[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745731823/the-u-s-has-nearly-...
This is false. You can grow crops almost anywhere in the U.S. using water intensive techniques.
You won’t be able to do it at scale while funneling all the profits through a single entity though. It can only be done with smaller farms and more attention from a larger number of specialized farmers. We know more about how to do this now than any time in history.
If you want to have a single entity collect all the profits you need a one-size-fits-all methodology, and cattle grazing is that.
So that’s the trade off. An existential one for big beef companies.
Cattle also destroy the plants that maintain soil health and allow you to store water in the landscape, so it’s a vicious cycle. Fairly easily undone building berms and planting pioneer species.
On the show Alaska the Last Frontier, they use federal land to let their cows graze during the summer.
Mass production in unhealthy factory styles is the majority source. Any incentive to end that process is a net gain in my view.
People's preferences haven't changed. Beef continues to be very popular, as do public fountains. The choice not to consume meat (at least here) is mostly associated with pretentious, upperclass people who like yoga and are keenly interested in social justice (there is even a word for this type of person: fresas, which literally means strawberries but here means, well, that type of person).
Eating or not eating meat is more about adopting cultural, class, and identity signifiers than any real correlation with the local water situation.
Peoples' preference for war hasn't changed either (most people don't want it), but we still find ourselves in conflict at every turn. That's because you can't go too long without confronting the objective physical reality of scarcity of resources.
No, more like life style participation.
>I guess, in that case, the "unpretentious, lower class people who hate yoga" would have those tree huggers to thank.
We need many countries to make national-level policies about this. The Instagram people are a smug drop in the bucket.
>we still find ourselves in conflict at every turn. That's because you can't go too long without confronting the objective physical reality of scarcity of resources.
That correlation seems made up. Has there been an increase of scarcity-driven wars? Most wartorn places don't seem to be resource scarce.
I was always angry to see them out grazing on public lands in the Sonoran desert where they trample emerging small cactus and graze down the nurse plants small saguaro need to get started. They also trash sensitive riparian areas. There was no animal like that there, cattle should not be in that area in my opinion, most especially on public ground.
However environments that natively supported animals of that size, plain or grass type areas, no problem, lease it out. Cattle actually do environmental good in these areas helping to keep brush down and building grasslands.
Unfortunately this isn't most of the public ground in the Western US.