Lay Summary The past fifty years have seen many changes leading to improved productivity and efficiency of beef cattle production in the United States. Integrating and quantifying the impact of all these changes is challenging. By modeling the life cycles of cattle production in 2022 and the early 1970s, improvements were determined for beef production, resources used and other environmental impacts. Compared to 1972, 7% fewer but larger cattle were harvested in 2022 producing 23% more beef. Nearly the same total feed was consumed to produce that beef, but 11% less land was used to produce the feed. These improvements in production have reduced fossil energy use, water use, carbon emissions, and nutrient losses. Continued improvements in cattle production are providing a more sustainable product to meet the growing demand for beef.
Rotz et al. (Wed,) studied this question.