Early in my career as an ecologist, I learned how to make a cow.
I had found the recipe in an old college text, long since discarded; but recently I rediscovered my notes from those undergraduate days at Virginia Tech with its details of preparation and unusual ingredients. It was a recipe to feed a thousand people.
Ingredients:
1 80-pound calf
8 acres of grazing land
1.5 acres of farmland
12,000 pounds of forage
2500 pounds of grain
350 pounds of soybeans
125 gallons of gasoline
170 pounds of nitrogen
45 pounds of phosphorus
90 pounds of potassium
Various herbicides, insecticides, hormones, and antibiotics
1.2 million gallons of water
As it turns out, making a cow is incredibly expensive and resource-intensive. The recipe detailed the needs of the cow in its first four months, including the application of drugs to kill its sex drive while corralled with other cattle and the issue of waste (produced by each cow at a rate equivalent to that of 20 people per day). “After four months in the feedlot, your cow weighs about 1000 pounds and is ready for slaughter,” continued the cookbook formula. After removing the inedible parts, only about 440 pounds of meat remain – a thousand 7-ounce servings in a mix of steaks, pot roast, chuck, stew meat, and less cherished cuts. Therefore, to produce one pound of meat protein, one must feed a cow roughly 6 pounds or more of grain. Of course, one could always take those same 2500 pounds of grain plus 350 pounds of soybean for a single cow and instead bake them into breads and casseroles, adding a few vegetables, to serve 18,000 people – not just 1000!
The students in my biology and environmental studies courses have analyzed the inefficiency of this process by way of ecological pyramids. Typically, the bottom layer of the pyramid is occupied by producers: grasses and other plants that capture sunlight, converting about 1% of the available radiant energy into the stored energy of carbohydrates. The next layer of the pyramid is taken up by primary consumers: herbivores such as groundhogs and rabbits that convert about 10% of that amount of energy into their own biomass; the remainder is lost (but not destroyed) as heat and waste. The third level of the pyramid is populated by secondary consumers: predators such as snakes and hawks that convert 10% of that energy into their biomass; again, the remainder is lost as heat and waste. If there’s a fourth or fifth level, then a similar process of conversion and waste is followed. Though inefficient, this living system exhibits an otherwise effective energy pyramid applicable to our recipe for making a cow. It’s a simple expression of the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics in the natural world.
The moral to the story is to eat low on the ecological pyramid to gain the most energy and biomass from the system: a very important lesson about sustainability for our ever-burgeoning human population. Scientists have concluded that such a simple change of diet – consuming the grains ourselves rather than feeding them to livestock – could provide food for the entire population of the United States for a year and still have some left for export. On the other hand, if the entire world ate as high on the ecological pyramid as the average American, then we would require more than twice the world’s existing arable land and 80% of the world’s available energy! Thus, eating low on the pyramid is perhaps nonsense (no cents?) for steakhouses, but pretty good sense from the viewpoint of energetics and nutritional health.
The Rainforest Action Network and other conservation groups have calculated that, globally, we lose about 100 acres per minute of tropical forests, some of these agonizing losses due to grazing livestock or growing crops for animal feed. That amounts to an annual deficit of acreage equivalent to the size of the state of West Virginia! So reducing our consumption of beef makes sense energetically, nutritionally, and ecologically.
In addition to the environment and economics, a third aspect of sustainability is social equity. I’m reminded of the Biblical story of Jesus feeding the multitude, overlooking the Sea of Galilee, with a few fishes and loaves of bread. Perhaps the story is not about a miracle per se, but about the just distribution of the world’s finite resources. Could it be that this great teacher convinced his followers that fateful day to share their meager meals with the less fortunate or less prepared around them, learning poignantly that such sharing – rather than hoarding – could fill everyone’s stomach and create an overabundance for their community? It’s also telling that Jesus distributed fish and bread, not beef, lamb, or mutton, to the multitude. As our nation recovers from the dark excesses of the market, including the debilitating self-interests of the banking, insurance, health, and real-estate industries, we need to remind ourselves that no program for development is sustainable without social justice.
So my essay, “How to Make a Cow,” is really a lesson about “How NOT to Make a Cow.” In these early decades of the 21st century, it’s time to “simplify, simplify, simplify,” as Thoreau instructed us 200 years ago. Let’s make an effort to give up some of our “sacred cows” here in America and link ourselves sustainably to the cultural and biological diversity of the planet.
This is quite the thumbsucking editorial. There was no identification of how radical the Rainforest Action Network is by the editorialist. There is also no sanity check. Dr. Rinker blithely quotes RAN stating that we lose 100 acres per minute due to grazing or growing crops for livestock. The environmental movement is well known for scaremongering – not too many years ago the Sierra Club had on their webpage an “optimal” recommendation for urban population densities (500 people/acre). Hong Kong, one of the most populated cities on the planet, has an urban population density of about 100 people/acre. Dr. Rinker also strains credulity by noting that Jesus distributed loaves and fishes, and not meat. Oh please! Does Dr. Rinker assert that Jesus didn’t eat meat by choice and that the miracle of the loaves and fishes is evidence of that??! Finally, Dr. Rinker puts forth a call for a sustainable development program for the cause of “social justice.” Social justice is socialism by another name. I reject the social justice engineers that try to shame us into foregoing a good New York Strip in the interests of the “greater good.” Those that prattle on about what we should do in the name of “social justice” have no right to my wallet nor my stuff. Social Justice has a long history, none of it good.
A sobering recipe! One nuance, however, is that for people living in the less developed world in which rainfall is so low that only grassland or savanna is the norm, then the most ecologically friendly agricultural option is not growing crops but grazing livestock. The soil need never be plowed, thus there will be little soil erosion so long as grazing does not turn into overgrazing. A drive through the natural grasslands of east Texas is a good way to view this natural grassland regime. So long as the cattle are kept on the grass their entire lives (grass-fed beef) and not moved into grain-dependent feedlots, then the recipe for making a cow becomes a lot more ecologically friendly.
This was the most interesting article~! I enjoyed reading it very much.
Whole grain foods have definitely stepped it up in our diets here. With the amount of exercise that goes into a day I find it necessary to have these carbohydrates in abundance~! When it comes to meats, chicken, fish and venison find their way to our dinner table a lot. Of course there are times when I still enjoy the good ‘ol beef burger, but less often. As always the colorful veggies dress up our dinner table for added flavor~!
What a difference in the way we were taught to fix meals…right to this day Meat(beef) and Potatoes are asked for each meal…Trying to introduce a new vegetable is still being frowned upon.
Gradually over time I have tried to change this and now Seafood , Green and Yellow Vegetables and Whole Wheat Bread are served with out frowns or comments…Its a matter of explaining how Healthy such eating is compared to the “Old Days”Maybe one day we will succeed….but who knows the way Human Nature is!