When two things are true at once - The Bezos Dilemma

Everyday, cattle producers wake up, tend to their livestock and care for their land. There’s arguably nothing more beautiful than cattle grazing amongst a meadow and recycling grass back into the earth that was given to them by their creator.

Recently, we’ve seen Jeff Bezos, potentially the number one individual emitter of green houses gases on the planet, partner with our historic American Angus Association to lower methane emissions in, no not rockets, private jets, yachts, or his $100 million dollar car collection but wait for it….cows…..yes cows, and beef cows no less. You know, the ones that are born and raised on grass for a large portion of their lives, with many spending their entire lives in the pasture.

As a 5th generation rancher, I was raised to believe that we are both Shepherds of the Earth and stewards of its vast resources and abundant beauty.

As a geophysicist by training, I’ve been tasked throughout my education and career to study Earth’s history and processes. What I have observed through it all, is that although man has been given greater responsibility and power to impact the earth, in the end, it still spins and the sun still rises like clockwork.

Regardless of my personal experiences, the cow-methane-climate idea is objectively an incorrect premise. For context, historical estimates indicate an upwards of 60 million Bison once roamed America before their near extinction. Today, there are less than 40 million mature cows, along with their calf crop, in production across the United States. Maybe Bezos is quite satisfied about the decimation of the American Bison? If a legitimate discussion is to be had on this topic, cattle need-not be included.

Regarding our breed association, it is not without the typical flaws that come with being a successful & growing organization. I think its members were otherwise mostly satisfied though, as long as it was a useful database for angus cattle, breeders, and occasionally offered services that were helpful to its members.

Now, many of us feel morally conflicted because although we support the success of our breed and its Association, it should not come through the subterfuge of our beliefs and principles by inviting the fox into the hen house. Unfortunately, the association’s preemptive acceptance now puts all of us in a tough spot we shouldn’t be in. We now run the risk of returning the money and receiving negative press by the same types of people that are promoting the cow-methane-climate narrative. Nevertheless, we must remain principled, right the ship, and forge a new path forward while finding better opportunities to promote real profit-driven efficiency in the breed. Or at the very least, as a conciliation, the association must exhibit more open communication and transparency with its members if we are to consider potentially divisive initiatives such as this. In a way, this feels like the association made a business decision, which I can respect, BUT AAA is a representative association that only exists at the whim of its members. Its current or future viability was certainly not dependent on this single research grant.

Make no mistake, the American Angus Association does not need the professional validation of the Bezos Earth Fund. On the contrary, the Bezos Earth Fund needs the strategic-validation of the unanimously & widely respected American Angus Association, the largest and most prestigious cattle association in the world. Why? Because AAA’s grant acceptance, willing participation, and subsequent data sharing, both affirms Bezos’ underlying cow-climate premise and facilitates their narrative that cows are the problem. Let that sink in.

Even worse, this Bezos Dilemma runs the risk of undermining and conflating legitimate efforts to make animals more efficient, maternal, healthy and most importantly - profitable.

And that’s where 2 things can be true at once, and we have a moral responsibility to address and separate the good from the bad.

The bad: A Bezos’ partnership with the American Angus Association to research low methane cattle. I’m here to encourage every member that reads this to consider signing the petition (linked here) to ask the AAA to rescind its agreement with the Bezos Earth Fund. This is a dangerous path that could eventually lead to government regulation empowered by the very data that the angus association would collect through this initiative. Imagine a world where the government decides which cows you are allowed to have. Just as ominous, what if this is the research that eventually justifies the mandatory use of Bezos’ “Cow Fart” vaccine that he recently invested ~$10 million research dollars into. Talk about a potential money maker for Bezos and the agricultural pharmaceutical companies. We’d have no one to blame but ourselves.

The good: Efficient & healthy cattle are more profitable and can help 5th generation ranchers, like myself, preserve this way of life for my children and theirs (Figure 1). Programs like the Midland Bull Test, Lucky 7 Angus, Byergo Angus, Green Gardens Angus, and many others have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in some cases millions of dollars, in feed efficiency systems to capture this costly data for the rest of the industry’s benefit. The goal of all of them is to simply produce cattle that can do more, with less. To increase profitability for the American Rancher. Not through carbon credits, tax breaks, incentives, or kickbacks. Nope, just good old fashioned dollars saved, combined with more cold hard cash made. You know, the way we use to do things.

Figure 1: This way of life is worth preserving. My grandfather and great-grandfather discussing life & cattle with the Head of Ranch Security “Major.” This picture was taken in the 1960’s at their multi-generational dairy, established on ground homesteaded prior to the 1889 Oklahoma Land Run. As a 5th generation rancher, this farm still exists today as my family’s successful cow-calf operation. It’s likely, my children will be the 6th generation to farm & ranch on this land. Preservation comes through profitability - not social & climate activism.

There’s no doubt we live in a world where the producers of beef often see and experience the world differently than the folks who consume beef. Many of these people don’t share our principles or beliefs, but almost all of them still buy beef.

They often have been misinformed about who raises our beef and how. Nevertheless, their perception is their reality and they hold the buying power to keep us in business.

Coincidentally, almost begrudgingly (considering the circumstances), efficient & healthy cattle have been shown to emit less methane on a per unit of beef basis. This intuitively makes sense, and shouldn’t surprise anyone. There are valid profit-centered reasons to research the emittance of methane from ruminant animals. For example, identifying the genetic factors of metabolic efficiency and resulting energy loss from poor nutrient absorption could be especially useful to breed more efficient & profitable animals. The AAA Board mentioned this very reason, among other good ones, in published comments regarding why they wanted to see this research done. It’s not the profit oriented side of the research that’s the issue though, it’s the Bezos Dilemma. The risk of subterfuge, undermining, and the conflation of real profit-driven research with a billionaire’s social/political activism is too great.

Efficient cattle can make everyone happy, from the cowboy, to the pony-tailed hipster and everyone in between. Let them have their reasons and let us have ours. Aligning with Bezos though, unintentionally makes our reasons the same as their’s, and this, we cannot accept.

Ironically, the tools already exist to identify more efficient animals, WW, YW, RDAG, DMI, $EN, etc for those that desire to use them. All of which have been empowered by data collected by seedstock producers and a handful of Universities, a few of which are mentioned above. New technologies, completely unrelated to EPDs, have also emerged, such as Promogen, which has been on the forefront of researching metabolic efficiency, can identify animals with superior immunity, stress resistance, and yep you guessed it, feed efficiency with a 8-12% advantage. With this cheap, simple test, you can put additional selection pressure on your own herd for these pasture-performance traits. I’m convinced this technology will eventually put agricultural pharmaceutical companies out of business while leading the American Rancher into a more profitable future. Preservation comes through profitability - not social & climate activism.

We must reject the bad, and double-down on the good. The American Angus Association and its members must reject the underlying Bezos premise, and boldly define our own narrative. American beef producers have an amazing story to tell, let’s tell it the right way, our way.

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Happy breeding

Josh Bedell,

President & Owner

VICCI Cattle Co.

www.viccicattleco.com

VICCI Cattle Co - Elite registered angus genetics. Bred without sacrifice, developed with your profitability as our obsession. There is no question, you CAN have MORE-QUALITY-POUNDS-EFFICIENTLY wrapped in an attractive and truly maternal package. NEVER SACRIFICE. #VICCI