8 ms·

> More than one-third of U.S. land is used for pasture ... There’s a single, major occupant on all this land: cows. Not here. I live on cow range land, but the

> More than one-third of U.S. land is used for pasture ... There’s a single, major occupant on all this land: cows. Not here. I live on cow range land, but the cattle are outnumbered by elk. The elk hunting industry here is larger than the cattle industry. Every third local seems to be a hunting guide, and many of those are cow growers too. This seems to me to be a very positive thing that should be encouraged. Instead of buying all their meat at the local supermarket meat counter thousands of city dwellers dream of the hunt. They buy expensive equipment and tags then come out here and work their asses off for a chance. Why would anyone spend that much and work that hard for an uncertain outcome unless it was fulfilling in some way? It sure doesn't save money on meat. Hunting forces you to commune with nature, dressing and hauling out your kill rubs your nose in it. It forces you to own responsibility for killing your dinner. Paying the blood price carries meaning that paying $/lb for a BOGO does not. If we can arrange for more people to harvest their own meat rather than accepting an industrial commodity, more people would have a greater love and understanding of nature, more respect for themselves, and more meaning in their lives. In many places it's a superior use of the range.

jmspring 8y ago
I live in a rural community where within the county and neighboring counties, cattle is a big deal. That said, the cows up here are fat and happy and have space to roam. Compare to the cattle pastures in the central valley where the cows are skinny and kept in small areas with limited space to roam. One thing that surprised me moving up here, and this is something I didn't realize re: laws around food, availabiliyt of game meat (dear/elk/etc) really is something you have to hunt on your own. Another interesting tidbit about cattle grazing and national parks - If you ever do the Mohave Road, there used to be a number of ranches that grazed in/along parts of that route. Old water troughs visible, etc. Most of them shut down, one of the few that was allowed to continue had connections to Diane Feinstein and her husband. Water, grazing rights, and land use politics can get pretty damn ugly out west.
- DareRight 8y ago
  Just ask the Bundy's
- scruple 8y ago
  I'm familiar with Mojave Road. Are you saying that there active cattle ranches out there still today? I really had no idea, I had thought they had all shut down by now...
dghughes 8y ago
Alaska would be similar to northern parts of Canada where herds of nearly one million caribou roam.
bscphil 8y ago
Having people travel to hunt the meat they eat doesn't scale, though, at all. It's quite simply not possible to use it as a way to improve land use and reduce climate change. Suggestions like yours can be good, but they don't recognize the scale of the changes that are needed. It's the equivalent of trying to get people to buy hybrids to stop climate change - even if everyone could do it, it wouldn't make a dent in the problem. Even given that hunting provides some kind of spiritual value (which I must admit I'm very skeptical of), it's a value only available to those who are by any reasonable standard quite wealthy (excepting rural people). It takes a lot of time, costs more, and is hard work that a lot of people aren't capable of. A marked increase in demand would make this even more of a problem. >It forces you to own responsibility for killing your dinner. I wonder if, faced with this choice, most people would not simply become vegetarians.
- windows_tips 8y ago
  >I wonder if, faced with this choice, most people would not simply become vegetarians. Probably not if they had to forage all their foods at current densities.
  - Alex3917 8y ago
    There is plenty of land that could be used for well-managed forest gardens. Bali is an example of a modern economy where people can forage a lot of their calories that way.
    - windows_tips 8y ago
      It would be real nice if our neighborhoods and streets were lined with edible plants. It seems like it could/would be a lot of work to maintain, but with the appropriate tools and planning it might be pretty simple. Non-edible (as far as I know) street trees are already watered by hand (with water trucks) here and they only seem to be used for decoration and shade. edit: one issue to be careful of is the plants collecting "pollution"
- komali2 8y ago
redahs 8y ago
> They buy expensive equipment and tags then come out here and work their asses off for a chance. That's fine as a hobby, but it would create poverty and rapid depletion of wildlife if the majority of people were forced to depend on hunting and game meat for daily meals. > If we can arrange for more people to harvest their own meat rather than accepting an industrial commodity. This is a false dilemma. If we want to return to a nation of small farmers rather than a handful of industrial farms, all we need to do is increase property taxes on land ownership, as declining property tax rates are associated with increased rural inequality and a worsening gini coefficient for land ownership, where a greater fraction of land is owned by fewer people. Development of large numbers of intensive and efficient small farms can also be aided by marginal cost public irrigation infrastructure funded out of land tax revenues, which is how California developed its agricultural sector in the early 1900s using its public irrigation districts. Requiring households to devote large fraction of their labor towards traveling to hunting areas is not a realistic alternative.
- StillBored 8y ago
  At least in Texas raising property taxes as such isn't the answer. Rather capping the amount a single owner/organization can claim in ag/etc exemptions, while making it easier for small 20 acre farms to claim the exemption. Right now what you have is the richest land owners paying the lowest rates, while owners of tiny suburban/rural lots get murdered. For example, I give you a few pieces of the 6d ranch, located on some of the most prime real-estate in Austin Tx. (Lot 4, 260 acres, $307 in taxes) http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/Property.aspx?cid=1&prop_id=563795# http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/Property.aspx?cid=1... (Lot 2, 155 acres, $278 in taxes) http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/Property.aspx?cid=1&prop_id=564020 http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/Property.aspx?cid=1... (Lot 1, ~120 acres + ~7000 sqft cottage, boat dock larger than my house, and a bunch of other stuff, $69,556 in taxes) http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/Property.aspx?cid=1&prop_id=564018 http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/Property.aspx?cid=1... The $70 thousand a year in taxes seems like a lot, unless you consider that I live a few miles away and pay ~15k a year for less than .1 acre and live in a house that isn't even as nice as the boat dock on that property. (if you google it a bit you can probably figure out who owns it, but good luck untwisting the layers of shell corps listed on the tax appraisal)
freddie_mercury 8y ago
I live in a developing country. People regularly kill animals to eat. They will have chickens, ducks, rats, fish, turtles, dogs, and pigs that they raise and eat. There is no "communing with nature". There is no "paying the blood price". There is certainly no "greater love and understanding of nature" or "meaning in their lives". It is just eating, living, surviving.
- hirundo 8y ago
  Suicide rates tend to be lower in developing countries. Don't you think that lifestyle is part of the reason? https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/535557fc6bb3f78245a35752-750-308.jpg https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/535557fc6bb3f78245a35...
  - edanm 8y ago
    And you think this is the only lifestyle difference between the countries? There are millions of confounding variables.
  - Swizec 8y ago
    To quote a smart person I know: “Yeah, sure, you could give up, but then who’s gonna feed the kids?” When your life is hand to mouth, there’s not a lot of room left for suicidal stuff. Too busy surviving. Especially if there’s people depending on you. Even if you’re suicidal, you don’t have the luxury to go through with it. And even if you’re depressed, you don’t have the luxury to give into it. Because if you do, then you don’t eat and neither do yiur kids. No choice but to keep going. Life’s fun like that.
    - ianai 8y ago
      Or, such places handle social interaction better. Birth rates decline in developed areas. My pet hypothesis is that “developed” countries/areas are only developed through extracting so much from workers that only a selected subset may reproduce.
      - 8y ago
strainer 8y ago
I noticed US has around the same magnitude of cattle as it had wild ranging buffalo a few centuries ago. That doesnt seem like a great conversion. Those forest reserves are enviable, the UK is lucky if it has a couple of squares left.
Taylor_OD 8y ago
Lot's of people truly enjoy nature and aspects of it but also love being able to walk to three grocery stores, 15 high quality restaurants, and knowing that they can get almost anything at any hour of the night. Cities offer something rural areas often do not. Rural areas offer something cities do not. I grew up on a dirt road in the middle of no where and loved every minute of it. I've been in Chicago for the last four years and love every minute of it. Eventually I'll probably move somewhere like Denver that allows access to both within an hours drive or so.
- nightski 8y ago
  It's not so black-and-white. I live in an area where I have both of those things and it's a much smaller city (<200k). Okay I lied there might be a little driving involved but it doesn't really matter because I drive less than 3000 miles a year anyways.

jmspring 8y ago

I live in a rural community where within the county and neighboring counties, cattle is a big deal. That said, the cows up here are fat and happy and have space to roam. Compare to the cattle pastures in the central valley where the cows are skinny and kept in small areas with limited space to roam. One thing that surprised me moving up here, and this is something I didn't realize re: laws around food, availabiliyt of game meat (dear/elk/etc) really is something you have to hunt on your own. Another interesting tidbit about cattle grazing and national parks - If you ever do the Mohave Road, there used to be a number of ranches that grazed in/along parts of that route. Old water troughs visible, etc. Most of them shut down, one of the few that was allowed to continue had connections to Diane Feinstein and her husband. Water, grazing rights, and land use politics can get pretty damn ugly out west.

DareRight 8y ago
Just ask the Bundy's
scruple 8y ago
I'm familiar with Mojave Road. Are you saying that there active cattle ranches out there still today? I really had no idea, I had thought they had all shut down by now...

dghughes 8y ago

Alaska would be similar to northern parts of Canada where herds of nearly one million caribou roam.

bscphil 8y ago

Having people travel to hunt the meat they eat doesn't scale, though, at all. It's quite simply not possible to use it as a way to improve land use and reduce climate change. Suggestions like yours can be good, but they don't recognize the scale of the changes that are needed. It's the equivalent of trying to get people to buy hybrids to stop climate change - even if everyone could do it, it wouldn't make a dent in the problem. Even given that hunting provides some kind of spiritual value (which I must admit I'm very skeptical of), it's a value only available to those who are by any reasonable standard quite wealthy (excepting rural people). It takes a lot of time, costs more, and is hard work that a lot of people aren't capable of. A marked increase in demand would make this even more of a problem. >It forces you to own responsibility for killing your dinner. I wonder if, faced with this choice, most people would not simply become vegetarians.

windows_tips 8y ago
>I wonder if, faced with this choice, most people would not simply become vegetarians. Probably not if they had to forage all their foods at current densities.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  There is plenty of land that could be used for well-managed forest gardens. Bali is an example of a modern economy where people can forage a lot of their calories that way.
  - windows_tips 8y ago
    It would be real nice if our neighborhoods and streets were lined with edible plants. It seems like it could/would be a lot of work to maintain, but with the appropriate tools and planning it might be pretty simple. Non-edible (as far as I know) street trees are already watered by hand (with water trucks) here and they only seem to be used for decoration and shade. edit: one issue to be careful of is the plants collecting "pollution"
komali2 8y ago

redahs 8y ago

> They buy expensive equipment and tags then come out here and work their asses off for a chance. That's fine as a hobby, but it would create poverty and rapid depletion of wildlife if the majority of people were forced to depend on hunting and game meat for daily meals. > If we can arrange for more people to harvest their own meat rather than accepting an industrial commodity. This is a false dilemma. If we want to return to a nation of small farmers rather than a handful of industrial farms, all we need to do is increase property taxes on land ownership, as declining property tax rates are associated with increased rural inequality and a worsening gini coefficient for land ownership, where a greater fraction of land is owned by fewer people. Development of large numbers of intensive and efficient small farms can also be aided by marginal cost public irrigation infrastructure funded out of land tax revenues, which is how California developed its agricultural sector in the early 1900s using its public irrigation districts. Requiring households to devote large fraction of their labor towards traveling to hunting areas is not a realistic alternative.

StillBored 8y ago
At least in Texas raising property taxes as such isn't the answer. Rather capping the amount a single owner/organization can claim in ag/etc exemptions, while making it easier for small 20 acre farms to claim the exemption. Right now what you have is the richest land owners paying the lowest rates, while owners of tiny suburban/rural lots get murdered. For example, I give you a few pieces of the 6d ranch, located on some of the most prime real-estate in Austin Tx. (Lot 4, 260 acres, $307 in taxes) http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/Property.aspx?cid=1&prop_id=563795# http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/Property.aspx?cid=1... (Lot 2, 155 acres, $278 in taxes) http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/Property.aspx?cid=1&prop_id=564020 http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/Property.aspx?cid=1... (Lot 1, ~120 acres + ~7000 sqft cottage, boat dock larger than my house, and a bunch of other stuff, $69,556 in taxes) http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/Property.aspx?cid=1&prop_id=564018 http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/Property.aspx?cid=1... The $70 thousand a year in taxes seems like a lot, unless you consider that I live a few miles away and pay ~15k a year for less than .1 acre and live in a house that isn't even as nice as the boat dock on that property. (if you google it a bit you can probably figure out who owns it, but good luck untwisting the layers of shell corps listed on the tax appraisal)

freddie_mercury 8y ago

I live in a developing country. People regularly kill animals to eat. They will have chickens, ducks, rats, fish, turtles, dogs, and pigs that they raise and eat. There is no "communing with nature". There is no "paying the blood price". There is certainly no "greater love and understanding of nature" or "meaning in their lives". It is just eating, living, surviving.

hirundo 8y ago
Suicide rates tend to be lower in developing countries. Don't you think that lifestyle is part of the reason? https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/535557fc6bb3f78245a35752-750-308.jpg https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/535557fc6bb3f78245a35...
- edanm 8y ago
  And you think this is the only lifestyle difference between the countries? There are millions of confounding variables.
- Swizec 8y ago
  To quote a smart person I know: “Yeah, sure, you could give up, but then who’s gonna feed the kids?” When your life is hand to mouth, there’s not a lot of room left for suicidal stuff. Too busy surviving. Especially if there’s people depending on you. Even if you’re suicidal, you don’t have the luxury to go through with it. And even if you’re depressed, you don’t have the luxury to give into it. Because if you do, then you don’t eat and neither do yiur kids. No choice but to keep going. Life’s fun like that.
  - ianai 8y ago
    Or, such places handle social interaction better. Birth rates decline in developed areas. My pet hypothesis is that “developed” countries/areas are only developed through extracting so much from workers that only a selected subset may reproduce.
    - 8y ago

strainer 8y ago

I noticed US has around the same magnitude of cattle as it had wild ranging buffalo a few centuries ago. That doesnt seem like a great conversion. Those forest reserves are enviable, the UK is lucky if it has a couple of squares left.

Taylor_OD 8y ago

Lot's of people truly enjoy nature and aspects of it but also love being able to walk to three grocery stores, 15 high quality restaurants, and knowing that they can get almost anything at any hour of the night. Cities offer something rural areas often do not. Rural areas offer something cities do not. I grew up on a dirt road in the middle of no where and loved every minute of it. I've been in Chicago for the last four years and love every minute of it. Eventually I'll probably move somewhere like Denver that allows access to both within an hours drive or so.

nightski 8y ago
It's not so black-and-white. I live in an area where I have both of those things and it's a much smaller city (<200k). Okay I lied there might be a little driving involved but it doesn't really matter because I drive less than 3000 miles a year anyways.