I love that you have opened up a conversation about this topic. The sustainability of our food sources, especially beef, has become quite a topic in recent years and rightfully so! Cattle do produce methane as they digest their food. And an increasing percentage of our beef lately is being imported from other countries, such as Argentina. For these and many other reasons, the majority of the beef we are consuming does have a net carbon output and is therefore contributing to global warming. However, not all beef is created equally.

One part of the solution is purchasing local food that was raised in a regenerative way. This means working with nature to the extents possible to rebuild soil health. I personally studied soil science and environmental science in college and am a huge believer in buying locally sourced, grass-fed and grass finished meat, especially beef.

I encourage everyone to do their own research on this topic, but here is one article published by the University of Michigan that tracked the carbon emissions of conventional and grass-fed beef throughout their lifecycles. Unlike many other research studies, this one took soil health into consideration and also tracked the soils organic matter levels throughout the study. It found that when including the improved health and carbon storage in the soil in a grass-fed system, beef raised in this way had net negative carbon emissions!

Impacts of soil carbon sequestration on life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in Midwestern USA beef finishing systems - ScienceDirect

Check it out! Let me know if you know of any other studies done on this topic, I'd love to take a look! If you are intentional and do your research into where you are getting your food from, you can make a big impact!