Texas Is All Hot, No Cattle

Once again the inconvenient specter of climate change rears its ugly head deep in the heart of you-know-where as year number two of the Lone Star State's worst drought in a century is forcing cattle ranchers to drive their herds out of the state to find pasture in numbers that are redefining the country's entire cattle industry. 

While some Texas ranchers hang on, selling off their stock at an unprecedented pace that has reduced America's cattle herd to the smallest in 60 years, many are carving new homesteads out of some of the richest grassland in North America, a bid for survival that falls somewhere between surrender and hope.

In cattle-car convoys that wind along routes cowboys used in the 1800s, this migration is also a stark illustration of the myriad threats facing the world's future food supply: intense competition for land; increasing demands on limited water resources; and the growing threat of volatile weather.

The size and speed of the shrinkage in the U.S. cattle herd has left the industry reeling. As the national cattle and calf inventory fell 2 percent from a year ago to its smallest since 1952, the herd in Texas dropped 11 percent or 1.4 million head, the biggest decline in nearly 150 years of recorded data.

But Nebraska's herd increased 4 percent or 250,000 head in the year to January 1, the most of any state, placing it ahead of Kansas as the country's second-largest cattle producer, according to the Department of Agriculture's bi-annual survey released on Friday.

Today, 7.1 percent of the country's cattle is in Nebraska - the state's largest share of the national herd since the federal government began collecting data in 1867. At 13 percent, Texas now has the smallest share since 1986.

And as climate change continues to play havoc with water systems, grassland expanses and just-in-time delivery to the supermarket shelf, this is only going to get more convoluted, more dangerous, and more expensive for Americans to consume.  Big Ag has already hyper-automated the meat process in this country to ludicrous levels.  With Mother Nature deciding not to play ball, all those plans are starting to come apart.  What's going on in Texas is going to be repeated in places across the world as more extreme weather events and climate patterns change the entire planet.

Earth of course will survive.  Whether or not we will is the question.