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Recent news reports have told us that ethanol, now the "big player" in the alternative fuels arena, is using up corn that would otherwise be fed to cattle, dairy cows, swine, sheep and fowl. This means that the prices being paid for corn are rising rapidly, and these increases in turn drive up the costs of foods we consume and of livestock feeds that contain corn.

The news stories did not pose or answer questions about why livestock are consuming corn-based feed in the first place. The answer would be that our industrial livestock industry confines the animals to pens and barns - therefore, they have to consume manufactured food.

It wasn't always this way.

In the 19th century, animals grazed and were sustained on the Great Plains, which were grasslands that covered almost 40 percent of North America. Only about 1 percent of the original ecosystem exists today, because it has been converted to agriculture or is degraded and abandoned.

While the Great Plains did support millions of grazing animals and pack-hunting predators that fed on the grazers, the grasslands remained healthy because of the symbiotic and holistic relationship between the land and the animals.

The presence of predators kept the grazing animals on the move, and their hoof action worked the soil so that their manure was quickly absorbed. The soil's organic matter was increased, thereby fertilizing it and keeping it healthy.

Would it be possible to return to a more natural way of raising livestock? Our organization, Holistic Management International, has accumulated abundant evidence - over 23 years of working internationally with farming and ranching families - that this is actually possible. Today, 30 million acres around the world, including the United States, are successfully cultivated using holistic management.

To change the paradigm of how we raise livestock, we would have to be willing to free up the acreage, grow the grass and restore the grasslands, with the animals present, and manage their grazing in such a way that replicates the behavior of those wild grazers of yesteryear and that permits enough time to elapse for the roots of the plants to rest and recover.

If we could bring animals back to the land in a holistically managed way and restore the grasslands, then:

Vast amounts of carbon would end up in plant roots instead of in the atmosphere. This would have a positive effect on global warming.

We would increase the water resources of the land, in underground aquifers and in the prairie. Covered soil retains significantly more water than bare ground does.

The overall habitat for wildlife would be improved.

Outbreaks of pests and weeds would decrease, along with the attendant use of herbicides and pesticides.

We could reduce the amount of methane that is produced by livestock in confined feeding operations.

We could produce a high-quality, clean-protein product for human consumption.

We could create another source of biofuels. Research conducted at the University of Minnesota and reported in the December 2006 issue of Science magazine, indicated that biofuels derived from grassland plants yield up to twice as much energy per unit of land as corn-based ethanol does. This exciting development could hold the key to the future of alternative energy production.

In the end, we would also improve our rural economies.