![]() “That’s the equivalent of consuming 100,000 gallons of gasoline each year.” “We’ve been sequestering carbon over the past five years at the rate of about 808 tons of CO2 annually,” Al says. So far, the results at Caney Fork have been very encouraging. ![]() It’s called ‘regenerative farming’ and Al’s farm is part of a collaborative effort of farmers and scientists to determine its most effective practices. You see, those animals are not just at Caney Fork Farms to provide Nashville’s chefs and consumers with the highest quality meats, although they certainly do those animals are there as critical components of a type of organic agriculture that markedly increases the capacity of the soil to contain carbon, thus raising the soil’s fertility, increasing the plants’ resilience, boosting their crops’ nutritional value, enhancing the taste of the produce, and - critically - reabsorbing carbon from the atmosphere, a win-win-win-win-win, if you will. And that brings us back to Al Gore’s livestock, to his cattle, hogs, and sheep. Um, Houston (and the rest of humanity), we have a problem.īut we also have a growing solution - a literally growing solution. As of April 2021, that number is 417 parts per million or 157 ppm higher than when agriculture began - a level not seen on Earth since the Pliocene Epoch some 3.2 million years ago, a time when the world’s sea levels were fifty feet higher … for now. From air bubbles trapped in ice sheets, we know that 12,000 years ago when those first farmers were developing food crops such as corn and potatoes and wheat, staples we still depend on, every million molecules of air in the atmosphere contained 260 that were carbon dioxide. Along with the happy ones like widely available food, convenient travel, and easy access to perks like hot showers are the deeply worrisome ones like the current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We now live with the results of all those agricultural and industrial decisions from the past 12 millennia, but particularly with the decisions from the last three-quarters century. The boom in fossil fuel burning over the last 75 years has completely eclipsed it.” And it wasn’t until the 1970s that the cumulative amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was not derived from agriculture as the single largest source. “It wasn’t until the 1950s when the big boom in the use of fossil fuel began in the post WWII global economy,” Al says, “that agriculture was no longer the primary source of CO2 in the atmosphere. Still, it wasn’t until a couple centuries later that industry finally surpassed agriculture as the biggest emitter of carbon. Fast-forward to the 18th century and the advent of the Industrial Revolution when our use of fossil fuels began to seriously pick up steam, releasing, in the process, huge amounts of carbon trapped underground. That was the dawn of the Neolithic Revolution, when plowing became common practice, releasing large amounts of carbon from the soil. However, it wasn’t until some 12,000 years ago that our impact really got cooking. Let’s start with the story.Įver since the first flint was flaked and some megafauna got its bacon baked, we humans have altered the Earth making tools and burning fuels, that’s just how we Homo sapiens roll. But before you go judging, you need to understand both an ancient story and some contemporary science because, at Caney Fork Farms, the two intersect to help point the way toward a more hopeful future. Wait, you mean the world’s most famous advocate for lowering the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere raises livestock? The answer is yes, and proudly for profit as well. At first blush, it may seem counterintuitive. And it’s the best of the best, too: 100% grass-fed beef and lamb, 100% pastured pork, all certified ethically raised and finished. “But I’m told it’s good.” The man speaking is Al Gore, a walking avalanche of accolades - a Grammy, an Oscar, a Nobel Peace Prize - and the meat in question comes from his livestock on Caney Fork Farms. “I haven’t eaten red meat for about the last eight years,” says the former Vice President of the United States whose family farm in Carthage, Tennessee raises cattle, hogs, and sheep for market.
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