Defending your ranch: Develop allies, not enemies

[Dobs4ever 3]

http://www.beefmagazine.com/ranching/world-without-beef-just-not-sustainable

This is an excellent article on how to approach the controversy between the vegans of the world and the food growers of the world.  The fight is real as vegans have a very strong message and campaign that says meat production is unhealthy and dangerous to the planet.  They have a meatless Monday campaigns, youTube videos that are edited in their favor, and heart wrenching stories and numerous other bizarre antics depicting a heavily slanted message.  They have even infiltrated our schools with their messages.

 

(quote) 

For those who are on the fence about beef in the diet, Sara Place, Ph.D., NCBA senior director, sustainable beef production research, puts to rest some of the most common misconceptions about livestock in a sustainable food system.

In a recent article featured on medium.com, Place explains how the latest research proves that an animal-free food system is just not holistically sustainable.

Place writes, “Let’s be clear, a healthy and sustainable food system depends on having both plants and animals. Researchers at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and Virginia Tech just published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences confirming this socially debated fact. The study examined what our world would look like without animal agriculture in the U.S. The bottom line? We’d reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. by 2.6%, and 0.36% globally — but we’d also upset our balanced food ecosystem and lack essential dietary nutrients to feed all Americans.”

Here are three main points Place makes in her article:

1. Cattle consume food that is inedible by humans

Place says, “One important role livestock — such as cattle — play in our sustainable food system is taking human inedible food and ultimately making it nutritious. Specifically, cattle act as upcyclers — meaning they eat grasses and plant matter leftover from human food production and upgrade them into nutritional, high-quality protein. In fact, they produce 19% more edible protein than they consume.”

2. Cattle graze on land that is unsuitable for anything else

Place writes, “More than 85% of the land where we graze cattle is not suitable for growing crops because it is too rocky, steep and/or arid to support cultivated agriculture.”

3. Organic foods benefit from cattle manure

“If you eat a USDA-certified organic diet, what’s one of the major fertilizer sources for your vegetables, grains, and other plant foods? Animal manure. What consumes 1.9 billion pounds a year of plant-based leftovers produced by the U.S. human food, fiber, and biofuel industries? Livestock. Without livestock, how would we dispose of these plant-derived leftovers without creating an environmental problem?" (quote)

We need to educate ourselves and have a sensible plan of attack.  We need to be in our schools educating students on the benefits of our agriculture, animal husbandry and how to feed a growing population.  It will not be sustainable on just plant crops that's for sure.  

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