Incredible.
Besides, we need the open space. Can't have houses everywhere, this isn't LA.
There are a lot of things to factor into this, crop yields aren't static and there are a lot of other things that can change the yields. Cows have legs, so you don't have to 'irrigate' them, they just have to be pastured within a couple thousand feet of water, and you can set up temporary solar pump + water trough if you have water within a couple miles.
Beef Cattle will give you 5-600 lbs of meat at about 1200 Calories per pound, with an average grazing time of 12 months. works out to 150cal/gallon.
Avocado has about 700+ cal per pound so about 8cal/gallon. (I'm not as sure on this, it could be lower as a 'medium' avocado is about 1/3 of a pound, but I've never grown avocados so I don't know the exact here.)
Calories in a whole grain wheat is about 1500/lb, so 1500/150 is about 10cal/gallon.
So it's kinda relative, but the only way you're going to harvest edible nutrients from scrub land is buy herding or hunting grazing animals that process the stuff with 4 stomachs.
There's a larger question of the value that grazing provides and if we need that as a food source. Before modern farming and shipping, if you lived in a semi-arid scrubland style climate, you were very much dependent on some type of animal to turn that stuff into a digestible food source for you.
Bonus points if (as with pine and bamboo) it can be used for construction, which'll potentially lock it up even longer.
What are you talking about? Places in the midwest and eastern part of the west that get plenty of rainfall every year?
Today about 27% of the irrigated land in the entire United States lies over the aquifer, which yields about 30% of the ground water used for irrigation in the United States.[5] The aquifer is at risk for over-extraction and pollution. Since 1950, agricultural irrigation has reduced the saturated volume of the aquifer by an estimated 9%. Once depleted, the aquifer will take over 6,000 years to replenish naturally through rainfall.[6]
"Irrigated land" is not the same as "farmed land".
The vast majority of farming is done in places where irrigation is rare.
About 53 million acres of farm land in the United States is irrigated, but there are about 257 million acres under cultivation.
Here’s a look at carbon sequestration in ecosystems in the Western US:
https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1797/pdf/pp1797_Chapter1.pdf
You can see that sagebrush and other hardy species, while not trees fit for lumber, can do the job better than cows belching away.
This paper focuses on the UK, but is still full of relevant info.
The bison that lived there before had identical gut bacteria, and it doesn't seem to have caused an "environmental disaster". Why not?
Now, there are a lot of other cattle that aren't being grazed on the historical prairie. You might have a point with those, but it's not relevant to the point under discussion.
Modern cattle spend some time grazing in the Great Plains, but start their lives on farms, and finish their lives on feed lots. Then they’re slaughtered, and more CO2 is emitted transporting them all around the country and indeed, world. Then of course, the bison existed in a world before heavy industry, a world of millions rather than billions of people, a world before automobiles, airplanes, coal fired plants, oil exploration, strip mining, rainforest clearing, ocean acidification and overfishing, etc... etc...
No, they weren't. You need to count only the cattle that are on the land under discussion.
> lived far longer lives than the average 2.5 years to slaughter of a cow
Irrelevant. One bovine is the same as another as far as the impact on the prairie is concerned. That's sort of how an ecosystem works, dude.
I'm skeptical that they lived "far longer lives", by the way. If they were anything like the wild grazing/browsing animals with which I am familiar (moose, caribou, musk ox) a WHOLE LOT of them died in their first year, either through being taken by predators or simply not surviving a harsh winter.
I strongly suspect you're using a lifespan figure for modern bison herds that are protected by human beings.
If you’re also of an ethical mindset similar to someone like Peter Singer, the “cultivation” of animals for slaughter is not something one should favor.
do cows produce significantly more methane than non-domesticated grazing animals, or are there simply many more cows than there were buffalo?
The same is true of similar grasslands elsewhere in the world. Lots of grazing animals, which support a smaller population of predators (including humans).
Plus, a good portion of the country’s good farmland is diverted to growing feed for those animals.
Think of it like: how many acres have been changed from a natural ecosystem to an artificial one for meat eating.
Leaving the land untouched is even more 'ecologically privileged' than using it to make expensive food.
>Plus, a good portion of the country’s good farmland is diverted to growing feed for those animals.
Growing feed (hay/grass) is much easier than growing things like almonds. If a farmer could grow something humans would pay for directly rather than hay, they would.
Plus, all the grain storage facilities are still mostly full from last year and we're looking towards another bumper crop from all the rainfall this year.
By contrast, EU farm subsidies in a smaller economy are three times that size. If the US farm subsidies are colossal, I'm not sure what you'd call 3x colossal.
I wonder what the economics would be of doing without the feed and feedlots? There would be somewhat less cattle I presume.
It's not like we invented grazing animals in a lab. The Great Plains were teeming with millions of buffalo before, and we have cattle on them now.
Sure that's different but it's reasonable to note that a lot of this land looks and basically is pretty much the same as it was before modern ranching.
But mostly we kill off the predators. The livestock spreads all over and grazes continuously. The result is topsoil destruction and erosion. There are large areas where overgrazing is a serious problem.
Allan Savory has been the leading advocate for "holistic grazing" that keeps the herds packed. It's been controversial, because he advocates doing more grazing. The evidence of that helping is mixed at best. However, just leaving overgrazed land alone is another matter, and experiments have been very successful.
https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/reversing-desertification-with-l...
I'll also add to that, look how much of the rocky mountains was listed as 'pasture / range'
Most of it was buffalo country two hundred years ago, so it's not like it's really changed.
The modern cow is not, especially when time on feed lots and eventual transportation pre-post slaughter are factored in. Modern cattle are after all, part of an industry which pollutes in addition to the cows themselves, while bison just lived and died on the plains.