How Can Eating Grass-Finished Beef Improve Climate? By Wendy Nadherny Fachon
Savvy consumers are moving away from purchasing energy-intensive industrial food and going back to choosing whole foods grown with natural methods. They seek to heal themselves and heal the land. Others remain under the misconception that cattle contribute to increases in greenhouse gases, when, in fact, the shift from grain-fed beef to grass-finished beef rebuilds healthy soil, sequesters more carbon, reduces greenhouse emissions and conserves fresh water. It all depends on how the cattle are managed.
Joel Salatin, world-renowned regenerative farmer and owner of Polyface Farms, has developed grazing methods that mimic natural processes. He has authored many informative and entertaining books on this topic, including Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People and a Better World. He writes “The electric fence was the technology that allowed smallholders to mimic nature’s patterns. The large migratory herds, along with their cohort of birds, predators, and other species, which were so foundational to soil development, carbon sequestration, and biomass accumulation, could not be practicably duplicated on a domestic scale.” Easily movable, electric fencing allows a farmer to manage herds in a manner that prevents overgrazing and allows for the healthy growth of pasture grasses and plants.
Nature feeds the soil through the buildup of brown matter. Leaves and needles fall when they become brown. Grasses fall over when they becomes brown. The brown matter is incorporated into the soil by herbivores trampling, birds scratching and earthworms pulling down the materials. During the winter months, Salatin does large-scale composting, feeding the cows hay and bedding them in woods chips, leaves and old hay, which absorbs the nutrients of copious amounts of manure. He adds whole shell corn, which gets trampled and ferments.
By springtime, the bedding may be three or four feet deep. The cows go back out to pasture, and the pigs come in, seeking the fermented corn. The pigs turn the whole matter into aerated compost. This process requires no machinery and no petroleum. The animals do all the work. This chemical-free fertilizer is then spread on the fields as the spring growth returns.
“The grass-finished animal eats as many as 40 different kinds of plants each day,” says Salatin. “The diversity of phyto-chemicals and compounds make for a highly nuanced nutritional experience, which is passed on to the consumer. You’re eating second-hand plantain, chickory, clover, fescue, orchard grass, and a host of others. That’s why here at Polyface we coined the term Salad Bar Beef, to capture all those essences.” (Salatin has published another book under this same name.) This natural diet is a vast improvement over eating second-hand corn, grown with chemically-derived NPK fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.
It’s important to distinguish the terms “grass-fed” and “grass-finished.” Industrially-raised cattle can be grass-fed initially and corn-finished in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which are known for inhumane conditions that stress the animals. Salatin acknowledges that grass finishing requires real management finesse. He likens the process to making wine. Artisanal devotion takes into account genetics, maturity, mineral, brix index (a measure of forage sugar), stress and fat cover.
To learn more, consumers can visit or call local grass-finished farmers, or they can converse with vendors at a farmer’s market and ask questions. How the cows are rotated through the pastures? Is the grazing land free of pesticides and herbicides? Do they avoid the use of antibiotics and hormones? How is the meat disinfected during processing?
Resources:
The Poop, the Whole Poop, and Nothing but the Poop, Folks, This Ain’t Normal by Joel Salatin, pp. 123-138.
Practical Bite #55: Buy Ecologically Raised, Grass-Finished Beef From Your Local Farmer, Beyond Labels by Sina McCullough, PhD and Joel Salatin, pp.321-323.
For more information, listen to Joel Salatin’s podcast interview with Wendy Nadherny Fachon on the Story Walking Radio Hour – Regenerative Farming: Healing the Land One Bite at a Time –https://dreamvisions7radio.com/regenerative-farming-healing-land/
Listen to Story Walking Radio Hour with Wendy Fachon every Monday 9am & 9pmET on global syndicated Dreamvisions 7 Radio Network. Listen Live: http://bit.ly/Dreamvisions7Radio_Network or Get our Apps Listen online, mobile, in cars and by asking “Alexa play Dreamvisions 7 Radio ”
