WHAT MAKES TEXAS “TEXAS”? by Ann Marie Kennon
HERE's the Beef! M
ost Texans will smile politely and nod when listening to a person who says beef is bad. That’s because Texas is the top beef-producing state in the nation, and raising cattle is the largest part of Texas agriculture. Fortunately, science—not media—assures us that beef is good for us and good for Texas, and cheers our centuries-old tradition of enjoying beef well done, regardless of how it is prepared.
SOME HISTORY For much of their early history, Americans did not eat much beef; settlers ate plenty of bison, fowl, and fish. Longhorns, descended from Spanish cattle, were abundant in the Spanish mission area of eastern Texas, but were mostly traded for their hides and rendered fats because the meat wasn't considered high quality. By the 1850s, as longhorns interbred with other European cows, beef had become a more popular food, so ranching had diversified and grown. Just prior to and during the Civil War, however, the northern Army blockad-
ed trade at the Mississippi and, as a result, many cattle were simply stuck in Texas. By war's end, there was a glut of mature cows in Texas in need of consumers, which dropped the price to about $5 per head. Fortunately for traders, they were worth $40 a head to the hungry populations in big cities across the eastern half of the country and ranch profits took off. From the 1870s until the mid-1890s, cattlemen and cowboys herded more than 5 million cattle to rail yards and cow towns and helped make a few millionaires along the way. Among them were Gustavas Swift who, through several patents and trials, facilitated use of the first refrigerated railway cars. This allowed Texas ranchers to stay in the Great Plains and ship their cattle to Chicago meat packing plants, which could distribute products quickly and safely in greater quantities.
THE INDUSTRY Today, while energy is still #1 in Texas, agriculture is #2 and beef and cattle are the tops there—about two cows (beef and milk) for every three people
