In my twenties, I was vegetarian for several years. I cared about the planet, and believed I was helping it by not eating animals. But over time, I noticed something: I was often tired, cold, and craving warmth. When I reintroduced small amounts of ethically raised meat, my body came back to life. I had more energy, clearer thinking, and a deeper sense of grounding.
That personal discovery mirrored what I would later learn about the land itself. The same way my body needed animal nourishment, the Earth needs the presence of animals to stay alive.
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The Dance That Heals the Earth
Healthy pastures depend on the presence of ruminants: cattle, bison, sheep, and goats; whose hooves, manure, and grazing behaviour mimic the great herds that once shaped entire continents.
When managed regeneratively, these animals:
• Sequester carbon deep underground by stimulating root growth.
• Aerate the soil with their hooves, helping rainfall penetrate.
• Feed soil microbes through manure and urine.
• Prevent desertification by cycling nutrients and organic matter.
Rotational grazing (moving animals in tight herds across the land) allows the grass to rest, regrow, and deepen its roots. Within seasons, dead soil turns black and fragrant again.
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Monocultures: The Hidden Violence
Meanwhile, the plant-based “ethical” alternative relies on massive monocultures of soy, corn, and peas. These crops require tilling, synthetic fertilizers, and herbicides that sterilize the very microbial web we depend on.
Each acre of tilled soil releases tons of carbon dioxide, destroys earthworm habitat, and kills billions of small creatures; insects, rodents, and soil life; in every harvest.
The true cost of monoculture is invisible because it happens underground.
A world of endless plant protein farms may look green from space, but it’s a green desert.
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The Real Ethics of Eating
To eat consciously is not to avoid death; it is to participate in it with reverence.
When you eat grass-fed beef from a regenerative farm, you are part of a cycle that heals the land.
When you eat industrial soy grown on dead soil, you are part of a cycle that feeds machines.
We can’t outsource virtue to ideology. We must feel the living exchange; the breath, the hoof, the seed, the soil; and remember that life feeds life.
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The Spiritual Dimension
In truth, the way we eat mirrors the way we live. Industrial agriculture treats land as a machine, just as industrial medicine treats the body as a mechanism. Regenerative farming, like somatic healing, honours relationship, not control.
When we bring the animal back to the field, we bring the sacred back to the soil.
And when we remember this, the Earth remembers us.
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Haiku
Hooves kiss the dry land
Roots remember the rainfall
Life feeds life again