fetch me a hamburger, caddy!

August 9, 2005 8:37 AM

Which is more wasteful of environmental resources per acre: golf courses or land set aside for feeding cattle?

A friend complained to me that golf courses waste water, etc... I claimed that eating meat is worse. Who is correct?

posted by about_time to science & nature (30 comments total)

I would think that a lot more work (and water and chemicals) to into maintaining a golf course than into an acre of grazing land. You don't obsessively mow or groom grass that cattle are going to eat, you don't generally water it, I'm guessing the cows do much of their own fertilizing.

Also, eating meat serves a more necessary purpose (yes, that could be served by other means, and possibly better means). Golf on the other hand doesn't serve as essential a need.
posted by duck at 8:47 AM on August 9, 2005

Well, it could be argued a couple ways:

Meat isn't necessary to survive. I know a lot of people who are quite healthy and so on, who don't eat meat. Therefore, it's something you -want- to eat, just like you -want- to golf. If you're golfing to get out and exercise, well, you could just go for a walk.

Neither of these things are vital. They are nice things to have. The real question of 'value' would have to be posed in a more specific way, value being hard to determine in a general way. For example, "which would employ more people", and so on.

If you don't golf, the golf couse is completely wasteful in your mind. If you don't eat meat, the grazing area is wasteful and probably somewhat barbaric.
posted by zerolives at 8:51 AM on August 9, 2005

It's the rare steer that gets to graze the land anymore. Life, at least the fattening up part, is spent in a steer sized pen on a feedlot.
posted by caddis at 8:54 AM on August 9, 2005

My understanding is that comparatively little land is actually used to sustain cattle these days (at least in the US). Most cattle eat feed processed from corn - which still uses land, but much less than would be necessary to sustain equal numbers of cattle with grass.

Zerolives is right on with the concept of value. Sure, you don't need meat to live, but my grandmother will never believe that. You also don't need your car and your ipod, but lots of people prefer to have them and willingly consume the resources necessary to do so.
posted by jmgorman at 8:55 AM on August 9, 2005

I'm with duck. A positive number, no matter how infinitisimal, is greater than zero. Golf courses produce nothing but entertainment (which might be arguably important to the average mental well-being of the human race). Cattle grazing land produces meat, an actual food that provides actual sustenance to actual people. That cattle-raising isn't the most efficient uses of that land is almost certain, but it does have direct output.

But zerolives hints at an important question: What input and what output are we using for this comparison? If you consider number-of-individuals-affected as our output benchmark, then golf courses might be a more efficient use of space on a per-acre basis.
posted by Plutor at 8:56 AM on August 9, 2005

You have to consider that the purpose of golf is to make business deals, many of which further damage the environment.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:08 AM on August 9, 2005

It depends on how you raise the meat. Factory farms have thousands of animals in a small space, producing tonnes of waste and consuming huge amounts of water and feed. Considering that it's possible for one factory farm to produce more sewage than the town I grew up in (which of course corresponds to the resources they consumed), I'd say that without a doubt, factory farms are more wasteful (and harmful) than golf courses.

But if you look at organic, free-range pasture-fed cattle (or hog, chicken, whatever) farms, the equation is quite different. Animals can be pastured in land that it not good for farming, land that is in fallow, land that is being used for multiple uses. The fact that they are free-range limits the number of animals significantly, reducing the strain on water systems. Furthermore, if they are all or mostly pasture-fed, you can eliminate the resource use (in terms of water and fossil fuels) used to grow and transport the animal feed.

Compare that to golf courses that water their lawns regularly and pollute the water table with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. The amount of water it takes to keep grass green (at least where I live) is huge. According to the USGA, however, golf courses are at least attempting to address their water usage.
posted by carmen at 9:11 AM on August 9, 2005

Plutor, I'm not sure what you are saying exactly. Surely the number of people who ever eat meat from an acre of feed lot or corn field is higher than all but the very most crowded golf courses, and probably higher even then.

As for the meat being unnecessary thing. It should be relatively easy to determine exactly how much more goes into raising a cow than the equivalent food value from other means. Where 100% of the golf course is optional, only a certain discounted percentage of the space 'wasted' on cows is optional.

Exactly what the 'other means' of producing food consists of needs to be considered carefully. No doubt veggies do lots of resource intensive things in order to make their anemic diet palatable :)
posted by Chuckles at 9:23 AM on August 9, 2005

weapons-grade pandemonium has the correct answer :)
posted by Chuckles at 9:24 AM on August 9, 2005

Carmen: But the same number of cows will make the same amount of sewage, or near enough, regardless of how spread out they are. Just because factory farms put it all in one place doesn't make them inherently more wasteful or dirty.

Plutor: I'm not following your second paragraph. Surely you agree that golf courses affect fewer people and are thus less efficient per acre.

I'm not sure this can be answered without extensive research and a much more precise statement of the question. What does more wasteful mean? Do you mean the total impact of all golf courses compared to all meat-producing farms? Should it be corrected for usage, since so many more people eat mean than golf? What about land value, as golf courses are much more likely to be in populated areas? Do you calculate "waste" compared to other uses of the resources that could create the same or a similar result, such as crops of soy instead of cows and parks instead of golf courses?

I'd guess (and this is just a guess) that the total environmental impact of the meat industry is greater than the golf industry, but that the per-user impact is less.
posted by Nothing at 9:26 AM on August 9, 2005

"Domestic livestock gazing has been the greatest environmental calamity ever to befall the Western United States."
posted by gwint at 9:29 AM on August 9, 2005

Correction: Yes, they are more dirty, clearly, but they do not necessarily produce more waste per cow is what I was trying to say.
posted by Nothing at 9:29 AM on August 9, 2005

"In the Southwest, livestock grazing is the most widespread cause of species endangerment, affecting many federally listed threatened or endangered species."
posted by gwint at 9:33 AM on August 9, 2005

Meat isn't necessary to survive. I know a lot of people who are quite healthy and so on, who don't eat meat. Therefore, it's something you -want- to eat, just like you -want- to golf. If you're golfing to get out and exercise, well, you could just go for a walk. Neither of these things are vital.

Whoa... hold on there tiger! I know a lot of people who don't have love in their lives, or who don't plan to have children.. so, what, love isn't necessary to survive?

It is a rather large unknown what effect not eating meat might have on the human race considering much of its mental development has rested on the intake of meat until this point.
posted by wackybrit at 9:48 AM on August 9, 2005

The issue still remains that a golf course is watered and groomed excessively where as a pasture may be bush hogged once in a blue moon. Tons of fertilizer and water go into maintaining a golf course while no fertilizer and little water is needed for cows except in the most arid climates (where golf courses need even more). Beef and milk are actual useful commodities, where as holes in one and good handicaps are not. You cannot stem starvation with a good score, however a wheel of cheese or a side of beef can go much farther towards that end.

No, by the way, cows are not raised for the most part in feed lots. They may meet the end of their days there, however their lives are spent in pastures grazing. The feed lot is usually the last stop, a few weeks before slaughter, where they are pumped with high calorie grain and hormones to fill them out to gargantuan proportions.
posted by Pollomacho at 9:57 AM on August 9, 2005

We just need to switch from cattle to bison.

I read that when the bison got wiped out it wrecked the ecosystem, which depended on their grazing, (different from cattle's) and their hooves and manure to plant the seeds, etc.
posted by small_ruminant at 10:15 AM on August 9, 2005

so, what, love isn't necessary to survive?

Well, duh, of course it's not. There's survival, and then there is living.
posted by kindall at 10:32 AM on August 9, 2005

where they are pumped with high calorie grain and hormones to fill them out to gargantuan proportions.

Exactly. And how were those high calorie grains grown? More likely than not with tons of fertilizer and water using GM seed. On a lot more land than a golf course, I'd imagine.
posted by gwint at 10:34 AM on August 9, 2005

so, what, love isn't necessary to survive?

Well, duh, of course it's not. There's survival, and then there is living.

I disagree. The "Rule of Threes" is a generally accepted rough guide to how long one can survive without certain elements. One copy I just found via Google is here. Love (in the form of traditional love, or in hope or faith) is certainly required for survival, let alone living, although it does come below such things as food and water!
posted by wackybrit at 10:42 AM on August 9, 2005

Another good excuse to bring on the artificial meat!
posted by p3t3 at 11:14 AM on August 9, 2005

I live in cow country--surrounded by dairy farms. Farmers move their cattle between pastures, so at any give time, there is wild acrage providing a habitat for wildlife. Foxes, raccoons, deer, toads, possums, etc. are all routine sights here.

If someone were to come in and buy out the farm next door and turn it into a golf course, all that would be gone. And the chemical fertilizers and weed killers would undoubtedly seep into the well water.

Based purely on observation, I'm going to have to call the golf course the greater evil.
posted by jrossi4r at 11:21 AM on August 9, 2005

Exactly. And how were those high calorie grains grown? More likely than not with tons of fertilizer and water using GM seed. On a lot more land than a golf course, I'd imagine.
posted by gwint at 10:34 AM PST on August 9 [!]

The question asks which is more harmful per acre. With that in mind, I'd say that golf courses "win" hands down.
posted by sic at 11:40 AM on August 9, 2005

(note: I'm a lot more familiar with pig farming than cow farming)

Nothing: You can't put 10 000 pigs on a small "traditional" farm. You can, however, put 10 000 pigs in an industrial enclosure on a small plot. Imagine driving down a rural road. If the farmers in that area have all converted to industrial pig farming, then each driveway you see represents not less than 10 000 pigs (making equal to the waste of a 40 000 person city). Just a rough mental calculation, I can imagine driving by about 3-4 industrial pig farms in about the same time as driving by a golf course. So my guestimate is at least 30 000 pigs in the space of one golf course, making about the equivalent (untreated) waste of 120 000 people. I submit that you could not pasture 30 000 pigs on a golf course.

Gwint, you're points are well taken, but really mostly applicable to large scale cattle ranching in arid land. Let me reframe my points about the value of paturing animals by noting that I am referring to small-scale farming in non-arid (can't think of the right word) land. Around where I live, 7 cows in a fallow pasture do not reak havoc, and the stuff I've seen on organic cattle production in Canada's West was from the mountains.
posted by carmen at 11:43 AM on August 9, 2005

The "Rule of Threes" is a generally accepted rough guide to how long one can survive without certain elements.

Yeah, it's so generally-accepted that I'd never heard of it. If you can't go three months without love, how do all those cranky bastards survive to the age of eighty?
posted by kindall at 12:29 PM on August 9, 2005

Exactly. And how were those high calorie grains grown? More likely than not with tons of fertilizer and water using GM seed. On a lot more land than a golf course, I'd imagine.

With GM seed you are getting far more bushels per acre than the golf course. If you have organic beef, "grass-fed" beef or a dairy farm there is no feed lot. Yet, there is no organic or free range golf course.

Carmen, the alternative to pig pens is wild hogs. Wild pigs presently have decimated much of the land as a terrible invasive species.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:58 PM on August 9, 2005

Pollomacho, industrial hog enclosures are not pig-pens.

If you don't find the first website I linked to helpful for understanding this, here is a reasonably good, brief intro to factory hog farming (complete with a picture):

In 2000, hog producers marketing fewer than 1000 hogs per year—68.2% of hog producers—marketed only 1.8% of all hogs produced, while hog producers marketing more than 50,000 head per year—two-tenths of one percent (.002) of hog producers—marketed 51.3% of hogs produced. I don't see how farms that constitute less than 1/2% of the producers but manage to produce over 50% of the product could possibly use less resources per acre than a golf course. I made a specific point, that factory farming uses more resources than golf courses, but if you look at "sustainable" farming practices it may well be less. I stand by that.
posted by carmen at 2:48 PM on August 9, 2005

Pollomacho, check out this NYT article (or at least a good mefi thread about the article): Cows are not raised on pasture land. Not anymore they ain't at least.
posted by zpousman at 3:17 PM on August 9, 2005

The question asks which is more harmful per acre. With that in mind, I'd say that golf courses "win" hands down.

If you actually account for the amount of damage cattle does to land, and how much petroleum-based fertilizer goes into growing the corn that feeds the cows, I'd say cattle "win" hands down.

The simple truth is that the way most cattle are raised in this country does immensely more harm to the environment than keeping your average golf course green.
posted by gwint at 4:29 PM on August 9, 2005

The simple truth is that the way most cattle are raised in this country does immensely more harm to the environment than keeping your average golf course green.

Yes but as you're no doubt aware (since it was spelled out above), the outputs of cattle raising are far more substantial. Tonnes of meat rather than hours of recreation.

A full comparative life cycle analysis of golf courses versus current methods of meat eating and production could never be done. As currently practised, both cause substantial damage to the environment and are ultimately unsustainable (and must inevitably change). There is sustainable meat eating. I'm not so sure there's sustainable golf.
posted by wilful at 5:34 PM on August 9, 2005

wilful, it is certainly possible to imagine sustainable golf... [much attempt at explanation deleted] As usual wikipedia has the answer - Golf: Environmental Impact.
posted by Chuckles at 5:50 PM on August 9, 2005