Q and A: Beef Production

Q. I am troubled by an advertisement I saw in your Green Guide [for "all natural" beef]. Meat is not a green product... Even if [this] beef is produced without hormones, antibiotics, fillers, or additives...meat-eating is still one of the most environmentally destructive things humans do.

--Gary Davenport, AR

A. To suggest that meat is categorically not a "green product" is to fail to discriminate between the way most of our meat is produced and consumed, and meat that is produced in ecologically sound ways. Livestock have certainly contributed to problems like deforestation, overgrazing, water pollution, and global warming, but the fault hardly lies with cattle per se. Cattle are not permanently married to feedlots and rain forests. Dispersed on diversified farms, cattle can convert crop residues into human food. Their manure, one of the most environmentally-benign sources of fertilizer, supplies a major portion of soil fertility needs, reduces the need for irrigation, and curtails soil erosion. If manure were fully utilized, it would drastically reduce the use of synthetic nitrogen, known to be one of the principal sources of nitrate contamination in water.

At least 80 percent of cattle food comes from grass, crop residues, and weather-damaged grains that people do not eat. If it weren't for ruminants, over a billion acres of U.S. land would not be utilized to produce human food. For example, of the 3,100 acres on our organic North Dakota farm, more than 900 acres are native grass and will always remain so since the land is too fragile for crop production. If it weren't for our cattle, those 900 acres would produce no protein for human consumption. Not a single kernel of grain is fed to our cattle.

Clearly, the whole meat industry is in need of serious overhaul. But to castigate all meat could cause as many environmental problems as it purports to solve.

--Fred Kirschenmann, Ph.D., a rancher and organic grain farmer in North Dakota, is president of Farm Verified Organic and a board member of Mothers & Others.