If, like me, you enjoy eating meat from time to time – and you’ve awoken at three in the morning in a state of existential panic about what that might mean for the planet – here’s a little ray of hope that could cheer you up.

It seems that there are now benefits attached to the grazing by cloven-hoofed animals of Australia’s fragile grasslands.

On last Sunday’s edition of Landline, Angus Whyte of Wyndham Station in north-western New South Wales spoke about it to reporter Chris Clark in a story entitled Grazing Carbon.

Angus’s aim is to increase the quantity and variety of vegetation on his cattle station in north-western New South Wales. He says that the cover of plants helps retain moisture in the soil and promotes the growth of fungi and bacteria. All essential, he believes, for the health of the entire landscape, producing stronger, more productive pastures.

The principle is that the stock keep a pasture in good condition by grazing it, much as mowing a lawn conditions grass. Then the stock are moved on to another pasture, allowing the grass to regenerate. The manure left behind nourishes the soil.

Grass seed will later fall into the furrows made by the hooves of the animals. With enough moisture, coupled with nutrition from the manure, new grass will flourish.

This approach uses the stock as tools; they cultivate and fertilise the pasture on which they graze before moving on to do the same to the next pasture.

The establishment of the cattle industry in Australia caused displacement and ensuing tragedy to the country’s original human population, as well as huge loss of native species and massive land degradation. There now seems to be an opportunity to redress some of the wrongs, a fraction of them admittedly.

The sheer size of many cattle stations in the north of the country beggars belief; some cover an area greater than many small countries.

A closer involvement with the stewardship of grazing country will perhaps signal the end of such huge operations. It could well be the start of new thinking on how best to work with the land, instead of just on it.