But What About the Cattle?

 

It will be a while before we have an accurate figure but the flooding in southwest British Columbia has taken a toll of livestock in the Fraser Valley. Some cattle were rescued, taken to higher ground but many, we're told, were lost.

On the prairies ranchers are culling their herds.  Not enough water. Not enough fodder. The cattle are wasting away.

This reminds me of a story I read a few years ago about a pastoralist (nomad) and his family from the Sahel in Africa. He made his living as his family had for many generations, perhaps centuries, by herding cattle from one area of pasture to the next.

Then, one year, his range was swept by flash floods. He lost half his herd. The next year brought intensive heat and drought. He lost the other half. The herder and his family had to migrate to the slums of Dakar to eke out a subsistence living through scavenging.

I know next to nothing about livestock, dairy or beef cattle, but I know the industry is vulnerable to flooding and to drought.  A cattle rancher who can't feed and water his herd is in trouble. A dairy farmer who can't get his animals to high ground is also in peril.

If the events of this year, the prairie drought (now in its __th year) or the dozen or more atmospheric rivers that have swept the rich farmland of the Fraser Valley are truly "once a century" events then these industries should bounce back. If, as we've been warned so many times, these conditions are some sort of "new normal" then we'd better find solutions - and fast.


Comments

  1. TrailblazerNovember 29, 2021 at 7:15 PM

    I know of Fraser valley farmer who complained bitterly some years ago , having to spend tens or hundreds of $ thousands to raise the level of his property to build a barn above the flood plain.
    These last weeks as he see's his neighbours farms flooded and his own just keeping it's head above water but barely.
    Now he says he should have added another two or three feet of fill.

    The moral of the story is that we have long known the possibility of a disaster but have put profit first!

    TB



    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Up in Smoke. 300 Sq. Mi. of Amazon Rainforest Lost Every Day.

Image
  The Amazon rainforest is disappearing at what should be an alarming rate. 312 sq. mi. or 808 sq. kms. every day. Over the past 30 years humans have destroyed a patch of the Amazon equal in area to the states of Texas and New Mexico . The Amazon – historically a great carbon absorber, since trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen – now releases more carbon than it stores, which adds to, rather helps to reduce, our global climate crisis. Deforestation rates decreased slightly from 2004 to 2012. But since then, they’re back on the rise, especially in the past couple of years, since Jair Bolsonaro became president of Brazil. In 2018, as Bolsonaro campaigned as a patriotic man of the people, scientists predicted that once the Amazon lost more than 25% of its tree cover, it would become a drier ecosystem, all because deforestation changes weather patterns (due to how trees respire), which in turn reduces rainfall. Furthermore, as the forest becomes fragmented, areas surrounded...
Read more

The Cognoscenti Syndrome

  There is a group of people I think of as the Cognoscenti, people who are well educated, very informed and of rapidly diminishing relevance. Their ranks include writers such as Chris Hedges and Glen Greenwald. These are people who have honed an almost Puritanical value system, readily finding fault in any direction. They are scathing in their attacks on Republicans and Democrats alike to the point where they become nihilists. They don't endorse. They prescribe. This is where they fail. They're unable to advocate for anything that might resonate with the public whose interests they argue are being trammeled. Donald Trump was bad but Joe Biden is scarcely better. This is where their elitism comes in.  74 million may have voted for Trump but, hey, they didn't know any better. The mob that stormed the Capitol. They were just victims of the system venting their frustrations. All the racism, bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, white nationalism - inevitable side effects of their oppr...
Read more

Who Asks "Why?"

Every time there's a conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, all we hear is 'why?'  Why, as in, whose fault is this? It's easier to affix blame if you can truncate the event. Pick a convenient start date, something recent. In this case we'll make it either the Israeli eviction of Arabs from Jerusalem or the scuffle that took place outside the mosque in response. If those don't work, let's go for Hamas launching unguided rockets into Israel. That's even better because it tags Hamas with the blame. The nice thing about this approach is you can just keep using it. It goes on and on, just as it has for the past half-century since the '67 war. You can even date this whole mess to the beginning of the occupation of the Palestinian territories. The Israelis are said to have called these periodic wars, "mowing the lawn." The idea is that, every now and then, you have to take these Arabs to the woodshed. And then you keep your powder dry unt...
Read more