Where is there more livestock than people?

At grocery stores I would see packaging for “grass-fed beef” or “free-range” and honestly I thought it was like a joke that farmers were pulling on city people, like “gormet hand-picked potatoes” or “premium plastic” or something. What else would cows eat?? I’d probably seen a hundred thousand cows in my life, always in herds roaming around vast pastures. Of course they eat grass.

Then I moved to California, and one day had occasion to drive from SF to LA. North of Bakersfield I encountered the most profound stink I’ve ever smelled while driving, and eventually I saw the source: industrial operations with enormous numbers of cattle in fenced pens shoulder to shoulder so they could hardly move.

I spent the next ten minutes slack-jawed, reconsidering my life experience.

What do I win?

Seriously though, check out https://xkcd.com/1338/ "Land Mammals" it's one of the more mind-blowing XKCDs IMO.

> Earth's LAND MAMMALS By Weight [[A graph in which one square equals 1,000,000 tons. Dark grey squares represent humans, light gray represent our pets and livestock, and green squares represent wild animals. The squares are arranged in a roughly round shape, with clusters for each type of animal. Animals represented: Humans, cattle, pigs, goats (39 squares), sheep, horses (29 squares), elephants (1 square). There are other small, unlabeled clusters also. It is clear that humans and our pets & livestock outweigh wild animals by at least a factor of 10. ]] {{Title text: Bacteria still outweigh us thousands to one--and that's not even counting the several pounds of them in your body.}}

A local rancher told me that they make almost all of their money from hunting parties in elk season. They wouldn't bother with cows except that the cows improve the foraging for the elk, improving their business. The cows are cultivating, seed distribution and fertilization devices in service of the elk herds.

I think that the more wild forage we can maintain along with our domesticated food system, the better. In paradise it's the rule rather than the exception.