On a humid dawn in Colombia’s livestock capital, Michael Robbin rides across one of his farm’s pastures, where tall green stalks brush his horse’s belly. When he bought the land outside Montería in 2020 he divided it into 125 smaller fields. His neighbours called him crazy at first.
“That’s not how it’s done in this area,” he acknowledges. “Everybody was looking at me like I was from outer space.”
Robbin adapted the land for intensive rotational grazing, a technique developed in the 1950s that involves moving cattle herds on to new pasture at least once a day.
Before Robbin’s foreman, Cesar Mestra, reaches each field’s fence in the mornings, the cattle are gathered, waiting. Instead of yesterday’s chewed-down stems beneath their feet, they’d rather eat the fresh, green leaves on the other side.
“They already know me. They have their sort of schedule,” Mestra says as the herd streams past him.
Most Colombian farms use the opposite method: continuous grazing, in which cattle roam a single pasture unit for an extended time. On Robbin’s farm, each mini pasture only sees animals for 13 days a year, at most. The benefits, he says, include maximum grass growth, healthier cows rapidly gaining weight, concentrated fertilisation from manure and carbon capture.
Robbin’s ranch is part of a new carbon capture study by researchers at Colombia’s National University, and recognised as a sustainable, silvopastoral system (SPS), an agroforestry model that includes the maintenance of various native trees on the property to provide shade and habitat for howler monkeys, turtles and a sample of Colombia’s diverse bird population.
For a country deeply affected by deforestation, SPS are considered a sustainable solution for an industry that accounts for 9.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
In Colombia, the livestock industry employs more than a million people – about 2% of the country’s population – and accounts for 23m hectares (57m acres) of land use. Colombia is the third-largest beef producer in South America, a region that accounts for 24% of the world’s supply.
However, one study revealed that cattle ranching has also been Colombia’s top contributor to illegal deforestation in recent years. Between 1985 and 2019, more than 3m hectares (7.4m acres) of the Amazon rainforest were cleared for pasture.
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Yet beef production isn’t inexorably fated to harm the land, says Luis Alfonso Giraldo, director of the Biorum research group at the National University of Colombia and the scientist leading the study on Robbin’s farm. “It is not about stopping eating meat. It’s a product of high biological value,” he says. “It’s about how we keep consuming in a more environmentally friendly way.”
This starts by utilising the land to capture carbon. To track carbon levels, Giraldo first attaches a tubular monitor to cows’ nostrils and mouth to measure their emissions of methane, a hydrocarbon. This amount is then subtracted from his calculation of carbon sequestered by the tall grasses and trees on Robbin’s property. If they even out, the farm can be considered carbon neutral, though Giraldo believes the land is likely carbon positive.
The potential for tropical countries to implement green systems is immense, Giraldo says, adding that he invites local farmers to replicate the technique based on the data from Robbin’s farm. The researcher says cows that eat young, green grass tips emit up to 30% less methane than those who chew on browner, fibrous stems.
Silvopastoral systems also maximise land use, which leaves more for conservation or other agricultural production, says Danny Fernando Sandoval, an economist and researcher at the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture and author of a recent study on SPS.
“It is so appealing, as it significantly increases carrying capacity,” he says. Instead of the typical one cow a hectare, SPS typically allows for up to three.
In the past 15 years, an international push to prevent deforestation and implement sustainable cattle practices such as SPS has made only patchwork progress in Colombia.
Despite interest, wide-scale adoption is a “complete failure”, Sandoval says. “There are many projects, but … when you go back to evaluate later, what happened? Very few producers actually stuck with it.”
A project sponsored by the World Bank and the UK government worked to transform more than 38,000 hectares (93,900 acres) into silvopastoral ranching systems from 2010 to 2020. The project stated a need for “further institutionalisation” of SPS via stronger policies and public-private partnerships.
Colombia’s congress shelved a different effort linked to Leonardo DiCaprio this summer. The actor had called for the passage of a bill that would create a system to track livestock and prevent cows who had traversed deforested land from going to market.
Yet carrot-based approaches should theoretically be incentive enough, as ranchers practising SPS can raise larger cows faster – a clear economic benefit. Research found that beef outputs for farmers using SPS were 12 times higher than those sticking with continuous grazing.
On Robbin’s farm, animals gain up to 800 grams a day, compared with the 420-gram average in Colombia. However, the high upfront cost is a barrier. “Economically, those early years may not be the most profitable,” Sandoval acknowledges.
The first phase of an SPS requires fence installation, forage planting and water relocation. And with a lack of national coordination for adopting SPS and sustainable practices, monitoring also falls by the wayside.
Sandoval says it raises a larger question about the climate crisis: “Who should bear the cost of sustainability?” The government, the cattle rancher, or another entity?
Lack of technical knowledge about more complex, climate-first techniques, especially among traditional ranchers who see them as risky, is also a barrier.
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Younger generations seem to be more open. Manuela Carvajal Ramírez, 30, felt inspired when she first learned about SPS while studying animal science outside Colombia’s second city of Medellín. She now runs two small cattle breeding operations with her husband.
They raise Angus bulls and heifers using a small, intensive SPS, rotating cows to new pastures twice daily. “When you ensure animals have good nutrition, their reproductive health will also be good,” she says.
A nearby water supply and shade for the cows are also key, Carvajal Ramírez says. “For us, it is very clear: water should go to the cows, not the cows to the water.”
Exposure to high temperatures, for example, can harm a bull’s testicular endocrinology and reproductive potential. “It shouldn’t be like this, but [our method] is quite new in the area,” says Carvajal Ramírez. “Many people take it as a theory, and that’s it,” adds her husband, Sebastián Carmona Gómez.
Colombia established a national roundtable for sustainable cattle in 2014, a group of more than 80 organisations that offer technical knowledge and promote carbon footprint reduction.
The group has taken on more of an advisory and policy-setting role, contributing to initiatives such as “zero deforestation” agreements and national sustainability goals. But one analysis of the roundtable found that the “path ahead is vast,” and noted that it is unclear whether it represents everyday livestock farmers to the extent needed for “definitive transformation”.
Sandoval also cautioned that SPS is not the only solution for everyone. Colombia’s diversity of ecosystems – from desert to rainforest to grasslands – means that each region must tailor any conversion to sustainable ranching.
On Robbin’s farm, Mestra interacts with the cattle as he guides them from pasture to pasture. He immediately knows if one is sick or injured. “I love it. It’s more work, but I do less,” he says.
Robbin has no doubt that the system he is implementing can change the perception of those who consider the meat industry to be a polluter. “Come take a look,” he challenges. “When you see this, it makes sense.”
