Is Raising Beef Sustainable?

Here is a post written by a farmer about raising beef...specifically how much water it takes to produce a pound of beef. She cites an article (one of many out there) that state that it takes 1800+ gallons of water to produce each pound of beef. I've often wondered about statistics like that one, trying to figure out how they come up with that number and if it can really be right. Numbers like that have never made sense to me, but I never sat down to calculate out what a more accurate number might be.

She figured out that on their farm, it takes 17.5 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef. Pretty sure that is comparable to the amount of water needed to grow a tomato plant in a location like Kansas, with a much more nutrient and calorie-dense end product. Hence, a more efficient source of food for humans. Not that tomatoes aren't healthy and all that or that they aren't nutritious, but you would need to eat a lot more tomatoes to sustain your life than beef. Well-balanced meals, people, is the goal.

The other thing that I always question, when I read articles or hear people talking about how cattle are bad for the environment, is the quality of the land they are talking about. Not all land is equal. Not all soils are equal. Certain land/soils should NEVER be tilled, or at least very rarely. Those particular areas are frequently well-adapted to pasturing animals. If there weren't animals being pastured on that land, then it would be completely unproductive, except perhaps for whatever wild game could be harvested off it in the proper season.

So if you want to go off on some sort of crusade about what is or is not killing the earth, at least do your best to know all the facts first.