Coho Photography

If you just want eye candy from 3 weeks exploring ranching in the American West, click HERE.

For a brief piece of writing on public land use and ranching, continue below…

Imagine 10 years in the future, I’m at the grocery store. I walk down the aisle to the meat section, located at the back of the store. The clear glass displaying steaks, shrimp, salmon, chicken. One difference, the entire selection is smaller. I shop wisely, ask where the meat is from, how it was raised, the butcher at the counter answers all my questions. I select my meat, and am still the only one at the meat counter. I checkout and go home, cook dinner, eat, and go to bed.
10 years in the future times have changed, global food markets are failing, local markets thrive. The beef that I buy comes from a local farm; raised on a small scale, grass fed in an ecosystem that can support a cow an acre. Buying my beef, I know that it was raised in a sustainable manner; market pressures combined with democratic political process has defined the way we source our food.
Our current system of where and how we get our food is going to change. Ranching as we know it in the Western US, especially on public lands, is currently a borderline profitable occupation. The ranching culture however is a tough beast, and will not go down without a fight. As a result, pushing to simply obliterate livestock grazing on public lands is unrealistic in the short term. New avenues need to be made to increase the economic possibilities for ranchers according to future market demands.
The main forces that will create this change in where and how we get our food are increasing energy costs, a strong “green” movement spurred on by global climate change, and increased customer awareness associated with globalization. Fuel prices are rising dramatically and will continue to rise in the foreseeable future. This change impacts ranchers simply in operating costs, but also through the transport of their final product. A decreased beef production with a higher final cost will be part of the final product, as well as meat production on more fertile land that can support up to 3 cows per acre, instead of the current norm of up to 1 cow per 500 acres. Also, production of beef in the American west, a low population density area, doesn’t make sense when the markets are heavier on the coasts. A more efficient use of lands closer to population hubs would help to decrease transportation costs. Not only is land in coastal states much more fertile, but also has a much lower density of public land. In addition, importing cheap meat from South America will no longer be feasible.
The strong “green” movement resulting from global climate change is helping to increase customer awareness. In the next 5-10 years people will increasingly think about their impact on the environment. Raising cattle in our manner is not an environmentally friendly food source, and people are realizing the effects greenhouse gas emitted by cattle, the inefficiency of transporting foods, and the ecological impacts of grazing. In 2003 US slaughterhouses killed 10 billion animals, which factors out to 19,026 every minute for an entire year (HCN July-Aug. 2004 p.60). This is significantly more meat than any country needs to consume, a number that we could easily decrease with drastic environmental benefits.
I enjoy eating meat, a juicy steak, a blue cheese bacon burger, and sloppy Joes. I’m not going to give it up, but I am changing what and how much I eat. I try to eat local meat, I try to think about how it was raised, and no, I’m not perfect, every once in a while I slip and eat a generic burger from an undisclosed source. We don’t all need to become vegans or vegetarians, we just need to think, consider how our choices and our purchases effect the world, and vote both on the ballot and with our pocketbooks.
The decreased demand for beef combined with increased operational costs, will lead to a decrease in the demand for livestock grazing and ranching on western public lands. The culture of ranching is essential to how the West became what it is today, and is not going to simply disappear. The people of the United States are going to need to be the changing force behind the use of Western Lands, through the political process and by considering where what we eat comes from. Walking down the grocery store aisle, looking for steak, I think about what I am buying, how my purchase will affect the world that I live in. I hope that knowledge about what we are eating will spread, and through that we will change the way that Western Public lands are used.

And again, for photos just click here.