Extensive Livestock Ranching

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Extensive Livestock Ranching
By 6A Chan Chui Ying Judy Lee
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Basic Information

• Commercial grazing of livestock over an extensive
  area
• Adapted to semi-arid and arid land
• Practiced in developed countries where vegetation
  is too sparse and the soil is too poor to support
  crop
• Large ranches may be owned by meat processing
  plants rather than individuals
• Commercial ranching is conducted in other
  relatively developed regions of the world. Sheep
  are commercially ranched in Australia, New
  Zealand and South Africa.
• Ranching becomes a part of the meat processing
  industry rather than an economic activity carried
  out on an isolated farm.

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Case Study Australia
Australia is the world's driest inhabited
continent. Scientists say some parts are getting
drier because of climate change, and many farmers
and ranchers are struggling because of the lack
of rain. But for a lucky few, climate change has
brought more rain.
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• In northern Australia, production is based mainly
  on native pastures on large properties
• In the southern states, smaller properties with
  a high degree of pasture improvement predominate.
  
• Extensive grazing by sheep and cattle occupies
  approximately 60 per cent of the rangelands,
  which in turn represent about 80 per cent of
  Australias land area.
• Cattle are frequently transported within and
  between regions in response to seasonal
  conditions and for breeder replacement, growing
  out or finishing, live export and slaughter
• Beef specialist farms are farms that make most of
  their income from the sale of beef cattle.

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US cattle ranching in inner Mongolia
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background

• Food demand increases as China becomes
  increasingly prosperous.
• One of the habits that the Chinese have picked
  up is an appetite for beef
• the rise of McDonald's in China in the 1990s
  popularized the all-beef patty
• today, upscale restaurants and hotels commonly
  put steak on the menu.
• Consumption has risen 31 in the past five years
  
• ?big (potential existing) market for beef
• there was a better living to be made selling milk
  than grain
• ? more people are willing to keep cows
• Old practice
• private company doesn't breed cows it buys
  them, fattens them up on a feedlot and then
  trucks them off to the slaughterhouse

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Hohhot, the cow town

• more than a million cows in total
• Two of China's biggest dairies, Mengniu and Yili,
  have headquarters in the area
• buy milk from thousands of farmers who raise
  dairy cows in their front yards.
• plastered with garish advertisements for yogurt
  and ice cream
• nearby farming villages have developed
  affiliations with dairy which buys their milk.
• In the past seven years, the city has almost
  doubled in both population and physical size, a
  trend that's in keeping with Inner Mongolia's
  recent double-digit growth rates.

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Western Cattle Company

• In early 2007, Western Cattle started to raise
  cattle on an American-style ranch and feedlot
  (???) built in the wide open spaces of Inner
  Mongolia.
• Their goal deliver truckloads of well-marbled
  beef to the waiting plates of urban China's
  growing middle class.
• target herd 75,000
• U.S.-based Western Cattle has the potential to be
  the leading company in the third-largest
  beef-producing nation in the world.
• first feedlot outside Hohhot, Inner Mongolia's
  capital
• ? local government's aggressive pro-investment
  policies
• officials helped the company find land and
  provided introductions to potential business
  partners

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How are the produces treated?

• Milk
• hamburger meat to McDonald's in China
• the half million male calves born every year are
  mostly sold to blood-serum (??) companies that
  render the animals' plasma (??) into products
  such as cosmetics

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Advantages brought by big agriculture

• Economical
• kick start the consolidation of China's
  disorganized beef-production
  
• chain ?bring high-volume efficiency
  (economies of scale)
• offer farmers more money for milk than they
  earn for crops
• ? help breathe life into Inner Mongolia's
  struggling economy.
• company provide farmers with an additional
  source of income
• farmers provide the company with
  inexpensive labor
• farmers are offered a good bargain
• the company earns revenue
• ? the deals are win-win
• Environmental
• advanced technology and management ? less harm
  to land
• utilise marginal land

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Problems

• Social Economical
• smaller farmers are put at a disadvantage
• ?US firms enjoy economies of scale
• lower production costs ?sell produce at lower
  price
• ? farmers could be squeezed out
• Farmers are at the mercy of middlemen like the
  dairies, which have some control over pricing
• Biological environmental
• Disease outbreaks in concentrated animal
  populations can be devastating
• Grow massive amount of corn to feed herds ?
  fertilizer and pesticide runoff in water supplies
  
• trucking feed and meat around the country ?
  high carbon emissions
• air pollution by the smell of feedlots
• water pollution
• there is no infrastructure for environmental
  treatment in many rural areas like in US
• ? big companies and governments will need to
  invest in the communities
• e.g. funding for programs that help displaced
  farmers find new lines of work
• political
• growing political-economic influence of big
  operators

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The End