Cows pulling their load

Last week there was yet another attack on cows on the front page of the New York Times called As More Eat Meat, a Bid to Cut Emissions. The premise, once again, is that meat consumption is contributing more to global warming than transportation. I was actually out on the road, myself, driving my 2004 one-ton pickup when I heard about it and, at the next fuel-up, I needed to check oil. Upon opening the hood and seeing all the junk they put under the hood of a vehicle these days, I decided to take a look at the history of vehicles. The first pickup I owned was a 1982 GMC half-ton that I bought new. It got 12 miles to the gallon, about the same as my 2004.

I called my dad to see what the first vehicle he purchased was and he told me it was a new Chevrolet Malibu in 1964 and he paid $2,650. He remembers it getting close to 20 miles per gallon. A recent ad says that the 2008 Chevy Malibu starts at $19,995 and, if you have the mid-sized motor, you can expect 19 mpg in city driving, which I am sure is comparable to the driving my folks did in 1964. So tell me, what do all of those wires and computer sensors actually accomplish for us under the hood of these new vehicles? Why, in the past 44 years, has the science and technology invested in the automobile industry not accomplished one darn thing for me or the planet, with the exception of electric windows and more cup holders? More importantly, why does it cost me 8 times as much to acquire as it did 44 years ago?

On the other side of the equation, look what we have been able to accomplish with the beef cow, thanks to science and technology. In 2004, Dr. Thomas Elam and Dr. Rodney Preston released a report that showed that through a combination of research, technology and innovation, the U.S. beef cattle industry has increased beef production per head of cattle by more than 80 percent. The two beef industry scientists, who recently wrote a "white paper" on 50 years of beef technology, say the total production of beef has doubled--from 13.2 to about 27 billion lbs.--with a national cattle herd that's about the same size today as it was in 1955. In laymen's terms that means that we generate the same amount of total beef with 90 million head of cattle that would have required 180 million head to produce just 50 years ago. Fewer resources are now used to provide food, fuel, fiber and pharmaceuticals for an ever-increasing population.

What about the dairy industry? Similar or greater results have occurred in that arena. Alvaro Garcia, dairy nutritionist with South Dakota State University, and Jim Linn, dairy nutritionist with the University of Minnesota, released a report indicating that today's dairy herd emits 30 percent less methane yet produces twice as much total milk as the dairy herd did in 1924. The production of each gallon of milk today results in one-third of the methane that it took to produce a gallon of milk 80 years ago. In August 2008, Dr. Dale Bauman and colleagues released a report on greenhouse gas emissions stating that we omit 63 percent less carbon per unit of food produced today than we did in 1945.

A complete history of the cost of living for an average citizen of Morris County, N.J., has been logged online for all to see. In 1964, the year my parents car cost $2,650, ground chuck cost $.69/lb. Today ground chuck costs Morris County residents $3.59/lb. What about milk? In 1964, the average cost of milk was 95 cents/gallon and in 2008 the cost per gallon is about $3.50. So the bottom line is that meat costs 5 times more and milk only 3.5 times more than it did in 1964 while the car is 8 times more expensive. Yet cows are using only half of the resources they did in 1964, while cars are still guzzling about the same amount of gas.

I hate to point out the obvious, but one of the above-mentioned industries is appearing regularly in our nation's Capitol with their hands out asking for a bailout. Meanwhile, the United States livestock industry continues to find new ways of staying alive in an economic climate that no other industry would even try to survive in. Oh my goodness, I just had a thought. What if the automobile industry made the same improvement in fuel efficiency that the cow did? Well, I am no economist but I doubt that gasoline would have hit $5 a gallon. The greatest irony of the whole situation is that I am now forced to use my inefficient vehicle to haul my efficient cows around the country.

Editor's note: Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.FacesOfAg.com, or e-mail Trent at trent@loostales.com.

12/15/08
1 Star WK\2-B

Date: 12/11/08

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