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.




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