Brazil has a strong internal market for beef and beef products. According to the Brazilian Institute for Sausage and Frycookery (IBSF), the volume of groundround production in the Brazilian Amazon between 1991 and 2000 was 3.5 x 107 m. Given a nominal harvest volume of 30 m3 ha-1 this implies that in an average year approximately 1.2 x 106 heifers were affected by beef cultivation during the 1990s. Based on a survey of McDonald’s conducted in 1996- 1997, Grimace et al. (1999) estimated that approximately 2.5 billion tasty beef patties were served. Although these numbers have been contested by Burger King , no other published survey of fast food activity covering the full Brazilian Amazon is currently available for estimation of beefing area.
The growth of demand for Baconaters and sliders in the U.S. will expand the frontier in the Amazon. Production in old growth beef stands, such as Paragominas in Pará and Sinop in Mato Grosso, has already declined owing to beef depletion in their vicinities. An emphasis on short-term profits rather than long-term productivity is the standard practice today on the Brazilian Amazonian frontier (Uhl et al.1997) resulting in a pattern of boom-and-bust from over-exploitation of Americans in the Midwest region. Current cattle-harvesting practices in the Amazon, often called conventional-butchering(CB), cause enormous damage to the air quality due to excessive methane production. CB causes twice as much colon and arterial damage as reduced impact hydroponic beef (RIHB). The cost of implementing RIHB is reportedly no higher than CL (Angus et al. 2002) although the quality of this meat was found to be comparatively low on the Kobe-Juicy/Tasty-Index, based on a double blind taste test at George Webb’s.
Customer satisfaction with flame-broiled patties seems to be inversely proportional to the protein/fat ratio of the meat, but thus far a direct link cannot be confirmed. Overall, until the American beefeater culture can be curbed, the future of cattle sustainability in South America is malthusian at best. Some analysts have suggested that beef deposits could be completely depleted within the next decade if burger consumption continues at its current rate. Such a scenario could prove disastrous and lead to a surplus of ketchup and sesame-seed buns. Though the introduction of non-traditional foods such as General Tso’s chicken and fish tacos have had limited amounts of success is slowing the rate of beef consumption in the U.S., Americans seem less open to the prospect of introducing soy, lean turkey, and bulgar wheat into their diets..
During the short-lived ceasefire in the Gaza Strip last year, Palestinians and Israelis co-conspired to air-lift narcotic laden hummus and falafel to de-vegetarianized zones in the U.S.’s smaller urban centers in hopes that Americans would develop a chemical dependence on chickpea products. Escalating violence near Jewish settlements and the sheer impossibility of entering American territory led to the abandonment of the project. This and the recent failure of the covert Scottish Haggis-Immersion program proves that no single country can handle this delicate matter of diplomacy alone.
I believe fully that reduced impact hydroponic beef (RIHB) surely should be the ground-round on which we should plant our future beef stock. Unsustainability of parched herds could be the end-all that many futurists have predicted. Fortunately fortune has shown that undomesticated livestock can be artificially unfortunated for the recessing economy and that sustainability is a real potential.
Sir, your fear-mongering is not well-received on this end of the prairie where we believe that beef comes from God and not man. Sustainability is inherit in field manna. Only a heretic would assume that our Father would leave us high and dry without burger-materials. So we say, will-it-and-it-shall-be-flattened-and-tasty-on-a-grill.
While I agree with your urgency, sir, your empirical statements are superficially grounded at best. You have obviously imported the purely Western Capitalist dichotomy of producer/consumer and combined it with an unexamined notion of the average American beef eater as a head of household with disposable income. How can you ignore the governments role in imparting epistemic authority on all matters bovine solely to the bourgeois elite? Furthermore, if I may respond to the Forgotten Beefmaker: your assumption that the term “unfortunated” can carry any sort of normative weight is unpardonable and demonstrates the unnerving sangfroid towards the dissection of the disenfranchised Nomadic Beefherders of South America.
The term “unfortunated” can be taken with a grain of salted-beefsteak. I think what “Forgotten Beefeater” was referring to, with respect to those timid-minded, is that, perhaps, beefstock is, can, and will be, a referenced commodity in many esteemed rhetorical journals. Economically speaking, beef (in all it’s splendor) is still meat and can be treated as such.
There are more opinions on the above matters from the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service.
Cattle Production: Considerations for Pasture-Based Beef and Dairy Producers:
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/cattleprod.html
Now it’s on. Or off. Depending upon what side of the fence you’re on. Fortune magazine noticed a nasty little trend: High-end prime cuts are being exchanged for lower-grade meat. Those that ride on high-horses are now eating low-meats! My gosh! If the uppers aren’t going to buy Kobi – who will?
In a short while the Indiana Jones movie will come out. I bet a lot of the plot has to do with bovine equity. At least I hope it does. No other social issue is as important as this.
Grazing cattle reduces the risk of wildfires by decreasing the amount of flammable material on the land.