Viral claims that cows and beef are climate solutions ignore the impacts of cattle farms

The claim that cattle are actually “carbon-negative” isn’t new, but it’s still circulating on social media, including TikTok and X – see this December 2025 X post that’s garnered more than 270,000 views. 

You’ll see claims that suggest ‘new studies’ have proved that cattle really aren’t as bad as climate scientists and climate advocates think. You might even see companies promoting ‘carbon-negative beef’.

On the surface, these claims may seem logical: how can animals grazing on CO2-absorbing grass be bad for the planet? But the story is more complex, as cows emit quite a lot of greenhouse gas. While we’ve written about the environmental impacts of cattle, in this review we’ll closely examine their greenhouse gas emissions. 

The key question is: do cattle farms absorb more greenhouse gas from the atmosphere than they emit? The answer is, typically, no. 

What are the greenhouse gas emissions of cattle farms?

Research clearly shows that most cattle farms emit more greenhouse gas than they remove. Even when cattle farmers do reduce their emissions, they seldom reach net-zero. A 2021 review paper surveyed 292 “beef production systems” around the world that tried to reduce their emissions. According to this review, only 2% actually achieved net-zero or better^[1].

Where, then, do claims that cattle are “carbon-negative” come from?

Some websites and social media posts (example) claim that a ‘University of Nebraska study’ ‘proved’ cows are carbon-negative. But this isn’t accurate – this research did not ‘prove’ that all cows are carbon-negative. 

The one study in question (which has not been published in a scientific journal) compared two cattle grazing methods. By modifying what and where cattle ate, the researchers could encourage the land to sequester – or absorb – more greenhouse gas than the cattle emitted. In other words, one well-run cattle farm can be greenhouse-gas-negative for some period of time.

But the 2021 review paper – which actually examined hundreds of studies – tells us that it’s not the norm^[1]. The majority of research on this subject suggests that most cattle farms are net emitters.

That 2021 review focused on beef farms, rather than dairy farms. However, other research tells us that around the world, dairy production is also a net emitter^[2]. Furthermore, dairy and beef production are often tightly interconnected; separating their respective emissions can be difficult^[3].

You may find companies selling “carbon-negative beef”. It’s possible they aren’t exaggerating, but climate researchers react to these claims with skepticism. (It’s worth noting that the meat industry spends a lot of effort trying to downplay beef’s environmental impact.)

Cattle’s emissions are mainly methane, not CO2

Crunching cattle’s greenhouse gas numbers can be confusing, because there are actually multiple greenhouse gases involved. We can talk about the CO2 emissions from supplying a farm or transporting food to the market, but we can talk about those for any animal. 

Instead, when scientists talk about the specific emissions from cattle, they’re usually talking about a different greenhouse gas: methane.

Cows are ruminating animals or ruminants. (Other ruminating animals include goats and sheep.) Rather than digesting food as we do, ruminant stomachs ferment their food with the aid of special microorganisms called methanogens. These methanogens break down plant matter so their host animal can better access nutrients.

As their name suggests, methanogens emit methane as a byproduct. This methane builds up in a cow’s stomach. When that cow belches, it spews the methane out into the air.

Livestock are also responsible for other emissions – for example, animal manure can emit methane as it decays^[4].

When there are multiple greenhouse gases at play, scientists add up their equivalents in CO2 to better understand how much they’ll actually warm the atmosphere. This conversion can be a bit tricky in methane’s case. Whereas CO2 lasts centuries in the atmosphere, chemical reactions tend to erase methane after a decade or two; however, while methane is in the atmosphere, an amount of methane can trap significantly more heat than the same amount of CO2. 

This doesn’t change the reality that most cattle farms are net emitters. No matter how we convert methane’s numbers to CO2, we find that cattle’s methane emissions usually outweigh any CO2 their land absorbs from the air – as we’ve seen^[1].

And the world’s methane emissions have more than doubled since 1950. We’re adding methane to the air far more quickly than the air can remove it (Figure 1). As a result, the level of methane in the atmosphere is about three times higher than before the Industrial Revolution.

Much of that methane – accounting for 41% of human methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency – comes from agriculture, especially cattle. Converting to CO2 emissions, one group suggested that cattle alone were responsible for about 7% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions between 1961 and 2010^[5].

Cattle don’t necessarily live on ‘natural’ land

Even if you know the numbers, it may be hard to think of cattle farms as greenhouse gas sources. After all, unlike gasoline cars or coal power stations, don’t cattle live amongst plants? Don’t plants absorb greenhouse gas from the atmosphere? 

When cattle do graze on grass, it is true that the environment can sequester greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. But as we’ve seen, the vast majority of cattle farms simply can’t sequester enough greenhouse gas to make up for the emissions of their cows.

First, we must account for the fact that cattle pastures may not really be natural landscapes. They’re often quite tightly managed to maximize a farm’s production – they may be artificially watered and fenced, and their farmers might try dictating where and when cattle can graze. This sort of control tends to increase pastureland’s greenhouse gas footprint when compared to more lightly grazed land^[6].

It’s also worth noting that new pasture may come at the cost of other ecosystems. Between 2001 and 2015, humans cleared more forest for cattle pastures than for any other agricultural product, according to the World Resources Institute. The grassy expanse you see in an image may have once been a dense forest before trees were cut down to let cows live there. In some heavily forested regions, especially in Brazil, more than 10% of forest has been cleared for cattle (Figure 1).

This is a good example of what scientists mean when they talk about emissions from land-use change. Forests remove CO2 from the atmosphere more effectively than pasture can, and cutting trees can also release greenhouse gas that is stored within^[7]. As a result, if we replace forest with grassland, we’d expect that to increase the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas levels in the future.

In fact, as more land is turned into pasture for the growing number of cows, Earth’s grasslands on the whole are now becoming less capable of absorbing greenhouse gas.

The world’s cattle probably aren’t going anywhere, so a lot of farmers and agricultural scientists are trying to create less emissions-intensive cattle farms. (This is one of the motivations behind the University of Nebraska research we’ve mentioned.) They’re researching ways to cut down on cows’ methane emissions and to encourage land to sequester more CO2.

However, it must also be said that many scientists are skeptical that this research will ever be enough to make cattle “carbon-negative”^[8]. In general, it’s good to be skeptical of claims that point to single studies or single examples and claim they represent everything.

References:

1. Cusack et al. (2021) Reducing climate impacts of beef production: A synthesis of life cycle assessments across management systems and global regions. Global Change Biology.
2. Beauchemin et al. (2025) The Path to Net-Zero in Dairy Production: Are Pronounced Decreases in Enteric Methane Achievable? Annual Review of Animal Biosciences.
3. Mazzetto et al. (2022) Mapping the carbon footprint of milk production from cattle: A systematic review. Journal of Dairy Science.
4. Herrero et al. (2016) Greenhouse gas mitigation potentials in the livestock sector. Nature Climate Change.
5. Caro et al. (2014) Global and regional trends in greenhouse gas emissions from livestock. Climatic Change.
6. Pendrill et al. (2019) Agricultural and forestry trade drives large share of tropical deforestation emissions. Global Environmental Change.
7. Chang et al. (2021) Climate warming from managed grasslands cancels the cooling effect of carbon sinks in sparsely grazed and natural grasslands. Nature Communications.
8. Wang et al. (2023) Risk to rely on soil carbon sequestration to offset global ruminant emissions. Nature Communications.