From: abulsari@abo.fi (Abhay Bulsari VT)
Subject: Environmental reasons, Part 3
Organization: Abo Akademi University
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 11:32:45 GMT

Continued from Part 2

%% Counting kilocalories %%

   American feed takes so  much energy to grow  --  counting  fuel for
farm machinery and for  making fertilizers  and pesticides --  that it
might as  well be a petroleum  byproduct.  Cornell University's  David
Pimentel,  a  specialist  in agricultural energy  use, estimated  that
14,000  kilocalories  are required to produce a pound of  pork  in the
U.S. -- equivalent to the energy in nearly  half a gallon of gasoline.
Pimentel's data show that energy use, like grain consumption, declines
from pork to beef, chicken, and eggs.  Dairy  farms are  exceptionally
frugal with energy, using scarcely the equivalent of one-fortieth of a
gallon of gasoline per pound of milk.
   Almost half of  the energy used  in  American agriculture goes into
livestock production,  the majority of it for meat.  Producing the red
meat  and  poultry  eaten each year by a typical American takes energy
equal  to   50  gallons  of  gasoline.   Supplying   vegetarians  with
nourishment requires one-third less energy on  the farm than supplying
meat-eaters.
   Of course energy used on the farm isn't the whole story in the food
system.  Processing,  packaging,  transporting,  selling, storing, and
cooking  foods  uses  almost  twice  as  much  energy   nationwide  as
agriculture does.  Yet, meat still leads the league in energy used per
pound  of  product served.   Pork involves  more than 15 times as much
energy as fresh fruits and  vegetables.  Milk, by  contrast,  uses  as
little energy as plant foods.

%% Watering the herd  %%

   Feed grain  guzzles water,  too.  In  California, now the  nation's
leading dairy producer, livestock agriculture  takes nearly a third --
the  largest share -- of irrigation  water, according  to  independent
water analyst Marc Reisner of San  Francisco.  Animal raising accounts
for similar shares across the  western U.S., including areas irrigated
with water  from  dwindling  underground aquifers.   The  beef feedlot
center  of the nation --  Colorado,  Kansas, Nebraska,  and  the Texas
panhandle --  relies  on  crops raised  with  water  pumped out  of  a
depleting undergound water source called the Ogallala aquifer.
   Jim  Oltjen, professor of  animal  science  at  the  University  of
California at Davis, estimates that half of  the  grain and hay fed to
American livestock  grows on  irrigated  land.  He calculates that  it
takes  about  430 gallons of water  to  produce  a  pound of pork, 390
gallons  for a  pound  of beef, and 375 gallons per pound  of chicken.
Thus the  water  used by to supply Americans with meat comes to  about
190 gallons per person per day, or twice what typical Americans use at
home for all purposes.

%% Land lords %%

   The  livestock industry uses half the territory of the  continental
U.S. for feed crops, pasture, and range.  On the half of U.S. cropland
growing  animal feed and hay,  soil continues eroding  at a  frightful
pace despite recent progress in conservation.  For each  pound of  red
meat, poultry,  eggs, and milk,  farm fields lose about five pounds of
prime dirt.
   The vast  majority  of land  devoted  to livestock  is not  fertile
cropland  or pasture but arid  public  range  in the  west  which  the
government leases  to ranchers for grazing.  Although the 270  million
acres so used -- an area larger than the 14 eastern seaboard states --
supply less than  5 percent of the beef  Americans  consume, damage to
the land is acute.
   The worst  harm was  done  in the great  cattle drives  of the last
century.  An Environmental Protection Agency sponsored study describes
the  shameful history: The land was grazed  so ruthlessly that "native
perennial  grasses  were  virtually  eliminated  from vast  areas  and
replaced  by sagebrush,  rabbitbrush,  mesquite,  and  juniper."   The
exposed  soil  "was  quickly  stripped  from  the  land  by  wind  and
water...Unchecked flood  flows eroded  unprotected streambanks...Water
tables lowered.  Perennial streams became intermittent  or dry  during
most of the year."
   Harold  Dregne, professor of soil science at Texas Tech University,
estimates that 10 percent of the arid west has been turned into desert
by  livestock.    The   U.S.  Bureau  of  Land  Management,  which  is
responsible along with  the U.S. Forest Service  for overseeing public
rangeland, reported last year  that nearly 70 percent of its expansive
holdings in the west were in unacceptable condition.
   With  open rangeland overgrazed,  cattle concentrate in the  narrow
streambank, or  "riparian,"  habitats  which  are  the  cornerstone of
arid-land ecology.  Trampling and  eating  vegetation  that  regulates
water flow, the herds leave  the land  unable  to  absorb cloudbursts.
Floods  then  rampage downstream, carrying away soil and  accelerating
the  process  of ecological  decline.   Edward Chaney,  author  of the
EPA-sponsored   assessment   of  rengeland,  says:   "I've  talked  to
specialists  across the west, and everyone agrees that riparian  zones
are in worse shape than ever."