I have to admit: I am confused. Mostly, I've been bothered by the naming of things, more than I should be, I reckon; but still, like a spider crawling over my bed covers, it just won't go away.
Much of it comes from the awareness of climate change (If you think this is a new concept, look at some ancient petroglyphs, which seem to, in some cases, attempt to record unfortunate climatic events, such as floods, lightning, earthquakes, etc.) More succinctly, what I'm talking about is reference to "solar farms, wind farms, factory farms," and such.
If thought of in the agricultural sense, as most people do, solar farms don't raise sunshine, wind farms don't raise wind, and factory farms don't raise factories. It's a lazy way for journalists to describe things they don't fully understand, hoping their readers will. "Farm" comes from Old French ferme, meaning rented land, ultimately from Latin firmāre, which means to settle. Call me a nitpicker.
If you've been keeping up with the eastern part of the state, some of those folks who initiated getting the return of wolves to Colorado on the ballot box might be part of a different group, "Plant Based Colorado," which wishes to statutorily make "slaughter houses" illegal in Denver. Never mind that like the above-mentioned misnomers, slaughter houses no longer exist. And anyway, can't Denver do this on its own without involving the entire state?
Today, there are processing facilities that process meat. Which reminds me, ranchers and farmers don't raise livestock for slaughter; they raise it to help feed the world's burgeoning population. This Denver group got enough signatures to get it on the November ballot. How short-sighted of them. Mostly because there is only one production facility in Denver, and it is for the preparation of sheep and lambs. The facility will just move somewhere else if the initiative loses.
But the hype is there -- they hope it leads, nationwide, to a "transition" away from people eating meat. Good luck with that. People around the globe are starving. Transition seems to be the new political "go-to" thought wave in other areas, as well. Get rid of those nasty cattle. Transition away from fossil fuels. Either one, or both. In how many years?
The group reasoning is agog with thinking usually attributed to university professors and other self-appointed intellectuals, brainiacs who have little understanding of how nature and the environment work, at least in Colorado. Their ultimate vision is to have cattle disappear from ranchland, to be replaced by crops edible by humans in place of meat. Just plow up that grassland, and put in garden crops.
Except, eastern Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and other areas drove the homesteaders out because most of the land is not suited to farming - remember the Dust Bowl? It's good for buffalo or cattle, and in our short-sighted wisdom, we'd already killed off most of the buffalo. No cattle, no farming, no cloven hooves to tend, fertilize and knead the soil, and now that most of the native grasses are gone, what do you get without grazing animals? Weeds, willows and barren patches. You cannot leave today's ranchland (hay fields, pastures) fallow and expect it to return to its natural state. An impossible fool's game.
For fun, try to imagine what the Roaring Fork Valley would look like if there were no cows on the land. There would be little demand for hay, so ranchers would likely stop irrigating. Agricultural money would be short. The open land would mostly burn up from lack of water. There would be some demand for miniscule amounts of pasture, from horses, sheep, goats, and other small mammals -- not nearly the demand that cattle produce. Water rights would soon be lost or sold due to non-use. Believe me, the Denver Water Board would be on top of it like snakes on a mouse den.
In addition, without the presence of large, cloven hooves traversing the land, soil would likely become compacted, reducing the ability of grass, flowers, and other green things to grow. The types and mixes of plants would change, affecting wildlife, including bird species.
Small vegetable farms like we've seen develop lately cannot take up the slack created by no cattle. It's futile to think that is possible. Winter would see to that. We could all eat vegetables, of course, but the building of greenhouses and heated storage buildings would become a pox upon the land. Fake meat won't cut it, and besides, the environmental damage caused by the chemical production of artificial meat has been proven to be far worse than what cattle create.
If you like hiking, remember that many of the mountain trails surrounding the Roaring Fork Valley, are kept up by cattlemen and women, clearing deadfall and other debris, so their cows don't drag their udders across such impediments and calves don't break legs getting over downed trees.
Tony Vagneur writes here on Saturday and welcomes your comments at [email protected].