhancing carbon dioxide release, because those carbon molecules go in, and they gotta come out some way, somehow, somewhere. So is it just being released as carbon dioxide versus methane, and the methane is a more potent greenhouse gas, straight out of the gate, but it also has about a 10-year half-life, and then it gets liced into water and carbon dioxide via, you know, photo reactivity and whatnot. So it’s like, are we really winning? And like, how much net infrastructure is necessary to go get the seaweed and the cinnamon and the different things to put into the animal feed to create this delta of methane here versus methane there? I don’t know.
Diana Rodgers, RD 34:07
Yeah. Well, I mean, basically, their whole goal is how do we finish these animals as quickly as possible? Because the longer they live, the more methane they produce. And how do we get them to be as efficient with their feed as possible because they notice that some animals just aren’t as efficient and they’ll just be eating and eating and eating and not gain as quickly as some of the other ones. So if they can get the animals to gain as fast as possible, to be able to reach the right weight as quickly as possible, then that means less methane and more money. And are they bad for that? No, because they’re getting all this pressure to do that, and that’s what everyone’s demanding right now. And so that’s just what the market is right now.
Robb Wolf 34:53
Right. Interesting. So you’ve got some additional travel coming up. Do you want to let folks know about that?
Diana Rodgers, RD 34:59
Oh, yeah, a couple more minutes before I guess we have to go. That was our whole update was Brazil and but yeah, I’m heading – I just got back from Kansas City I was doing an animal welfare conference there. It was super interesting. We were talking about kind of like, what to do when protesters hit your farm. It was really fascinating. You know, what are the protocols that farmers have in place? How to get those protocols in place. And then next week, I’m headed out and I’m not sure when this podcast is going to come out maybe even while I’m in England, but I’m going to Knepp Castle Estate, which is a rewilding project with cattle. It is the book Wilding by Isabella Tree. She lives there. She lives in this beautiful kind of like Downton Abbey looking castle with her husband, and it’s pretty cool. I’ve been invited to consult with them there. They’re opening a store and I get to visit and hang out at this castle. Then I’m doing that Health Optimization Summit and then I’ll be in Wales at Patrick Holden’s farm. he was in the film. And so I’m learning what not to do in Wales, like not call them English, as you don’t do that in Wales. I’m learning. I’m learning. And then I’m home for a little bit. And then back in England, again, for Groundswell. And then, which is a regen ag conference in June in England, and then I’ll be in Australia and New Zealand for the large chunk of July. So it’s kind of exciting. Yeah, it’s a lot of travel. And you’re in puppy land, in Montana.
Robb Wolf 36:43
Puppy land in Montana, and I’m going nowhere, actually, I maybe going to the CrossFit Games oddly enough. Some interesting things have happened and I seem to have reunited with my old clan in CrossFit and I’m doing a little bit of work for them. Looks like I may be doing at least some of the continuing education for their nutrition certification stuff. So hell hath frozen over and third time’s a charm working with CrossFit again, so
Diana Rodgers, RD 37:12
Wow, that is full circle.
Robb Wolf 37:15
It is. It is. It’s wacky. Yeah. Yeah. The next chapter to the book. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD 37:21
That’s awesome. Yeah. And LMNT. Everyone’s doing well with LMNT?
Robb Wolf 37:26
Everyone’s staying salty. Grapefruit is… when this thing goes up, grapefruit will be out in the wild. That is our seasonal flavor. Limited time only. Last year, people thought we were *beep* with them when we said it’s limited time only, and Nope, it’s here, and then it’s gone. And it’s not like oh, when we found a secret stash and everything. It’s like no, once it’s gone, it is in fact gone. So yeah. So if you’d like grapefruit, order large and order early. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD 37:55
Yeah, I’ve been loving it. I’m drinking it right now. Anson has been using… he needs more LMNT stickers for surfboards,
Robb Wolf 38:04
Just let me know. And I’ll – I know a person who knows a person. So we can make that happen.
Diana Rodgers, RD 38:10
Awesome. Well, it was great to see you, and have a great summer. And I’m sure I’ll be chatting with you here and there. But it’s nice to catch up formally on the podcast.
Robb Wolf 38:21
Good to catch up. And thank you again, for the work that you’re doing. I know that I can’t say it enough, you have worked so hard in this space, and have really taken a lot of slings and arrows and a lot of vitriol for just trying to create an opportunity to have a discussion around these topics. And I’m heartened by the reality that there is a very big world out there and people who can’t get swept away with all the kind of screwiness on social media and whatnot and that they actually have to live lives, they have to figure out how they’re going to support their families, and make their communities work and make the world work in that they’re trying to innovate and do the right thing. And I, again, I’ll pat myself on the back a little bit that the developing world is where I think a lot of this stuff is going to get vetted out and they’re looking to people like you for that expertise to get the broader picture to be able to weave all this together. So I’m super stoked about it.
Diana Rodgers, RD 39:21
Yeah, cool. I definitely think I’m gonna be doing some more work with Brazil. And I’m really impressed and excited and also supportive of what’s going on down there. Yeah.
Robb Wolf 39:31
Cool. Well, Daina, take care. We’ll talk to you soon.
Diana Rodgers, RD 39:33
All right.
Diana Rodgers, RD 39:36
Thank you so much for tuning in to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review on iTunes and check out my website at sustainable dish.com where you can sign up for my newsletter, catch up on the latest blog post, and check out my courses and favorite products. See you next time and thanks again for listening
