It would be nice if every bovine had an acre or so of beautuful green pasture land to itself and that each one was a "contented cow", but that is simply not going to happen.

There is another thread right now titled "Food: Inflation" were it is stated, with some authority, that the people of planet Earth have consumed more food in the last 2 or 3 years than they have produced. That means that the historucally small stockpiles are being depleted.

We are actually pushing as hard as we can to produce food, any way we can, and still falling short.

The United States has just 4.6% of the world's population, yet all food shorfalls are expected to be made up by Americans. The result is that our limited farmland is being damaged at an alarming rate. Also, the people who come to this county to work on those farms stay. They build their houses on the finest farmland in the world. Eventually, the best farmland will be lost under urban sprawl and the marginal areas of desert and such will be all that is left to farm.

We have some big problems coming, especially if the Third World presents us with 1/2 billion new mouths to feed each decade.