Remind me in the future to always check first with my good friend Jim Libbin, retired Acting Dean of the New Mexico State University Department of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences before I post anything agricultural related.
He thankfully called me out on the errors I made in post earlier this week regarding New Mexico’s cattle ranking against other states. The source I found on the internet, which was not verified, said New Mexico ranked No. 11, but it was not clear exactly what that meant.
According to Jim, it was the ratio of cattle to humans in each state. South Dakota ranked first, with more bovines than people. In New Mexico, it turns out there is approximately six-tenths of a cow for every human.
I was surprised when I saw that New Mexico was ranked higher than Texas in the chart, but it’s because of that state’s much higher population than the Land of Enchantment. According to a National Agricultural Statistics Service source provided to me by Jim, Texas had approximately 12.2 million cattle, compared to New Mexico’s measly 1.2 million bovines.
Jim also notes that our cattle number are higher in part because of the large dairy industry in the state.
“The only difficulty with the cattle inventory number is it incudes dairy cattle in addition to beef cattle, and New Mexico has a bunch of dairy cattle,” Libbin said. “We’re #22 because of dairy cattle, we would probably be in the high thirties, down with Nevada without the dairies.”
I’m glad to have all of this clarified. And by the way, in addition to 12.2 million cattle, Texas also has more than 160,000 oil wells and more than 83,000 gas wells. Which explains the rich odors we occasionally get when the wind blows from the east.
aero-cordero.com 