From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Tue Jun 12 2001 - 12:48:27 MDT
On 6/12/01 2:26 AM, "Samantha Atkins" <samantha@objectent.com> wrote:
> James Rogers wrote:
>> Except a substantial percentage of cattle aren't fed on cultivated land and
>> some of the land that *is* cultivated to feed cattle would be pretty much
>> useless for cultivating human food. Simply cutting back on the quantity of
>> cattle consumed to eliminate the areas of cultivatable land use overlap
>> should be sufficient; no need for everyone to go vegan.
>
> If the cattle are not fed on cultivated land then what are they
> fed on? The vast majority of cattle raised for meat and flesh
> in the US are raised in factory farms and can't exactly keep the
> lawn mowed.
They are frequently fed in the sparse grasslands in the rain shadows of the
Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain ranges. The number of heads supportable on
this arid land can get quite low (about 3-4 acres per head in the dry scrub
land), but since the US has many, many millions of acres of this type of
land, it can quite easily support vast sparse herds that incidentally are a
critical part of that ecosystem. While the soil in many of these areas is
relatively rich, lack of water, salinity, and rockiness frequently make for
very poor farming compared to other regions. Nonetheless, the native
grasses and scrub that thrives in these areas makes reasonably nutritious
food for free-range cattle.
Per the USDA, only about 17% of cattle is raised in feed lots and factory
farms (US herd size is ~100M head), largely to meet the market for certain
select grades of beef. There are (again per the USDA) just under 900,000
beef cattle operations in the US, a substantial percentage of which are
raised on grass and scrub lands. My best guess based on the distribution
statistics is that ~40% of cattle in the US are raised on land that could
not likely be profitably farmed.
Another important factor to consider is that there already is no market for
a significant percentage of the plant foods currently produced. Producing
even more plant product would be ruinous, since the market can't even absorb
what is produced now with cattle occupying a fraction of cultivatable land.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:08:05 MST