The Disappearing Cow Problem

         It’s hard to find cows in Luxembourg.

         Remember this fact. It will be important later.

         Cows aren’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think about walking the Camino de Santiago. That’s the walk from the French border, over the Pyrenees and across northern Spain that I finished a few weeks ago. Cows, frankly, aren’t the second, third or fourth thing that comes to mind, either.

         But cows are probably a more real concern than the things people usually talk about when they think about the Camino de Santiago.

• Blisters? Not a problem if you take reasonable care of your feet.
• Getting lost? Barely possible. There are yellow arrows and scallop shell markers everywhere. Pay attention. The path is clear.
• No place to stay? Hardly possible. Pilgrims receive a list of about 550 albergues between St. Jean Pied du Port and Santiago. And that doesn’t count all the pensiones, hostels, hotel rurals and regular hotels. You might have to pay more than $15 for a dormitory bed in an albergue, but you’ll find a place to stay.
• Theft, attack or worse? Unlikely. Indeed, one of the guiding sensations on the Camino is a feeling of being part of benign river of human beings who have separated, at least for the walk, from the malice, distrust and doubt that characterizes daily life in “the real world.” For me, that experience alone was worth the effort the walk requires.

My first clue about the cow problem came from talking with a cab driver. One day, several days after leaving Leon, I stopped at a relatively new, well-designed albergue with a grand view. A mini-van cab was parked in its courtyard and I suddenly felt tired. I wanted to be instantly transported to our destination for the day. (Trust me, my Zen Reacher brother, the 71-year-old Ironman who never stops and mostly runs, was already there.)

I sat in the front seat of the van and asked the driver what other hats he wore. “Oh,” he answered, “the whole family works at the albergue. All six of us.”  He explained that as his parents grew older, they didn’t want to continue the hard work of operating a dairy farm.

“You mean,” I said, “they figured out they could make more money from people than from cows?”

“Well… yes.” He went on to tell me they had a new building designed to meet needs they anticipated from future Camino pilgrims. I asked what those needs were.

“More people want individual rooms, not dormitory rooms with bunk beds. So, we built them. We have more rooms with private baths than the older albergues. It’s all changing. Pretty fast.”

That’s when he dropped the bombshell.

“Five or 10 years from now, there won’t be any cows on the Camino,” he said.

That would be a gigantic shift. Today, cows and other domestic animals are an integral part of the Camino. Even if you don’t see them due to mist and fog, you hear their bells. They are also part of the olfactory barrage that city folks encounter — the mix of sweet wildflower and grass scent with the odor of cow, sheep, goat and horse manure. Of those, cow manure gets top billing for strength and ubiquity. Think of it as sensory renewal.

A few days later I walked with a young couple taking a break from their jobs in Luxembourg. Urbez is a Spanish tax accountant. Jade is French. She worked in HR as a recruiter. They are in their late twenties. They hoped to marry sometime soon and, when possible, buy a house in Spain. They knew it would be difficult.

Urbez offered that Spain needed more entrepreneurs and fewer people who sought secure government jobs. I mentioned the rise of new, more luxurious albergues and the disappearance of cows.

“I don’t know where you would go in Luxembourg to find a cow,” he said. “There may not be any.”

There is a reason for this, of course.

It’s called income. If you check any list of the highest income countries in the world, you’ll find the usual, tiny tax havens at the top. According to the CIA World Fact Book, for instance, tiny Lichtenstein is No.1 and Luxembourg is second. Further on you’ll find Monaco, the Isle of Man, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and the Falkland Islands.

The United States is the tenth highest income country in the world.

I guess you could say that’s pretty good for a large country. Except that Ireland is number 4. Seriously. Ireland!  The only good news here is that our country probably doesn’t have a disappearing cow problem. Our supply of milk and cheese is secure.

Urbez can’t find a cow in Luxembourg because so many of its residents make very good incomes creating tax shelters and exploiting tax loopholes. Sorry, cows, you’ve got to go.

The problem here is that you can’t drink tax shelters. And no one has found a way to make cheese out of tax loopholes. That’s why Luxembourg imports most of its food.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure there is a limit to this process.

Cows need to live somewhere. Food needs to be grown somewhere. We can’t just assume we’ll want food, and it will appear.

Yet most of the world does just that, in spite rising of global ill will and upheavals.

Related columns:

Scott Burns, “Going for a Very Long Walk,” July 7, 2024: https://scottburns.com/going-for-a-very-long-walk/

Scott Burns, “The Zen Reacher,” January 28, 2024: https://scottburns.com/the-zen-reacher/

Sources and References:

The CIA World Fact Book: Real GDP Per Capita, https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/real-gdp-per-capita/country-comparison/

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Photo:  Scott Burns, 2024

(c) Scott Burns, 2024