LIFE
The Cowboy Lie
How megacorporations sold Americans a beefy falsehood
It is a brilliantly golden morning in the rolling hills of the west, as the first rays of the sunlight illuminate the frosted grass upon the plains. A herd of placid Angus cattle, jet black and massive, are silhouetted against the sunrise as they make their way down a beaten trail to a locale they all know well; the breakfast bar. A rugged young cow hand is doling out bales of hay as if they weigh no more than pillows, his thick leather gloves protecting his hands from the sharp twine holding the bales together. The cattle jostle each other for access to the food, huffing and puffing out great plumes of hot breath into the freezing air. It is a scene which has played out daily on these hills for over a hundred years; a cowboy feeding his stock, in harmony with the land, a quintessentially American morning.
This scene is — if you’ll pardon the pun — bullshit.
Modern America has a particular view of the cattle industry which has been shaped by Hollywood and politicians for decades. From films like The Cowboys and TV series like The Virginian to Billy Crystal’s City Slickers, the cattle industry is depicted as the noble work of rugged individualists living lightly on the land, at one with nature and themselves. Industrial capitalism has romanticized ranching and pastoralism as being the difficult role of a few good men toiling against the odds of city living and big corporations. The reality is that some of the largest corporations in the world are cattle ranches, and that the cattle industry itself is one of the greatest unseen capitalist forces shaping America today. Before colonization there were an estimated 30 to 50 million bison on the entire continent. As of today, over 93.8 million cows graze in the United States alone, mainly on public lands in western and middle America.
Cows graze on roughly half of all land In the United States. In this country 67 percent of endangered species spend at least some part of their lives on private rangeland. In California, over 60 percent of open space in a populous and sprawling state consists of privately owned rangeland, and 85 percent of increasingly precious freshwater runs over ranches. With staggering numbers like these, what are the unseen effects of the cattle industry on our country, our way of life? Or more accurately, what are the seen but unrealized effects?
The unseen hand of the cattle industry is monumental. The way our towns were created, our states settled, and our water resources managed were all influenced by ranching. Wealthy cattle monopolists drained millions of acres of wetlands to create grazing land, forever changing the landscape we live in. Barbed wire was invented and the fencing of the range began due to cattle operations, and the privatization of the open range and the death of the last truly nomadic lifestyle in America can be pinned on the cattle rancher. Predators like wolves and cougars were hunted to extinction in many states to protect cattle, leading to increased populations of prey species like deer, and the changed ecosystems of wilderness areas. Increased herbivore species in turn influence the makeup of our plant species, what trees are eaten or which trees are allowed to grow, which influences the nature of stream bank erosion and the ultimate direction of rivers and streams. Cattle trampling of riverbanks creates great gullies in arid states, deepening and speeding up rivers, which affects the water temperatures and pollution, leading to the decline of salmon and other fish species. The very shape of our home states and the species that live there have been changed by the cow. The scene of the cowboy, at one with nature as he leads his little herd lightly across the range, is as much a myth as Bigfoot, but one which far more Americans believe in.
The appeal of ranches stems not from an underdog status but from their central role in generations of colonial agriculture. Cattle raising was not the romantic ideal of hard-working folk toiling against Big Industrialization; cattle were the very foundation of industrialization in America and the base of its power. Cattle were the basis for the creation of the railroads, refrigeration, urbanization, and of New World economics.
Present day pro-grazing propaganda recycles ideas of manifest destiny, whereby land is brought to its full potential through European agriculture. This rhetoric harkens back to colonists importing stock from Europe because they considered their domesticated animals superior to the savage beasts of the New World. It touts the idea that beef is “All-American” and equates the cattle industry with patriotism and the support of rural America. But beef farmers are not feeding America. Record volumes of American beef feeds China. We import just as much beef as we export, bringing in beef from Canada, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, and New Zealand while we send our steaks to Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. Yet the cattle industry whitewashes its profits to appeal to its conservative base. Cattle ranching has always been portrayed as white, despite the reality. In the heyday of the cattleman nearly half of all cowboys were Mexican. Large numbers were also Black, Filipino, Chinese, and Native American. Black cowboys in particular tended to be given the dangerous and more cinematic jobs that we see white actors doing on screen such as breaking wild horses, roping loose bulls, and crossing rivers with the herd.
Our environment is changing. People are waking up to the realities of human influence on our landscape, our ecology, and our native species. Cattle ranches have shaped the social, economic, and political identity of the western United States since the 15th century, but change is on the horizon. In the overgrazed and climate-ravaged west, the economic foundation of rural areas is shifting from resource extraction to outdoor recreation, restoration, and preservation. On our public lands, however, cattle ranching is still touted as a “historic use”. As ecologist George Wuerther says, “A historic use is no excuse.” Strip mining, fracking, old-growth logging, and slavery were all “historic uses” which have been rightfully left in progress’s dust. Perhaps someday the cattle industry will be left there, too.
