My Visit to Al Gore’s Tennessee Farm: Can Regenerative Agriculture Reduce Climate Emissions?
And four actions you can take to help regenerative and factory farms reduce emissions
Al Gore at Climate Underground workshop held at his Caney Fork Farms. M Krasny
When you hear the name Al Gore, the 2000 contested “chad” presidential election might come to mind. Or his movie “The Inconvenient Truth” warning of climate disaster. Fewer people know about Al Gore’s family farm near Nashville, Tennessee. Or that Gore is a champion of regenerative agriculture.
I traveled to Al Gore’s Caney Fork Farms last October because I had questions about how truly sustainable regenerative agriculture is. Farm Director Asher Wright’s profound knowledge of everything from how to grow a special variety of corn for a tortilla shop in nearby Nashville, to the vagaries of clover growth in degraded soils, truly impressed me as we slogged across the muddy paths in the pouring rain. Most eye opening for me was the intricate process of separating grains from contaminants, including the use of visual sensing technology. Most pleasing were the cows grazing peacefully with the Tennessee hills as a backdrop. And most fun were the black heritage pigs that came romping and grunting up to meet us. After the farm tour, I spent two days with a bunch of high- and low-tech regenerative agriculture experts and advocates at Gore’s Climate Underground Workshop. Here is what I learned.
Regenerative Agriculture Can Be High-Tech
Gore and Wright believe that cows are an integral part of regenerative agriculture because their manure helps fertilize the soil. The farm crew takes great care to avoid overgrazing by moving the cows every few days to new pastures. This typically requires hours of tearing down and setting up fences.
On the bus from the hotel to the farm, I met someone who works for Halter, a virtual fencing company. Their fences differ from the invisible fences that keep dogs in a yard because they don’t require installing an electric line around the perimeter. Instead, farmers enter GPS coordinates where they want the cows to roam, and a collar emits loud beeps into the cows’ ears when they stray into the wrong area. For rotational grazing, this means simply switching the GPS coordinates to guide cows to a different pasture, rather than having to remove and reinstall fences by hand. In short, regenerative farming is labor intensive but technologies can help.
Regenerative Agriculture Can Sequester Carbon
Monitoring how cow poop and other regenerative practices impact the farm’s overall soil health falls to Dr. Emily Stutzman, the farm’s Head of Research. For those concerned about climate, understanding the conditions when agricultural soils capture carbon from the air, and when they store carbon underground, is paramount. But it turns out that measuring how much carbon is stored in soils is tricky. Soil carbon varies depending on what was grown in the past and what is being grown now. And it can change rapidly if the farm experiences a heat wave or downpour. The depth of the soil sample matters, too. To further complicate things, soil test results for carbon vary depending on which soil measurement lab processes the sample.
Farm manager Asher Wright with pasture clover and grass. M Krasny
Despite the measurement issues, Dr. Kris Covey, Skidmore College professor and co-founder and President of The Soil Inventory Project, told me that soils on farms combining no till and cover crops sequester and store significant amounts of carbon. In the US Midwest, combining these two practices results in an average net saving of 1.2 Mg CO₂-eq ha⁻1 yr⁻1 compared to conventional practices. Because the US Midwest has about 65 million hectares of farmland, realizing this reduction in emissions from no till and cover crops could be a huge win for the climate. However, the amount of carbon sequestered in any one field varies widely, with some regenerative farms showing no reduction in emissions. The highest mitigation occurs on soils depleted by years of unsustainable farming, but these benefits taper off as the soil becomes saturated with carbon.
Regenerative farms that include livestock, despite how much nutrients their manure adds to the soil, face a particular climate hurdle: cows emit a lot of methane via their so-called “enteric” emissions or burps. And, in the short term, methane heats the climate about 80 times as quickly as the more well-known greenhouse gas CO2. Scientists think reducing methane emissions now is critical to slowing down global warming.
Reducing Cow Emissions on Regenerative Farms Is Not Easy
During the workshop, I asked Al Gore about one potential way to reduce cow methane emissions – supplements added to cow feed. Although long-term studies are ongoing, one study found that feed additives reduced cattle methane emissions by up to 99%. Gore responded that he puts a lot of faith in feed additives, but offered the caveat that they are not practical when cows roam freely across a pasture. They must be administered daily and are easier to use in Concentrated Animal Feed Operations (CAFOs) where cows are confined in one place. Other emerging technologies, such as vaccines to lower methane emissions, may be more suitable for free-range cows because they are administered once rather than daily.
Highly efficient cow breeds matched with high-quality feed and state-of the-art animal health practices also lower methane emissions. This is because healthy, well-fed cows mature and produce more meat at an early age, and thus don’t live long enough to produce as much methane.
According to a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “emissions per kg protein of even the most efficient grass-fed beef are 10 to 25% higher than those of industrial US beef.” The paper concludes that even when we take into account the soil carbon storage benefits of regenerative farming, grass-fed beef still does not score a climate win over industrial beef. And both CAFO and grass-fed beef are way worse for the climate than plant-based proteins.
I caught Al Gore as he was being shuttled out and asked about his stance on a plant-rich diet. He replied that he has not eaten beef for over ten years and has only recently started adding chicken and fish back into his diet. Because chicken and fish have lower emissions compared to beef, the once vegan now follows a diet that some may describe as “climate carnivore.”
Cows grazing near electric fence on Al Gore’s Caney Fork Farms. M Krasny
Regenerative Agriculture Poses a Climate Quandary
So, we are left with a quandary. Regenerative agriculture provides numerous benefits: healthy soils, less runoff during floods, less drying out of soils during droughts, reduced use of pesticides and fertilizers, and, in some cases, higher prices for farmers. And cows grazing freely in a pasture undoubtedly have a better life than those confined in a CAFO. Some scientists predict that the decimation of soils by chemicals, compaction, and overuse in industrial agriculture will cause our whole system of farming to collapse. Plus, who wouldn’t want to live next to a peaceful pasture rather than a foul factory farm?
You Can Support Lower Emissions from Regenerative and Factory Farms
If the future of agriculture lies in regenerative farming, then we need to support farmers to adopt cover cropping and other practices to replenish soils, and new technologies like feed additives to reduce methane emissions.
If the future of agriculture lies in factory farming, we need not just to reduce enteric emissions. We also need new practices to reduce methane emanating from huge piles of manure and to prevent that manure from running off the land and polluting streams.
Here are a four policies that you can support if you want to reduce livestock emissions on regenerative and factory farms!
The bipartisan EMIT Less Act (Enteric Methane Innovation Tools for Lower Emissions and Sustainable Stock) will boost financial support for farmers adopting proven enteric methane solutions like new feed additives and manure management practices, and will accelerate research into additional methane solutions.
TAKE ACTION! Ask Congress to help farmers lower methane emissions from livestock.
The PERMIT Act (Promoting Efficient Review for Modern Infrastructure Today) would weaken the historic Clean Water Act, by limiting the federal government’s authority to regulate water treatment systems, groundwater, and CAFOs. CAFOs usually raise hundreds or thousands of cows, pigs, or chickens. While they are efficient at producing meat for consumers, they concentrate large amounts of manure in the same place, which can pollute surface and groundwater and emit methane.
TAKE ACTION! Ask Congress to oppose weakening the Clean Water Act, which would mean less oversight of CAFO manure flowing into streams.
TAKE ACTION! Ask your state leaders to regulate CAFO air and water pollution.
The Agriculture Resilience Act is a comprehensive bill that addresses food waste, rural energy, and livestock emissions in regenerative and factory farms.
Great post, Marianne! I'm sharing this with my chapter. - Lynn
Al Gore appears to be stuck in a climate silo. His return to eating chicken and fish may reflect a common misunderstanding—conflating a generic “vegan” diet with a nutrient-dense, whole-food, plant-based one.
I would argue that if we aligned climate-focused agriculture with optimal human health, the result would be a Venn diagram with complete overlap.
Manure is just one way to supply nutrients—not the only way. Legumes partner with soil bacteria to pull nitrogen from the air and convert it into a form plants can use, naturally enriching the soil. Green manure systems and crop rotations have long been used to build and maintain fertility without livestock.
By contrast, reliance on manure carries significant tradeoffs: nutrient runoff and water pollution, methane emissions from cattle, and extensive land use requirements. An added advantage is that we need not spend valuable time and resources trying to modify cattle or mitigate their impacts—we can simply reduce their numbers for the benefit of both people and the planet.
If we follow the evidence, diets built on whole plant foods deliver the best health outcomes—by a wide margin.
In short, we don’t need to choose between feeding people well and caring for the planet—the same approach does both.