In Cattle Beet Capital, Michael Weeks presents a fascinating account of the development of industrial agriculture on the Colorado Piedmont during the twentieth century. The book highlights how farmers on the Piedmont transitioned from cooperative agriculture in the 1870s to corporate sugar beet cultivation in the early 1900s to large-scale commercial cattle feeding in the latter half of the twentieth century. Along the way Weeks, a skilled environmental and agricultural historian, shows how the sustainable agroecology of sugar beets and small livestock operations gave way to “mechanical, biological, and petrochemical technologies” that sustained the huge commercial cattle feedlots. These technologies exploited and altered the environment (11).
Weeks's book is divided into seven chapters. The first two chapters detail farming in the Piedmont from 1870 to 1930. In the early years of settlement, farmers established open-range cattle ranching that benefited from the shortgrass prairie in the area. They also developed...
