For whatever reason, I am fascinated in equal parts by conflict and harmony. As a grazier, much of my job involves work that attempts to coordinate forces that are, at least at first glance, often at odds with one another: ecological needs with market restrictions, nurturing life to be killed and eaten, staying safe on the backs of prey animals, and cows and creeks—to name but a few.
Within ranching itself are plenty of disagreements, from the practical to the ontological. But to me there is nothing quite so compelling as the angst that can be find between those of us who raise livestock and those who think we simply should not. Many of these beliefs are based on nearly immovable world views that are rarely about livestock or meat themselves and are in fact rooted more deeply, and are thus well beyond the scope of this essay. But a lot of frustration is simply based on misunderstandings, assumptions, and talking past one another, and that’s what I intend to address.
It's with that preamble that I offer the following observations about three major misunderstandings I have noticed between one of my primary circles--agricultural producers, and specifically ranchers--and many of our detractors, such as vegans, environmentalists, and ecologists. Many of these observations have been gleaned from first hand, in-person conversations next to the squeeze chute or over meals after brandings, and others from taking in conservations and essays online. I consider both ways of interacting with people and gleaning information to be valid and useful to one another.
1. “I risk my life to take care of the animals that others think I neglect and abuse.”
This is a very common gripe amongst many ranchers I know. Understandably, we feel misunderstood. It's true that many people who aren't in this work probably struggle to square the idea that someone would get into livestock agriculture--much of which involves, and in fact is based on, animal death--because they love animals. Yet for most of us, the death part of it feels kind of like an addendum: we're mostly preoccupied with animal life.
This doesn't mean that we are in a state of willful denial of the ultimate ends of the animals that we raise. Many of us see us as playing a part of tending a circle of care: we care for the animals, the animals feed us, and so on. Detractors try to unpack this rhetorically and syllogistically, but it's difficult to verbally unravel what for us is a felt relationship. And while there are many ranchers whose experience of stewardship and care may be rooted in notions of dominion, I contend that for many others the orientation is more one of caretending.
Many of us identify with our animals, even those of us who own or manage large herds, and even when we are not associating with a single individual. A level of empathy is cultivated within us that means in times of drought, heat, cold, and stress, we feel with and experience pain if we anticipate that our animals are suffering.
This is part of why the issue around wolves and other predators can be so contentious, with one side arguing with fact-based rhetoric about trophic cycles and species thresholds, and while the other may be revisiting finding a calf eaten whose mother literally worried herself to death in the process. The very empathy that allows us to be attuned managers and develop almost psychic anticipation of an animals' needs, or to have a feeling of land, can make conversations that refuse to allow the role of deeply human feelings insufficient to understand what’s going on.
We find ourselves talking or shouting past one another, and the gulf widens. The rancher wonders, how can they not see how much I care for my animals? I literally suffer for and with them. Many of you may have experienced coming in long after dark after fixing a water problem, or washing our own and another being's blood off ourselves, only to check something on social media where a vegan is accusing ranchers of animal abuse. The disparity can feel maddening. How can they not see?
But here is what I think those of us in in animal agriculture are missing: when people ignore the ways we care for our animals, yet balk at the things we do that strike them as abusive (hot iron branding, separating calves from their mothers, and so on), what they often have in mind is that the animals should not be in that position to begin with. They don't give us credit for our medical interventions, for risking our own lives to put out wildfires or rescue animals from the cold, because in their minds animal agriculture is unnecessary, and thus puts domestic livestock in the position of having to be saved by us.
They wonder, what about the ones we don't save? When we think of those animals we feel grief and often shame first. Most of us don't think of the financial implications right away--we lament the experience of the being. When detractors of animal agriculture think of those animals, they think the real shame is that the animal was in a position of dependence to begin with.
Do I agree with them? Not entirely, no. If I did, I wouldn't be involved in animal agriculture--or I'd be walking around so wracked with cognitive dissonance that I couldn't get a whole lot done. For me, animal agriculture plays an important (but not singular) role in our food system and our ecosystems. It is one way humans can participate with the inherent violence and death that is integral to biological systems and circles, and do so with accountability. Violence does not have to equal abuse.
But I can easily see where they are coming from. And until the rest of us can see that, too, we are bound to keep having the same fights, talking past one another all the while.
2. “Don't give the industry a bad name.”
Every once in a while, footage emerges of a worker in a dairy abusing cows or calves. These videos are repugnant, and are upsetting to producers and detractors alike. They bring shame upon their respective industries, and unsurprisingly, are circulated widely by animal rights activists who offer the footage as an example of what they imagine regularly goes on behind closed gates.
Those of us in agriculture respond in different ways. Some say to call out the videos as the exceptions to the rule—to put distance between the majority of the people who care for their animals and the bad apples who don’t. Others insist we ignore them so they disappear more quickly from headlines and social media algorithms.
Regardless, what sometimes emerges in the wake of these scandals is a bit of buttoning-up; we can adopt a rhetorical posture of defense. This defensiveness is thoroughly understandable, and in some cases it may even be justified. A critical gaze has been growing that views animal agriculture and its associated activities like 4-H and rodeo with extreme suspicion that sometimes yields positive and necessary changes for the benefit of animals, and other times results in overly restrictive legislation. The response to this amongst ag communities has often been to withdraw from the public eye altogether, or to double down on public-facing “education.”
"Agtivism," as it's sometimes called, seeks to inform the public by busting myths about agriculture while showcasing all that we get right. But while a neutral general public of eaters may be swayed, those who already detest animal agriculture will not be. And if there is any mistake in our rhetoric, so confidently put forth to the public, particularly keen audiences will sniff out any BS we try to circulate. Any glossing-over, misrepresentation, or eliding of the truth will be glaringly obvious to those already viewing us with suspicion and further discredit us.
The result is that by seeking to win hearts and minds the wrong way, we lose trust. And those we lose often hold more sway than those we gain. It’s true that producers couldn’t make a living without people willing to eat our products, but one more turned-off and alienated professor, activist, or policy-maker can hold a disproportionate amount of sway.
I've found that rather than broadcast everything going right in animal agriculture, people seem very attracted to my sharing from my specific circumstances and honestly representing the problems and possibilities I encounter. This won't be true of every audience, but for the people who pay attention to our work and what I have to say, the more nuance and specificity I share the better.
What really seems to matter to them is when I explain the tradeoffs of things that seem simple at face value, share things I see on the land that don’t necessarily support or deny a particular agenda, or even share the things I don’t like. Elk damage of a riparian area is interesting to people because it challenges the idea that all wildlife live in harmony with the rest of nature. Acknowledgement that branding cattle causes pain to them (even if I don't mention measures we take to mitigate pain) demonstrates that I am not in denial of the basic facts of biology, and can be trusted with other matters as well. When we more accurately share where we are, we can be trusted that we know where we’d like to go.
Many people believe that ranchers are so desensitized to the more brutal aspects of our work that we don't actively think about them. How can we underscore the value of stockmanship without first acknowledging that domestic livestock can experience stress? How can we showcase progress without implying that there is something we would like to move away from?
If all I hear from someone is everything they are doing right, I simply do not trust them. Would you? So why do we think a bit of honesty will lose the room? In my experience it's had, sometimes quite dramatically, the opposite effect.
3. “People in polluted, concrete jungles tell me I'm bad for the environment, yet I look out upon nature all day long.”
This, or something like this, is a common refrain often expressed in cynical memes or snide comments towards city-slickers. And I get this; after all, most ranches are de facto habitat for many species. Many people would be surprised to realize how rapidly the populations of certain grassland-dwelling birds are disappearing, all because of habitat loss due to land conversion from intact habitat to commercial and housing development and tillage-based agriculture.
As ranchers, we are surrounded by nature every day, especially those of us raising livestock on rangeland, with relatively little supplemental feed. Anecdotally, I have seen more diverse and abundant wildlife species on some so-called working ranches than in nearby national parks or preserves. And I've also worked on conservation-focused landbases who utilize livestock as a critical component of their wildlands management and stewardship, and have successfully for years, despite the fact that educated people are engaged in endless debates on Twitter about whether or not cattle can have any place in nature.
Given that most ranchers prefer solitude with plants and animals over social time with people, it's no surprise that so many of us love nature and are affronted when people assume otherwise, or when people accuse us of being bad for the planet because we raise ruminants.
But what I think those of us in animal agriculture often miss is a very specific criticism that generally doesn't come from the public at large but a small subset of animal ag critics--biologists and ecologists, whose education and training orients them not only to the big picture but also to wonder about very specific species that they may consider missing from a landscape.
As ranchers, we may look at a recovering riparian area, see green plants of various sizes and functional groups, and think we're doing a great job. A wetland ecologist, meanwhile, might notice several species considered to be invasive, and also notice the absence of flora and fauna that they would have hoped to see. They may attribute this absence to the presence of livestock.
In reality, the land manager and the ecologist can learn a tremendous deal from one another. Conversations spent with cow skeptics with a heavy horticultural bent, or bird researchers with a mental catalogue of what birds can be found where, have made me a profoundly better manager of livestock and land alike.
Sadly, many ranchers don't have relationships with researchers who specialize in their habitat, and many scientists are relegated to studying public land and thus see what is often the worst of livestock management. In practice, these kinds of relationships rarely get off (or on!) the ground.
This is a solvable problem, but not an arbitrary one. There are reasons why things are why they are, and uncovering those reasons is an essential first step to solving them.
On the rancher's side, having researchers out can be a liability in theory (fire hazards, gates left open, damaged roads, regulatory concern) and a financial burden in practice (liability insurance rates may be raised due to third parties accessing the landscape). I can't speak to the researcher's side too well--I hope some commenters may chime in--but ranchers can be difficult to get in touch with, and have stipulations not present on public land or research trusts. Field work is already very logistically complicated; weather, grant funding and timelines, student availability, equipment rental all must be coordinated. Attempts at longitudinal research make this all the more complicated. It's no wonder that there is a gulf between what producers think we see on our land and what makes it into the literature.
As I said, this is a solvable problem. Apps like iNaturalist allow ranchers to identify species on their land, which enters the public record. Groups like the Society for Range Management are taking active measures to mend the divide between researchers and ranchers. And a company I just started working with, Pivotal, has created game changing technology to monitor biodiversity on landscapes and track real change (not based on speculation) for a fraction of the conventional cost.
This latter piece is important: hiring a team of qualified researchers to monitor landscapes is extremely expensive. As a result, most of the globe just goes unwitnessed, so far as baseline biodiversity and any changes are concerned. As Pivotal's technology becomes ubiquitous, claims of ranchers and criticisms of animal ag detractors alike can actually be groundtruthed. Ranchers will be able to see real changes on their land attributable to their management, have their anecdotal claims catalogued and affirmed, and get a far clearer picture of what’s going on and how they can improve, and—soon—be compensated for their success as land stewards.
Everything good and durable that I have seen come to working lands in my sixteen years working in agriculture has something in common: it came from open dialogue that explored the real concerns held by producers and the broader public, with trust, good faith, and a practical problem-solving attitude. As agricultural producers, as ranchers, we have to be leaders in this and break the cycle of combative, dysfunctional relationships—even when our gripes are justly held. We have everything to gain.