I just learned this bit on the radio the other day and was quite surprised: out of 1.9 billion acres in the US, the #1 and #3 ranked uses are cattle and crops (respectively) [1]. Out of the crops, much of it is used for livestock. [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745731823/the-u-s-has-nearly-...
And why is that land used for livestock? Much of this is land in the west, and there's not much else you can do with it. You can't grow crops on it - not enough water. You can't even grow trees on it - not much land got cleared of trees to make room for grazing. All you can do is run some cows or sheep on it. And, behold, it becomes part of this huge acreage used for cattle.
This is false. You can grow crops almost anywhere in the U.S. using water intensive techniques.
You won’t be able to do it at scale while funneling all the profits through a single entity though. It can only be done with smaller farms and more attention from a larger number of specialized farmers. We know more about how to do this now than any time in history.
If you want to have a single entity collect all the profits you need a one-size-fits-all methodology, and cattle grazing is that.
So that’s the trade off. An existential one for big beef companies.
Cattle also destroy the plants that maintain soil health and allow you to store water in the landscape, so it’s a vicious cycle. Fairly easily undone building berms and planting pioneer species.