Hi. You said we feed grazers grain because we produce so much of it. I was under the assumption we grew that much grain purposely to feed them because it's cheaper and therefor more profitable than allowing them to graze. What is the truth?
There’s a bunch of agricultural history to start and then the modern day implications follow. I’m traveling abroad right now so don’t have my books for exact citations, but RR means recommended reading and is where the bulk of the info is coming from.
Around the time of WWII, a bunch of things started rapidly changing in agriculture. First, tractors were becoming increasingly available and affordable for farmers. Second, Americans increased their production of food to an amazing degree so that they would be able to send food to the Allies as well as reduce (the real intention was to prevent) rationing in the US. As a result, American agriculture began the process of industrialization. Wartime production needs resulted in a number of changes. The most important change was the adoption of monocultures. Monocultures are the growing of a single crop (or animal) over an expanse of land. Monocultures of grain were the first monocultures. During the war, grain was getting good prices and American farmers couldn’t produce enough to meet demand, so they scrapped their mixed farming operations - got rid of their dairy cow, pigs, vegetable plot - and planted fields of grain. Grain is labor un-intensive, especially with the new tractors, so farmers could grow a lot of grain even with so many people pulled from agriculture because of the requirements of war. (RR: Farmer Citizen at War)
After the war, American farmers continued to grow a bunch of grain to send over the Europe to aid in the war recovery effort. This was part of the Marshall Plan. Farmers loved this. This stabilized prices for grain in part because there was a guaranteed market. When Europe started to get back on it’s feet, American farmers were worried about themselves. They had invested in newer, bigger tractors capable of helping them grow grain more efficiently but were at risk of going under or into serious debt if the grain market shrunk. The 1950s, the US began what would become USAID, the US distributor of food aid around the world. This was done as a short of extension of the Marshall Plan; it had been shown that ‘adequate’ calories for a populace was a good measure against political instability (read here as stopping the spread of communism). So the US dumped grain into countries at risk for communism (read poor countries). This continued market was not enough to support grain production, however. Subsidies for grain increased to that farmers wouldn’t go under. Concurrently, places outside the American prairie couldn’t produce grain cheaply enough or on a similar scale, and so started raising livestock. (RR: Hungry World, Eating Right in America, The Great American Mission)Because grain production was so high and demand low, the price for grain dropped significantly. Because grain was so cheap, livestock producers began feeding it to cattle because feeding cattle can be very expensive. But cattle don’t naturally eat grain. While, true, cows eat seed heads of grasses occasionally, grass seed doesn’t have the same energy profile as modern, domesticated grains. Grass seed has a much smaller endosperm relative to it’s size. Humans have bred enormous endosperms into our grains because that’s where the sugars and energy is (and notably, not the nutrients). So a cow eating some seeds is not getting the sugar load of the equivalent number of corn kernels. So because the endosperm of grain is so large, so full of sugars, cattle show impressive gains on grain. But not all gain is equivalent. All cows start their life on grass because if we were to feed them grain from birth they would die. Grain results in a lot of fat accumulation (like those big slabs of white fat you find on an untrimmed brisket). Grain feeding grazers is damaging to their health. In grazers, feeding grain can result in diarrhea, bloat, and/or rumen acidosis - all of which can be deadly. Feeding wheat to sheep causes foot problems. Grazers fed grain rations have to be watched for illness because it is rather common. To make best use of all this cheap and available grain, breeders of grazing animals have been purposefully breeding animals that do better on grain such as get sick less or aren’t as prone to fat accumulation rather than muscle gains. The modern Angus cow wouldn’t do very well on grass because it’s been bred to take corn. Meanwhile, the Dexter cow does great on grass and would be more prone to bloat if fed grain because it has never been bred to take grain. (RR: Defending Beef - written by a vegetarian environmental lawyer)
So cheap grain had to come first, then we could start feeding it to grazers. Then because there was so much grain, we started breeding the grazers to be better and better able to take grain. We now grade our beef based on the fat profiles (like marbling) that are achievable with grain feeding but much, much, much harder to achieve on a pasture diet. We’ve codified grain fed as the pinnacle of quality (it’s not, for more on the nutritional differences between grain and grass fed I’ll do a post if I get asked). So if we use the benchmarks set by feeding animals grain, then grain feeding animals not only makes sense, but seems to be the best method of doing things. If we graded quality not by the percentage of hanging weight to live weight (how much meat/fat you get out of an animal) and instead had to do with nutrition by weight, then feeding grain would make no sense at all and seem a very expensive, ridiculous production method. What’s another way we know that cheap grain was the driving force behind the feeding of grain to cattle? It’s been the driving force between feeding more grain to the American public. Pick up any box of food at a grocery store and look at the ingredients. Most of them are grain or grain derivatives. Maltodextrin, citric acid, caramel color, ascorbic acid, and xanthan gum are all common ingredients derived from grain, though the list is very long. All the processing of grain into these additives is very energy intensive and not cheap; it’s only because the grain itself is so cheap that the high cost of processing is made economically viable. Food scientists LOOK for ways to put grain derivatives into food because it is a cheap way to fill out a product. So why are we still producing so much grain? Some blame goes to Nixon and his USDA head Earl Butz (one of the most hated agricultural people of all time) who ordered in the 1970s that farmers expand grain production EVEN MORE and increased subsidies. This was a contributing factor to the farm crisis of the 1980s. Some blame goes to the US government, which uses food aid as a political tool. US food aid and food shipments undermines the local’s ability to produce their own food in many places such as Ethiopia and Mexico (further reading: look up what has happened to the Mexican ag industry since NAFTA and meddling by the WTO). We also have so much money sunk into things like combines, crop dusters, GMO grains, etc. that the sunk cost fallacy has kicked in. People with 3,000 acre farms are looking to buy more land to grow more corn to try to squeeze a fraction of cent more per acre out of grain production so they don’t go bankrupt. But capitalism is the greatest issue. Capitalism requires that production always increases. Under capitalism, stagnation is failure and causes economic collapse. So farmers and everyone else is looking for ways to increase production.
WORLD RHINO MONTH🌱🦏🌱 Despite their huge size and strength, these bulky beasts don’t prey on other animals for food. They’re herbivores, and instead like to munch on lots of grass and plants at night, dawn and dusk. #whiterhinos #grazers #rhinolovers #rhinoloversunite (at Ol Pejeta Conservancy) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUZQgiVKOMU/?utm_medium=tumblr
These absolute swines and their sluggish cousins have been wrecking havoc in my garden this year! . Looks like too many for the birds to eat and sadly no Hedgehogs ever seen in the garden (yet). . They are cute, but so much damage. Annoying. I’ve been using @grazers_2000 G2 formula ‘Slugs and Snails’ recently to see if it makes a difference. It isn’t designed to kill them, just to strengthen the plant against them and deter them. Good results so far with a number of plants bouncing back. This includes my new Parochetus communis that was defoliate after a couple of days of planting. Several new leaves pushing through. . Importantly, I’m glad that the Grazers products don’t get into the food chain or harm other animals etc. . Worth looking into. https://www.grazers.co.uk/gardeners/ . #grazers #snails #slugs #wood #table #garden #plants #slugsandsnails #gardenpests #environmentallyfriendly #birds (at Crowborough, East Sussex) https://www.instagram.com/p/CBqF06jAiQN/?igshid=1lwk3u99xzzqt
Illegal grazers kill Laikipia ranch security chief Illegal grazers kill Laikipia ranch security chief. Check Out What's Up. He was shot in the stomach and on the arm at his home.
