Yesterday was the 36th annual Meat Out Day, and a lot of people are upset that Colorado—whose most lucrative export is beef—is observing the day following a proclamation by its governor. To be honest, I don’t blame them. Governor Polis seems to be speaking out of both sides of his mouth as he awkwardly navigates a culturally bifurcated population, and his attempts to cater to the interests of all may simply result in greater polarization. But what’s more interesting to me is observing the responses of many ranchers online as they seek to defy MeatOut Day by various versions of rallying around meat consumption and production.
You know, I love meat. Our freezer is full of beef we raised, elk from this land, pork from the next ranch over, and wild pig a friend shot while were out together. I feel better after eating meat than any other food, and I hope for a future where more people, not less, can consume sustainably raised meat.
I have written about meat publicly. I wrote something for Civil Eats promoting consuming well-raised meat that still re-cycles on the web every few months. I’ve argued online with George Monbiot about what I consider to be the erroneous aspects of his vegan-centered rewilding rhetoric. Friends new and old check in with me when they’re trying to understand if they should be eating beef, or meat at all. There’s plenty I don’t know, but I tell them how I approach the question.
Perhaps more to the point, I’ve raised it and sold it. In California, I worked for grassfed operations and even had my own fledging beef brand for a short while. These days, I work with thousands of head of commercial cattle on three ranches (seasonally) in two states with my partner, working collaboratively to make a living on the land while incrementally building up the health of the range. It’s my life’s work, and I have literal skin in the game. I really, really believe in the power of where we source our protein to rehabilitate ecosystems.
And, it’s also true that meat as we know it has a rough past. Cattle ranching was used to “win” the west, leaving heinous violence in its wake. We don’t talk much about it, but it’s no secret, and the consequences of that period of history are still playing out today. Yet, speaking about this in many ranching circles would be akin to discussing politics and religion. For such tough people we sure can be scared of talking a bit of history, even history where we emerged as the relative victor.
Ranching-done-wrong has a rough biological legacy, too. Over- or poorly-timed grazing has reduced the soil profile of many western landscapes to shadows of their former selves - rubbly parent material remains where plant roots once grew. Pollution from packing plants continue to be a problem often externalized on those who can’t defend themselves. (The fact that the industry is “working on this” is good, but the very fact that progress is being made does not repudiate the problem - it affirms it). And though this is thankfully changing every day, basic training in low stress livestock handling or even an ethic around it is still not universal in the industry. Meanwhile, during the pandemic, reports suggest tens of thousands of packing plant workers contracted Covid when their employers failed to implement basic safety standards, and hundreds died. So far as I can tell, this is something that industry publications seem to have largely ignored.
We often say thank a farmer, thank a rancher. But we owe our access to food - our lives, put differently - to truckers, veterinarians, and plant workers, too.
Why am I ragging on my own industry? Why not just put up a sly Meat on the Menu post and leave it that? Because I love what I do, and I just can’t stand to see my work tarnished by the attitudes of people behaving at their most defiant and fearful, whose actions and rhetoric just might have us lose the trust of the people we really depend on to buy our product, to lease us land, and to legislate on our behalf. I know the good that responsible ranching can do for land and lives, and it’d be a real shame if the many exceptional and progressive operations out there dwindled because we ruined our relationship with the people we need to trust us.
Without the trust of the public we will find ourselves unmoored and unable to raise animals, to tend land, to ranch. And it will be at least as much our fault as anyone else we choose to blame. How do we gain trust? Well, first we have to be trustworthy.
If we ranchers want to have a place in the world as this century marches on, we might have to exchange our attitude of somewhat cavalier self-certitude to one that confidently speaks to what we’re doing right, specifically addresses where we need to improve, and humbly acknowledges our shortcomings. Agricultural communities often espouse the value of hard work, accountability, of owning up to mistakes, and being honest. Let’s extend that to how we talk about our work. After all, think of the people you most trust in your own life. I don’t know about you, but if I meet someone who only speaks of their accomplishments, responds to questions with condescension, and ignores my criticism, I am probably not going to trust them with much.
Ranching is chock full of cultural tenets that I really like and think are rare and worth expanding. But our conversations are often laced with fear, and understandably so. We fear that the public’s misconception of us will result in our AUMs being reduced on forest service permits. In response, we claim that all grazing is good. Who would believe that? When a hiker strolls through a riparian area wrecked by unmanaged grazing and then hears cattle grower groups sing the praises of grazing as an unqualified monolith, are we surprised when they distrust what we say about other matters - like antibiotic use and stock handling?
We fear tokenized predators will kill our animals, and they do. In response, we launch campaigns vilifying wolves, discrediting ourselves as we fail to address much of the public’s interest in trophic diversity and intact wild populations. We cast ourselves as the defensive bad guys rather than conscientious stakeholders concerned about more than our calves. The more absurd the legislation that is proposed or ridiculous the holidays, the more we double down in our reactions. Online, in public, producers can be seen calling all vegans idiots, complaining about city-dwellers, and worse, wielding that particularly nasty brand of internet cynicism that, for all of our claims of being misunderstood victims, really makes us seem like bullies. I know this attitude well, because I have demonstrated it myself. It gains accolades from people who already agree with us, but alienates those who aren’t already bought-in, creating the illusion of winning hearts and minds when we’re really sowing further distrust.
These behaviors seem rooted in anger and fear - emotions usually emerging from concern over loss of resources, of livelihood. Perhaps what we fear most is that we will not belong in the world that is unfolding. For people born and raised on multi-generational ranching operations, the thought of being the last generation to make an honest living, in a tangible way, on our family land must chill to the marrow. Anger and fear are pretty understandable.
Yet while responding to criticism and threat from a place of scarcity-induced cynicism and rage may be understandable, it’s just not effective. And more and more, effective communication is all we’ve got.
As a population, ranchers are often an autonomous bunch, self-selecting for more solitude and self-reliance than much of the population. Yet we are in a precarious position right now. If we want to have a place amidst the present and coming reckonings over racial equality, land ownership, immigration, import beef, water rights, public lands management and the myriad other issues on which we - as <2% of the US population - depend on having effective dialogue with the non-ranching public, maybe we could consider changing our tune from one of authoritativeness, defensiveness, and victimhood, to one of confident humility, honesty, and collaboration. Our livelihoods depend on it, and so much more.
