UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Invisible Hooves
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Invisible Hooves: Markets and the Environment in the History of American and Transnational Cattle Ranching, 1867-2017 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Timothy Amund Paulson Committee in charge: Professor Peter Alagona, Chair Professor Nelson Lichtenstein Professor Erika Rappaport Professor Simone Pulver September 2017 The dissertation of Tim Paulson is approved. _____________________________________________ Simone Pulver _____________________________________________ Erika Rappaport _____________________________________________ Nelson Lichtenstein _____________________________________________ Peter Alagona, Committee Chair September 2017 © Tim Paulson, 2017. iii Curriculum Vitae Education Ph.D. University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of History (2017). M.A. University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of History (2013). B. A. University of Victoria, Department of History (2010). Publications Peter S. Alagona and Tim Paulson, “From the Classroom to the Countryside: The University of California’s Natural Reserve System and the Role of Field Stations in American Academic Life,” Landscape and the Academy: Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies Series (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Forthcoming 2017). Tim Paulson, “From ‘Knife Men’ to ‘Streamlining with Curves’: Structure, Skill, and Gender in British Columbia’s Meat-Packing Industry,” BC Studies 193 (Spring 2017), 115-145. Peter S. Alagona, Tim Paulson, Andrew B. Esch and Jessica Marter-Kenyon, “Population and Land Use,” Ecosystems of California, Hal Mooney and Erika Zavaleta, eds. (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016). Book Review by Tim Paulson: Jack Stauder, The Blue and the Green: A Cultural Ecological History of an Arizona Ranching Community (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2016), The Public Historian 39, no. 3 (2017), 137-139. Double Book Review by Tim Paulson. Edward Payson Evans, Animal Trials (London: Hesperus Press, 2013 [1906]), and Denis Hayes and Gail Boyer Hayes, Cowed: The Hidden Impact of 93 Million Cows on America’s Health, Economy, Politics, Culture, and Environment (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2015) Make Literary Magazine, 2017, http://makemag.com/double-review-cowed-by-denis-and-gail-boyer-hayes- and-animal-trials-by-edward-payson-evans/. Book Review by Tim Paulson: Scott Laderman, Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2014), Make Literary Magazine, 2016, http://makemag.com/review- empire-in-waves/. Presentations “Paper Steaks: Western American Cattle Ranchers Confront Futures Trading, 1964-1980,” Presented at the Labor and Working Class History Association Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, June 2017. Poster, “Reworking the Range: Using Historical Evidence to Test Ecological Theory on Western Rangelands,” Presented at the American Society for Environmental History Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, March 2017. “Fair Trade?: The Beef and Citrus War and the Aggravation of Pacific Rim Trade Politics,” Presented at The Hagley Library’s Business Across Borders Conference, Wilmington, DE, November 2015. iv “Why All Cattlemen Drive Cadillacs,” Presented at The Annual Meeting of the Agricultural History Society, Lexington, KY, June 2015. “The ‘Sheep Wars’ and the Origins of the American Cattle Ranch: A Case of Enclosure in the Name of Scientific Conservation, c. 1880-1920,” Presented at The Annual Conference of the Social Science History Association, Toronto, ON, November 2014. Poster, “A Sanctuary for Science: The UC Natural Reserve System History & Archive Project,” Presented at Discover the Natural Reserve System: A Conference Celebrating the UCSB NRS, Santa Barbara, CA, February 2013. “The Sheep Wars: New Approaches to the History of Violence,” Presented at The Annual Conference of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, San Diego, CA, August 2012. “Knife Men: Labour Process in British Columbia’s Meat Processing Industry, 1947-79,” Presented at The 42nd Annual Pacific Northwest Labor History Conference, Portland, OR, June 2010. “Introducing the British Columbia Meat Processing Industry, 1950-80,” Presented at The 35th Annual Qualicum History Conference, Parksville, BC, February 2010. Research Projects Research Fellow, 2016-2017. “Grazing and Climate on California Rangelands: A Study of Historical Land Use and Climate Change.” Co-author Kevin Brown, Institute for the Study of Ecological & Evolutionary Climate Impacts (ISEECI). Oral history interviews; aerial photograph analysis; non-traditional archival research; orphan and dark data collection and analysis; government agency interfacing; writing presentations, reports, and articles. Graduate Student Researcher (GSR), 2012-2017. “University of California Natural Reserve System Archive Project,” Principle Investigator (PI) Peter Alagona, History and Environmental Studies UCSB. Indexing historical resources of ecological field stations; drafting site reports; creating archival collection records; off-site research; website construction; and deliverable product writing (http://archives.nrs.ucsb.edu/). GSR, 2014-2015. “Egregious Polluters: A socially-constructed explanation of disproportionality in the production of pollution,” PIs Simone Pulver and Mary Collins, Environmental Studies and Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, UCSB. Data collection; case study development; and writing environmental histories of case industries. PI, 2009-2010. “Knife Men: Craft and Industrial Labour in British Columbia’s Meat Processing Industry, 1947-79.” Oral history interviews of butchers, meat processing workers, and others involved in the British Columbia meat processing industry; ethics review and permissions; advertising and contacting participants; interview design and execution; writing transcripts. Transcripts held in the University of Victoria Library Special Collections (Call Number TS1970 P38 20100). Teaching Teaching Associate (Instructor of Record), UCSB, “History/Anthropology 176B: The American West— Environment & Society,” Summer 2016. Guest Lecture, “The History of Meat and America,” for UCSB, “History 193F: Food and World History,” Instructor Erika Rappaport, 29 April 2015. v ABSTRACT Invisible Hooves: Markets and the Environment in the History of American and Transnational Cattle Ranching, 1867-Present by Timothy Amund Paulson This dissertation examines the making and breaking of landscape-based economic markets over time. It provides a historical narrative of the formation and failure of various market situations in the United States beef economy from 1867 to 2017—including the open range, grazing privileges on public lands, corporate structure of meatpacking, consumer beef prices, live cattle futures contracts, international trade markets, and carbon markets—based on archival research and historical datasets. The narrative emphasizes the role of ideas, laws (and other types of exchange-rules), and organizations in changing the nature of capitalist markets and their relationship with the natural environment. The dissertation argues that actors from across the beef economy purposefully altered capitalist markets based on differing notions of how free markets and landscapes ought to interact. All efforts were united by an enduring faith that markets (if corrected) could serve ecological and social goals. The dissertation concludes that different market constructions are possible within capitalism and yield different social and environmental outcomes, but it also finds that, in general, capitalist markets tend towards instability making them poor mechanisms for managing human-environment relationships. vi Table of Contents Introduction: American Bovine Capitalism 1. Cattle, Sheep, & Open Range Capitalism 2. Regulating Landscape-Based Markets 3. Original Environmentalists 4. Supply Chain Fights 5. Paper Steaks 6. Beef, Oranges, & Comparative Disadvantage Conclusion: Pacific Rim Beef? Epilogue: Carbon-Neutral Cows vii Introduction: American Bovine Capitalism Global Cattlescapes Cows, especially beef cattle, leave an immense social and ecological hoofprint on the world. There are approximately one billion cows on Earth.1 In terms of total body mass, cows dwarf every other vertebrate species on the planet including humans.2 Rangeland ecosystems cover more than one third of the earth’s surface area, and a majority of them are—or have been—grazed by cows. Cows also live in, or adjacent to, most urban spaces in the world for at least part of their lives and most of their afterlives as food and durable goods. Grasslands, deserts, forests, cities, and semi-industrial suburbs have all co-evolved with cows. Cattle are so consequential for many social and environmental landscapes that we could characterize much of the world as a system of cattlescapes. According to more radical scientific claims, agriculture is and has been responsible for about half of all human-induced climate change from the first domestication of crops and livestock to the present. Of all agricultural pursuits, beef production has the greatest climate impact. If one accounts for all the trees that do not exist and accounts for all the years they have not existed for because they were cut to make space for cows, then you might conclude that cows—not cars or coal— caused global warming.3 Indeed, we may be living in a cattle climate. 1 “Number of Cattle Worldwide from 2012 to 2016 (in million