#grazers

Around the time of WWII, a bunch of things started rapidly changing in agriculture. First, tractors were becoming increasingly available and affordable for farmers. Second, Americans increased their production of food to an amazing degree so that they would be able to send food to the Allies as well as reduce (the real intention was to prevent) rationing in the US. As a result, American agriculture began the process of industrialization. Wartime production needs resulted in a number of changes. The most important change was the adoption of monocultures. Monocultures are the growing of a single crop (or animal) over an expanse of land. Monocultures of grain were the first monocultures. During the war, grain was getting good prices and American farmers couldn’t produce enough to meet demand, so they scrapped their mixed farming operations - got rid of their dairy cow, pigs, vegetable plot - and planted fields of grain. Grain is labor un-intensive, especially with the new tractors, so farmers could grow a lot of grain even with so many people pulled from agriculture because of the requirements of war. (RR: Farmer Citizen at War)

After the war, American farmers continued to grow a bunch of grain to send over the Europe to aid in the war recovery effort. This was part of the Marshall Plan. Farmers loved this. This stabilized prices for grain in part because there was a guaranteed market. When Europe started to get back on it’s feet, American farmers were worried about themselves. They had invested in newer, bigger tractors capable of helping them grow grain more efficiently but were at risk of going under or into serious debt if the grain market shrunk. The 1950s, the US began what would become USAID, the US distributor of food aid around the world. This was done as a short of extension of the Marshall Plan; it had been shown that ‘adequate’ calories for a populace was a good measure against political instability (read here as stopping the spread of communism). So the US dumped grain into countries at risk for communism (read poor countries). This continued market was not enough to support grain production, however. Subsidies for grain increased to that farmers wouldn’t go under. Concurrently, places outside the American prairie couldn’t produce grain cheaply enough or on a similar scale, and so started raising livestock. (RR: Hungry World, Eating Right in America, The Great American Mission)Because grain production was so high and demand low, the price for grain dropped significantly. Because grain was so cheap, livestock producers began feeding it to cattle because feeding cattle can be very expensive. But cattle don’t naturally eat grain. While, true, cows eat seed heads of grasses occasionally, grass seed doesn’t have the same energy profile as modern, domesticated grains. Grass seed has a much smaller endosperm relative to it’s size. Humans have bred enormous endosperms into our grains because that’s where the sugars and energy is (and notably, not the nutrients). So a cow eating some seeds is not getting the sugar load of the equivalent number of corn kernels. So because the endosperm of grain is so large, so full of sugars, cattle show impressive gains on grain. But not all gain is equivalent. All cows start their life on grass because if we were to feed them grain from birth they would die. Grain results in a lot of fat accumulation (like those big slabs of white fat you find on an untrimmed brisket). Grain feeding grazers is damaging to their health. In grazers, feeding grain can result in diarrhea, bloat, and/or rumen acidosis - all of which can be deadly. Feeding wheat to sheep causes foot problems. Grazers fed grain rations have to be watched for illness because it is rather common. To make best use of all this cheap and available grain, breeders of grazing animals have been purposefully breeding animals that do better on grain such as get sick less or aren’t as prone to fat accumulation rather than muscle gains. The modern Angus cow wouldn’t do very well on grass because it’s been bred to take corn. Meanwhile, the Dexter cow does great on grass and would be more prone to bloat if fed grain because it has never been bred to take grain. (RR: Defending Beef - written by a vegetarian environmental lawyer)