Climate Policy

[kandrathe]

The times with the USA being one of the largest grain exporters (most of it to 'enemy' Russia, oddly enough) are over, in case you missed that. Nowadays, the USA imports far more food as it can export.

Half true. The USA still produces a large share of agricultural products, but they compete in a global agricultural market. This graph in particular shows the extent that other countries have entered into the world cereal market.

There is the huge amount of imported foodstuff for your livestock to consider, yes. Don't you know that 'growing' one Kg meat can take 5 to 30 times the amount of land needed to grow a Kg of grain? No, that's not the size of the pastures they are in.

Well, YES, I did know. My little sister is a vegetarian. That was a side effect of her watching us butcher animals on the farm. The statistic you want to look at is protein per acre.

[begin dissertation on raising prime beef cattle]
My experience in raising beef cattle was a little different, granted that we bought about half the grain needed to raise them. I raised beef cattle (20 per year) for ten years when I was young to raise money for college. The total land use was 80 acres (20 for hay, 20 for corn, 20 for pasture, and 20 for miscellaneous high protein grains that we bought). I also used non-grain supplements (vitamins and minerals). In essence, I used the Joe Weider program to raise my beef cows. His method is to continuously break down muscle tissue and keep a high availability of amino acids for repair in the bloodstream (high protein diet). One key to success is to find the "Arnold Schwarznegger" of cow genes. I also used the hybrid effect by mixing three wide and tall bovine breeds (females were 1/2 black and white Friesian Holsteins that expressed a large udder, and Hereford. Males were Charlet). I would breed my brood cows usually getting 1 or sometimes two calves, then trade new born calves from the local dairy farmers for breeding services with my bull.) This way, each brood cow having a "milk cow" udder, would support raising 4 or 5 calves each. (plus provide fresh milk for the farm when the calves are weaned). Another key to success was exercise, so I built them a huge turnstile to fit 12 at a time (I should have had a generator on it:)). There are other success factors, like land management, veterinary care, waste management and insect control. We were early adopters of minimum tillage, and biological remedies in lieu of pesticides and herbicides. It was a small farm, with some very brainy farmers experimenting on increasing productivity.

I was actually banned from the 4-H cow show because my cows were so huge (still a sore spot with me). At 1 year old, a typical steers dressed weight is about 700 lb. Mine weighed on average 1300 lb. So, using an intensive method, I was able to raise the protein per acre to (20 x 1300) / 80 = 325 lb / acre. This is near the same production for soybeans or rice. This is based on a good agricultural year on our farm, so in poor agriculture years, we did buy more hay and grain from areas not hit by drought, so it might be fair to average it down a bit. If I were to do it again, I would look to buying high protein waste products from fermentation plants (ethanol, or beer) as the base for their feed (and I would design the barn to be cleanable with a Bobcat).