Can Colombia’s ‘crazy’ cattle ranchers make beef an eco-friendly choice?
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By rejecting traditional grazing and maintaining trees and wildlife habitats alongside pasture, farmers are turning their land carbon positive. But will it be enough?. 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.
![[A man works on a fence across a field with cows on one side of it]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a572066041839b6643495a38b5bba303a339a0b7/0_0_2000_1333/master/2000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“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.
![[A herd of cows gathered in the shade of a row of trees]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/de073207df65e10a938514dff768993891e03669/0_0_2000_1124/master/2000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
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.
![[A cow in a yard with a tube monitor attached to its mouth]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f08b06dd674c61c7a3eb95ec314d39af170377eb/0_0_1280_960/master/1280.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
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.
![[A copse of trees in a green field]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/341ef3863d365cc78ac09147d48a3d8ab113401d/0_0_3755_2816/master/3755.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
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.
![[A cow next to a water tank]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4ad189660167e535a2cf4752a67b3dc034350e16/0_0_2000_1333/master/2000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
