Final Description

Emily Cudhea-Pierce

The goal of this project was to find a replacement for corn. Due to the drought that is happening and will continue to worsen over the coming years, the corn crop will suffer. This year, about 20% of the corn crop was lost due to drought, and that will be exacerbated as the drought continues. The idea that this project is based off of is the idea of using cactus to replace corn in cattle feed. The cactus would work because it needs less water to grow. Right now, it takes about 9.6 lbs of corn to get 1 lb of beef on the table. The corn crop's failure could impact a large part of American life.

To start out, Emily tried to create some recipes for humans using the cactus. Eventually, she decided that the taste of cactus was not as universally appealing as that of corn. She moved on to figuring out the economics and feasibility of using cactus as cattle feed. This seemed like a much more possible idea. She made Vensim models of the cactus economy to see how feasible the idea was. According model, they will have to grow approximately 68 million lbs of cactus in order to become profitable. 

Because of the amount of water saved in feeding cactus to cattle, up to 450 million gallons of fresh water could be saved every day. This would be very helpful in a drought.

Vensim Model

Emily Cudhea-Pierce

This is a model I made on Vensim. Vensim is a modeling software. The model shows how the main aspects of selling, buying, growing, and distribution of cactus are related. The goal was to figure out how much cactus would have to be produced in order for the business to become profitable. 

Though the model looks complicated and confusing from afar, a closer look will reveal that each individual connection makes sense. Look at the "Welfare" graph. If the supply is high and the price is low, the people are happy. If the supply is low and the price is high, the people are unhappy. As some of the current stock of cactus decay, the profit goes down. The amount in the stock is determined by the demand and supply, and the amount of stock determines the sales. The stock has a decay, surplus and deficit, meaning that after the growing season some of the cactus is stored. Some of the cactus is lost (decay) some is extra (surplus). Sales in tons are converted to profit in dollars. Profit is determined by the sales and the price of cactus and decreased by the cost of growing the cactus and the cactus lost during the year due to varying factors.