Matthew W. Jordon, Jean-Charles Buffet, Jennifer A. J. Dungait, Marcelo V. Galdos, Tara Garnett, Michael R. F. Lee, John Lynch, Elin Röös, Timothy D. Searchinger, Pete Smith and H. Charles J. Godfray

Jordon MW et al. 2024 A restatement of the natural science evidence base concerning grassland management, grazing livestock and soil carbon storage. Proc. R. Soc. B 291: 20232669. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.2669

Oxford Martin Restatements review the natural science evidence base underlying areas of current policy concern and controversy. Written in policy neutral terms and designed to be read by an informed but not technically specialist audience, restatements are produced by a writing team reflecting the breadth of opinion on the topic in the science community and involve wide consultation with interested stakeholders. The final version of the restatement is peer reviewed prior to publication.

This paper was published in January 2024 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It deals with grassland management, grazing livestock and soil carbon storage potential.

Approximately a third of all annual greenhouse gas emissions globally are directly or indirectly associated with the food system, and over a half of these are linked to livestock production. In temperate oceanic regions, such as the UK, most meat and dairy is produced in extensive systems based on pasture. There is much interest in the extent to which such grassland may be able to sequester and store more carbon to partially or completely mitigate other greenhouse gas emissions in the system. However, answering this question is difficult due to context-specificity and a complex and sometimes inconsistent evidence base. This Restatement describes a project that set out to summarize the natural science evidence base relevant to grassland management, grazing livestock and soil carbon storage potential in as policy-neutral terms as possible. A series of evidence statements are listed and categorized according to the nature of the underlying information, and an annotated bibliography is provided in the electronic supplementary material.