Peak oil and the end of hamburgers!
Aug. 21st, 2007 by AlEnjoy them while you can…with the rising price of oil, and the coming bio fuel caused 
commodities scarcity, beef may become an environmental and socially prohibited product.
Two recent statistics that have stuck in my head are that the amount of oil needed to bring a cow to market is the equivalent used by a small passenger car while driving across the continent from New York to Los Angeles, and that it takes 14 kilograms of grain to grow one kilogram of cow…and when the inedible parts of the cow are factored in, that figure grows to a nearly 20 to 1 ratio!
When environmentalists also warn that methane from cows is one of the leading causes of global warming and that increasing amounts of rainforest and other forested land are burned yearly for grazing land for American destined beef, it makes you wonder if it’s all worth it.
I mean I love a good steak, and a burger when done just right is a little piece of heaven…but when the social costs of cattle ranching are so extreme, maybe the way out of our current predicament is partially through a switch away from such an inefficient means of food production.
With political will mandating increasing percentages of domestically produced ethanol to fuel our cars, the prices of ethanol related commodities has been rising, and causing rising commodities prices across the spectrum of agriculture. With economists already predicting food shortages in some poorer countries as a result of these rising commodities prices, and we are as well limiting amounts of crops actually grown for food, perhaps we need to reserve the grain we have left to actually feed people, and not feed cows.
Although the world is not facing anything close to food shortages at the moment, market fluctuations and commodities prices will surely raise the price of the grain needed for the grain fed marbling in a good steak, and maybe with rising beef production costs, the demand for beef will diminish naturally…but I doubt it.
Driving cars and eating burgers, and eating burgers while driving cars…quintessentially American habits that may need to change as we strive to feed our expanding population in the world after peak oil.
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