Robin, thank you very much for this terrific post and link. I hope many people on this site take the time to check this highly valuable resource out. The writing on this blog and the insights offered are profound. 

Yesterday, my wife and I drove north to the Eagle Mountain Casino for a little recreation. Nestled just southeast of Porterville in the foothills, with access off of Highway 190 along a 13 mile winding stretch of narrow two-lane roadway is where the casino sits. Healthy cattle, goats, sheep and horses graze on grasses found on either side of the little roadway to the resort area. Modest homes make up most of the dwellings on this reservation property. Granite juts from the earth among steep fissures and ravines with scrub oaks and grass that creep up the hills. To see how beatiful this land looked, and the various inhabitants on it was worth the whole trip.

The drive from Bako to Porterville through 99 and 190 was an illustration of what Dan O'Brien talks about on his blog. The dairy and cattle feedlots filled with the waste of every cow penned inside with their food covered under soaked tarps and tires makes you want to cry. The dogs sitiing or bolting along the roadways, loose and struggling for survival in view adjacent to the rundown houses and building structures of old processing plants show how broken our economy and our business models are. 

It was very encouraging to see that a few people were doing themselves and nature right at the reservation in tending to the land. It was very discouraging to see the horrible situatiion of land and livestock strech so broadly across this great Central Valley in the name of profit before all else. If we are what we eat most of us are corn stalks of detritus these days. 

Thanks again for the exceptional post, and here is a toast to working to end factory farming and ranching in our lifetime!

WOW Robin this post and the link is awesome! I saved the buffalo web site to my favorites. In 1950-51, I lived on a farm in Danville Ill. One of the happiest times of my life. I had a cornfield for a back yard and through that cornfield about 1/4 mile as the crow flies, were my friends - I was 6. We rode bikes up and down the dirt road, had a hand pump in the yard and in the kitchen. We were rich - or so we thought! Nov 1951 we moved to Calif and by 1952 Bakersfield. We could actually see the mountains everyday all around Bakersfield and only saw smog when we went up over the grapevine and into L.A. We felt so sorry for those people having to live in that 'air garbage'. Our San Joaquin Valley was always so beautiful. Jump forward a few years and Bakersfield is now L.A. north.

I still prefer living in the mountains but I'm afraid even that will be gone all too soon. Progress is good but people need to know when to put the brakes on and say "no more building". We have so overbuilt Bakersfield and Calif that now the state is going to turn off the water for the farmers.................now what?

WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING???

Cattle aren't generally raised in feedlots.  Ours roamed the mountains above the Indian Hill Ranch Campground and only went to feedlots to await butchering.  There has to be a central point to bring cattle together for processing.  I don't know how you'd avoid the mud and the manure.

Even here in CA, range cattle have to be fed hay during bad weather and years with little rain to help the grass and filaree grow.  They are stilll moved from valleys in the summer to higher ground and back again in the winter.

If you drive along the Massive Tejon Ranch bounderies, along with other semi large ranches, you'll see the cattle roaming free.  I can't speak for the plains areas, I've only been through them a couple of times, but feed lots have always been with us if you'll recall the massive ones in Kansas at the railhead.

Is there a solution to this?  What would you folks like to see done?  (honest question)

Thanks so much for the great post and link Robin ....

Watching those California Cheese ads one would think it's all green rolling land and meandering cows~ the reality is far from that.

My families ranches are just memory now,agri-"business" has taken many others as well.Here is to keeping the few family farms left prosperous.

My grandpa's cattle roamed the coastal mountain ranges, but once they were sold, many of them (particularly the calves) ended up at feedlots instead of slaughter houses. There's a lot of cattle grazing on the coastal range (just look around you when driving 46 to Paso), but there's even more in the feedlots along 99. Don't assume because you see some cattle grazing on the hills that all the cattle go to slaughter straight from the ranch. You'd be suprised how many detour into the feedlots first.

And unlike Nancy, I don't think the feedlots are a necessary step along the path to the dinner table. Feedlots do not exist to "consolidate" the cattle into one location. They exist to bulk the cattle up quickly so there's more meat in less time than the "free range" method. Nothing more, nothing less. Feedlots are to maximize the throughput and production of beef. Throughput is maximized because it takes less time to bulk up a cow to slaughter size at the feedlot than it does if it was allowed to graze naturally. Production is maximized because often the cattle end up larger when bulked up at the feedlots. It's about profit basically.

There are vendors which do allow cattle to graze naturally right up to slaughter. Their beef is often more expensive because this method takes more time per cattle. A free range ranch cannot slaughter as many cattle each year as a feedlot ranch could. So the beef costs more to make up for the lower production rate. And a lower production rate is going to happen with free range cattle. It follows from simple math and logistics. If you have to wait a couple years for the cattle to be large enough to slaughter, then you'll be selling fewer cattle each year than if you sold the calves off each year to a feedlot, because you need space on the ranch not only for this year's calves, but also the year-old cattle that are still grazing up to slaughter size.

People are too focused on price right now to focus on how the beef on their table gets there. You could tell them "we'll outlaw feedlots and have healthier cattle that don't impact the environment as badly, but the price of beef will go up, perhaps drastically" and most people would cry foul because the price of beef is going up. Those who care about the environment and health of the cattle are already seeking out the "free range" beef vendors that currently exist. Maybe if "free range" takes on the same buzz that "organic" has, more ranchers will switch to that method due to demand, but my cynical side doubts that.