By Seth Millstein for Sentient Climate.
Broadcast version by Isobel Charle for Washington News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Beef production has steadily been rising over the last half-century. Unfortunately, so has the environmental destruction that it causes. Cattle ranching requires the wholesale eradication of natural habitats, and this eradication causes immeasurable damage to an essential component of Earth's overall ecosystem: food webs.

"Cattle are not native to the U.S. and did not evolve with our ecosystems here," Jennifer Molidor, senior food campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity told Sentient in an email. "They are not a viable replacement for any native species in the U.S., including bison. Removing a native species from the food web to prioritize cattle grazing impacts the entire food web and ecosystem balance.

But how exactly does cattle ranching affect food webs, and why does this matter? Let's have a look.

What Is a Food Web?

Most people are familiar with the concept of a food chain: The big fish eats the medium-sized fish, who in turn eats the small fish, and so on.

Food chains do exist, and are helpful as a general framework for understanding the natural world. In truth, however, most ecosystems are much more complex than this. Species have to contend with multiple predators, and predators eat many different types of prey. Because of this, many ecosystems look more like a web than a chain, with complex and multi-faceted connections between the various species in it.

"Most ecosystems aren't as simple as, 'If you catch this, there'll be more of the thing it eats, and then less of the thing that that eats,'" Trevor Branch, a professor at University of Washington's School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences, tells Sentient. "Most systems are more like, 'There are 100 species in the system. If you catch one of them, this thing goes up and that thing goes down. And because of that, there's less competition over here. And so this thing goes up, and then that eats more of the thing here,' and you've got this big mess."

Here's another way to think about it: Any given ecosystem has a number of interlocking food chains that criss-cross with one another, and this overall connection of food chains is called a food web.

In order for an ecosystem to remain stable and functional, the food webs within it have to maintain a degree of equilibrium, with all of the species in it balancing one another out over the long run. This is true of both individual ecosystems, like the Amazon rainforest, and the Earth's overall ecosystem.

"Food webs illustrate the complex interdependence of organisms for survival," Molidor says. "We are part of the food web, and we need other species for a healthy planet."

But when food webs are disrupted, so is this complex interdependence. This can have disastrous and widespread impacts, from species extinction to unsafe drinking water and tainted food. Unfortunately, cattle ranching is incredibly disruptive to food webs in a number of ways, and results in all of these consequences and more.

Why Does Cattle Ranching Impact Food Webs?

Beef farming exacts an enormous toll on the environment, and food webs are just one area in which we see these consequences play out. But why is cattle ranching such an environmentally intensive process in the first place?

Deforestation

Deforestation is one big reason cattle ranching is so harmful to food webs. In order to make way for beef farms, cattle ranchers regularly destroy huge swaths of forested land, most notably in the Amazon rainforest, but elsewhere as well. The destruction doesn't stop at the farms itself, either, as a significant amount of land is also deforested just to grow food for this cattle.

"Cattle production is a leading driver of global deforestation and habitat loss, both in clearing for cattle pasture and grazing lands and in clearing for feedstock production," Molidor says.

Needless to say, destroying millions upon millions of trees has a number of enormously disruptive impacts on the surrounding environment, which we'll discuss in a bit. In this sense, cattle ranches begin affecting ecosystems before they're even built.

Pollution

Once they're up and running, beef farms pollute the land, air and water as a matter of their daily operations. Cows emit methane, a harmful greenhouse gas, as part of their natural digestive process - and so does their manure, which is often stored on-site in huge pools known as manure lagoons.

These methane emissions are bad enough on their own, but cattle manure poses a second problem as well: it pollutes the water and damages marine ecosystems. This happens not only because manure lagoons often spring leaks, but also because many farms use manure as untreated fertilizer for soil, which can cause it to seep into groundwater or be washed into nearby bodies of water in the rain.

Soil Degradation

Finally, cattle farming takes a toll on the land itself. A common problem on beef farms is overgrazing, which is when the cows eat plant cover faster than it can regrow. Over time, this erodes and degrades the soil beneath, making it more susceptible to runoff and other undesirable consequences.

These are the primary ways in which cattle farms affect the food webs around them. But what exactly do these effects look like?

How Cattle Farming Damages Food Webs

Cattle farms hurt food webs in a multitude of ways, both big and small. Here are a few illustrations of what this damage actually looks like.

Fewer Pollinators

When a bee sucks nectar out of a flower, some of the flower's genetic material, or pollen, gets stuck in the bee's fur. When the bee moves on to another flower, they take this pollen with them, and that pollen fertilizes the second flower. Simply by searching for food and eating it, this bee is facilitating the reproduction of plants.

This process is called pollination, and bees aren't the only ones who do it: Birds, bats, beetles, butterflies, moths, and flies are also pollinators. Even lizards and mice have been known to pollinate, though in totality, insects do the majority of pollination.

Pollination's importance to life on Earth can't be overstated. Around 75 percent of all crops that humans eat rely on pollinators to reproduce; when accounting for differences in crop production, this means that one-third of all food we eat depends on pollinators, according to Our World In Data.

But cattle farms threaten pollinators. Both deforestation and overgrazing by cattle reduces the fertility of soil, which makes it more difficult for plants to grow and thrive in it, including the plants that pollinators depend on for food. More broadly, deforestation destroys massive ecosystems in one fell swoop, and pollinators are often a part of these ecosystems.

Pollinators, Molidor says, "are threatened by the very food systems we need them for."

"If we want clean air and water, we need more than just humans and the domesticated species they eat," Molidor says. "We are part of a planet that needs all kinds of other organisms to be healthy, and have healthy landscapes, air and water."

It's worth noting that we're not the only ones who need pollination. So do the various mammalian species, such as elk and coyotes, who rely on pollinated plants for food and shelter. Elk and coyotes are themselves preyed on by other animals - wolves and bears to name just a few examples, and are part of the complex food web.

In other words, overgrazing by cattle on beef farms is an indirect threat not just to bees, but also to coyotes, wolves and humans' food supply. It's a classic illustration of food webs, and how all of Earth's creatures rely on them.

Harmful Algal Blooms

As mentioned earlier, the manure from cattle farms often finds its way into nearby lakes, rivers, streams and other waterways. In addition to methane, cattle manure also contains nitrogen, ammonia, phosphates, and other toxins that hurt marine ecosystems and aquatic food webs in several ways.

Harmful algal blooms are perhaps the most stark example of this. Algae plays an important ecological role, as it's the primary food source for many creatures and serves as the base of aquatic food webs. But when a body of water contains excessive nitrogen and phosphorus, as it does when it's polluted by cattle manure, algae can grow out of control into what scientists call harmful algal blooms.

Algae might not sound too threatening, but harmful algal blooms cause an astonishingly far-reaching amount of damage to countless different creatures, from coral to dolphins to humans. They poison fish, and because of the complex and interlocking nature of food webs, this poison often trickles up to larger creatures that eat fish, like sea lions and birds. These blooms often cause mass die-offs; for instance, in 2019, a toxic algal bloom killed millions of salmon in Norway, also resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in economic losses.

Humans aren't safe from the damage caused by harmful algal blooms - and not just because of the noxious stench, which one researcher likened to the "smell of decay and death." Drinking water and seafood are often contaminated by harmful algal blooms, with paralytic shellfish poisoning being an especially common consequence of this.

Although this usually doesn't kill the person in question, it sometimes does, and in 2018, a coalition of European researchers dubbed harmful algal blooms a "threat to global water security."

Biodiversity Loss

Many of the above phenomena, such as deforestation and harmful algal blooms, are forms of habitat destruction. Habitat destruction leads to biodiversity loss, which can have a catastrophic effect on food webs and beyond.

Biodiversity essentially refers to the number of different species in any given ecosystem. A high, or at least a healthy, level of biodiversity is essential for the survival of any ecosystem, be it a lake, a forest or a planet. It's not necessarily the end of the world if one species is driven out of an ecosystem, but lose enough of them and the effects can be devastating.

For instance, as Molidor points out, the cattle industry has engaged in widespread killing of black-tailed prairie dogs, due to the belief that they compete with cows for food. As it turns out, this belief may be incorrect, but regardless, prairie dogs have been wiped out from 95 percent of their historic range, in large part due to these extermination efforts.

This is a problem not only for prairie dogs, but for the critically endangered black-footed ferret, which relies on prairie dogs for food. It's estimated that there were once as many as five million black-footed ferrets around the world; now, there are only around 300 left in the wild.

The deforestation carried out for cattle farms is even more alarming in this regard. At least 10 mammalian species, 20 avian species and eight amphibian species have gone completely extinct due to deforestation in the Amazon. It's been estimated that 137 species of plant, insect and animal go extinct every single day due to deforestation.

Humans aren't necessarily safe from this, either. Over the last 500 years or so, entire genera have been going extinct 35 times faster than the historical norm, according to a 2023 research paper, and that rate is rapidly accelerating. Likening it to a "mutilation of the tree of life," the authors of this paper wrote that the loss of biodiversity is not only a "serious threat to the stability of civilization," but is "destroying the conditions that make human life possible."

The Bottom Line

Beef production disrupts and damages food webs in complicated ways. But the big-picture takeaway is not complicated: Cattle ranching, and the practices that make it possible, is destroying ecosystems.

"It's important to understand that nature is a series of relationships and connections," Molidor says. "If we want clean air and water, we need more than just humans and the domesticated species they eat. We are part of a planet that needs all kinds of other organisms to be healthy, and have healthy landscapes, air and water."


Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


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A pair of new reports shows Ohio communities are quietly leading the way on clean energy, from urban centers to small towns, with solar power playing an increasingly central role.

Advocates said the findings reflect an economic opportunity for the state and a potential bipartisan path forward on climate action.

The new annual report from the nonprofit Power A Clean Future Ohio highlighted sustainability wins in communities across the state.

Joe Flarida, executive director of the group, said local action has often outpaced state-level efforts, and emphasized energy and climate work is happening across the political spectrum.

"We've seen this local movement building in Ohio, and it's not just building in big cities, it's building in small villages, suburban, rural, across the board," Flarida explained. "They make up all types of political backgrounds, demographics, economic traits and characteristics of these communities."

In 2023, Ohio lawmakers passed House Bill 201, blocking cities from restricting natural gas use, a move clean energy advocates said has undercut local sustainability efforts even as community projects expand statewide.

Another new report from the crisis management firm UNPREDICTABLEcity found residential solar installations are booming statewide, including in rural and traditionally conservative areas.

Jon-Paul D'Aversa, principal at UNPREDICTABLEcity and the report's lead author, said solar is becoming increasingly normalized among homeowners and comes down to basic economics.

"Electricity in particular has risen 30% since 2019," D'Aversa pointed out. "There's a lot of pressure right now on folks to have that addressed. One of the ways that we see a lot of people addressing this (is) by just purely economics, for a lot of folks."

He added his company's report attributes the growth to falling solar costs and new local policies making installation easier. Analysts said Ohio's solar expansion is a promising sign for the state's energy independence and future economic competitiveness.

By Nina B. Elkadi for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Approximately 122 million people are exposed to potentially toxic byproducts in their drinking water. The possibly toxic mix is the result of organic material, like manure, interacting with disinfectants in the treatment process. According to a new report by the environmental non-profit Environmental Working Group, when the manure and other organic materials interact with chlorine, the result is a chemical byproduct that raises a number of health risks, including some that may have long-lasting health consequences for consumers.

“It’s not just that there’s manure in your water and that’s unsafe, but it’s that manure and other organic materials are then triggering these unsafe contaminants,” Environmental Working Group Midwest Director Anne Schechinger tells Sentient.

The 1.7 billion animals raised for consumption in the United States produce approximately 941 billion pounds of manure each year. Smaller water systems and residents living on private wells are especially vulnerable to agricultural pollution, but this new report raises another concern. The problem with disinfection byproducts — of specific concern in this report are trihalomethanes (TTHMs) — reaches cities including New York City and Los Angeles, which each had at least one test above the maximum contaminant level (MCL) set by the Environmental Protection Agency in the last five years.

From 2019 to 2023, the five years this report covers, the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (that serves the Washington D.C. suburb in Maryland) tested above the MCL level 218 times. TTHMs can form when chlorine interacts with a host of organic matter ranging from dead vegetation to, as this report states, manure.

In a 2021 notice the EPA drafted for water utilities to notify residents that they have high levels of TTHMs in their water, the regulators wrote: “Some people who drink water containing trihalomethane in excess of the MCL over many years may experience problems with their liver, kidneys, or central nervous system, and may have an increased risk of getting cancer.” Four years later, the regulatory landscape looks very different — the EPA is moving to dismantle Clean Water Act protections and the phrase “Safe Drinking Water” is banned at the Department of Agriculture.

The new report from EWG states that six of the 10 systems that tested at or above the maximum containment level at least once “are also listed among the states with the most livestock.” EWG cites research that documents how runoff from animal farms, and swine farms in particular, can contain extremely high levels of precursors that can turn into harmful chemicals during the disinfection process. Dairies are a major culprit too.

As cities grapple with multiple hot-button water issues from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to nitrate, the list of things to filter out seems to be continuing to grow. Water experts say disinfection byproducts like TTHMs could be filtered out with new technology targeting PFAS, if that regulation sticks.

‘Clean’ Water?

“What unknown things that we don’t yet know are in our drinking water” are the “bread and butter” of Susan Richardson’s lab. Richardson is a professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina, where she has been studying disinfection byproduct chemicals for around 30 years.

When we treat water, Richardson says, we’re killing harmful microbes. “But the problem is that the disinfection byproducts are an unintended consequence of trying to kill harmful pathogens,” she says.

Richardson says the interaction between the disinfectants and natural organic matter like manure can result in disinfection byproducts — as do tea leaves, algae and many other things produced in nature.

In 2024, the Biden Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency passed a new regulation to address PFAS, requiring public utilities to comply with new maximum contaminant levels in treated water.

Richardson’s opinion is that the regulatory approach to PFAS was rushed, and yet the outcome could have a silver lining. As utilities look to install new systems to filter out the PFAS, the systems can include filters that remove other contaminants too.

Certain filters, like granular activated carbon filters, can take out the precursor chemicals that lead to disinfection byproducts like TTHMs. They aren’t cheap. Richardson lives in Columbia, South Carolina, where the water plant serves around 375,000 customers. Installing that type of filtration system would cost the city approximately $200 million — not to mention approximately $24 million per year on upkeep.

In 2024, the EPA announced $1 billion in funding for communities and people on private wells impacted by PFAS contamination. Cities like Columbia plan to use this to partially fund their projects, if the funding remains.

A Defunded Landscape

The EWG report recommends starting to fix the problem at the source, in this case, they argue, on the farm. But under the Trump administration, funding for on-the-farm conservation practices aimed to reduce pollution in waterways is currently paused.

“When you take away hundreds of millions of dollars from cover crops and stream buffers and filter strips, you’re also taking away a reduction in nitrate and manure and other contaminants running off farm fields,” Schechinger says.

The Trump administration has not publicly commented on the future of PFAS, but just a few days ago, an anonymous EPA employee told the Guardian that the agency is considering a more lax approach to regulating chemicals such as PFAS.

“I think we have good water,” Richardson says, holding up her water bottle. “I’m drinking it. But, I think we can do better. I know we can do better, and I want us to do better.”


Nina B. Elkadi wrote this article for Sentient.


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A major player in the Northwest's energy landscape is considering changes in the future, as extreme climate events make power delivery in Oregon more unpredictable.

Like utilities in the region, the Bonneville Power Administration - a nonprofit federal administration - is considering joining a larger energy market to ensure reliable access for customers.

BPA is favoring a market known as Markets+, which it says will be less expensive in the long run but could cost between $79 million and $129 million more for ratepayers in 2026.

However, organizations like Save Our Wild Salmon favor the Day-Ahead Energy Market, or EDAM.

Tanya Riordan, policy and advocacy director with the organization, said BPA needs to consider tribal rights in the region, especially when it comes to salmon.

"We can have a more open governance model," said Riordan, "that gives state officials and consumers an equal role, which would keep salmon recovery priorities at the forefront, which is what the EDAM market would offer."

Riordan said the transition to a larger energy market would reduce pressure on the federal hydropower system, also reducing pressure on the region's rivers and salmon.

A formal document outlining BPA's decision is expected in May.

Ben Otto, an energy consultant with the Northwest Energy Coalition, said he also favors EDAM.

He said the BPA has a unique role in the Northwest, with obligations to its customers, but also to the rest of the region by selling hydropower to keep bills low and running a transmission grid in the Northwest.

"Also by mitigating the impacts to salmon and wildlife and tribal interests," said Otto, "this is really important - and we really think that those obligations need to play a more significant role in Bonneville's decision, and we look forward to that being reflected in their record."

Otto said EDAM would reduce costs and be just as reliable as Markets+, and would make the integration of clean energy easier.

He noted that BPA wouldn't fully join the market, regardless of its choice, until 2028 - and so he's urging the administration to take its time making a decision.

"We believe a market that gives a strong role for public interest and state policy is a better fit for Bonneville's obligations than Markets+," said Otto, "which is really more of like a business league and more commercially focused."




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