Why these are estimates, not measurements
We have been grazing California for more than 10 years, across our own herds and alongside partner operations including California Grazing. Nobody in this industry runs a metered ledger of every acre and every animal across a decade of subcontracted work — anyone who tells you they do is guessing with more decimal places. So we round hard, round down, and say plainly that these are good-faith estimates.
If a figure here matters to a decision you are making — a grant application, an RFP, a news story — call us and we will tell you exactly what we can and cannot document for the specific project you care about.
Goats deployed
Cumulative head run across our own herds and partner operations over the period, not the size of any single herd. A herd of a few hundred animals working repeat contracts across ten years produces a large cumulative figure quickly. We publish it as a round floor (10,000+), never a precise count.
Acres grazed
Total project acreage across the same period, counted once per project pass. A property grazed three times in three years counts three times, because each pass is a separate deployment of animals, fencing and labor — but we do not multiply acreage by the number of days the herd was on site.
Carbon avoided
This is the figure most worth scrutinising, so here is the whole calculation:
- Mechanical clearing — mastication, mowing, brush cutting — burns roughly 7 gallons of diesel per acre on the kind of ground we work. Steep, brushy terrain runs higher; open grass runs lower.
- Burning a gallon of diesel emits about 10.2 kg of CO₂ (the EPA figure is 22.4 lb per gallon).
- 25,000 acres × 7 gal × 10.2 kg = roughly 1,785 tonnes CO₂e, which we publish rounded down to the nearest hundred.
What this figure does not include
It is an avoided emissions estimate — the diesel a machine would have burned covering the same ground — not a measurement of carbon sequestered. Specifically, it does not subtract:
- The diesel our own trucks and trailers burn hauling animals, fencing and water to site. On a large project this is small next to the machine hours avoided; on a small one it can erase the benefit entirely, which is a real part of why we hold a roughly ten-acre minimum.
- Enteric methane from the animals themselves. Goats emit methane whether they are working a fire break or standing in a home pasture, so we treat this as outside the comparison — but it is not zero, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
It also does not count the things that are real but hard to quantify: soil left uncompacted, herbicide not applied near waterways, seed destroyed in the rumen rather than spread by a mower. Those are among the better arguments for grazing, and none of them are in the number.
Questions or corrections
If you think a figure here is wrong or overstated, we want to hear it — write to [email protected]. We would rather revise a number than defend one.