UC Berkeley

Debates about modern beef production suffer from a major historical blind spot. For over a century, the feedlot relied on a closed nutrient loop to sustain soil fertility in the United States Corn Belt. Driven by industrial capitalist urbanization, a cattle-grain-beef complex shaped land use, tenure systems, management practices and environmental politics on the expanding frontier, sacrificing the tall-grass prairies and fracturing agrarian resistance to corporate concentration and the Union Stock Yards. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) emerged after 1950, breaking the nutrient cycle of the original feedlot and turning the relationship between ranching and agriculture into a dysfunctional one.