SUSTAIN-ability

The time has come - we're diving off the deep end this week folks. As you're starting to gather by this point, I LOVE BEEF. So, over the next couple of weeks, we're going to take a quick tour around some hot industry topics. As they say - we are lifelong learners. I want this to be an opportunity for you to learn alongside me.

This week we are discussing one of my favorite topics - sustainability. Many controversial opinions float around both inside and out of the beef industry as to if we are really being sustainable. Let me make a couple of quick points about how we, as beef producers, are doing our part and why cattle are important to the environment.

1. Cattle consume forages/roughages that are grown on lands unsuitable for cultivation, thereby expanding the land base available for food production.

In the United States, there are approximately 800 million acres of land that are considered range and pasture lands (USDA-ERS, 2018). Currently, the only way to generate human food from this land area that represents 35% of the United States is to convert the biomass to human edible products with ruminant livestock – cattle, sheep, and goats. U.S. cattle producers provide land management services and help preserve habitats on hundreds of millions of acres across the nation.

A perfect example of this is my friends in the sandhills of Nebraska. These cows are taking grasses that contain low amounts of protein and growing 500-600 weight calves before they are shipped to a feedyard. Compared to 1977, today's beef farmers and ranchers produce the same amount of beef with 33% fewer cattle. How was that accomplished? Beef animal health and welfare, better nutrition, and better animal genetics. Improved efficiency and animal well-being mean a 16% lower carbon footprint and fewer natural resources used for every pound of beef produced, leading to U.S. farmers and ranchers being able to produce 18% of the world's beef with only 6% of the world's cattle. That's impressive.

2. Integrating cattle into row-crop plant agriculture systems can have environmental and socioeconomic sustainability benefits.

Cattle can be and are integrated into crop production systems either at the farm-scale on the same land base or are integrated from a regional perspective to capture synergies between cropping and cattle farming systems. Benefits of integration depend on the production system, soils, and climate, but can include improved nutrient cycling, added farm enterprise diversity (a form of risk management), and the generation of multiple human usable products (i.e., both plant and animal products) from a given land area (Sulc and Franzluebbers, 2014). Beef cattle eat 7-9% of U.S. corn production which covers approximately 6.5 million acres.

An excellent example of this is the effects of the derecho in Iowa this summer. For the first time in a very long time (maybe ever!), we have an abundance of feed that needs to be utilized in some way, shape, or form. Otherwise, it's going to waste. We want to ration it out as much as possible, and in some cases, we wish we could buy more cows because it's going to be such a cheap form of feed. However, at this point, we are able to utilize the corn, manure from the livestock is being distributed across the field, lessening the pressure of spreading manure later in the season, and cows cause less compaction, reducing soil erosion.

3. Cattle can convert human-inedible feedstuffs into high-quality human-edible protein.

Cattle are ruminants. This means they have a four-compartment stomach comprised of the rumen (contain papillae which breaks down the feed), reticulum ("hardware storage"), omasum (water absorption), and abomasum (functions like the human stomach, nutrient absorption). The fact that cattle have the ability to take grass or feedstuffs and convert it into edible protein is pretty darn cool. It's a process we call upcycling and not many species can do it.

Want an even cooler fact? Cattle take by-products from corn and soybeans and covert them into that same protein. While it could be argued these byproducts could be disposed of or used to create compost as a soil amendment, feeding human food byproducts to cattle generates multiple benefits. Byproduct feeds fed to cattle generate human nourishment, wealth, and manure which is a high-quality organic fertilizer. In this way, as with integrated crop-cattle production systems, cattle act as a component of the circular bio-economy, cycling and upcycling nutrients and energy through the integrated food, fiber, and biofuels system.

These are just three things that make cattle important to our environment. They contribute less than 2% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Beef producers care about their cattle and their contribution to the environment. Sustainability is bigger than carbon footprints - it's about balancing multiple economic social, and environmental issues at once, while recognizing that beef is a safe and nutritious product.

Always remember to EAT BEEF.

Lauren

*For more information on sustainability, check out this article published by Dr. Sara Place, Director of Sustainability, National Cattlemen's Beef Association.