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From wheeler@super.org Wed Feb 24 17:57:28 1993 Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 10:35:11 EDT From: wheeler@super.org (Ferrell S. Wheeler) To: tms@cs.umd.edu Subject: BB/OPED Rifkin OP-ED 1 Beyond Beef Campaign 1130 17th St., NW Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20036 Tel: 202-775-1132 Fax: 202-775-0074 Cattle and the Global Environmental Crisis By Jeremy Rifkin President, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation Washington, D.C. In all of the ongoing public debates around the global environmental crisis, a curious silence surrounds the issue of cattle, one of the most destructive environmental threats of the modern era. Cattle grazing is a primary cause of the spreading desertification process that is now enveloping whole continents. Cattle ranching is responsible for the destruction of much of the earth's remaining tropical rain forests. Cattle raising is indirectly responsible for the rapid depletion of fresh water on the planet, with some reservoirs and aquifers now at their lowest levels since the end of the last Ice Age. Cattle are a chief source of organic pollution; cow dung is poisoning the freshwater lakes, rivers, and the streams of the world. Growing herds of cattle are exerting unprecedented pressure on the carrying capacity of natural ecosystems, edging entire species of wildlife to the brink of extinction. Cattle are a growing source of global warming, and their increasing numbers now threaten the very chemical dynamics of the biosphere. Most Americans and Europeans are simply unaware of the devastation wrought by the world's cattle. Now numbering over a billion, these ancient ungulates roam the countryside, trampling the soil, stripping the vegetation bare, laying waste to large tracts of the earth's biomass. Hoofed locusts of the rain forest Since 1960 more than 25 percent of Central America's forests have been cleared to create pastureland for grazing cattle. By the late 1970's, two thirds of all the agricultural land in Central America was occupied by cattle and other livestock, most of it destined for North American dinner tables. American consumers save, on the average, a nickel on every hamburger imported from Central America, but the cost to the environnment is overwhelming and irreversible. Each imported hamburger requires the clearing of six square yards of jungle for pasture. The creation of a vast cattle complex in Central America has enriched the lives of a few wealthy landowners and their political allies, pauperized much of the rural peasantry, and spawned widespread social unrest and political upheaval. More than half the rural families in Central America -- 35 million people -- are now landless or own too little to support themselves, while the landed aristocracy and transnational corporations continue to gobble up every available acre, using much of it for pastureland. This destructive pattern of forest clearing, land concentration, and displacement of peasant populations is being repeated throughout Latin America. In Mexico, 37 million acres of forests have been destroyed since 1987 to provide additional grazing land for cattle. Mexican ecologist Gabriel Quadri summed up the feelings of many of his countrymen when he warned, "We are exporting the future of Mexico for the benefit of a few powerful cattle farmers." The wasting of the land The destructive impact of cattle extends well beyond the rain forests to include vast stretches of the earth's land. Cattle are now a major cause of desertification around the planet. Today about 1.3 billion cattle are trampling and stripping much of the vegetative cover from the earth's remaining grasslands. Each animal eats its way through 900 pounds of vegetation a month. Without flora to anchor the soil, absorb the water, and recycle the nutrients, the land has become increasingly vulnerable to wind and water erosion. And the cattle destory the land in still another way: their powerful hoofs compact the soil with the pressure of 24 pounds per square inch. The soil compaction reduces the air space between particles, reducing the amount of water that can be absorbed. The soil is less able to hold water from the spring melting of snow and is more prone to erosion from flash floods. More than 60 percent of the world's rangeland has been damaged by over grazing during the past half century. The United Nations estimates that 29 percent of the earth's landmass now suffers "slight, moderate, or severe desertification." Some 850 million people live on land threatened by desertification. More than 230 million people live on land so severely desertified that they are unable to sustain their existence and face the prospect of increasing malnutrition and starvation. In the United States, cattle are destroying much of the West. Between two and three million cattle are currently grazing on hundreds of millions of acres of public land in 11 western states. While western beef cattle make up only a small percentage of the beef production in the United States, they cause significant environmental destruction. According to a 1991 report prepared by the United Nations, more than 450 million acres on the western range are suffering a 25 to 50 percent reduction in yield, in part because of the overgrazing of cattle. Philip Fradkin, writing in _Audubon_ magazine, summed up the dimensions of this crisis -- a crisi that has, until now, remained among the country's best kept environmental secrets: "The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways and sub-division developments combined." Warming the planet with beef The grain-fed-cattle complex is now a significant factor in the emission of three of the gases that cause the greenhouse effect -- methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide -- and is likely to play an even larger role in global warming in the coming decades. The burning of fossil fuel accounted for nearly two-thirds of the 8.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere in 1987. The other third came from the increased burning of the forests and grasslands. Plants take in and store carbon dioxide in the process of photosynthesis. When they die or are burned, they release the stored-up carbon -- often accumulated over hundreds of years -- back into the atmosphere. When the trees are cleared and burned to make room for the cattle pastures, they emit a massive volume of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Still, the burning of forests for pastureland is only part of the story. Commercial cattle ranching contributes to global warming in other ways. Our highly mechanized agricultural sector also uses a sizeable amount of fossil fuel. With 70 percent of all U.S. grain production now devoted to livestock feed, much of it for cattle, the energy burned by farm machinery and transport vehicles just to produce and ship the fee represents a significant addition to carbon dioxide emissions. It now takes the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline to produce a pound of grain-fed beef in the United States. To sustain the yearly beef requirements of an average family of four requires the use of more than 260 gallons of fossil fuel. Moreover, to produce feed crops for grain-fed cattle requires the use of petrochemical fertilizers, which emit nitrous oxide, another of the greenhouse gases. Nitrous oxide released from fertilizers and other sources now accounts for 6 percent of the global warming effect. Finally, cattle themselves emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Although methane is also emitted from peat bogs, rice paddies, and landfills, the growing cattle population accounts for much of the increase in methane emissions over the past several decades. Methane emissions are responsible for 18 percent of the gases causing the global warming trend. The ever-increasing cattle population is wreaking havoc on the earth's ecosystems. Reducing our consumption of beef and redirecting animal husbandry practices toward humane, sustainable production of cattle will go a long way towards restoring the planet to health and establishing a new covenant of stewardship with the earth.