Harris Ranch & Highway Five

After basking in the southern sun for a week and a half, the time came to head northward. We elected to take highway 5 all the way to the Bay Area, a path which took us directly past the infamous Harris Ranch. For those of you who are unaware, Harris Ranch is the largest feedlot/agribusiness on the west coast and California's foremost producer of beef. At anytime up to 100 thousand cattle are present at this lot. Harris Ranch is so massive that it can be smelled from miles away down the road.

Unfortunately "ranch" conglomerates like these greatly affect the surrounding environment by contributing to surface & groundwater contamination, polluting the air by emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane gases, and providing hotbeds of antibiotic resistance (among other adverse effects). When witnessing a place like this it's not hard to see the negative impacts that operations of this scale can have on the environment and the livestock.

We've passed many pastures & feedlots, countless cows along highways, but none were quite like Harris Ranch. The livestock barely felt like cows. Instead all we could think about was water, and the massive quantities needed to keep these cows alive in draught stricken California. With some quick maths and a lot of guestimation {(the conservative estimate for gallons of water to 1 pound of beef is 441g) X (again conservatively, cows weigh in at about 1,000 pounds each) X (once more conservatively estimating, 100,000 cows)} we can surmise that Harris Ranch requires at least 441,000,000 gallons of water over the lifetime of a generation of cows on the feedlot. Now consider the fact that livestock cattle are slaughtered at fourteen months and you arrive at an estimated figure of 1,050,000 gallons of water a day being used at Harris Ranch.

This is not to condemn beef production and consumption, but intended to be food for thought (Water for thought??? Water for food??) on the sustainability of operations of this scale.