Livestock and Deserts

Questions of whether or not we should all become vegetarian because the conversion rate of grain to meat is 10:1 ignore a lot in order to come to that conclusion. Sure cattle are terrible at converting grain to meat--but they're not really supposed to be converting grain to meat.
Any animal converting grain to meat is a worst-case scenario. And cattle are the worst of all. Pigs do much better at 5:1, and chickens are just over 2:1. But one role of animals--particularly ruminants, is to bring otherwise un-farmable land into the food chain. Pigs excel at bringing food waste back into the food chain, and have long been raised on slops--otherwise unusable food. Pigs have even been used to manage human sewage and bring it back into the food chain--although that's not something I would recommend. And chickens are champion foragers. Given a bit of woodland and some pasture, and they do quite nicely at feeding themselves most of the year.
But most important is the role of animals, primarily ruminants, in building soil. People like Joel Salutin at Polyface Farm have found how to maximize this aspect of animal husbandry. Intensive rotational grazing by cattle followed some days later by rotationally-grazed chickens increase the speed of soil production, add nitrogen to the soil, and provides insect control.
Sustainable farming pretty much requires animals as part of a land management plan. They are just too darned efficient, and offer compact calories, access to nutrients that are difficult to acquire any other way, and the opportunity for increased income. Sustainability, after all, includes economic sustainability.
Alan Savory did this TED talk about the role of ruminants in wild systems. It's worth a watch.

Raising Meat and the Research Issue

Over at the New York Times, James E. McWilliams, back on April 12th 2012, published an op-ed piece called The Myth of Sustainable Meat. It's an attack on the idea that meat can be raised under better conditions than the farm-feedlot system currenty used in the industrial world. This was a direct attack on the techniques employed by Joel Salatin at Polyface Farm--and Mr. Salatin was justifiably upset. And he fired back.

from the Polyface Farm website

Pictures like the one above are what people think of when they think of raising animals on a farm--a picture out of the first half of the century repeated in endless kid's books and in popular culture ever since. But it simply isn't the case any more. Instead, sows are confined to gestation crates in massive hog barns.

credit: Wikipedia

People don't like to think that their food has been tortured before eating, but that's pretty much the way it is. CAFOs, Confined Animal Feeding Operations, pretty much dominate modern meat production, and as awareness of the way they operate spreads, they find themselves under increasing pressure, both from consumer groups and legislators. When Howard Lyman, a fourth-generation rancher in Montana became disgusted and enraged with the way cattle were being treated (and having suffered two bouts of cancer), he ended up on Oprah Winfrey's show in 1996, talking about how cattle are abused. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association decided a SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) was called for, but they lost that suit in 1998, when both Lyman and Winfrey were found not guilty of any wrongdoing.

More From Michael

Michael Pollan made his way back to Williams College, just up the road from where he studied, to talk to a room full of people about his book The Omnivore's Dilemma. The talk covers two of the major themes from the book, corn and hope. It is long, but can run behind whatever else you're doing. Pollan is an excellent speaker, personable and interesting, making this time just flow by.
He talks, at the end in answer to a student's question, about the price difference between organic food and industrial food, and how we mis-perceive industrial food being cheaper. As he points out, industrial food has a lower proce per calorie in the store, but only after enormous subsidies along the way. All in all, a fascinating talk from a knowledgeable and interesting speaker.