What about CO2 grazing cows? (with organic dairy farmer C. van Rijn) by The Soft Protest Digest

Today, the cow is mainly valued for her milk and her meat. But what if she was valued for the work she was doing while eating grass, while grazing?

In this podcast, we will explore the collaboration between the cow and the grass, working as agents for recycling and storing carbondioxide in the soil’s ecosystem. The redistribution of CO2 from the atmosphere into the soil, mediated by the cow and the grass as part of the carbon cycle, could indeed play a part in adressing climate distress.

For this episode, we will first set the stage by putting our research in its context: the Netherlands. By going back in the history of dutch cow farming, we will try to understand what ties the Netherlands to its beloved dairy.
In a second part, we will talk about the science of carbon grazing with Corneel van Rijn, a dutch organic dairy farmer, involved in the Agricultural European Innovation Partnership, who’s farm we visited in late September in Hoogmade, a few kilometers south of Amsterdam.
We will conclude our podcast by trying to outline the possible future of the cow. We will speculate and sketch three hypothetical scenarios of near-futures, involving dairy and meat.