Corn
We grow quite a bit of corn in this country (something to the tune of 12 billion bushels per year) and it’s primarily used for two things: feeding livestock and fueling cars.
The use of corn to produce ethanol is rapidly gaining popularity as oil prices soar. There are two points of debate regarding ethanol production. The first is that the process is a net energy loss. I don’t want to get too far into that argument, but I will state that most scientists agree that the whole system is a net energy gain (albeit small). The more interesting debate is that of resource allocation–namely, how much corn we should be putting into our fuel tanks at the expense of putting it into our stomachs as food.
Herein lies the crux of the problem: almost all the corn grown in the US is fed to livestock (primarily cattle) which are then eaten for food. Due to the magic of the food chain, this means that it takes about 25 calories of corn to produce 1 calorie of beef. For years, this wasn’t really a problem since we had plenty of corn (too much, actually) and no other good use for it. With ethanol fuel on the scene, it’s high time we reevaluate the agricultural industry in American and change our priorities.
Feeding corn to cattle violates the basic rules of nature. Cattle aren’t designed to digest corn–they are designed to eat grass. They can survive on corn, but it diminishes their immune system, forcing ranchers to inject antibiotics to keep the cattle [marginally] healthy. Another side effect of corn feed is that it allows (encourages?) ranchers to use a feedlot in place of free range. This exacerbates the issue of disease and introduces a host of vectors for spreading nasty bugs like E. coli.
There is a small but growing contingent of ranchers who are going back to the grass-fed approach to raising cattle. This creates a healthy animal, it’s far less energy intensive (since you’re cutting out all the corn production) and the meat is tastier.
Feed cattle grass. Feed cars corn. Everyone is happy.
Filed under Uncategorized : Comments (0) : Aug 26th, 2006 by tadfad
