All Land is not Created Equal

Back when I was in elementary school in Hastings, Nebraska, my class took a field trip to the local library. We watched a presentation given by a man wearing a snake oil salesman's ensemble from the late 1800s. He wasn't selling patent remedies though, he was selling a false dream. The railroads needed settlers to move west along the rail lines, and they would post newspaper ads that told a tale that was too good to be true.

Rain follows the plow.

The idea was that if settlers would move west, establish homesteads and plant crops, their land would be watered due to some mystical effect that somehow was created by disturbing the ground and thus turning it into a giant sponge. Nope. Doesn't work that way. What actually happened is that a lot of people went broke. Tribes of people who already lived on that land were massacred or relocated (and did some massacring of their own). And then came droughts and the Dust Bowl. Westward Expansion is not a fairytale with a magical ending.

Dormant prairie in western South Dakota

Today, it seems, we have the same bill of goods being sold by a different group of folks with a different goal. If those darned livestock farmers would just quit polluting the environment and destroying the land with their big old smelly animals, and plant trees and crops instead, the environment would flourish and there will be plenty of vegetables for all.

Here's the thing: Some soil is clay, some is black, some is nothing but sand, and some is so full of mineral salts that it doesn't grow much. Some parts of the US get less than 12 inches of rain per year, and some get over 50. Some areas have lots of rivers, creeks, lakes and ponds, and some have little to no surface water. Some places, you can drill a water well and hit good clean water near the surface, and other places, you must dig a couple hundred feet and maybe hit water, maybe not, and who knows if it's good water or not. Some areas are below sea level, and others are more than a mile above sea level.

If you've read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, you might remember that in addition to his homestead claim, Almanzo Wilder had also filed on a tree claim. In order to eventually own that land outright, he'd have to plant trees on it and keep them alive. If you've ever driven along I90 in South Dakota, you might have noticed that outside the Black Hills, there isn't a whole lot of land with trees on it. Large swaths of Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and Oklahoma are much the same. If the land could support a forest, then barring the actions of man, there would already have been a forest there 150 years ago. There would have been no need to plant one.

My poor mother-in-law tried to establish trees on the family ranch in western South Dakota. By the end of 2 years, every single tree had died, despite her diligent watering. Actually, they probably died because of her diligent watering. Shortly after my husband and I got married, I had the well water tested to determine whether it would be better to use that or surface water to help establish a shelter belt around our new house. The results came back that we should definitely not be using that well's water for animals, due to the high level of sulfates. Needless to say, we installed a water filter in our kitchen immediately.

I've driven along gravel roads out there on a moonlight summer night and seen what looked like a dusting of snow on bare ground. It's actually mineral salts that rise to the surface as the ground dries from the spring thaw.

Calves on pasture in the Ozarks

What is that land capable of? Funny you should ask. It takes that marginal soil, sparse rainfall and sunshine, and turns it into nutrient-dense forage. Ruminants do a fantastic job of turning that forage that humans cannot digest, and turning it into nutrient-dense food that humans can eat. And, they do so without a whole lot of inputs beyond fresh water, grass a little salt and mineral supplement and sunshine.

No, I'm not trying to convert any vegetarians into carnivores. Everyone has the right to determine what they will and won't eat. But nobody has the right to try to force their beliefs on others, and most especially not by lying.