Feedlots and Freeways

Roads tell stories. One of the roads that stands out most vividly in my memory as a child was Interstate 5. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I-5 was the principle highway between home and Southern California. I remember it primarily for its monotony.  Endless farms and fields whizzed by, punctuated by the occasional irrigation canal. Then, at what seemed to be the exact midway point in the trip, came the odor. What smelled at first like a distant barn, soon assaulted the nostrils. Along the east side of the highway stood Harris Ranch –several roadside miles of cattle packed into commercial feedlots, their concentrated excrement dominating the olfactory senses. Though we all held our collective noses, Harris Ranch made me curious. How did each of these animals come to be confined in one place? Situated in the midst of almonds, fruit trees, and vegetables, cattle did not belong. The same highway speeds that generate good questions also preclude us from finding thoughtful answers. So it was with cattle and Interstate 5.

Typical Feedlot along I-76. Note the road in the foreground used to deliver feeds. The cattle congregate at the feed bunks behind the road. Note also the massive pile of manure at the center of one of the feed pens in the background. Finally, in the far background, observe a feed mill where feeds are delivered and mixed with the aid of a computer that calibrates the rations to achieve maximum weight gain per pound of food eaten (also called feed/conversion ratio)

            A recent research trip on I-76 provided clarity to the feedlot queries of my youth. The highway traverses a diagonal arc that connects I-70 in Denver with I-80 in western Nebraska, rarely straying more than a few miles from the South Platte River. Since I was on my way to interview cattle feeders in Sterling, my nose was already primed for the smells I would encounter. I was not disappointed. Speeding along at seventy-five miles per hour, I inhaled the familiar odor of concentrated excrement emitted by several feedlots. Because I have spent some time around feedlots, their geography is somewhat familiar to me – the rectilinear pens, the feed-bunks and adjacent roads that allow for mechanical food distribution, the piles of manure accumulated at the center of the pens and, of course, the cattle.

            On this trip, however, other roadside attractions drew my attention. In between the widely dispersed feedlots, on the north side of the highway, stood fields of Round-Up Ready Corn, stretching off for what seemed to be a few miles. Stalks were tightly and uniformly spaced, each one about four feet high. The fields were punctuated by occasional farmhouses and grain silos off in the distance. On the south side of the highway, the scene was entirely different.  Instead of manicured fields, High Plains flora predominated – buffalo grass, blue grama, sagebrush, and a host of invasive plants. Occasionally, several cattle came into view, grazing on the abundant forage that a particularly wet year made available to them. Barbed wire stretched along the highway as if to remind gawkers such as myself that, no matter how close I came physically to these bovines, networks of animal ownership and private property placed multi-layered boundaries between those driving through the landscape and those who occupied it.

            It did not take long to realize that the feedlots, the corn, and the grazing cattle were all connected. The privately-owned grazing lands on the south side of I-76 were populated with young steers and heifers, generally less than one year old. No crops grew here because the owners do not possess the water rights necessary to grow marketable crops in a climate that averages less than fourteen inches of rain annually. So, these operations take advantage of the cheaper land costs and free protein energy offered by the grasslands to raise young cattle. They are called cow/calf operations if the cattle are birthed on the ranch, or backgrounding if the animals are purchased after birth. The next stop on the short life journey of these animals is a nearby feedlot-likely one of the many I viewed from my windshield. Typically, the young cattle are sold when they weigh between 750-800 pounds, at around one year of age. In the feedlots, cattle are fattened on a diet that prioritizes corn grains (ground corn kernels) and silage (the other parts of the corn plant processed into edible bits). Four to six months later, feeders sell their cattle to a slaughterhouse, each animal having gained, on average, 400-500 pounds. And, where did that corn come from?  You guessed it. It was grown in the fields on the north side of the highway. These lands, made far more valuable by water rights from the South Platte River, were put to use growing corn grain and corn silage year in and year out – most of it contracted to the feedlots.

            A conversation with former Colorado Agricultural Commissioner and state legislator Don Ament confirmed my observations. He stated, “on the south side of the interstate, guys are grazing cattle out there and it’s all going to end up in that feedlot, and the corn is all going to end up in that feedlot....  The corn is where you can get the water, but the feedlot is where this is all going, and the calves from this place are all going.” Going further, Ament made an argument for the critical importance of commercial feedlots and the landscapes that feed them, “…Two-thirds of our agricultural output in Colorado is livestock, primarily cattle. It’s not growing beans. Everything…the corn, the alfalfa, the hay goes through those cows.” In summary, a significant majority of the agricultural energy of an entire state is funneled through a single animal.

            What I witnessed at highway speeds was neither boring nor innocuous. Rather, it was a landscape-sized snapshot of how beef-eaters are fed. The interconnected world of calves, grass, fences, water, corn, feedlots, and fattened cattle were all visible from my windshield. I was also observing very particular uses of biologic and chemical energy. The stored energies of Plains grasslands make the proteins that grow the calves in their first year of life. Water from the South Platte River irrigates the fields that are then cultivated through a host of synthetic pesticides, genetically modified corn, and fossil-fuel powered machinery. Cattle are fattened with those stored energies, while byproducts such as carbon dioxide, methane gas, and manure – containing it own energy byproducts - are released. Animal scientists have concluded that, under modern cattle feeding conditions, the energies of 7 to 8 pounds of feed are required to generate one pound of beef. And, each of these energies are found on the interstate – hidden in plain sight.

            These energies have a history. In some of my future blog posts, I will break down how we arrived at this point by explaining the processes by which corn, cattle, water, science, feedlots, farmers, consumers, and more evolved together. The food systems, the landscapes, and the agro-ecologies that produce them – human and non-human – are not inevitable, but historically contingent.  Few questions matter more than how a society feeds itself. I intend to put together the historical pieces. Stay tuned….

DISCLAIMER: All highway observations for this blog post were made with hands firmly planted at the 10 and 2 position on the steering wheel. While Michael encourages readers to observe the world with historic curiosity, he does not endorse doing so in an unsafe manner.