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Nearly one million cattle take heavy toll on Arizona’s land, water

If you’re like me, when you go to the local grocery store, you find it fairly easy to slip into the mindset that imagines all those vacuum-sealed cuts of beef lined up in the climate-controlled meat aisle simply popped out of some magical stainless steel machine, a clean, efficient marvel of our technological age.

But as I know — and you know — nothing could be further from the truth.

The reality is, those packages of beef are the final product of a production chain that in its use of water, grain and other resources is one of the most environmentally damaging processes on our beleaguered planet.

Just here in Arizona, an astounding 970,000 steers and calves roam the open range (or, more likely, huddle together on giant feedlots).

I know, because today I called the Arizona Beef Council, and chatted with Anna Groseta, the Council’s spokeswoman. According to their website, Anna is a former Beef Ambassador (”The Voice of Women in the United States Beef Cattle Industry”), so I trust in her beef expertise.

The Beef Council gets a dollar for every head of cattle that goes to the ol’ slaughterhouse, so you would imagine they’d keep pretty good figures.

(Believe it or not, the dollar-a-head “check-off” fee is a federal law — part of the 1985 Farm Bill — called the Beef Promotion and Research Act, the purpose of which is “to support beef/veal promotion, research and information.” Go figure.)

And much to my surprise, that nearly one million head of cattle is absolutely peanuts in comparison to some of our neighboring states.

“We’re not even in the top ten,” Anna assures me.

Colorado has 2.3 million cattle.

Texas alone has a staggering 14 million.

(Just to go one step further — and vegetarians, brace yourselves — according to the USDA, give or take a few million, in 2008, all told, there were about 100 million cattle in the good old USA, from sea to shining sea. Let’s hope they never get the vote.)

But, getting back to Arizona, and our humble one million bovine residents, I ask: what is the cost — and the benefit — of all these heifers?

For starters, cattle ranching generates about $3.2 billion annually in the state.

That’s not chump change.

And hey now — let’s not forget our federal government’s latest farm bill, a five-year, $305 billion monstrosity. Some of that has got to be filtering down to our ranchers.

Also to be considered are the 11.5 million acres of public land open for grazing in the state, and the abundant water being guzzled by these thirsty creatures — an estimated 2,500 gallons of water for every one-pound steak.

In exchange, we, the people, get plentiful, flavorful beef.

And despite all those stories you hear about people stocking up on Spam because of the horrible economic crisis bearing down on us like a Category 5 hurricane, spokeswoman Anna assures me that folks are still chowing down.

“Calorie for calorie and dollar for dollar, beef is the protein of choice,” she says.

In fact, she tells me that beef scientists (yeah, I never imagined there was such a thing either) have recently discovered new cuts of beef!

One is called the “chuck roll,” and forgive me if I’m not running for my fork and knife.

“There have been new cuts to come out, like the chuck roll,” Anna says. “We call those value cuts – it’s a whole new era and it’s adding value to the carcass.”

Now, for those of you not just decided on a new life of vegetarianism, let me get to my main point (and I do have one!) which is that if it’s not already abundantly clear, our society’s meat fixation is totally out of control!

If you don’t believe me, here’s some facts from a U.N. report, with the appropriately ominous title: Livestock’s Long Shadow.

The total area occupied by grazing is equivalent to 26 percent of the ice-free terrestrial surface of the planet. In addition, the total area dedicated to feedcrop production amounts to 33 percent of total arable land. In all, livestock production accounts for 70 percent of all agricultural land and 30 percent of the land surface of the planet.

Turns out that 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock, too.

Okay, well, maybe some of you have heard all this stuff already. And for you vegetarians out there — keep on keeping on. For the rest of us, I wonder… what does it take to curb this addiction?

It’s a salient question — and one I will go into in depth in an upcoming post, which will include an exclusive interview with Howard Lyman, anti-beef activist, former cattleman and the original “Mad Cowboy”. Stay tuned.

John Collins Rudolf

(Photo of feedlot courtesy Vegetarian Image)

Brown clouds over Phoenix, Planet Earth

Phoenix, you are not alone: brown clouds are engulfing most of the eastern hemisphere as well.

Andrew Jacobs of the NY Times lays it out in this story today:

A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations.

The clouds are a product of automotive exhaust, emissions from coal-fired power plants, wood-burning stoves and slash-and-burn agriculture, Jacobs writes.

He continues:

The brownish haze, sometimes more than a mile thick and clearly visible from airplanes, stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to the Yellow Sea. During the spring, it sweeps past North and South Korea and Japan. Sometimes the cloud drifts as far east as California.

Sounds like it’s headed our way…

Anyhow, we here in Arizona already have our own pollution problems, namely the famous “Phoenix Brown Cloud,” that toxic stew of dust, tailpipe emissions and other organic compounds that forms in response to seasonal atmospheric changes over the central valley.

To get some perspective on our own “brown cloud,” I chatted up Ed Phillips, the former state senator and meteorologist who chaired the Brown Cloud Summit, established by former Gov. Jane Dee Hull in 2000.

According to Phillips, emissions from car tailpipes are responsible for fully half of the particulate matter in the cloud. Dust, construction equipment, power plant emissions — even lawn mowers and leaf blowers — contribute much of the rest.

Diesel fuel pollution is probably the worst culprit, with looser regulations on emissions for vehicles and more particulate matter emitted per engine. Think: idling semi trucks by loading docks, etc…

What’s the bottom line? Phillips has a solution: ban cars that pollute.

“The single best thing we could do is get rid of the internal combustion engine. Much of our overall problem would be solved if we had completely clean tailpipes,” he says.

Phillips stresses that he is not being flippant — he understands as well anyone that there is no magic wand to be waved to instantaneously remove the millions of gasoline-burning cars from Arizona’s roads and replace them with emissions-free vehicles, trains or other mass transit.

But I appreciate his willingness to say what needs to be said: the internal combustion engine is killing us all (some of us — like asthmatics — faster than others). The same could be said with coal-fired power plants.

What do we do about it? Well, the new light rail system in Phoenix and Tempe is a good start. Use it. Ride your bike. Drive less. Support solar power and other renewable energy projects on a municipal, state and federal level.

Use less water — the amount of electricity it takes to move water from the Colorado River to Phoenix and Tucson is absolutely obscene.

Got any better ideas? Let me know.

John Collins Rudolf

(Photo of the Phoenix Brown Cloud courtesy of Flick)

‘Wild & Scenic’ Film Fest coming to Tucson

The biggest environmental film festival on the West Coast is coming to Tucson this week, and you best not miss it.

For the third year in a row, the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival is descending on Tucson, courtesy of our local eco-warriors, the Center for Biological Diversity.

The fest is one day only, this Wednesday, Nov. 12, at the Loft Cinema. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the show gets underway at 6:30.

On tap is a choice selection of short, medium and feature length environmental films, from a jeremiad against the evils of the paper coffee cup to a futuristic imagining of a world that successfully combated global warming.

The feature film is Mark Harvey’s “A Land Out of Time,” which outlines the Bush administration’s giveaway of vast swaths of public land to the energy industry.

(The full fest, scheduled for Jan. 9-11 in Nevada City, Calif., has dozens of films and bands, and Tucson’s fest offers only a sampling of seven films. But honestly, how many environmental films can you watch in one day, anyway?)

Earlier today I traded a few emails with Hypatia Porter, whose award-winning short, “For the Price of a Cup of Coffee” will be one of seven films featured on Wednesday.

The 15-minute film explores the ecological cost of disposable goods like paper coffee cups, which we use once and then chuck in the nearest trash bin.

Of her inspiration behind the film, Hypatia writes:

I was feeling overwhelmed with the state of the environment, and was trying to find a way to illustrate the issue that is most important to me - not cups or waste specifically, but a mindset that chooses convenience first.

I realized as I was making the film, that I am absurdly wasteful and given the option of saving 2 minutes by using something wasteful, I take it. Often without any thought.

I believe that if we start to look at what we use, and how much we use, where it comes from and where it goes more discerningly, we’ll be examining the issue at the root of all of our environmental issues, and hopefully start to live a little more sustainably.

Hypatia, pictured here, looks like she could use a cup of coffee herself. But only in a reusable cup, ‘natch.

I love the concept behind this film, because it hits on the idea that in the grand scheme of things, it is not some villain in a black hat — whether it be logging companies, or the Bush Administration, or what have you — that is ultimately responsible for fucking up the environment, but our own mundane, prosaic activities — using and throwing away disposable crap like paper coffee cups and plastic bags, and the million other seemingly trivial acts that we do for the sake of convenience alone that is really doing the planet in.

Dontcha think?

For some previews of films both on the Tucson slate, and not, go here.

I’ll see you at the fest. Bring your friends. And for god’s sake, don’t let me see any of you there drinking from a paper Starbucks cup.

John Collins Rudolf
(Photo at top from “For the Price of a Cup of Coffee”)