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Show LIVESTOCK NOTES Los Angeles, July 27, 1936 Beef has always been in high favor with American consumers. From the time this country was first inhabited, in-habited, it was traditional that the farmers had beef cattle as a major part of their farm operations. Despite all sorts of campaigns calculated cal-culated to attract public fancy to other foods, beef remains as the headliner in the average American family's daily meal. It was upon the basis of beef cattle herds that the entire western west-ern country was settled; and it was upon the development of the beef cattle industry that the western west-ern country has depended to a great extent for its cash income. That situation still holds good, for the beef cattle business is still the major industry in point of dollars invested and dollars of income in most of the western states. In these days, we are more than ever before inclined to recognize the economic importance of an industry in-dustry because we have come to realize that after all, what is produced pro-duced from the soil constitutes our most staple source of wealth. California is noted for its climate, cli-mate, its oil and motion picture industries in-dustries but it is still one of the great beef cattle states, with a cattle population of around 1,800,-000 1,800,-000 head. Of its 110,000,000 acres of land, less than 10 per cent is given over to cultivated crops. The balance is and probably always will be given over to livestock grazing. American people this year are eating more beef than at any previous pre-vious time in all history, due in part to the increased numbers of animals available but to an even greater extent because of the improved im-proved quality of beef production It is significant that in spite of the widely heralded drouth of 1934 and the present drouth situation, there are more good quality cattle being slaughtered by American meat packers than ever before. ' For example, the slaughter of cattle for the first six months, as indicated indi-cated by federal inspection figures, was the greatest in the history of the country with the exception of 1918. But in 1918, there was an enormous war export business. Today, practically all of the beef produced in America is consumed within our own borders. |