I've written about Richard Manning many times before. See Cereal Killer for a fairly recent example, and Cereal Killer, the alternative universe version, for a much older one. I've always been somewhat critical of his writing but only in the sense of correcting defects in a generally sensible thesis. His ideas have been sometimes poorly targeted, and always over the top, but he's working in a fruitful area and improves over time. That's rare indeed.

I have been fascinated by the permanence and healing power of grassland for 15 years now. If we respect the great original wisdom of the prairies, I’m convinced we can heal the wounds inflicted on the American landscape by industrial agriculture.

But in America, the question is always does it scale up? This is the critical test of any potential solution to a major environmental problem. Is a given practice feasible, and are there mechanisms for spreading it to cover a whole landscape?

Well, it's not just in America that this matters, and it's not just an environmental issue. Limiting the discussion in this way makes it easier to push a weak idea, but doesn't really investigate the issues.

A diverse collection of pioneers across the nation is raising not bison, but mostly grass-fed beef and dairy — an enterprise that can scale up quickly. They have a working model. It is not unrealistic to expect that we as a nation could convert millions of acres of ravaged industrial grain fields (plus millions of acres of land in federal conservation programs that cannot currently be used for grazing) to permanent pastures and see no decline in beef and dairy production in the bargain.

They aren't pioneers. This has been going on for half a century and more. And in other nations the practices have been going on for longer, with greater success, and are a source of techniques and general wisdom for the world.

Doing so would have many benefits. It would give us a more humane livestock system, a healthier human diet, less deadly E. coli, elimination of feedlots, a bonanza of wildlife habitat nationwide, enormous savings in energy, virtual elimination of pesticides and chemical fertilizers on those lands, elimination of catastrophic flooding that periodically plagues the Mississippi Basin, and most intriguingly, a dramatic reduction in global warming gases.

Well, no. This is an exaggeration. There are benefits for all of these areas of concern, but less than Manning's starry eyed claims, and there would be costs for these benefits. More importantly, it can't possibly happen on such a large scale because there is political and economic reality to consider. It's an integrated system and you can't massively tinker with one part of it without affecting the rest. The inertial drag on alteration of such a system creates frictions that prevent large or rapid change. Move along, there's nothing to get excited about here. It's analogous to the wild and unrealistic claims of organic advocates who have achieved so little as measured by their market share, while making so much noise.

The heart of his advocacy is that the land now used to grow grain for ruminants could be restored to native prairie grasses and forbs which would, managed properly, provide the same amount of milk and meat but with superior food value and less environmental impact, perhaps even huge environmental remediation, enough to compensate in part for sins committed elsewhere (the carbon, oh the carbon!!!).

It could. It won't. Even in traditional grazing nations such as Argentina grasslands are being put to the plow because it is more profitable to grow grains for a hungry world. The recent price spikes for food, reduced a bit at the moment by recession, will resume a relentless upward trend. Mega-money from oil states and technologically advanced manufacturing areas (Korea for example) is roaming the world seeking land to be used for grain production. Africa beware. Add in pressures for biofuels and the idea that a great deal of grain land will be repurposed is simply not on. Not in this world, at this time.

He also fails to be realistic about agronomic practices: "virtual elimination of pesticides and chemical fertilizers". That's not how it works. There's no free lunch, no perpetual motion machines. The fertilizers are largely concealed but a full accounting finds them. Stored forages are fed for part of the year - much of the year in the northern parts that have real winters and short growing seasons. Much of that forage is grown on fertilized lands but even if it isn't the fertility of that land is mined to increase the fertility on the grazed lands. It is embodied in the imported forage. Those forage growers may also use herbicides and pesticides to protect their crops, and those chemicals are in effect embodied in the imported forage too. You have to look at the whole system.

What can honestly be said is that well managed grazing land is very productive of foods that are of value to ruminants. That is in part due to the unique ability of ruminants to thrive on foods that other animals and humans can't digest. Nature produces such food in abundance, so ruminants have an unfair advantage in the competition of species. A horse could starve to death on forage that fattens cattle, and a human would expire long before the horse.

It can also honestly be said that less imported fertility and other amendments or additives are needed for grasslands to be highly productive. Part of that is due to the fact that they are polycultures that make better use of the biotope space over a longer growing period, part of it is due to the fact that some of those diverse species are nitrogen fixers, and part of it is due to the fact that ruminants do a better job of harvesting the crop: they take repeated cuttings (with no machinery or fossil energy required) which provides more nutritious food and encourages rapid regrowth. More and better food is produced.

This means that careful graziers can get startlingly huge production of highly nutritious forage with far less "pesticides and chemical fertilizers". A top grazier might only get 20% of the nitrogen budget from imported fertilizers while the other 80% in generated on site or comes from imported forage. It's an economic decision. In hard times or high costs times it is possible to skimp, though the bill will eventually have to be paid to avoid degradation of the land and eventual collapse.

It will remain a niche market. The niche might get quite a lot larger - bigger than organic for example - but with a world population heading north of 8 billion people, and a political situation shaped as much by history as systems analysis, grain land will remain grain land for the most part. But do read the article since it does address many confusions and provide good information, it just goes over the top in excitement.