> Most farmers have limited land and they cannot just keep exhausting
>pastures and moving them to new pastures. Ranchers limit the number of
cattle in a
>pasture. Pasture can be fallowed or renewed by planting forage grasses.
> Cheers, Ken Hanly.
David Wright Hamilton, a biologist at the University of Georgia, once wrote
that an "alien ecologist observing...earth might conclude that cattle is
the dominant species in our biosphere.." The modern livestock industry and
the passion for meat have radically altered the look of the planet. Today,
across huge swaths of the globe, from Australia to the western plains of
the United States, one sees the conquest landscapes of the European mass
meat producers and their herds of ungulates.
Take California. In the late eighteenth century when the cattle herds
arrived in what the Spanish colonists called Alta California, the region
presented itself as a Mediterranean landscape, but of a sort that had been
extinguished in Europe for many centuries. There were meadows with
perennial bunchgrass, beardless wild rye, oat grass, perennial forbs: 22
million acres of such prairie and 500,00 acres of marsh grass. Beyond this,
there were 8 million acres of live oak woodlands and parklike forests.
Beyond and above this, chaparral.
By the 1860s, in the wake of the gold rush, some 3 million cattle were
grazing California's open ranges; the degradation was rapid, particularly
as ranchers had been overstocking to cash in on the cattle boom. Floods and
drought between 1862 and 1865 consummated the ecological crisis. In the
spring of 1863, 97,000 cattle were grazing in parched Santa Barbara County.
Two years later, only 12,100 remained. By the mid-1860s, in Terry Jordan's
words, "many ranges stood virtually denuded of palatable vegetation." In
less than a century, California's pastoral utopia had been destroyed; the
ranchers moved east of the Sierra Nevada into the Great Basin, or north, to
colder and drier terrain.
These days travelers heading north through California's Central valley can
gaze at mile upon mile of environmental wreckage: arid land except where
irrigated by water brought in from the north, absurdly dedicated to
producing cotton. Some 200 miles north of Los Angeles, a fierce stench and
clouds of dust herald the Harris Beef feedlot. On the east side of the
interstate several thousand steers are penned, occasionally doused by water
sprays. After a few minutes of this Dantesque spectacle the barren
landscape resumes, with one of California's state prisons, at
Coalinga--unlike the beef feedlot, secluded from view--lying just over the
horizon to the west.
California is now America's largest dairy state, and livestock agriculture
uses almost one-third of all irrigation water. It takes 360 gallons of
water to produce a pound of beef (irrigation for grain, trough water for
stock), which is why, further east in the feedlot states of Colorado,
Nebraska and Kansas, along with the Texas panhandle, the Ogallala aquifer
has been so severely depleted. (California's Central Valley itself faces
increasing problems of salty water from excessive use of groundwater.)
ALEXANDER COCKBURN ON BEEF
Unsustainable grazing and ranching sacrifice drylands, forests and wild
species. For example, semi-deciduous forests in Brazil, Bolivia and
Paraguay are cut down to make way for soybeans, which are fed to cows as
high-protein soycake. Humans are essentially vegetarian as a species and
insatiate meat-eating bring its familiar toll of heart disease, stroke and
cancer. The enthusiasm for meat also produces its paradox: hunger. A people
living on cereals and legumes for protein need to grow far less grain than
a people eating creatures that have been fed by cereals. For years Western
journalists described in mournful tones the scrawny and costly pieces of
meat available in Moscow's shops, associating the lack of meat with
backwardness and the failure of Communism. But after 1950, meat consumption
in the Soviet Union tripled. By 1964 grain for livestock feed outstripped
grain for bread, and by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, livestock were
eating three times as much grain as humans. All this required greater and
greater imports of grain until precious foreign exchange made the Soviet
Union the world's second-largest grain importer, while a dietary "pattern"
based on excellent bread was vanishing.
Governments--prodded by the World Bank--have plunged into schemes for
intensive grain-based meat production, which favors large, rich producers
and penalizes small subsistence farmers. In Mexico the share of cropland
growing feed and fodder for animals went from 5 percent in 1960 to 23
percent in 1980. Sorghum, used for animal feed, is now Mexico's
second-largest crop by area. At the same time, the area of land producing
the staples--corn, rice, wheat and beans--for poor folk there have fallen
relentlessly. Mexico is now a new corn importer, from rich countries such
as Canada and the United States, wiping out millions of subsistence
farmers, who have to migrate to the cities or to El Norte. Mexico feeds 30
percent of its grain to livestock--pork and chicken for urban eaters--while
22 percent of the population suffers from malnutrition.
Multiply this baneful pattern across the world. Meanwhile, the classic
pastoralists, who have historically provided most of the meat in Africa
with grazing systems closely adapted to varying environments, are being
marginalized. Grain-based livestock production inexorably leads to larger
and larger units and economies of scale.
(From the "Beat the Devil" column in the April 22, 1996 Nation magazine)
Louis Proyect
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