Grab some top sirloins and fire up the barbecue because Robert Sopuck believes you'll be conserving the environment if you do so. A hunting excursion on Thompson's T 4 Ranches caused Robert to stop and think about cattle ranching and its positive effects on the environment.

Critics of the cattle industry cite the plight of the rainforest, methane production and overgrazing as reasons to shut down the cattle industry, all the while ignoring the landscape conservation benefits of well-managed, extensive cattle ranching. To be blunt, cattle create an economic incentive to conserve, manage and create diverse and productive grasslands. Those great, and seemingly boring, vistas of native prairie in Saskatchewan and Alberta (often contemptuously dismissed as “drive-through country”) represent a treasure trove of wildlife and biodiversity, one of the great natural wonders of North America. And it is still in existence because of ranchers.

Meanwhile, back at T 4 Ranches, this landscape conservation process was magically rolling out before our very eyes. That is because Thompson’s “hobby” is to purchase cultivated grain land and “sow it down” to hay and pasture for cattle feed. All that perennial cover creates lots of room for nesting birds and other wildlife that easily co-exist with the extensive ranching and grazing that predominates on T 4 Ranches.

This leads us to another favourite argument of the cattle critics, namely that humans should bypass meat and consume the plant products of the land, thus ensuring more efficient use of the Earth’s resources. The problem with that argument is that not all hectares are created equal. We have millions of hectares of sandy, sloping and fragile land that will produce grain crops for a few years, but as the soil is played out, higher and higher levels of inputs are required to grow crops during this downward spiral of soil degradation. Much better to have such fragile land covered with a conservation blanket of perennial vegetation that is cropped by a well-managed cattle herd. By the way, for the holier than thou tofu eaters out there, your dietary preference encourages the expansion of row-crop soybean production, often at the expense of native grasslands. No tofu will ever find its way into our home; we care too much about the land.

As for the red meat is bad for you argument, I take the view that if you give up fat (and sugar and alcohol, too, for that matter) you may not live longer; it will just seem that way. Make your own call on that one, but I am here to live a little. As Clifton Fadiman wrote, “I have yet to meet a man who, with a good tournedos Rossini inside him, was not the finer for it, the more open to virtuous influences.”

Awhile ago Leafy Green posted the 15 Reasons to Eat Meat, a vegan's (sarcastic) perspective on the topic of carnivorous habits, and asked meat-eaters to provide 15 actual reasons to eat meat. I'm not sure there are 15 here (hey it's Friday, I'm far too lazy to count them), but it's a good start.

» Frontier Centre for Public Policy