How one rancher keeps cattle on the move and carbon in the soil

Meet Andrea Stroeve-Sawa, a fourth-generation rancher whose herd saves fragile ecosystems and stores greenhouse gases in the soil. She helps to show how beef cattle raised at Shipwheel Cattle Feeders in adaptive multi-paddock grasslands in Alberta, Canada, are capturing emissions.

Digging out and poring over faded, yellowed grazing charts and pictures dating back to 1982, Stroeve-Sawa traced the farm’s stocking days, revealing that they had gone from an initial 2.36 stock days per acre to reaching around 110 stock days per acre this year. From where they started, this is an increase in productivity of a staggering 3,862 percent.

“I feel an immense responsibility for the way that I not only maintain what we currently have, but now, I feel like I have to push past where we are and do more,” Stroeve-Sawa said. “Do better. Be bigger.”