You might want to see how well livestock as an investment fared during the dustbowl. If you can't feed and water it you've got very quickly perishing meat, and if you're in that position you can believe a lot of other people are too, which further harms the price for it. For the cost of one meat cow I can feed myself for three years. In metal cans, so it's not going to spoil or be eaten by the mice and rats.
You might want to see how well livestock as an investment fared during the dustbowl. If you can't feed and water it you've got very quickly perishing meat, and if you're in that position you can believe a lot of other people are too, which further harms the price for it. For the cost of one meat cow I can feed myself for three years. In metal cans, so it's not going to spoil or be eaten by the mice and rats.
https://history.iowa.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/dust-bowl
Historically cattle are a wise investment, a good indicator of wealth.
The ONE time we started spreading out west and tried to plow our fields and ended up killing the earth -- lessons learned. Don't do that.