How Much Does a Cattle Farmer Make Per Cow?

Incomes differ across farms, and depend on various factors, including their size, and how much farmers are willing to compromise on animal welfare to boost their profits. Given the fact that demand for one of the main products of cattle farming—dairy—is plummeting in the U.S., farmers have been facing losses and dumping milk in rivers and fields. There is not much clear data on how much cattle farmers make per cow, but on average farmers earn $300-700 a week. Again, this figure is changing with changes to consumption patterns worldwide, as people are demanding more ethical choices for food and clothing.

Why Is Cattle Farming Bad for the Environment?

Because of how normalized consumption of meat and dairy is, cattle farming is often romanticized as something essential and even empowering. But no matter how one looks at it, the facts still point to the overwhelmingly detrimental impact of cattle farming on the environment. Cattle farming is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases, thus being a major cause of climate change.

Cattle farming has also often displaced local communities who have ensured more regenerative and balanced uses of land in their environments. It causes air and water pollution. The industry also treats living beings as commodities and shows no consideration for their welfare. Finally, cattle farming depends on clearing the land of forests, which is the habitat of many animals, thus threatening biodiversity. 

Dirty Water

A cow produces approximately 37 kilos of feces every day. Now imagine 80-100 cows producing this much waste on a cattle farm every day. What happens to the waste? It either lies strewn around for the cows to live, breathe, and sit in it, or it is dumped on land or in bodies of water. Cattle waste contains a lot of nitrogen, which can contaminate water sources around farms over time. Nitrate contamination from a cattle farm infiltrated most of the wells in the Central Sands region of Wisconsin in just four years, forcing many people to relocate. The use of pesticides and insecticides on cattle farms just exacerbates the problem, by contaminating major water sources with harmful chemicals.

Overuse of Antibiotics

The easiest way for cattle farms to ensure the good health of animals is by feeding them antibiotics. However, this has a detrimental impact on the environment. The antibiotics may boost methane production in cattle, which means that their waste would release gases of even more harmful intensity. It has a more obviously devastating unintended consequence for humans too—overuse of drugs leads to the evolution of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. 

Inhumane Animal Care

At the very least, “humane” behavior implies that one shows compassion and respect for the individuality and existence of another being. This implies that if someone does not consent to their bodies being used to earn profits in the market, then that choice should be respected. We are one among a billion species that together are important for the planet to thrive.

However, nothing that happens on a cattle farm matches this description of being humane. Right from birth, cattle are segregated according to their commercial use. The lactating cow is assigned to spend the rest of their lives chained to machines that suck out their milk, the calves are either bred to become milk producers or are killed for meat, leather, and other purposes, and bulls are bred to extract their semen, or fattened up for beef. 

Throughout this process, the calves get little to no access to the milk meant for them. The cows spread their time in crowded enclosures, in the same space, continuously for many years. Cattle born with horns are “dehorned,” which is a painful process that targets many nerve endings. They are sometimes kicked and beaten, and sick cows are left to die. 

Global Warming

Global warming is one of the clearest aspects of climate change. Essentially, days become hotter as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions increase. Methane and ammonia are the most powerful gases that lead to global warming, and data from the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization indicates that animal agriculture is the leading industry producing these emissions. Beef and dairy cattle, in particular, are responsible for the release of GHGs because of enteric fermentation during digestion. This means that the process that cattle undergo to break their food into soluble components builds up a lot of harmful gases. 

Grass-fed cattle are often considered to be a sustainable solution for global warming. However, not only do they release emissions, but they also use a lot of land and run the risk of overgrazing. 

Cattle Farming Facts and Statistics

The world has 1.49 billion cattle being used to produce different commodities. From these cattle, the world takes 841.84 million tonnes of milk per year, and 71.61 million tonnes of beef. Beef, soy, and palm oil account for 60 percent of tropical deforestation. Soy production is not primarily driven by plant-based milk, but beef and dairy production, since soy forms a major component of cattle feed. 

When we look at land use, agriculture takes up more than half of the world’s land resources, and 77 percent of this land is not even being used to grow crops for human consumption, but the grazing and feed of farmed animals, including cattle. 

Continue reading on Page 4 (last page)