home → articles → Production | Email to a Friend

Feedlot Cattle Becoming More and More Efficient

published: September 29th 2010
source: Des Moines Register

Modern beef production is clearly improving. The total carbon footprint to produce one pound of beef was reduced by 14 percent since 1977, according to research by Washington State University. It takes 27 percent fewer animals to produce the same amount of beef now than it did 30 years ago.

This is not attained by organic or grass-fed beef, but by growth-enhancing technology and efficiency in feedlots. It takes more than twice the energy use, and methane production almost triples in grass-fed beef. It also takes 13 times more land use to produce the same amount of beef in grass-fed versus corn-fed.

To quote Scott Laudert from Kansas State University, per unit of beef produced, conventional feedlot feeding is more sustainable and environmentally sound.

In the last 50 years U.S. beef producers have doubled production while reducing land use by 442 million acres, roughly the size of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Kansas.