Along the Trail
Raising beef is good for the earth.
Along America’s Angus Trails is celebrating a new birth, a real born-again experience that turned out right. The cynic in me might say, “I told you so.”
It’s all right there in the Wall Street Journal, an article entitled “Raising Beef Is Good For the Earth.” It’s by one Nicolette Hahn Niman, a self-admitted “longtime vegetarian and environmental lawyer, who once bought into those claims.” She is the author of a new book, Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production. She and her husband founded Niman Ranch and now have a grass-fed beef business.
She says, “It isn’t just the alarm over the environmental effects of raising beef are overstated. It’s that raising beef cattle, especially on grass, is an environmental gain for the planet.”
Niman goes on to point out gems like, “Cattle are key to the world’s most promising strategy to counter global warming: restoring carbon to the soil.” Or, she says, “Cattle’s pruning mouths stimulate vegetative growth as their trampling hoofs and digestive tracts foster seed germination and nutrient recycling,” on the range.
Or how about, “Cattle are necessary for the functioning of grassland ecosystems.” She points out that veganism says it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound (lb.) of beef. A new University of California at Davis study says it actually takes 441 lb. of water to produce 1 lb. of beef — about the same amount it takes to grow rice — and beef is far more nutritious.
She also points out that eating beef stands accused of aggravating world hunger.
“This is ironic,” she says, “because over a billion of the world’s poorest people depend on livestock. Some 85% of the world’s cattle live on land that is not suitable for farming.”
She concludes, “The bovine’s most striking attribute is that it can live on a simple diet of grass, which it forages for itself; and for protecting land, water, soil and climate, there is nothing better than dense grass. As we consider the long-term prospects for feeding the human race, cattle will rightly remain an essential element.”
That stuff all sounds so good, I wish I’d written it myself, but I’m glad she did.
Welcome to the beef business, Mrs. Niman. We think you’ll like it here.
Editor’s Note: Dan Green is a Denver-based historian, author, retired editor of the The Record Stockman and the voice of “Along America’s Angus Trails,” a regular feature on Angus Media’s SiriusXM satellite radio program, Angus Talk. Angus Talk airs at 10 a.m. Central, every Saturday on Rural Radio, Channel 80.