I love those ads with the cows saying "Eat more Chikin". I thought of that today when I saw that great botanist, water specialist, biologist, and soil conservationist Congressman Ben Ray Lujan say that Forest Service scientists are wrong to cut back on cow grazing in the forest watersheds. Why, they are all evil mean spirited people aren't they? Lujan, who had strong backing from the environmental community, just sucker slapped them by siding with the livestock industry in keeping too many cows in the forests. No matter there is drought. No matter the forests are in great fire danger. The charges that the government scientists want to destroy their lives is just ludicrous. Just good ole boy politics by the new congressman in the north. What the cowboys want, the cowboys get. These are the same folks who voted for our new right wing governor. I wonder if Ben has thought about that before throwing science under the bus.
1 comment:
Amen. When you consider how inefficient cow farming is, it's hard to see why it goes on. It takes 1/2 to 1 1/2 acres to grow a cow back east where it actually rains sometimes, 5 acres here if you supplement grazing with hay, which consumes the biggest share of New Mexico's water, ninety percent of which goes to agriculture. And the return is so low you'd be better off just selling the water.
Cow farming despoils the environment (especially dairy farming which pumps tons of nitrates into the southern New Mexico groundwater), and the few cows they are able to graze per acre still manage to thoroughly degrade what naturally is a colorful and varied vegetative landscape into the endless miles of those drab gray bushes cows won't eat.
But then, you can put on a cowboy hat and feel connected to that made up American mythology, and ignore the entirely unrelated reality, and the environmental degradation, and the unhealthy diet rich in animal flesh, and the land grabs and genocide the entire agricultural economy rests upon.
So I'm guessing somebody gave Mr Lujan a cowboy hat.
Post a Comment