>I think you are getting caught in the illusion of efficiency of the
>domestication , It is true only when you looked thru a narrow lens ( short
>term economic values) , when you looked at even a slighly bigger picture
you
>can see that the real cost of our agriculture or animal husbandry make it
>rather ineficient and if you really looks deeper it becomes obvious that a
>more rich ecosystem (varieties of species) is more productive in a
>sustainable way.
>We replace  the rich ecosystem of the prairies with all its fauna and flora
>( varied available food sources) by cattle and sage , agremented with grain
>fields (to make them economically
>worth it by fattening them. )


I'm sorry, Jean-claude, but you, too, have become a victim of my absent
minded omission of the fact that I was refering ONLY TO RANGE-FED domestic
animals.  I corrected this in a later posting, but you must have missed it.
I am very much against feedlot ranching, and generally avoid meat from such.

What I'm thinking of is restoring once native grasslands and raising cattle
on them in harmony with nature.  The North American plains once sustained
increadible quantities of bison (I think I remember reading or hearing that
there were more bison in america at one point than there are cattle now, but
can't think of a reference).  Yes, that ecosystem contained many species,
but I believe that the bison were vastly dominant in the landscape, and
represented the only obvious food source (compared to rodents, birds,
reptiles, wolves).  My fantasy is to see these great plain environments
re-established and loaded with cattle to fill the niche that the bison once
did.  Why not re-introduce bison?  Because I'm thinking in 'feeding the
world' terms here; sure, the ideal would be to somehow re-establish the
native species and learn how to manage them as a food source, but practical
issues might come into play, makeing the end result more difficult to
obtain.  Since bison are basically wild animals, and cannot be transported
live, and are generally more difficult to catch and manage (although I
remember hearing that they are gentler on the land), it seems that cattle
are the most efficient food source.

Has anyone seen the "Wilds of Europe" programs on PBS?  One episode featured
the high mountain region of northern spain, and spoke about how it has one
of the oldest human populations in europe.  The people today are essentially
primitive dairy farmers.  At any rate, there were lots of shots and some
discussion on how the cattle and the animals of the high-mountain meadows
live in relative harmony.  There were some great shots of several species of
wild ruminants (like deer and mtn. goats... I forget the names) and birds
coexisting peacfully within a few feet of each other.  And this was in a
region where huge ruminants like cattle and bison are not native, or at
least couldn't have been as dominant as great plains regions elswhere.
Imagine how well the great plains ecosystems, if re-established, could fare
alongside cattle (or bison, of coure, given there's a way to manage them).
Does anyone know anything about the Argentinian Pampas, like how adept the
vaqueros are at maintaining their plains ecosystem?

B. Lischer