But even during these dormant months, across 17 rolling acres just 30 miles east of Washington, D.C., the landscape is filled with life.

Long, diverse grasses blanket the ground around and between the vines. In one section, two dozen vocal sheep munch happily on those plants, leaving their waste to stimulate regrowth up and down the aisles. Three acres of meadows provide habitat for insects. A petite blue bird darts across the horizon, flitting between a few of the 600 diverse young trees—loblolly pines, hazelnuts, and plums among them—that are just establishing themselves around and within the perimeter.

This is what Tom Croghan means when he says that, “under the right conditions,” grapevines are especially good at executing nature’s most common magic trick: absorbing carbon dioxide from the air during photosynthesis and then depositing it far below ground, hopefully for a long while. “We can pay [to create those conditions],” says Croghan, Dodon’s co-owner, “because we can use a byproduct of that system to produce wine.”

In other words, farmers lucky enough to produce a high-value product—especially when it’s intrinsically tied to the soil it’s grown in—may be uniquely positioned to help experiment, develop, and de-risk regenerative practices across all kinds of farms.

That’s the conclusion researchers came to in a study published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems earlier this year, which found that a slew of soil-building practices, especially in combination, added more carbon to soils when used in vineyards compared to being used on annual cropland.

“If we take this as a holistic system . . . we probably shouldn’t even be looking at practices, we should be looking at outcomes, but the practices are a way to get there,” explains researcher and study author Jessica Villat. “Soil carbon sequestration is one indicator that we’re on the right track.”

Compared to staple crops like corn and rice, wine grapes barely occupy a speck of the world’s farmland, at about 18 million acres. As a result, carbon stored in vineyard soils won’t ever add up to a meaningful reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions. But Villat and others see the fields as unique spaces where innovation can happen, spurring the ability to improve regenerative practices and increase adoption across agriculture.

“The viticulture sector is notoriously one of these ‘bubble sectors’ that stays within itself and isn’t talking as much to the rest of the ag community,” she said. “They’re trying to solve the same problems and the same issues. We’re talking about animal integration, we’re talking about integrating trees, we’re talking about integrating other crops. It really is regenerative agriculture, even if we might take a viticulture lens.”

A Model for Maximizing Soil Carbon Storage (and Other Benefits)

ROC executive director Elizabeth Whitlow attributes that partially to the fact that since ROC’s launch in 2017, Paul Dolan, a pioneer of organic, biodynamic, and regenerative winemaking in the state, chaired the organization’s board. Dolan spearheaded the certification of the big-name wineries he worked with, Fetzer and Bonterra. Other lauded wineries, such as Tablas Creek and Grgich Hills Estate, were also early adopters of ROC standards.

“I do think vineyard operators are not under the same stress of harvesting kale and rushing to market five days a week, so there’s a real cushion,” Whitlow said. “It is a rapidly growing category.”

Dodon is not certified organic and still applies pesticides when needed, especially fungicides, which East Coast vineyards often rely on due to a much more humid climate than California’s. But most of its other regenerative practices overlap with what ROC vineyards are doing on the West Coast: Living roots in the soil year-round, animal integration, and biodiversity boosts.

Since Croghan first planted the vineyard, he said that based on soil testing, organic matter in the soil increased from .3 percent to 3.2 percent. About 60 percent of organic matter is carbon. Croghan is so proud of those results, he jokes that he introduces himself differently now.

“I’m in the carbon capture and storage business,” he says.

Villat’s research supports the general idea.

In reviewing studies done to date that fit their criteria, Villat and her co-author, Kimberly Nicholas, found that many common regenerative practices—such as grazing sheep between vines, cover crops, and non-chemical pest management—resulted in much more carbon sequestration in vineyards compared to in fields dedicated to annual crops.

However, the number of available studies was too small to come to big conclusions about any individual practice resulting in more sequestration over another.

“We actually need a lot more studies to prove those claims. However, what we are seeing is that across the board there is carbon sequestration happening,” she said. “So, what we can say is that all practices sequester carbon . . . and that when you mix different practices together, it actually increases the benefits. So, there’s something to be said for a holistic view of integrating practices together.”

Why exactly vineyard soils might hold onto more carbon compared to annual cropland is also a complex, open question. Villat said the soils might have started with less carbon to begin with. But the deep roots of the vines are also likely interacting with the cover crops and increased microbial activity as a result of animal waste, possibly holding it there longer. With cover crops, it could be as simple as the fact that the plants remain year-round rather than only being planted in between crop cycles, said Paul West, a senior scientist for ecosystems and agriculture at Project Drawdown.

West said that while the volume of carbon held in vineyard soils wouldn’t be significant enough to affect global greenhouse gas reduction goals, he said the conclusions could be used to identify best practices that could also be used in farming other crops. They might especially apply to other shrubby perennial crops, like blueberries, but the practices are similar across agriculture. A diversified farm that is growing vegetables and raising livestock, for example, might incorporate more perennial plants into their system to encourage carbon storage in deep roots.

And he pointed to other important factors for the grape growers themselves. “Many of the other benefits [of these practices] in addition to [building] soil carbon likely help the health of the vineyard even more,” he said. “For example, as you’re building up organic matter, the soil is able to hold a lot more nutrients. It’s able to hold a lot more water.”

Building Resilience in Vineyards—and Beyond

On the other coast, regenerative practices are also helping vineyards deal with hot, dry summers.

In Napa in 2022, Whitlow remembered, a particularly searing heat wave hit right at harvest time. “Truly, it was like biblical devastation,” she said. “Fruit shriveled on vines, and there was a complete crop failure for many operations.” At ROC vineyard Grgich Hills, where lush cover crops blanketed the ground in between vines, the team measured significantly lower temperatures just off the ground compared to a neighboring vineyard with bare soil.

As the climate crisis intensifies and extreme weather events become more intense and more frequent, these practical advantages could make or break a vineyard—or any farm’s—ability to save a single harvest and make it to the following season.

Grape harvest photo courtesy of Dodon.

For example, Croghan is currently focused on pests called sharpshooters, which have been given a boost by rising temperatures. While a few days of cold-enough temperatures can kill off the population before grape season begins, fewer of those days come around. The sharpshooter drills and deposits bacteria into vines, causing the devastating Pierce’s Disease. At a recent gathering of winemakers in the region, the majority reported they already had sharpshooters in their vineyards, and Croghan was anxiously anticipating their arrival.

A more traditional-leaning agriculture consultant advised Croghan to mow down his grasses to destroy potential habit the sharpshooters might live in. He was resistant, since he’d already put in so much time building up that habitat to accommodate insects that like to eat other pests, and the meadows that will bloom in a few months host crucial pollinators, providing countless other ecosystem benefits beyond the vines. Instead of chopping it all down, Croghan is betting on the whole regenerative system working in his favor, from carbon-holding roots up to the insects flying above ground.

“We’re gonna stick to our guns,” he said.

If it works and his vineyard is better able to manage the pest pressure with its cover crops in place, in the future, other farmers could benefit from his willingness to take the risk.

As Villat says, “The nice thing I think about viticulture is that, it’s not always the case, but often you have farmers who can . . . innovate, do something a little bit differently.”

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“This is called shadow microscopy,” says Robb, the co-owner of Compostella Farm in southern Mississippi, bringing the microorganisms into focus. It’s a way of viewing living specimens under an oblique light, so they appear backlit and magnified, like a shadow box theater. Just prior to this, he diluted the sample in water and shook it, like a “hurricane or earthquake, any biblical catastrophe motion for that soil.” This broke apart the soil’s structure so he could see everything holding it together, like the dark brown curl of fungi.

Soil microorganisms busy decomposing, magnified by shadow microscopy.
(Photo credit: Timothy Robb)

“This is what a really good, healthy fungi strand looks like,” he says. Its uniform, segmented structure, thickness, and color are often good signs, though he adds that it’s not a hard and fast rule, just clues that this might be an architect of healthy soil.

As a vegetable farmer, Robb is mostly in the business of life. But his interest in building healthy soil led him down into this shadowy world of decay, where microbes shuffle carbon and nutrients in an endless cycle that sustains all life on Earth. This world appears chaotic at first glance, but Robb insists that it is elegant. An orderly marketplace, really. He’s been working to understand and strengthen this underground economy to replenish his soil.

Researchers have increasingly recognized how essential fungi are to sequestering carbon in the soil and some have come to appreciate the outsized role they play in supporting crop health, mitigating climate change, and even sheltering crops from disease. As fungi’s vast benefits come to light, more farmers are tapping into this vital network, learning how to work with beneficial fungi to encourage its growth in the soil, swapping tilling for microscopes.

This growing interest in fungal networks on farms quietly challenges the underpinnings of U.S. agriculture. The prevailing model involves taking care of the crop’s nutritional needs with chemicals, bumping up the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in an effort to maximize the yield of the crop. Farm ecosystems are controlled with herbicides that kill weeds and fungicides that kill the fungi in the soil. Common practices, like tilling the soil, disturb the fungal networks and then deepen the dependence on chemical inputs.

“We’re reliant on these cheap inputs that are no longer cheap,” says soil ecologist Adam Cobb, whose research focuses on mycorrhizal fungi. He notes that farmers are then subject to the whims of a global market, which tends to skyrocket in price during geopolitical conflicts.

These chemical-based practices degrade the soil over time, stripping it of its ability to cycle carbon and nutrients without its supportive network of decomposers. But working to both protect and encourage fungi on farms is a way to reverse course. Robb sees his work of coaxing beneficial fungi back into the soil, which he largely learned from an online program called the Soil Food Web School, as both a challenge to mainstream agriculture and as a way forward to restore agricultural soils.

“It’s a criticism of how agriculture is currently conducted,” says Robb. “And it’s a methodology of introducing the microorganisms that are absent from the soil—the chain of organisms that release different minerals from rocks, clay, or silt particles in the soil.”

The Nutrient-for-Carbon Exchange

Mycorrhizal fungi, which encompass thousands of species, can form large, underground networks, connected by branching filaments called hyphae, threading through the soil in every direction. One type of this fungi, known as arbuscular mycorrhizal, attaches directly to the cell membranes of a plant’s root, facilitating a smooth delivery. Other microbes in the soil, like protozoa and nematodes, participate in this cycling, too, digesting fungi and bacteria to release their nutrients in a more available form to plants.

“The microbes engineered habitats around the plant roots that would be high in organic matter and make it more efficient for them to be able to obtain water and nutrients that they could then–in this carbon economy–essentially sell it to the plant,” says Kris Nichols, a leading researcher on soil microbiology. “It’s really an economic relationship.”

This relationship becomes especially interesting when business is booming—when the plants are delivering a lot of carbon into the soil that is used to build larger and larger fungal networks while distributing carbon across the soil profile. The carbon accumulates in the soil in many forms, from fungal cell walls to soil aggregates, or pellets of very alive soil that Nichols describes as “little microbial towns,” like economic hubs.

When these microbial communities develop, mycorrhizal fungi use their hard-earned carbon to build a protective coating around them, sheltering them from disturbances while more stably storing carbon. To the naked eye, these pellets look like crumbs in the soil.

The accumulation of carbon in the soil effectively slows the carbon cycle, causing carbon to linger in the ground for a longer period of time rather than quickly releasing into the atmosphere, where it takes the form of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas driving climate change. That’s the goal of what’s been popularly described as “climate-friendly farming,” or regenerative agriculture: keeping as much carbon in the soil for as long as possible, in part by keeping these underground networks undisturbed.

And increasingly, fungi have gained scientific recognition for their essential role in slowing this life-ending and -giving cycle. A recent study found that the world’s mycorrhizal fungi store the equivalent of a third of fossil-fuel emissions.

How Farmers Can Tap Into Fungal Networks

There’s no shortage of bacteria on the slide. It’s common for agricultural soils to be dominated by bacteria, which Robb is hoping to shift on his farm, building a more balanced ratio of fungi to bacteria in his soil. It’s not that bacteria should be scorned; they too are important decomposers that collaborate with fungi. But it’s hard to beat fungi at its game, rightfully a kingdom of its own. Fungi, more complex organisms, are more efficient at storing carbon across vast networks in the soil and more effective at delivering nutrients for certain plants.

The ratio of fungi to bacteria depends on the plants, explains Robb. He mostly grows salad greens across 3 acres of farmland. For his bok choy, mustards, and kale, he’s aiming for a 1-to-3 ratio of fungi to bacteria, but his lettuce requires a bit more fungi, closer to 1-to-1. He steeps the compost like a tea, extracting the microorganisms in water, and then runs it through his irrigation system.

“You’re introducing millions of fungi and bacteria species to the soil. And that’s as far as the management really needs to go, because once the plant gets established, then it’s controlling [the relationship with the microbes],” says Robb. He’s essentially just giving a plant options, a pool of microbes at its service.

In addition to applying compost tea, Robb supports fungal life by creating mulch from wood chips, which the fungi help decompose.

Robb shows me a pile of wood chips softening in the sun. It’s just 3 months old, but already threaded with fine white hairs of saprophytic fungi, resembling a cobweb. “When you can see it visually like this, what you’re actually seeing are like thousands of strands wrapped around each other,” says Robb, given that hypha are just several microns in size.

Before planting, he’ll also coat his seeds in a mycorrhizal treatment, a powder of spores. This inoculates this critical, network-building fungi in the soil. So as soon as the plant germinates, the fungi will be available to swap nutrients for carbon. Periodically, he’ll feed the fungi, adding liquid kelp, fish hydrolysate, and humic and fulvic acids to encourage its growth.

Every month or so, Robb peers at a soil sample under the microscope, assessing his progress. It has been about a year since he bought his first microscope and began surveying the local microbes. Most of his soil still isn’t where he’d like it to be, still dominated by bacteria, but it’s steadily improving. He essentially started from scratch on sandy soil that couldn’t hold onto much water or nutrients.

The most visible marker of improvement, at least to the naked eye, might be the crops themselves. A couple years ago, he observed “a precipitous decline in the quality” of his vegetables. They were yellowing and stunted. His lettuce was drooping. Disease was a regular occurrence. This prompted him to look into how to build soil that could hold onto more nutrients, which led him to fungi.

So far, his focus on improving decomposition has improved the health of his crops—now, rows of mostly bright green, leafing, upright crops emerge from dark brown, lush soil.

A Symbiotic Relationship That Predates Humans

“We had a very mineral land base, but we didn’t have soil,” said microbiologist Kris Nichols. As plants began washing up on shore, it’s thought that mycorrhizal fungi helped them siphon nutrients and water, providing what they needed to move to land, in a symbiotic relationship for the ages.

“We know that this relationship existed,” said Nichols. “We have the genetic markers and we have the fossilized plant roots to be able to see, structurally, that it has been this same type of relationship for hundreds of millions of years.”

It has taken a while for the role of fungi in supporting plants and soil health to gain mainstream scientific recognition, however. Elaine Ingham, a pioneer in the field of soil microbiology, recalls facing pushback in the early 1980s when she proposed researching the role of soil microorganisms for her dissertation at Colorado State University. She met with her professors to propose her field of inquiry, only to be sternly dismissed.

“They’d look me in the eye and say, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Bacteria and fungi in the soil—they’re just there. They don’t do anything,’” she recalls. “All of them agreed that I was endangering my ability to get a job at the other end of my research project.”

But Ingham was undeterred. “I wanted to understand what bacteria and fungi in the soil were there for,” she says. “In all the literature I looked at, you couldn’t find anything about what these organisms in the soil actually do.” With the blessing of her advisor, she was allowed to pursue a dissertation project, along with her husband Russell Ingham, studying how soil fungi, bacteria, and nematodes interact with plants.

It was the start of her life’s work to help peel back the layers of the mysterious world of microbes within the soil. To date, the vast majority of the millions of fungi species on Earth remain unknown by scientists, but it’s now abundantly clear that many fungi play a critical role in soil health. Ingram, who grew up on a farm, now works with farmers to reintroduce soil fungi through the Soil Food Web School.

Robb came to learn how to work with fungi on his farm when he stumbled upon the school by chance in a footnote of a book. He attended the program without a background in science, but it didn’t take him long to feel comfortable behind a microscope. It was an “aha moment” when he realized his soil was depleted of fungi and other microbes—with this, he had the clarity of a diagnosis.

The Vast, Untapped Potential of Fungi

The roots of a cowpea plant, with fungi stained in blue, under a microscope.(Photo credit: Adam Cobb)

“We never leave our soil bare. It is always covered with straw, leaf mold, or wood chips,” says Leah Penniman, the co-founder of Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York. “We like to think of these wood chips as encouraging the fungi from the native forest around to come into our fields and partner with our orchards and with our crops.”

In 2006, when she started Soul Fire Farm, the soil was very degraded and the organic matter—which includes soil carbon—was only at 3 percent. But they’ve since increased it to 10 percent to 12 percent in some areas. “That has been through a partnership with fungi,” Penniman says. Slowly but surely, fungi have emerged from the forest, building carbon in the soil.

Robb also thinks of the forest on the outskirts of his fields. The trees have a relationship with mycorrhizal fungi and microbes that take care of all their needs, without any human intervention. “Those are nitrogen-rich plants, and nobody’s applying fertilizer,” he says.

He currently adds organic nitrogen to his farm, but hopes to add less and less, allowing the fungi and microbes to increasingly take over in tending to his crops.

The post Fungi Are Helping Farmers Unlock the Secrets of Soil Carbon appeared first on Civil Eats.

https://civileats.com/2024/03/04/regenerative-beef-gets-a-boost-from-california-universities/ Mon, 04 Mar 2024 09:00:29 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=55514 But for Diaz, good food is key to good health. Since taking the helm of the facility’s nutrition and dining services in 2018, he has worked to revamp the cuisine, including sourcing almost half of ingredients from farms and ranches within a 250-mile radius of the Sacramento Valley. Food grown in local fields, orchards, and […]

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It’s no wonder that hospital food gets a bad rap, says Santana Diaz, executive chef at the University of California Davis Medical Center, a sprawling, 142-acre campus located in Sacramento, California. As a seeming compromise between nutrition and institutional efficiency, food has long been dished up as an afterthought to patient care. “That was never the focus of hospitals,” he adds.

But for Diaz, good food is key to good health. Since taking the helm of the facility’s nutrition and dining services in 2018, he has worked to revamp the cuisine, including sourcing almost half of ingredients from farms and ranches within a 250-mile radius of the Sacramento Valley. Food grown in local fields, orchards, and pastures with healthy soil management practices simply make for healthier, more nutritious, and more flavorful meals, he says—the perfect ingredients for changing the “stigma” associated with hospital fare.

Diaz is not alone in making this shift, but he may be ahead of the game. In 2022, the University of California (U.C.) system—a network of 10 campuses and five medical centers—committed to supporting regenerative farming as part of U.C. President Michael Drake’s vision to mitigate the effects of climate change and drive a more equitable food system. And as an advisor to an initiative lead by the nonprofit organization Roots of Change, Diaz is helping to steer the larger institution toward local agriculture—through the system-wide procurement of regeneratively ranched beef.

Santana Diaz, Executive Chef, U.C. Davis Med Center. (Photo courtesy of Roots of Change)

The term, a general reference to pasture management that prioritizes soil health and perennial plants by grazing livestock through rotated paddocks, encompasses a set of practices that advocates say results in healthier animals and pastures. Research also shows that beef from cattle raised strictly on grass is more nutritious than conventional beef, although it’s not yet clear how regenerative practices may impact those findings.

Cumulatively, the U.C. dining system serves more than 600,000 meals a day during the academic year. By ensuring reliable demand for regeneratively raised meat, proponents of the system’s new procurement pledge see the sizable volume giving the state’s independent ranchers and rural economy a huge boost, and bolstering the local and regional meat supply chain.

It’s a tall order, but Diaz knows the sway that comes with institutional demand. The former executive chef at the Sacramento Kings’ Golden 1 Center and the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium is also a founding member of Beef2Institution, a non-profit program helping K-12 schools, hospitals, and sports venues in California source beef from local, family-owned ranches.

Institutions are the perfect outlet, says Diaz, for ground, braising, and stewing meat and the other lower-value, secondary cuts that make up nearly two-thirds of every beef carcass. So featuring hamburgers, boneless short ribs, and carne asada as part of a local farm-to-fork menu offers nearby ranchers a prime bread-and-butter opportunity, he says—all the while exposing a captive audience to the value of beef raised on regenerative pasture.

“Obviously, we’re not going to change patient behavior . . . in [one] hospital stay.”

“Obviously, we’re not going to change patient behavior . . . in [one] hospital stay,” Diaz notes. But because diet plays a major role in raising the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions, there’s huge merit, he adds, in educating them about preventative and nutritional approaches to health management.

And with his kitchen alone churning out 6,500 meals a day—along with patients, the medical center feeds an army of clinicians, staff, and medical and nursing students—the appetite of the entire U.C. system will likely have a resounding impact on the larger beef market in the state. “That’s how institutions can flex their buying power,” Diaz says.

A Premium Product

Despite research showing that eating less beef has significant health and environmental benefits, including shrinking an individual’s carbon footprint by as much as 75 percent, America’s steak and burger consumption is on the rise.

Currently, the vast majority of U.S. beef comes from cows raised on pasture for about the first year of their lives, then moved to concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—large-scale industrial facilities that grain-finish cattle in confinement for six to eight months before slaughter. Along with concentrated levels of environmental pollution, critics deride beef feedlots as places where hundreds if not thousands of cattle are crowded together. These conditions typically require antibiotics to prevent herds from getting sick; subsequently, this “subtherapeutic” use has also been linked to antibiotic resistance.

Nevertheless, CAFOs are also the basis of a “hyper-efficient” commodity system, says Renee Cheung, managing partner at Bonterra Partners, an impact investment advisory firm for regenerative agriculture and co-author of a market analysis of grass-fed beef. These operations pump out a consistent, year-round supply of beef for the meatpacking industry, a sector dominated by a handful of multinational giants that control more than 80 percent of the country’s beef market.

Grazing cattle on pasture for the entirety of their lives, on the other hand, is far less productive. As such, strictly grass-fed or grass-finished operations tend to be modest in scale, says Cheung, with the majority of ranches in the U.S. herding around 50 heads. The smaller volumes and seasonality of pastures create more variability in slaughter weight and harvest windows, running counter to the conventional year-round commodity model.

As a result, non-CAFO operations don’t benefit from the economy of scale built into the heavily consolidated processing and marketing infrastructure, Cheung says. With limited access to centralized meatpacking facilities, these producers are often saddled with high overhead for transport, cold storage, and market delivery—all of which add to premium prices at the meat counter.

The cost, however, also reflects a more superior product. Compared to conventionally raised beef, studies show that strictly pasture-fed beef contain higher nutrients with less fat, often with lower levels of antibiotics, hormones, and risk of food contamination. And grass-fed cuts simply taste better, according to Chef Dan Barber, sustainable and ethical farming advocate and author of The Third Plate, who extols its rich, complex, and “undeniably beefy” flavor.

Not all pasture-based ranchers have adopted paddock-based regenerative practices, but the number appears to be growing. That’s in part because the holistic principles of regenerative ranching go hand in hand with land stewardship and animal welfare, says Michael Dimock, executive director of Roots of Change. By “mimicking nature,” the grazing patterns of ruminants benefit from natural forage and room to roam, all the while “maximizing soil health and biodiversity” of plants, insects, and other animals.

Preparing grass-fed beef for serving at the Meat Summit. (Photo courtesy of Roots of Change)

Regardless, recent research shows that 100 percent grass-fed cattle have a larger carbon footprint than those finished on grain because they fatten at a slower rate, yet also weigh as much as 20 percent less at maturity. And while regeneratively managed pastures have been shown to sequester carbon, the science behind the potential for “carbon-neutral beef” has been overblown. Still, Dimock adds that well-managed, rotational grazing enhances pasture productivity, helps restore spent cropland, and prevents wildfires by keeping invasive grasses and dry brush in check.

It’s also a highly efficient use of marginal land, notes Dimock—a classification of the 70 percent of the world’s arable regions unsuited for crop production due to poor soil, aridity, or steepness. As he sees it, regenerative ranching is also accessible and practical for smaller operations because it’s scalable, and lowers the financial risks associated with compliance-centered practices like organic farming.

The Power of Procurement

Making regenerative beef a more attainable business model requires developing a resilient supply chain, says Dimock, one that caters primarily to smaller producers. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerabilities of a heavily consolidated industry, including bottlenecks in meat processing due to labor shortages and transportation breakdowns. Along with the USDA’s recent $1 billion investment in expanding the nation’s meat and poultry processing capacity, he sees California’s $600 million Community Economic Resilience Fund (CERF) giving a major boost to the state’s meat supply infrastructure.

The targeted funding includes shoring up the network of smaller, regional harvest, processing, and storage facilities, he adds, and will help rural communities develop stronger economic hubs that decentralize the current top-heavy model. But those new and expanded facilities won’t succeed if there isn’t a consistent market for the kind of meat they process.

“If we want to give small-scale ranchers a fair shot,” Dimock says, “we have to break up [the current corporate stronghold].”

Going up against the commodity system, however, comes with additional challenges. While grass-fed beef accounts for roughly $4 billion, or 4 percent of the overall U.S. market, an estimated 80 percent of the supply consists of imports, largely from Australia, Uruguay and Brazil—countries where raising livestock on pasture is far more economical. Passed through a USDA-inspected plant, these products can be labeled “domestic,” leaving true domestic producers at an economic disadvantage.

“If you talk to 12 people about regenerative [practices], you’ll get 12 different definitions.”

In fact, the general lack of standards and regulations for the grass-fed sector has created a Wild West landscape of labels, says Bonterra’s Cheung. For its part, the USDA has recently announced stepping up its labeling guidelines, which distinguish true grass-fed beef from confusing claims such as “pasture-raised,” “50 percent grass-fed,” and “grass-fed and grain-finished.” These are highly misleading terms, she notes, given that most cattle are pastured for the first year of their lives. And “there has been a lot of outright cheating in the industry,” she adds—for instance, grass-fed labels can still apply to confined cattle raised on grass pellets.

The fundamental practices of regenerative ranching align with California’s efforts to promote farming “in a manner that restores and maintains natural systems,” says California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Secretary Karen Ross. The approach also complements the state’s climate smart initiatives and efforts to advance social equity through the support of small-scale farms and ranches.

Still, Ross acknowledges that the term’s inherent flexibility can make it a fuzzy concept. That’s especially true in California, where regional variations in microclimates, precipitation levels, and soil structure reflect a wide practice spectrum—some ranches in the state’s mountainous reaches, for example, may winter their herds on dried silage when fields are bare, while others may have the means to transport them to greener pastures.

“If you talk to 12 people about regenerative [practices], you’ll get 12 different definitions,” Ross says.

Currently, several certifications such as the American Grassfed Association (AGA), Regenerative Organic Certified, and Land to Market provide a range of overlapping criteria that ensure the regenerative provenance of meat. By outlining transparent measures, these voluntary labels are intended to legitimize and safeguard the premium nature of regeneratively produced beef.

Last month, the CDFA began work on officially defining regenerative ranching and agriculture. Rather than developing standards for state certification, and the goal is “to make sure that when we use the term, we have a shared understanding of what the practices are,” says Ross. The “inclusive” set of parameters will help inform state policy around regenerative food production, she adds—including public procurement initiatives.

Public institutions are “a ready-made way” to spur and ensure market demand for healthy food from sustainable sources, adds Ross, who has been involved in discussions about the UC initiative. “We’re investing in better outcomes for farmers, the community, and the environment,” she says. “That’s the power of procurement.”

Building the Supply Pipeline

Balancing supply and demand is nonetheless a delicate endeavor, says Tom Richards, co-owner of Richards Grassfed Beef in Yuba County, California. The fifth-generation rancher has been a key voice in both the UC initiative and Beef2Institution.

Most of California’s pasture-grazing operations focus on a premium, direct-to-consumer market. Between online sales, farmers markets, restaurants, and specialty retailers, year-to-year demand tends to be stable—and manageable.

The supply of better beef “isn’t something you can just dial up,” says Richards. Increasing herds is a risky investment—“it takes three years to raise one of these animals,” he notes—so clear market forecasts are imperative. “The biggest thing that we need from the industry is for somebody like a Santana [Diaz] or UC to say, ‘we’re committed to [helping you] map out a three- to five-year plan to grow your supply,’” he says.

“Right now, the market’s operating on a push,” Richards adds. “But what the industry needs is the pull”—with heavy strings attached.

For smaller-scale operations in particular, committed relationships all along the supply chain are essential to staying afloat. Yet that business model runs counter to industry approach, says Clifford Pollard, the founder of Cream Co. Meats. The Oakland, California-based meat processor “bridges the gap” between regenerative ranches and broadline product distribution on the West Coast, and has played a central role in promoting Beef2Institution’s efforts.

Conventional meat processors “trade in commodities,” Pollard says, sourcing raw material at the lowest price possible. Cream Co., on the other hand, cultivates its supply pipeline “over many years of sustained [purchasing] commitments” to individual operations, he says.

Ultimately, with demand driving supply, the large-scale procurement will undoubtedly influence the equation. Nevertheless, even incremental steps by institutions can pave the way for meaningful change, Pollard notes. “There’s often a hesitation that it has to be all or nothing, but shifting even a small portion of your spend towards [regeneratively minded sourcing] is impactful,” he says, and U.C.’s commitment really gives regenerative producers “a seat at the table.”

“We don’t need the whole table,” Pollard adds. “Just a seat.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/02/27/can-taller-cover-crops-help-clean-the-water-in-farm-country/ Tue, 27 Feb 2024 09:00:12 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=55400 Bedtka is in his mid-30s and working to raising a small cow-calf beef herd profitably. That requires cutting costs and labor, and he’d like to keep input-intensive corn and soy out of the picture if he can. Instead, he wants his cattle to harvest their own feed via managed rotational grazing, even in the winter. […]

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Under pewter-colored skies, Alan Bedtka tramps through the snow and past a stand of sorghum-sudangrass, its chest-high stems rattling in the harsh wind. The tall forage stands out in southeastern Minnesota’s corn and soybean fields, which this time of year have been reduced to stubble poking through the snow.

Bedtka is in his mid-30s and working to raising a small cow-calf beef herd profitably. That requires cutting costs and labor, and he’d like to keep input-intensive corn and soy out of the picture if he can. Instead, he wants his cattle to harvest their own feed via managed rotational grazing, even in the winter.

“Any day you can graze is better,” says Bedka.

It turns out a system that relies less on row crops isn’t just good for a time- and resource-strapped young farmer. A snowball’s toss away, a trout stream called Crow Spring snakes through the white landscape. Yet the bucolic scene belies an environmental problem roiling beneath the surface: The groundwater in this part of Minnesota is so contaminated with nitrates running off farm fields that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently called on three state agencies to take action to protect the health of rural residents.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says 70 percent of the state’s nitrate pollution is coming from cropland.

That’s where the sorghum-sudangrass comes in. It works as both a cover crop and forage for the cattle, and it’s helping Bedtka build up organic matter in his soil. He was paid to plant it by the Olmsted County Groundwater Protection and Soil Health Program, a local effort that seeks to reduce overall fertilizer use by building soil—therefore cutting down on the nutrients that enter waterways—while helping farmers save money.

In its inaugural season, the program has already helped keep tens of thousands of pounds of nitrates out of area water. The initiative goes beyond pushing the establishment of an isolated practice to take a holistic, integrative approach. And its early success has conservationists and lawmakers hoping it can become a model for local, state, and federal farm conservation programs, and in the process serve as a way of disrupting the corn-bean-feedlot machine that dominates Midwestern agriculture.

Nipping Nitrates at the Source

In 2022, Olmsted County commissioners Mark Thein and Gregg Wright approached staffers in the local soil and water conservation district office and asked a seemingly straightforward question: How can we keep nitrates out of the groundwater? Thein, whose family runs a well drilling business, is troubled by the increase in contamination he’s seen over the past few decades in the aquifers he taps throughout southeastern Minnesota.

“It’s not in society’s best interest to look the other way,” he says. “I don’t think it’s fair to the next generation.”

Southeastern Minnesota is a hollow land—its geology is characterized by porous limestone that allows contaminants to easily make their way into underground aquifers. Nitrates are a particularly troublesome pollutant, given their ability to escape the surface and seep deeper into the Earth, often in a mysterious and unpredictable manner. High nitrate levels can cause a sometimes-fatal condition called “blue baby syndrome” and has been linked to colorectal cancer, thyroid disease, and neural tube defects.

The EPA has set the drinking water standard for nitrate at 10 milligrams per liter, or 10 parts per million. Recently, research has hinted at serious health problems associated with nitrate levels lower than that. Minnesota Department of Agriculture testing has shown that over 12 percent of the private wells tested in the eight-county karst region of southeastern Minnesota exceeded the EPA’s drinking water standard. More than 9,000 residents in the region have been or still are at risk of consuming water at or above the EPA standard, according to a letter the agency released in November 2023.

A winter view of Alan Bedtka’s sorghum-sudangrass cover crops during a soil health field day led by Olmsted SWCD staff. (Photo courtesy of Alan Bedtka)

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says 70 percent of the state’s nitrate pollution is coming from cropland. Corn requires lots of nitrogen, and it’s by far the most commonly used fertilizer in the United States. Iowa farmers, for example, apply it on 87 percent of their fields at a rate of 149 pounds per acre. Annual crops take up only about half of the nitrogen applied, and the rest often ends up polluting groundwater in the form of nitrate.

This doesn’t just create problems in local drinking water wells. Nitrogen and phosphorus escaping Midwestern farm fields are the major cause of the hypoxic “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, which is about the size of Yellowstone National Park. The EPA’s latest National Rivers and Streams Assessment found close to half of the country’s waterways were in “poor condition,” and nutrients such as nitrogen are a leading culprit.

Southeastern Minnesota’s Olmsted County is a microcosm of agriculture’s dependence on nitrogen fertilizer. Since the 1940s, oats, wheat, hay, and pasture have been replaced by a duoculture of corn and soybeans. In addition, large concentrated animal feeding operations, which have become more prevalent there in recent years, add to the problem by disposing millions of gallons of nitrogen-rich liquid manure.

Olmsted County officials acknowledge that water in certain areas of the county will continue to see increasing nitrate levels as the contaminant moves deeper into aquifers. And when nitrates are present, it’s inevitable that other contaminants, such as pesticides, are also polluting the water. “We’re allowing this to happen,” says Caitlin Meyer, the water resources coordinator for the Olmsted SWCD. “But what can we do to prevent this in the first place?”

Dialing up Diversity

One standard approach to cleaning the water that runs off farms is planting cover crops. Indeed, studies have shown that when cover crops grow between the corn and soy seasons, they provide the kind of soil environment that builds natural fertility and cuts nitrate leaching by anywhere from 40 to over 70 percent.

Cover cropping has also gained a reputation as a tool for sequestering carbon and thus mitigating climate change. Since 2016, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made available more than $100 million in funds to help farmers establish cover crops.

Despite the resources devoted to advancing the practice, however, only around 5 percent of U.S. farmland is regularly cover cropped. The cost can be prohibitive, and it can be tricky to fit them into a conventional row-cropping system. A 2022 Stanford University satellite study reported that although cover cropping reduces erosion and improves water quality, it also causes significant yield hits for corn and soybeans. And some scientists are concerned that cover cropping’s role in climate change mitigation has been overplayed.

For a time, the Olmsted County SWCD administered a traditional cover-crop program funded by the USDA that helped farmers with establishment costs. Angela White, a soil conservation technician for the SWCD, says the program was valuable in getting cover crops established in the region and showing that it could work, but it had limitations as far as producing environmental benefits. Farmers would often plow the cover under early in the spring before it could provide optimal soil health benefits, and USDA restrictions didn’t allow much flexibility.

Ray Weil, a University of Maryland soil ecologist who has worked with farmers in numerous states, says when farmers are paid to implement an isolated practice such as cover cropping, they can become too focused on the minimum needed to qualify for payments, and they don’t consider the overall soil health picture.

But Weil and other experts also say cover cropping can be a “gateway practice” for implementing the five principles of soil health promoted by the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service or NRCS: armor the soil, minimize disturbance (i.e., reduce tillage), increase plant diversity, keep roots in the soil as long as possible, and integrate livestock.

Plant diversity and covering the land has long been associated with more resilient soil. But experts say the integration of livestock via rotational grazing can also help reduce reliance on continuous plantings of fertilizer-intensive crops. And that’s where the Olmsted County Groundwater Protection and Soil Health Program enters the picture. The program pays farmers to plant cover crops, but it digs deeper to ensure that they get real results.

Research shows that allowing cover crops to grow to significant heights can dramatically reduce pollution. So, the program pays a farmer $55 an acre to grow their cover crops to at least 12 inches; at 24 inches, they receive an additional $20 per acre. Planting a cash crop within a living stand of cover crops, a technique called “planting green,” garners a farmer an additional $10 an acre. Farmers can also receive payments for growing so-called “alternative” crops such as oats and other small grains, and for converting crop acres to deep-rooted perennial systems like hay and pasture.

Each farm can qualify for a maximum of around $15,000 in payments per year. When Olmsted County SWCD staffers originally brainstormed with area farmers about setting up the soil health initiative, they considered a per-farm cap of $20,000 to $25,000. However, the farmers insisted on a lower cap so that more money could be spread around on more acres.

“I put $6,500 total expenses into seeding—the program paid back $3,500,” says farmer Logan Clark, who used the program to convert cropland to rotationally grazed pasture on his hilly, erosion-prone farm. “So, I’d at least be $3,500 more in the hole if I didn’t have the program.”

SWCD staffers say one advantage of the program is that because funding comes from the county—the commissioners agreed to set aside $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds for the program—rather than the USDA, they have more freedom to allow farmers to experiment and learn from their mistakes.

“I know farmers who have been cover cropping or strip tilling for decades … Now they are hungry for what’s next.”

Mark Stokes has been using no-till cropping for 26 years. Around five years ago, he noticed that even on his no-till acres he was seeing erosion, so he started growing cover crops utilizing traditional cost-share programs. He isn’t afraid to experiment—he’s grazed his beef cow herd on a mix of nine cover crops, and a few years ago, after seeing it being done on YouTube, mounted a seeder box on his combine so he can plant cover crops while he’s harvesting corn.

Stokes enrolled in the Olmsted SWCD program in 2023 to help cover the risk of yet another innovative practice. Through the contract, he agreed to plant his corn and soybeans into growing cereal rye green and terminate the rye after it hit 12 inches tall. It turns out the dry conditions made it a bad year to let a cover crop grow tall. On the other hand, the oats he raised in 2023 thrived.

When it came time to sign up for the 2024 round of the program, Stokes took advantage of its flexibility. “I signed up for more oats, so we don’t have to worry about the cereal rye so much, and if we have to, we can terminate it sooner.”

Not all participants in the program are going to check all five soil health principle boxes, but flexibility can serve as a seedbed for aspirational farming. Alan Bedtka wants to follow as many of the principles as possible. In 2023, he used the program’s funds to grow his cover crop to 12 inches. He also signed up to raise cover crops for seed production, which qualified him for the alternative crop portion of the initiative. Finally, his use of rotational grazing and the growing of forages on formerly row-cropped land qualified him for the haying and grazing payment.

“Protecting water quality is a perk, but the main reason I’m doing it is to try to be more profitable,” says Bedtka as he stands in a recently grazed cover-cropped field that he hasn’t had to add fertilizer to for two years. Nearby is an exposed limestone hillside, a reminder of the area’s vulnerable karst. Bedtka explains that his healthier soil absorbs and stores precipitation better. “So that means you’re growing more grass and more cows per acre. All the benefits are kind of tied up into one.”

Like Stokes, Bedtka is now able to take a more integrative, whole-systems approach with less financial risk.

“I know farmers who have been cover cropping or strip tilling for decades . . . Now they are hungry for what’s next,” says Kristi Pursell, who, when she headed up the watershed group Clean River Partners, supported farmers adopting practices to keep ag pollution out of southeastern Minnesota’s Cannon River. “The Olmsted SWCD program respects the knowledge that these farmers have of their land and their previous experience.”

Truckloads of Disruption

Soon after the Olmsted County program was launched as a pilot in 2022, 52 farmers signed up to grow tall cover crops—more than double what was expected. In total, they agreed to grow cover crops up to 12 inches high on over 5,300 acres and 24 inches on 2,700 acres. This year, over 70 farmers have signed up to raise cover crops under the program, representing almost 13,000 acres.

There are 240,000 acres of cropland in the county, so the majority of the area’s farmers aren’t participating in this initiative. But the program may be having an outsized impact on soil health. The SWCD estimates the environmental results of the program by combining the nitrate reduction directly observed on its own research farm with some of the wider research that’s been done. It estimates that in 2023, the program kept roughly 310,000 pounds of nitrates out of the county’s drinking water.

Surveys show that most farmers plant more cover-crop acres than they are getting paid for— something they can afford to do because the SWCD contracts pay so well, says Martin Larsen, a farmer and conservation technician for the district. When the SWCD includes those additional acres, the amount of nitrates being kept out of the water goes up to 560,000 pounds—or the equivalent of 23 semi-truckloads of urea fertilizer.

“The contracts are generating a nearly two-to-one payback in terms of soil health practices that are put in place on the farms,” says Larsen.

At the SWCD office, Caitlin Meyer, the water resources coordinator, points to a color-coded map that shows where farmers have signed up for the program so far; soil-friendly practices are being used in most areas of the county. “If we could get 30 percent in our subwatersheds put into cover crops, we’d be making real progress,” she says. One estimate is that some watersheds are approaching the 20-percent mark.

Larsen, who got his start using regenerative practices by planting cover crops a few years ago, then displays a chart showing what kind of acreage changes could occur if the program lives up to its potential over the next five years—9 percent less corn, 13 percent fewer soybeans, 417 percent more cover crops, 95 percent more oats, and 5 percent more pasture. If the effort succeeds, in other words, it could significantly disrupt the corn-soybean system in the region.

“For generations we’ve been telling farmers to do exactly what they’re doing. If we want them to change, we need to change.”

It might also serve as a model in other counties in Minnesota and beyond. Dagoberto Driggs, who coordinates the National Healthy Soils Policy Network, says the data from the Olmsted effort’s research farm helps determine an accurate estimate of the program’s benefits, ensuring public resources are being invested wisely. He adds that a program like this fits well with the current push on the part of regenerative agriculture groups across the country to create conservation incentives that are flexible enough to allow farmers to innovate and adapt. Driggs would like to see something like the Olmsted County program tried in other parts of the country.

“We really need a more holistic approach based on the soil health principles, which is what I find striking with this program,” says Driggs.

Mark Thein, the well-driller and county commissioner, hopes a cost-benefit analysis could show that such a proactive program saves taxpayer money by reducing the need for new drinking water infrastructure to deal with pollutants. It would be ideal, he adds, if the state would create a large-scale version of the program, taking pressure off local governments.

The timing could work in his favor. An analysis by the Star Tribune newspaper found that despite the fact that Minnesota has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to reduce nitrate pollution over the past few decades, the problem has not gone away.

When the 2024 session of the Minnesota Legislature convened in February, lawmakers began drafting legislation that would create a pilot nitrate-reduction program modeled after the Olmsted County initiative. Pursell, who is now a state representative, is working on the legislation. She’s frustrated with the lack of progress made to reduce ag pollution and blames federal policy such as the farm bill, which encourages farmers to grow little other than corn and soybeans.

If a local pilot is successful, Pursell says it could help farmers transition out of the corn-soybean duoculture in a financially viable manner—and give taxpayers a return on their investment in the form of clean water, a crucial public good.

“I want to make sure that when we are spending money, it’s for an outcome, and it’s not just to tick a box,” she says. “For generations we’ve been telling farmers to do exactly what they’re doing. If we want them to change, we need to change.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/02/22/from-civil-rights-to-food-justice-jim-embry-reflects-on-a-life-of-creative-resistance/ Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:00:51 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=55258 In 1972, he founded the Good Foods Co-op in Lexington. Then, in 2001, at a pivotal point of his life, Embry moved to the heart of Detroit, assuming the role of director at the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, where he began integrating his work for social justice into the effort to bring nutritious […]

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Jim Embry sees tending to land as a sacred and spiritual responsibility. The food systems advocate, land steward, and beekeeper came of age during the civil rights movement in Kentucky and has spent five decades working for social and racial justice.

In 1972, he founded the Good Foods Co-op in Lexington. Then, in 2001, at a pivotal point of his life, Embry moved to the heart of Detroit, assuming the role of director at the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, where he began integrating his work for social justice into the effort to bring nutritious food to underserved communities.

This move marked the culmination of 30 years of political collaboration with luminaries Jimmy and Grace Lee Boggs. Embry’s focus on urban agriculture and food justice in Detroit drew a global audience, where he hosted audiences include the British Parliament, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, and distinguished personalities such as Danny Glover, David Korten, and Joanna Macy.

“I have developed a worldview that enlarged my concern for all the human and non-human people: the plant people, the animal people, the water people, the air people, the rock people, the fire people. These are all our relatives, and we are all children of the Earth.”

Embry returned to his home state of Kentucky in 2006, and founded the Sustainable Communities Network (SCN), a nonprofit that connects and supports a variety of entities in a larger effort to build justice in the local food system. SCN works with nonprofits and schools in the region to integrate farming and food production into their work and advocates for local policy that supports school gardens, urban farms, and community gardens and helps get fresh produce to food insecure residents. He is also part of the Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance, a Black- and Indigenous-led organization with a focus on African and African American crops.

Since then, he has traveled and spoken extensively, including trips to the World Social Forum in Brazil and to Terra Madre, the International Slow Food Gathering in Italy. Embry now lives alongside his cousin in Richmond, Kentucky, on the 30-acre Ballew Farm, named after his great uncle Atrus, who died at age 100. In June 2023, Embry received a James Beard Leadership Award that recognized his many years of leadership within the justice food and food sovereignty movements.

Embry strives to balance community activism and writing with “soil activism,” embodying the essence of a life dedicated to weaving harmony between humanity and the natural world. His ethos extends beyond human boundaries; he sees himself as “stardust condensed in human form, collaborating with kindred spirits to foster beloved communities where every being, from human to water, air, rock, animal, and plant, is held in sacred regard.”

Civil Eats recently sat down with Embry to talk about his farm, his family’s agrarian history, and how he approaches his current role as an elder in the food system.

Drawing from your experiences as an activist, farmer, and social justice leader, how have historical events influenced and shaped your passion for the social justice movement?

I’ve been a participant in all the social justice movements for the past 65 years. In 1959, when I was a 10-year-old, I was a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). My mother was the local chapter president.

Those years of activism inspired me to develop a worldview that moves beyond 45, 90, and 180 degrees and approaches 360. My involvement in social justice movements encompasses all forms of oppression that humans are subject to. But I have also developed a worldview that enlarged my concern for all the human and non-human people: the plant people, the animal people, the water people, the air people, the rock people, the fire people. These are all our relatives, and we are all children of the Earth.

As a social justice activist and organizer, I have not only participated in historical events, but I have also helped to plan and organize historical events. One case in point is the 1964 March on Frankfort, Kentucky, led by Dr. King and Jackie Robinson. As a president of the state youth chapter for the NAACP, my role was to travel around Kentucky and organize other young folks to attend the march, which attracted 10,000 people. I have gone on in my life to help organize probably 30 or 40 large events, have helped found 30 to 40 organizations, and I have never felt like dropping out.

One very important historical moment that influenced my journey was attending Dr. King’s funeral in 1968. It was here that I met Ernie Greene, well known for his involvement in the Little Rock school integration effort. He invited me to spend the summer in New York City in 1968 working construction. It seemed like the whole world was in New York City. There were people there from all over the world, interacting together. It was there that I was exposed to questions around food justice, food apartheid, food access, and the racism within the food and agricultural system.

Can you share the driving force behind your commitment to activism and the social justice movement, particularly in the context of fostering a more socially and environmentally sustainable world? 

I grew up with a closeness to the land because of my upbringing in Madison County, which sits at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, is fed by the Kentucky River watershed, and is nourished by soil heavy mineralized in limestone rock.

My grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins were all small farmers. So, my family culture was a culture of people connected to the land. I call us agrarian intellectual activists. Everything I do has been influenced by my family legacy as small farmers.

How does your family history inform your understanding of the challenges faced by today’s small-scale farmers?

My family’s history provides me an understanding that conditions during the years of enslavement, during the period after the Civil War, are all connected to what is happening today. The conditions that we faced after the Civil War were not resolved towards justice and are thus still prevalent.

There were 180,000 Black men and women who fought . . . [and] brought about the Union victory, defeated the Confederacy, and reunified the country. Most all of those Black soldiers were listed as farmers for their occupation. So, it was Black farmers who saved the union. This is the history and legacy of Black farmers.

Are you still actively involved in farming?

Yes, I’m currently actively involved in farming, but in defined ways. I’m a beekeeper and I love all those momma bees that go out and gather pollen and nectar on our 15-acre pollinator conservation project as part of our 30-acre family farm. I currently [have] about 30 fruit trees with most every kind of fruit growing. And I have all kinds of berries and fig trees and a whole variety of medicinal and cooking herbs.

On our property we have two high tunnels where we’re growing an assortment of veggies. And we do host farm tours, women’s retreats, dinners, and other educational activities here. My cousin next door raises chickens and makes value-added products from elderberries, herbs, teas, and tinctures.

We have invested in mushroom logs, and we are replenishing native tree varieties while also intentionally planning additional medicinal herbs that are native to Kentucky forests. We have two ponds on the property, and they get used periodically by family members or friends to catch fish. We have adopted an organic agricultural transition plan and we are in the second year of that activity. But honestly, because of my speaking engagements, I’m away from home for about one-third of the year.

Leadership winners Ira Wallace, Savonala “Savi” Horne, Valerie Horn, and Jim Embry speak onstage at the 2023 James Beard Restaurant And Chef Awards at Lyric Opera Of Chicago on June 5, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Jeff Schear/Getty Images for The James Beard Foundation)

For most of my life, I have not been involved in farming full-time. I moved to our family farm in 2012 to help look after our aunt and uncle who were both 90 years old at the time. They were like second parents to me, and so much that I do now in the food and agriculture system is based upon their teachings.

This property that I live on now goes back to the year 1800 or so, when our ancestors were brought across the Appalachian Mountains to live here in Madison County. So, we claim ancestral stewardship of this land. We purchased it in 1889 from those folks who stole the land from Indigenous peoples.

“Each decision we make around food is a political choice. It’s an economic choice. It’s a cultural choice. It’s a spiritual choice.”

Over the years I’ve developed extensive knowledge about every aspect of the food agriculture system and recognize my role. My role as an elder is to have this systems view, to create synergy, to speak to everyone and point out that everyone has to change since everyone eats. Everyone has to change in how we relate to the food and agriculture system in our daily practice and the food choices we make.

Each decision we make around food is a political choice. It’s an economic choice. It’s a cultural choice. It’s a spiritual choice. My dear friend, Wendell Berry, who I met as a student at the University of Kentucky back in 1968, says, “Eating is an agricultural act.” This means everyone is involved in the food agricultural system. Everybody has to change.

I have spoken to presidents, peasants, university professors, preschoolers, famous actors, and to kids who are doing hip-hop, beats, and rhymes and working in some of our urban garden projects. I’ve talked to members of the Nobel Committee and kids in FFA, governors, mayors, local schoolteachers, and military veterans with missing limbs who want to farm. These are a few of the people, organizations, and institutions that I’ve been blessed to work with over the years.

What are some notable best practices and challenges you believe exist in agriculture?

If we lift up one of Albert Einstein’s famous quotes, which is, “We can’t solve today’s problems with the same way of thinking we used when we created them,” then we have to deeply examine that way of thinking. [We have] created unsustainable farming practices, damaging practices, toxic practices, practices that create injustice, health disparities, economic inequalities, loss of biodiversity, and environmental pandemics. Oftentimes, the “best practices” that emerge over time become “worst practices” and create even more problems.

“Oftentimes, the ‘best practices’ that emerge over time become ‘worst practices’ and create even more problems.”

There are many different schools of thought or different methodologies that people embrace as we do our farm work, and I have borrowed from many, but my favorite is agroecology.

Agroecology is an integrated approach that combines ecological and social principles for sustainable agriculture and food systems. It emphasizes optimizing interactions among plants, animals, humans, and the environment while fostering equitable food systems where people have a say in their food choices and production. Agroecology has evolved to include ecological, sociocultural, technological, economic, and political aspects of food systems.

The key elements of agroecology involve empowering farmers, promoting local value addition, and supporting short value chains. It enables farmers to adapt to climate change and sustainably manage natural resources and biodiversity. Agroecology stresses local knowledge, biodiversity, synergy, knowledge sharing, and economic diversification. It also focuses on fairness, connectivity, land governance, participatory learning, circular economies, and polycentric governance, serving as a science, practice set, and social movement.

How do you envision agriculture’s role in shaping our future?

Agriculture has had the biggest role in shaping human culture for the past 15,000 years. Agriculture developed some 12,000 to 15,000 years ago and was a gift to our species by women.

Agri-culture—or the growing of food through the use of seeds—allowed us to move away from being primarily hunter-gatherers. This development (and domestication of animals) gave rise to what we call modern human civilization. In my view, it is within agriculture where we have the most profound need for change, and it is within agriculture where we have the most powerful fulcrum point for social transformation of all other human institutions.

“In my view, it is within agriculture where we have the most profound need for change, and it is within agriculture where we have the most powerful fulcrum point for social transformation of all other human institutions.”

After a sharp and comprehensive critique of our prevailing and dominant worldview of agriculture, we need to develop a farming philosophy, farming practices, farming research whose primary aim is the health of the people, health of the planet, health for all other species on the Earth, and the health of the economy.

Right now, the dominant food and farming systems are used to promote profit, plunder, and have a predatory relationship with the Earth. We need a huge paradigm shift in both the philosophy and the practices of farming. That will mean changes in every aspect of the food and agriculture system from seeds to planting to production to harvest to distribution to education to marketing to eating to disposal. In the face of climate change and environmental devastation, every sector will require lots of significant changes or shifts in how we go about the work in this area.

For us to enact changes we will need to develop an integrated systems approach. But we don’t have any choice if we want to become good ancestors and leave our great-great-grandchildren an Earth of abundance.

What is your philosophy on caring for and giving back to the planet?

George Washington Carver said any injustice to the soil is injustice to the farmer. Any injustice to the farmer is injustice to the soil.

Our human quest now is to have a much more expanded view of our responsibility not just to resolving the conflicts and contradictions within the human realm but it’s also to be stewards of Earth protectors or protagonists in maintaining the sacred Earthly balance.

What advice do you have for those looking to become more involved in advocating for their communities, land, and people striving to heal, reshape, and sustain our environment?

I encourage people reading this to contact me. I invite folks to, as Bill Withers would say, use me up. I’m in my last quadrant. I’ve done all kinds of things and recognize the importance of passing on these understandings to the next generations.

Secondly, get involved in organizations; they are critical to making change. Then form study groups to discuss ideas. Get out of the U.S.; travel internationally to see the cultures, the histories of other parts of the planet. Get engaged in your community. Become a voracious reader and read books like Farming While Black by Leah Penniman, We Are Each Other’s Harvest by Natalie Baszile, Freedom Farmers by Monica White, Collective Courage by Jessica Nembhard, and the great work of Thomas Berry and Wendell Berry.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/01/31/investment-is-flowing-to-us-grass-fed-beef-again-will-it-scale-up/ https://civileats.com/2024/01/31/investment-is-flowing-to-us-grass-fed-beef-again-will-it-scale-up/#comments Wed, 31 Jan 2024 09:00:39 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=55133 That’s how, a year later, he ended up at the largest cattle ranch in Montana, where the only thing more vast than its approximately 380,000 acres is the wealth and power of the man who owns it: one Rupert Murdoch. On a sunny September afternoon, Tripician stood in front of a small crowd to present […]

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When two small Western grass-fed beef brands combined forces in the name of growth in fall 2022, Jeff “Trip” Tripician was tapped to lead the newly formed company, Grass Fed Foods. As CEO, one of his first actions was to send an employee on a quest: Find the “most regenerative” ranch, he instructed. “But they have to be big. Do not bring me a small ranch,” he said.

That’s how, a year later, he ended up at the largest cattle ranch in Montana, where the only thing more vast than its approximately 380,000 acres is the wealth and power of the man who owns it: one Rupert Murdoch.

“Cream Co. is the first one that we worked with in the beef space. It’s not gonna be the last.”

On a sunny September afternoon, Tripician stood in front of a small crowd to present Bert Glover, the managing director of Impact Ag Partners, an Australian firm that helps people like Murdoch make and manage regenerative agriculture investments. Glover’s eyes gazed out at an audience made up of a few dozen representatives of America’s largest grocers and food-service companies from beneath the brim of a straw cowboy hat. Behind them, green pastures stretched into the distance toward looming, sand-colored peaks.

“How do you make the best beef business in America?” he asked, crossing one brown leather boot in front of another. “How do you do that and create ecological change, economic value, and social benefit? That’s what you’re gonna learn over the next 12 or 14 hours.”

The September Montana ranch tour and presentation. (Photo courtesy of Grass Fed Foods)

Buyers from Costco, Sysco, and Whole Foods climbed onto a hay wagon, eager to get started.

Tripician dreamed up the tour of the Matador Ranch in southwestern Montana to sell the buyers on the idea of stocking their meat cases and commercial food service kitchens with an up-and-coming supply of domestic grass-fed beef.

And it’s a more radical idea than it may at first sound.

While health, environmental, and animal welfare concerns have contributed to an increase in demand for grass-fed over feedlot beef over the past decade, the last reliable data estimated it accounted for 4 percent of the commercial market in 2016—and nearly all of it is imported from Australia, New Zealand, and other foreign countries, where grass-fed production costs less. (Experts say those numbers have likely increased somewhat, but good data is hard to find.)

Tripician projects that Grass Fed Foods will buy 2,500 head of cattle from the ranch in 2024, 4,500 in 2025, and 7,000 in 2026.

Meanwhile, grass-fed beef from U.S. cattle is primarily sold regionally at farmers’ markets, through meat shares, and in restaurants. And despite an abundance of optimism in recent years, countless efforts to shift more domestic production toward grass-fed have failed.

Now, despite numerous policy and economic hurdles, Murdoch’s money is not the only pot of capital flowing into what many consider to be “better” beef. In August, Oakland-based Cream Co. Meats raised $4 million in funding with the help of Provenance Capital Group, an investment bank that works primarily with extraordinarily wealthy families.

“Cream Co. is the first one that we worked with in the beef space. It’s not gonna be the last,” said Adrian Rodrigues, Provenance’s CEO. Will Harris’ White Oak Pastures in Georgia recently raised $1.2 million, and Old Salt Co-op in Montana raised $1 million through Steward, an alternative lending platform for regenerative agriculture.

There is no doubt that globally, methane and other emissions from beef production are contributing to climate change. And in Western countries, reducing overall beef consumption is one of the most effective climate interventions available. Yet advocates for regenerative grazing, like Tripician and the Impact Ag team, believe the right practices, which can store carbon in healthy soils, can balance out a significant portion of those emissions while providing other benefits. Many experts imagine a future that includes both shifts: less—and better—beef.

Although all of the companies mentioned above want to shift more beef production toward systems that employ regenerative grazing, eliminate the need for commodity grain as feed, and produce healthier meat, they have very different ideas about how to create success in the industry. Tripician is hoping one big supplier can catapult him toward plugging more grass-fed beef into the same efficiency-obsessed system that currently runs on a cheap supply of commodity beef provided by four large meatpackers. Think American grass-fed ground beef and steaks in the trucks of UNFI and the other distributors that supply large grocery and restaurant chains.

But many in the industry say that will never work, because American producers can’t compete on price with cheap imports. And while they may be able to command a premium among buyers who prefer domestic, that pathway is stymied by the fact that loopholes in federal policy have allowed imported meat to be labeled “Product of USA” if it is packaged stateside—even if the animal was born, raised, and slaughtered elsewhere. (The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposed changing that last spring, but the agency has not yet finalized the rule.)

Instead, businesses like Cream Co. and Old Salt are working to create new systems entirely, to change not just how cattle are raised, but how the meat is sold and who benefits as it moves from field to plate.

“For our entire food system, not just grass-fed beef, we really need to move . . . to a more localized and regionalized model,” said Allen Williams, who trains farmers on regenerative systems, including intensive grazing and grass-fed finishing in all 50 states through his consulting company, Understanding Ag, and is a founding partner of the regenerative agriculture certification Regenified. “Every economic study you’ve ever seen shows that the way to true prosperity in our country is a vibrant rural economy coupled with a strong small-business infrastructure, not a handful of major mega-corporations. None of their money turns over in any of our rural communities.”

Raising Grass-fed Cattle

Not only has Tripician heard that argument, in the past he has labored in service of it. In the 15 years he spent at Niman Ranch, he increased the network of small family farms raising animals on pasture from 160 to over 850. “We positively affected the lives of those people, but all their land added up . . . it’s smaller than the Matador,” he said. His tune has changed because, in his mind, “We didn’t solve the problem.”

The goal, as he sees it, is replacing as much conventional feedlot beef as possible.

Photo courtesy of Grass Fed Foods

But one thing that became apparent on the tour is that even at the Matador, which is being presented as a model for grass-fed, the ranch’s bottom line is still reliant on the ongoing production of a lot of conventional beef. The more expansive side, called the Beaverhead division, makes up more than 80 percent of the acreage and still sends all of its cattle to conventional feedlots. Murdoch bought Beaverhead from none other than the Koch brothers in 2021 for $200 million.

He combined it with a smaller ranch called La Cense, which he bought the same year. There, ranch manager Race King had already been implementing a paddock-based system referred to as regenerative, mob grazing, or intensive grazing and finishing the animals on grass instead of in a feedlot. The idea, the Matador team said, is to gradually spread the practice of combining regenerative grazing with grass finishing throughout the entire ranch.

Tripician projects that Grass Fed Foods will buy 2,500 head of cattle from the ranch in 2024, 4,500 in 2025, and 7,000 in 2026. And while those numbers are a drop in the bucket, Tripician said that right now, he can only guarantee so much demand. Not only does he want to get to a place where he’s buying tens of thousands of cattle from the Matador, he said the ranch operators also know neighbors who are interested in raising grass-fed cattle nearby.

“I fully expect those numbers to change,” he said, as he signs on more customers. That was the point of inviting retailers and distributors to the ranch, after all.

At one stop on the tour, shiny black cattle huddled quietly in the center of a pasture, watching the noisy group of humans with still curiosity. Then, a skilled ranch employee removed a line of polywire fence in one fell swoop, and the cows charged forward as fast as they could, together, like a group of 5-year-olds playing soccer. Instead of a ball, their target was tall, fresh grass; their enthusiasm created a symphony of mooing.

“Chow time!” yelled King, with gusto.

Photos courtesy of Old Salt.

King described how the ranchers move the animals to fresh paddocks daily, as Lora Soderquist, a colleague of Glover’s at Impact Ag Partners, explained how that movement prevents overgrazing, keeps living roots in place at all times, spreads the manure to stimulate grass regrowth and microbial communities, and sequesters carbon in the soil.

“Soils that hold a lot of carbon hold a lot of nutrients; they hold a lot of moisture, and they are able to adapt,” Soderquist said. “That bank account of soil carbon we’re building is a buffer to make us more resilient.”

Rich, healthy soil is unquestionably a good thing, but grass-fed beef’s status as a climate-friendly food is up for debate. How much carbon the soil holds and how long it stays there is still an open question with many variables; the Matador is currently involved in several projects to measure carbon in its soils for that reason. Whatever the number, another big question is whether it’s enough to counter the methane emitted by burping cows as they munch away.

Still, at another stop on the tour, a researcher from the University of California, Davis, showed off the first in-field trial that involves feeding seaweed supplements to cattle to reduce methane. While he spoke, one cow wandered over to the hulking metal machine, stuck its head in a chute, and was fed a pellet while emissions measurements were taken. So far, they’ve seen about a 50 percent average reduction in emissions, he said, although those results are preliminary and the study is small. It’s also not clear how ranchers would deliver the supplements to a herd of thousands of grazing cattle on a regular basis.

During the wagon ride, a buyer from one company that runs corporate and university cafeterias confided that she heard feedlot beef production emits less methane than grass-fed production, since feedlot cattle live shorter lives and have less time to burp methane. That’s a message the commodity meat industry is investing time and resources in promoting and which some studies support. One recent analysis found higher emissions from grass-fed systems primarily due to increased land use. At her company, the buyer said, regardless of other impacts within the supply chain, cutting carbon (or its equivalents) and sharing those numbers on menus was all that the higher-ups cared about.

Zach Jones of Impact Ag Partners speaks to the group in Montana in September. (Photo courtesy of Grass Fed Foods)

Glover and other members of the Impact Ag team spoke openly about questions related to climate and other production impacts related to grass-fed beef and the challenge of communicating what they see as the best approach. But they largely dismissed questions about pitching a climate-friendly product born on a ranch owned by a public figure who has made a fortune on media that regularly peddled climate denial and misinformation. Just a week prior, as the news that Murdoch was stepping down from News Corp and Fox spread, climate scientists from all over the world told The Guardian that no other person in the world had done more to delay climate action.

“Murdoch will be looked back on by historians as someone who used their media monopoly to influence the destabilization of the Earth’s climate,” said Joëlle Gergis, an Australian climate scientist. (Not to mention the fact that in 2022, the Murdoch family’s private jet flights alone produced more planet-warming emissions than 280 average Americans’ annual carbon footprints, according to ClimateJets.)

While billionaires owning ranch land in Montana is apparently about as surprising as billionaires owning homes in the Hamptons, the staff insists Murdoch took on the project out of passion and is intimately involved in the environmental mission. And while he didn’t attend the gathering, his son-in-law, Alisdair Macleod, did. Macleod owns multiple regenerative ranches in Australia, one of which recently generated $500,000 of carbon credits purchased by Microsoft, and he made the rounds at all the important international climate gatherings last fall.

As to the Murdoch family’s legacy of climate disinformation, Macleod said, “​​We’re all learning that we’ve all got to be doing our bit . . . and so what we’re doing here is ensuring that people that are concerned about decarbonization are getting a product that they can put on their plate that’s suitable for a decarbonized world.”

Selling Grass-fed Beef

For some grass-fed beef entrepreneurs, however, reaching climate-conscious consumers isn’t the end goal.

“There’s one philosophy that says, ‘Well, better agriculture is just about a better product. It’s got this set of attributes that a conventional product doesn’t necessarily have,’” said Cole Mannix, the founder of Old Salt Co-op, over the phone recently as he scraped ice off the windshield of his pickup truck. “But we feel that it’s not just the better product that’s important—it’s a better process to get it to people.”

“What’s important is to move away from the ‘move fast and break things’ model when it comes to regenerative agriculture and to instead move slowly and with intention.”

Mannix created Old Salt to build a regional meat supply chain that bypasses the consolidated food system and keeps dollars and ecosystem benefits within local communities. Based in Helena, Montana, about two hours north of the Matador, the company currently sells meat from four family ranches and runs on relationships with neighbors through local pick-up and delivery and two restaurants, the larger of which he expects to open by March.

All the beef Old Salt sells is grass-fed, but Mannix bristles at that simplified descriptor. If you think of the larger agricultural system as a canal, he says, he’s trying to turn it into a stream. “A canal gets water from point A to point B just like a stream does, but it strips out the inefficiencies where life exists. It doesn’t have the ripples and the logs and the rocks and all the life that feeds fish,” he said.

In agriculture, the grizzly bear habitat and soil microbiology—and also farm families and farm labor—are inefficiencies to eliminate if you’re just trying to get a product from field to consumer. “But we want long-term, enduring agriculture,” he said, “and some of those inefficiencies are actually critical.”

Mannix thinks one reason other companies have failed at expanding grass-fed beef production is that they’ve tried to replicate the commodity approach to distribution and marketing. “It’s like, ‘Let’s get a better product with better labels and then go sell it through the same channels,’” he said. “There are a lot of people who are recognizing how vulnerable that can leave a food system,” because after years of building up supply, those buyers might demand lower prices. Or, “consumer trends,” which drive the whole tractor in big box grocery, may change. This year, The New York Times says being a “regenivore” is in; next year it might be out.

At Provenance Capital, Rodrigues said that despite what he sees as growing demand for grass-fed beef, he thinks many have failed because companies took on the wrong kind of investors. Venture capital, for instance, works on a time frame and return rate that is impossible for agriculture to keep pace with. That’s especially true when an approach invites inefficiencies for the sake of health and the environment.

“What’s important is to move away from the ‘move fast and break things’ model when it comes to regenerative agriculture and to instead move slowly and with intention,” in terms of investment and scale, he said. That’s what Cream Co. has done, growing from a network of three small to medium-size family ranches in California in 2016 to about 30 on the West Coast today. Aggregating the meat has allowed him to get regional grass-fed beef into tech company cafeterias and 30 school districts. With the new investment, there’s more growth ahead.

Aside from competing on price, one of the biggest challenges companies like Cream Co. and Grass Fed Foods face is that they have to buy whole animals, despite the fact that grocers and restaurants only want certain cuts. Tripician said he needs a buyer like Whole Foods to buy steaks for its meat counter and a customer like Chipotle to buy ground beef for its burritos. Grass Fed Foods has created a line of processed products—including a new line of vegetable-infused hot dogs designed for school food service—to make use of what’s left.

“I’m in a race to be able to have you go anywhere you want in this country and order the kind of food I can be proud of. And for that, I need big partners.”

When companies order grass-fed beef from Australia, on the other hand, they can ask for the cuts they know they can sell. Despite that, both companies currently bring in some grass-fed beef from Australia to increase their volume enough to access larger buyers.

Tripician said he isn’t worried about it undercutting his business as he works simultaneously to expand domestic production. But Allen Williams was adamant that the practice is strangling the economic prospects of the farmers and ranchers he works with across the country. “It sends mixed signals to all of us [domestic producers],” he said.

Williams was involved in a 2017 report that predicted bold, fast growth for American grass-fed beef, but that has yet to materialize. He pointed to the fact that grass-fed beef imports increased dramatically after Congress repealed a law in 2015 that required meat to be labeled with its country of origin. “It’s been a major, major factor,” he said.

Carrie Balkcom, who has run the American Grassfed Association (AGA) for the past 20 years, agreed. The group has been working to bring about policy that promotes truth in labeling for the past two decades. This year, its work to get the USDA to change which meat can be labeled “Product of U.S.A.” finally paid off. In March, the agency proposed a rule that would update the regulations to allow the claim only on meat “derived from animals born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in the United States.” Now, Balkcom and other advocates are pushing the agency to finalize it.

But even if that happens and it charts a better economic path forward for American ranchers dedicated to regenerative grazing (she believes it will), Balkcom said that within the AGA, most producers still won’t be able to get their products on the shelves of large, conventional retailers. In fact, even those who have made some in-roads seem to be pulling out of those relationships, she said. At the same time, companies like New Zealand’s Silver Fern Farms are ramping up their imports; in 2022, it launched a “Net Carbon Zero” grass-fed beef line in 1,600 Costco stores across the country.

On the day we spoke, Balkcom had just arrived home from a conference where, she said, Will Harris of White Oak Pastures, “an icon in our industry,” had told attendees that his wholesale business isn’t penciling out because he can’t compete with imports. She said most producers she works with are doubling down on building their own regional supply chains and direct-to-consumer online sales.

That’s where Mannix at Old Salt is investing his energy. “It’s not as if I believe there’s a one-size-fits-all scale where everybody has to sell direct to consumer. . . . It’s just that our food system has gone so far down the path it’s on that there’s very little opportunity—in the form of wholesalers that will buy from us at the prices we would need, distributors who will work with us, or regional processing capacity that is easily accessed.” he said. “We’re really starting at the ground level to rebuild.”

He’s interested in how the Matador Ranch’s plan for the future turns out, but personally, he’s not up for investing in a system that ultimately depends on the shifting demands of packers, distributors, retailers, and landowners who historically have cut and run if the numbers didn’t quite work the way they wanted them to.

Tripician, on the other hand, is intent on making Grass Fed Foods a part of that production, and at the Matador, where the landscape seemed to continuously unravel in every direction, he looked out and saw only opportunities ahead for American grass-fed beef.

In the past, buyers from Costco, Kroger, and Sysco would look at his products and ask if he had the volume to meet their customers’ demand. “And for grass-fed beef, that answer has always been ‘no’ domestically,” he said. “I’m in a race to be able to have you go anywhere you want in this country and order the kind of food I can be proud of. And for that, I need big partners.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/01/31/investment-is-flowing-to-us-grass-fed-beef-again-will-it-scale-up/feed/ 3 https://civileats.com/2024/01/23/these-state-lawmakers-are-collaborating-on-policies-that-support-regenerative-agriculture/ Tue, 23 Jan 2024 09:00:09 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=54985 As Georgia state senator Kim Jackson began her welcome speech, she instructed the group to look around the room. “We are female; we are male. We are queer; we are people of color; we are Indigenous. We are rural, urban, and suburban,” she said. “Now raise your hand if this is what your [state’s] ag […]

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On a crisp weekend this past fall, 30 state legislators from across the nation descended on TomKat Ranch, an 1,800-acre ranch focused on regenerative agriculture in Pescadero, California, an hour south of San Francisco. In addition to learning about regenerative farming practices, the diverse group had gathered to understand how state-level agricultural legislation can bring about climate resilience, food security, and social equity.

As Georgia state senator Kim Jackson began her welcome speech, she instructed the group to look around the room. “We are female; we are male. We are queer; we are people of color; we are Indigenous. We are rural, urban, and suburban,” she said. “Now raise your hand if this is what your [state’s] ag committee looks like.” Despite all hands staying down, “this is exactly why we’re here,” she continued, “because we all have a stake in ag.”

The two-day workshop, which was organized by the State Innovation Exchange (SiX), a nonprofit, non-partisan national policy, resource, and strategy center, highlighted the power of states to drive progressive change in food and agricultural policy. Against the backdrop of a carefully managed perennial pasture, the gathering focused on legislative approaches to promoting regenerative farming and ranching practices, which the group believes can galvanize support across partisan and rural-urban divides.

The national farm bill often “sucks a lot of the wind out of the room,” says Kendra Kimbirauskas, the senior director of agriculture and food systems for SiX, making state-level initiatives seem like “the little sibling of federal policy.” But local and regional actions can counter the country’s “highly centralized and dominant” industrial food and farm system, she adds, and lay the blueprint for transformative large-scale measures.

Packed with experiential learning sessions with experts and advocates, field walks, and farm-to-table meals featuring ingredients sourced from nearby growers, the forum in Pescadero was primarily designed to connect lawmakers, says Kimbirauskas. Reinforcing the network can arm legislators with the resources needed to tackle “tough decisions” in their State Houses, she adds, and expose them to perspectives outside the typical ag lobbying groups on abstruse measures and less-obvious implications of bills.

Attendees at the TomKat Ranch tour organized by the State Innovation Exchange (SiX). (Photo courtesy of SiX)

And because agricultural policy is typically shaped by large agribusiness interests, advocates say efforts to foster greater inclusivity is paramount to changing the status quo. “This,” proffered Jackson, a Black urban farmer from a multi-generational farming family and Georgia’s first openly gay senator, “is how we raise our collective voices.”

Power of State Policymaking

The Cohort for Rural Opportunity and Prosperity (CROP)—a subset of SiX’s Agriculture and Food Systems program—currently includes elected officials from 43 states who are positioned to advance socially and ecologically responsible rural, agricultural, and food policy.

When it comes to deciphering rural and farm-related issues, progressive legislators often face a steep learning curve, says Kimbirauskas. Many tend to hail from urban areas and are better versed on issues such as public health or education; even those with farming roots may not have direct field experience. As a result, they may lack the capacity to be “champions for food and ag policy,” she notes, despite the broad impacts of farming legislation on cities, the environment, and the larger food system.

Historically, that space has been dominated by state level farm bureaus and the larger federal, Kimbirauskas says. Heavily backed by large agriculture trade groups with deep pockets, the nation’s most powerful agricultural lobbying group is, generally speaking, the sole voice leading those conversations at the state level. “The corporate ag lobby absolutely knows the power of state policymaking,” she says. “That’s why they have a stable of lobbyists in every state house across the country.”

Depending on the state, legislators may be severely under-resourced and overworked—nationwide, their salary averages less than $44,000, with state lawmakers in New Hampshire and New Mexico working as volunteers, requiring many to hold second jobs.

“The corporate ag lobby absolutely knows the power of state policymaking. That’s why they have a stable of lobbyists in every state house across the country.”

State budgets can also hamper in-house agricultural knowledge. Less than half a percent of Hawaii’s annual budget, for instance, goes to its department of agriculture, thereby limiting the robust collection of crop statistics and other data critical to making industry decisions. Recently, the state also slashed 20 percent of university extension staff.

As an “organizing vehicle” designed to help “disrupt the legislator-to-lobbyist pipeline,” CROP equips progressive leaders with robust support and expertise to fill these voids, says Kimbirauskas. Rather than relying on ag industry lobbyists to shape boilerplate legislation—a tactic frequently used by conservative national policy organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—SiX connects lawmakers to policy advocates and agriculture-based organizations to share information and strategies in creating more effective policies.

Although organic practices are federally certified, “regenerative” methods—which hold many commonalities—are not typically strictly defined or certified. However, for the same reason, they are also often seen as more accessible to growers and less divisive than organic agriculture. And when done right, regenerative farming has been shown to have multiple benefits that appeal across partisan, racial, and geographic divides, says Renata Brillinger, executive director of the California Climate and Agriculture Network (CalCAN), an advising partner to SiX.

Along with reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, practices that build healthy soil, for example, make land more resilient to drought, flooding, wildfires, and erosion. And the perks go far beyond the pastures, Brillinger says: “We get cleaner air and water, healthier communities, and a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions” through carbon sequestration.

As the gains become more obvious amid the growing challenges of the climate crisis,“the more conservative champions [can] get on board,” Brillinger adds, “because they [also] appreciate the benefits to the farmer and the farm economy.”

Since its implementation in 2017, California’s Healthy Soils program—part of the state’s suite of Climate Smart Agriculture initiatives aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change and fostering sustainability across various sectors—has influenced similar policies throughout the country. Last year alone, six states passed bills that advance healthy soil management policies, programs, and funding.

For lawmakers from states short on resources or lagging in support for these measures, frontrunners like California help gauge effectiveness and build momentum for similar measures back home, says Brillinger. Along with sowing the seeds for incentive programs and educational resources down the line, more moderate initiatives can make it possible to collect federal funds.

Last April, Montana took a notable step in promoting good soil practices by designating an official Healthy Soils Week. Rather than laying out imperatives, the state act helps “gently lead people” towards regenerative practices, says the bill’s author, State Senator Bruce Gillespie, by recognizing the benefits of soil conservation and range management, particularly through rotational livestock grazing.

Despite being one of the country’s driest states, agriculture is Montana’s leading industry, “so there’s a big opportunity here” to promote the merits of building and preserving rich soil, adds the third-generation rancher, who was not in attendance at the Pescadero event. In addition to absorbing precious precipitation, he points to the fact that well-managed pastures can capture carbon, harbor wildlife, and become more resistant to erosion.

The “win-win” proposition has the support of Gillespie’s Republican and Democratic colleagues alike, he says, as well as farmers and conservation groups in the region. He hopes that Montana’s actions inspire other states in the grassland region—a sizable area that includes Wyoming, Nebraska, and the Dakotas—to adopt similar measures.

In the best-case scenario, state-level initiatives can influence federal policy, says CalCAN’s Brillinger. Congress is currently mulling the Agriculture Resilience Act, which would incentivize farmers and ranchers to engage in climate-friendly practices if its language gets included in the next farm bill. That proposition has been markedly influenced by similar state policies including California’s Converting Our Waste Sustainably (COWS) Act, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through pasture-based manure management.

Laying the Foundation for Change

Nevertheless, in most farm states, the existing legislative structure firmly favors commodity agriculture and the companies it benefits, making even incremental policy changes daunting, says Liz Moran Stelk, executive director of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance (ISA), a Chicago-based nonprofit organization. Built to serve “a massive, complex, and incredibly productive and efficient food system,” its presence, she adds, is unyielding.

In past decades, the large-scale consolidation of the food supply chain has reduced processing, aggregation, and transportation to a handful of companies. As a result, smaller producers often face greater hurdles in adopting any practices that sit outside the mainstream. Without access to markets and appropriate infrastructure (think: organic grain elevators and slaughterhouses) growers can’t fetch added premiums for sustainable practices. “It’s hard to do the right thing,” notes Stelk, “if you’re getting paid the same as your neighbor who doesn’t do anything extra.”

“It’s hard to do the right thing if you’re getting paid the same as your neighbor who doesn’t do anything extra.”

Several Western and Midwestern states, however, have managed to promote conservation-minded practices through modest incentives. The Illinois-based Saving Tomorrow’s Agricultural Resources (STAR) Program sets standards for regenerative practices such as crop rotation, tillage, and nutrient applications. Based on their level of stewardship, the voluntary grading system awards farmers with one to five stars, with “pay-for-performance” incentives based on their rating.

Created in 2017, STAR programs have spread to more than 10 states, and a national organization was established earlier this year. As momentum builds throughout various regions, it has spawned wider discussions about incentivizing other parts of the supply chain for regenerative producers, says Stelk.

‘Context Is Everything’

Although the weekend workshop in Pescadero revealed many approaches to strategic state-level governance, it also exposed stark differences in the operational landscape. “Context is everything,” says Hawaii State Representative Amy Perruso, whose state’s plantation history has resulted in a distinct political and agricultural landscape. Big ag continues its outsized presence on the islands in the form of seed companies—GMO seed corn is Hawaii’s top cash crop—so the power they exert “is a big obstacle to systemic change,” she says.

Yet exposure to the broad implications of regenerative farming was eye-opening, says Perruso, in understanding the larger framing of agricultural policy. In the aftermath of her state’s devastating recent wildfires, the effectiveness of policies that promote managed grazing—which reduces fire risk by increasing soil moisture and keeping invasive grasses in check—seem self-evident, she notes.

In addition to bolstering climate resilience, many regenerative practices are also the cornerstone of Native Hawaiian farming systems, which prioritize soil and water stewardship. And because propelling these efforts can impact food sovereignty, it also carries “strong political implications,” she adds.

Perruso’s insight also underscores the importance of considering the diversity of stakeholders invested in regenerative farming. And Indigenous perspectives are especially relevant to shaping effective state-level food and agricultural policy, says Yadira Riviera, associate director at the nonprofit First Nations Development Institute (FNDI).

As a presenter at the Pescadero workshop, Rivera reminded lawmakers that Native farmers, ranchers, and food producers—including foragers and harvesters—hold deep-rooted, traditional expertise. Their insight is essential to creating sustainable, culturally sensitive, and region-specific policies, she says.

Soliciting input from a broad pool of stakeholders also helps lawmakers formulate more effective policy, says Riviera. Funding for fencing, for instance, may not have obvious regenerative benefits, but for farmers and ranchers practicing managed grazing—which requires rotating livestock between multiple fenced paddocks—it’s an absolute necessity.

CalCAN’s Brillinger believes that building a more resilient food and farming system is in everybody’s interest, so collective action is imperative to shoring up effective policies. And unlike the drastic climate solutions needed in the energy and transportation sectors, many agriculture- and land-based strategies don’t require expensive, high-tech approaches, she notes, and can be easily implemented—given the political will. “The benefits are just so multifaceted,” she says, “that it’s kind of a no-brainer.”

And finally, the weekend gathering highlighted yet another perk to regenerative farming: “mind-blowing” produce cultivated in rich healthy soil. “It was such an experience eating that food,” says Perruso, of the generous spreads served on the ranch. “I’ve never tasted vegetables like that.”

Civil Eats receives funding from TomKat Educational Fund. We also receive funding from FNDI to support our Indigenous Foodways reporting.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/01/08/the-farmers-leaning-on-each-others-tools/ https://civileats.com/2024/01/08/the-farmers-leaning-on-each-others-tools/#comments Mon, 08 Jan 2024 09:00:57 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=54654 As California has lost much of its grain to higher value crops, small flour mills and grain cleaning businesses have disappeared, too. It’s a symptom of what Gonzales-Siemens sees as a larger problem facing many farmers, awash in a marketplace dominated by highly concentrated operations as regional farm infrastructure atrophies. This specialized, often professionally operated […]

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For three years, Nathanael Gonzales-Siemens drove up California’s coast for 14 hours every month for a routine task: milling his grain into flour. “I was literally not able to find a flour mill at my scale, and we’re not tiny,” he said. “We’ve got 150 acres of grain.” He found this disconcerting, not only for himself but the future of small-scale grain farming in California, once known for its golden hills of grain.

As California has lost much of its grain to higher value crops, small flour mills and grain cleaning businesses have disappeared, too. It’s a symptom of what Gonzales-Siemens sees as a larger problem facing many farmers, awash in a marketplace dominated by highly concentrated operations as regional farm infrastructure atrophies. This specialized, often professionally operated equipment—and all farm equipment, for that matter—can be prohibitively challenging for many farmers to buy and maintain.

“This does not feel like I am living on planet Earth, where humans live,” said Gonzales-Siemens, laughing at the absurdity of the drive north to find a mill.

“It’s not a novel idea. Farmers have been sharing equipment forever. But it seems like farmers are becoming less and less neighbors of each other.”

He eventually bought a mill from a grain farmer who went out of business, but finding the other equipment necessary for both farming and processing grain was an ongoing struggle.

So, Gonzales-Siemens got to talking with other farmers in the region. He learned nearby grain farmers, Clayton Garland and Melissa Sorongon in Santa Barbara, were in a similar position. In 2019, the trio decided to work together to lift this equipment burden, pooling funds to buy their first combine. Prior to that, they had all either harvested by hand, an intensely laborious process, or hired someone with a combine. Next, they purchased a no-drill seeder together, and it allowed them to plant rows of grain directly into orchards and pastures without tilling, a practice known to benefit the soil.

As word spread, other small-scale farmers joined them, and they became a more formalized collective with a name: California Plowshares.

“It’s a programmatic way for us to be a little more collaborative and supportive of each other’s work,” said Gonzales-Siemens. “It’s not a novel idea. Farmers have been sharing equipment forever. But it seems like farmers are becoming less and less neighbors of each other. Most of my neighbors—the people actually adjacent to me—are corporate entities,” where the farm owner is often absent, and the workers don’t have a say in the equipment.

In this sense, California Plowshares is a return to the kind of rural sharing economies that once arose naturally between farmers in tight-knit communities but have become much less common in recent years. The collective currently consists of around 50 farmers located along California’s southern Central Coast who share equipment that they co-purchase and individually own, often with a rental fee.

The original idea was to form a collective for just grain farmers, given that “grain farming is so rare that we need all the infrastructural and equipment help we can,” said Gonzales-Siemens. But then it became clear that the collective could benefit a wide range of small-scale farmers.

The collective doesn’t charge a membership fee, but they each contribute in other ways. There’s the “sweat equity type of guy,” who jumps in wherever needed. Another farmer with storage for equipment. Others chip in financially when they’re having a good season. There’s a skilled welder who fixes loose parts. As for Gonzales-Siemens, he often helps transport equipment between farms. They tend to lean on each other’s strengths.

In the near future, he hopes to contribute further by building out a local grain processing operation, filling a gap in regional infrastructure. He is now the proud owner of three flour mills, two of which he shares, and the co-owner of a grain cleaner—the building blocks of the processing operation in the works. Long gone are his days of driving up the coast to find a flour mill, and he hopes to spare other farmers from that fate as well.

Collective Response to Farming’s Steep Costs

Collective approaches to farming, like equipment sharing, often emerge from a stark realization: The current farm business model in the U.S. isn’t working for many small producers. The median farming income in the U.S. was less than zero in 2022: -$849. Meanwhile, the cost of farm production expenses are expected to reach a record high in 2023. It’s a balance sheet that isn’t adding up, and equipment is a part of the equation. 

“We thought it was so stupid to have all this steel sitting in the field that we were using just twice a year.”

Next to land, equipment is a farmer’s biggest investment. While farm equipment collectives are still relatively rare in the U.S., they tend to share a similar origin story: Farmers begin informally swapping farm equipment to ease costs, building a sense of trust. Then they realize that sharing tools makes sense and they build a more formal system. This is the story of Tool Legit (yes, named after the MC Hammer song), a farm equipment library in North Carolina.

“It started off with a couple of buddies. I owned the tiller. Someone owned a bush hog. Someone owned a flail mower. We would just swap them back and forth as needed,” said George O’Neal, a vegetable farmer who started Tool Legit. “We thought it was so stupid to have all this steel sitting in the field that we were using just twice a year.”

In 2011, they formed an LLC with a rotating president and treasurer, supported by a $27,500 grant from the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI). This helped them buy their first cache of shared equipment: a tiller, a harrow, a manure spreader, a trailer to move equipment between farms, and a log splitter for heating greenhouses with wood. Every year, they pool funds to add to their growing collection of tools.

A decade later, the collective is still thriving. “We’re all very community and civically minded, but I feel like that’s very true for 90 percent of small farmers,” said O’Neal. “We don’t see each other as competition in any meaningful way. We see Walmart or shitty food or HelloFresh as competition—not each other.”

O’Neal estimates that he saves about $1,000 every year in equipment upgrade costs. The collective charges an annual membership fee, but aims to keep it low, below $400 per year, so it’s accessible.

It helps that, like California Plowshares, Tool Legit has low overhead costs; they store the equipment on their farms and use Google Calendar to reserve it. Other equipment-sharing models involve renting space, a system that works for some farming communities but can add to the costs.

The list of equipment shared between the farmer members of the Intervale Farmer Equipment Company in Burlington, Vermont.

One example is the Intervale Farmer Equipment Company, a farmer-owned cooperative in Burlington, Vermont. Hilary Martin, one of the farmers in the cooperative, said the space they rent is their largest expense annually. They spread out the cost through a fee structure based on either the number of acres on which the equipment is used or the number of hours it is in use. It’s an evolving system, said Martin.

“Every year we have to take a look at [whether] we’re charging enough,” she added. “We’ve been well in the black some years, and other years we’re in the red.”

So far, they’ve been able to accommodate seven farms of varying size. They have the advantage of being close neighbors, and all rent land from the Intervale Center, a nonprofit that supports farm viability. The center originally owned the equipment cooperative, then sold the business to the farmers. “We’re kind of pre-organized to work together,” said Martin.

Still, she wasn’t sure they’d be able to make it work. “I was worried about a tragedy of the commons scenario . . . people would be in a rush, misuse the equipment, and leave problems for everybody else.” Instead, she has been pleasantly surprised by her neighbor’s capacity to look out for each other.

Environmental and Social Benefits of Equipment Sharing

The range of equipment available in collectives also allows for experimentation, giving the farmers the freedom to test out what works. It also allows them to try out more regenerative practices, which typically require new equipment.

For instance, prior to the formation of California Plowshares, none of the group’s members owned a spreader for mulching, which helps retain moisture in the soil. Once ubiquitous, spreaders have become harder to come by in California’s Central Valley, where many of the corporate farms hire private companies to deliver and spread mulch. The companies are often booked months in advance. “To get [your mulch or compost] spread in a timely manner was really quite impossible,” said Gonzales-Siemens.

“Building efficiencies and healthy movement patterns into your farming business is such an important way to protect yourself and not burn out.”

Everything changed when the collective bought a small-scale spreader from the 1980s, relying on a grant they obtained. Now, the farmers’ soil will be better protected during dry times of the year. Similarly, buying a no-till drill allowed Gonzales-Siemens to expand the use of cover crops in his orchards and further protect the soil.

“[The drill] made a huge difference. It has allowed us to do much more creative things in orchard systems,” said Gonzales-Siemens. It’s also helped him experiment with intercropping, another practice that builds soil health and biodiversity on the farm. And, at $6,000, he wouldn’t have been able to afford one on his own.

Over at Tool Legit, the farmers share similar goals of farming ecologically and productively at a human scale, which lends to knowledge-sharing, too. “It functions kind of like an informal discussion network,” said O’Neal. “Every time you go pick something up, there’s usually a 15- or 20-minute chat, like, ‘What are y’all up to today? Oh, that’s cool. I’ve never seen that. What is that? What are you growing?’”

Nathanael Gonzales-Siemens demonstrates how to use California Plowshare’s no-till drill to grow cover crops in an orchard. (Photo courtesy of Nathanael Gonzales-Siemens)

They’ll also often advise one another on the best, most efficient ways to use the equipment. For instance, O’Neal said farmers will send the entire group a text, such as, “Hey, I offset the potato digger and it can do two rows at once. Has anyone tried this?”

Connecticut farmer Mary Claire Whelan, who helps run a new tool-sharing network with the New CT Farmer Alliance, has also observed the mental health benefits that come from having a supportive network of farmers and access to the right tools and equipment.

“It’s so emotionally draining to use the wrong tool over and over again,” said Whelan, who works as a farm crew member on a vegetable and flower farm. “Building efficiencies and healthy movement patterns into your farming business is such an important way to protect yourself and not burn out.”

She recalls working on a previous farm where she was required to break heads of garlic into individual cloves for planting. “It’s hard on your thumbs. I would get all these calluses,” she said. Then she learned of a tool that can quickly split garlic heads. It could have finished the task in a few hours, saving days of hard, repetitive labor.

Whelan hopes to one day own her own farm in Connecticut, the state that she notes has some of the most expensive farmland in the country. She sees building social and resource networks as essential to making it as a first-generation farmer.

Connecticut farmers standing in front of a winnower, built by Dina Brewster, which she has made available for nearby farmers to share. (Photo courtesy of Dina Brewster, Hickories Farm.)

“I don’t think [owning a farm business] would be possible if I didn’t have a robust community to rely on and folks who I could borrow equipment from, or purchase it in common with,” she said. “It helps me feel like the future I desire and see for myself is a possibility.”

Slow Shift to Collective Tool-Sharing

Despite these benefits, farm equipment collectives and sharing models are still few and far between in the U.S., especially compared to other countries. France has the most developed sharing system, which includes a network of over 12,000 agricultural equipment cooperatives, involving a third of all French farms.

These cooperatives have allowed farmers to share equipment and infrastructure, including compost facilities, and have been integral in helping a growing number of farmers there adopt agroecological practices. “Since the 1980s, some Coopérative d’Utilisation de Matériel Agricole (CUMAs) have taken initiatives that pertain to agroecology: purchases of specialized harvesting equipment necessary for more diversified farming systems,” observed French scholars Veronique Lucas and Pierre Gasselin in a 2022 article.

There have been some recent efforts to support more robust farm equipment-sharing in the U.S. Earlier this year, California Assemblymember Steve Bennett introduced a bill aimed at funding regional equipment-sharing hubs for equipment needed for soil health and conservation practices, as well as storage and processing. It also would have provided training for farmers on how to design their own equipment cooperatives. The bill passed in both the Senate and House last spring, but it was vetoed by the governor due to budget concerns.

“It just makes sense to have it be a piece of equipment that gets rotated around and shared,” Assemblymember Bennett told Civil Eats. And while he’s not ready to commit to introducing the bill again next year, he’s considering it.

Faith Gilbert, the author of a popular guide on tool-sharing, attributes the slow uptake in the U.S. to the effort it takes to organize. “Few of us have time to go organize a whole new program in order to save $3,000 to $5,000 annually,” she said. And while sharing farm equipment can chip away at the high costs of farming, she notes that “it’s not going to fundamentally shift the business model” of most farms.

Still, she acknowledges, most small-scale farms work with small margins, and any boost to the bottom line can make a difference.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/01/08/the-farmers-leaning-on-each-others-tools/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2023/11/27/can-virtual-fences-help-more-ranchers-adopt-regenerative-grazing-practices/ https://civileats.com/2023/11/27/can-virtual-fences-help-more-ranchers-adopt-regenerative-grazing-practices/#comments Mon, 27 Nov 2023 09:00:38 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=54316 This herd, however, is not quite as free-range as it appears. All 70 of the animals wear what look like big, boxy cowbells around their necks. When one goat gets close to an invisible fence line the farmers set up on an app, the box emits a high-pitched tone, eliciting an immediate response. Any goat […]

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At Georges Mill Farm in northern Virginia, Molly and Sam Kroiz’s goats are on the move. Some roam through pastures testing bunches of fescue, a cool-season grass, for the sweetness the frost brings. Others push into a strip of bushes, munching through brambles. One scales a boulder and balances on its hind legs to take bites out of a tree branch.

This herd, however, is not quite as free-range as it appears.

All 70 of the animals wear what look like big, boxy cowbells around their necks. When one goat gets close to an invisible fence line the farmers set up on an app, the box emits a high-pitched tone, eliciting an immediate response. Any goat within hearing distance perks up, freezes, and then slowly moves away from the line, despite the lack of any physical barrier.

The system was created by a Norwegian company called Nofence, and Molly and Sam are among 43 pilot farms testing it ahead of an official United States debut expected in early 2024. And Nofence is just one of several companies getting into the virtual fencing game. U.S.-based Vence, which was acquired by veterinary pharmaceutical giant Merck Animal Health in 2022, has been slowly rolling out a similar system on larger cattle ranches across the West since 2019. Other systems, including eShepherd and Corral Technologies, are also in development.

Virtual fencing is gaining traction in American agriculture because it can save farmers time and money.  But it could also enable them to more easily adopt practices—and entire systems—that promote environmental benefits. When farmers are able to control how, where, and when their animals move between pastures, they can more easily accomplish ecological goals that might include increasing soil carbon, reducing water pollution, or incorporating trees. The technology also has the potential to rid the West of barbed wire that negatively impacts wildlife migration and adapt grazing to an age of increased wildfires by making it easy to keep cattle out of burned areas.

Virtual fencing is gaining traction because it can save farmers time and money. But it could also enable them to more easily adopt practices—and entire systems—that promote environmental benefits.

Given how few farms are using it, there are still many questions about limitations—like the absence of cell service in some rural areas, farmer acceptance, accuracy, and ongoing costs—but buzz about virtual fencing’s applications continues to grow. In September, a project dedicated to sustainable beef production in the Southwest created a Virtual Fence Forum for farmers on Facebook; in November, ranchers gathered in Arizona for a workshop on the technology.

“People have been talking about virtual fencing for a long time,” said Juan Alvez, an extension research associate at the University of Vermont’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture, whose expertise includes grazing management, “and now it’s just coming to market.”

More (Virtual) Fencing Facilitates Animal Movement

Sam’s family has been farming Georges Mills’ 90 acres since the 1750s, and the infrastructure harkens back to a time before farmers used even simple machinery. At night, the goats sleep in a barn built in the mid-1800s from large blocks of local stone and weathered wood.

But since the couple took over about a decade ago, they’ve been looking to the future to make their goat dairy and cheesemaking operation more sustainable—both financially and ecologically.

In past grazing and milking seasons, which run from March through December, Sam regularly had to move fencing—sometimes every day—to keep providing them access to new fields with fresh plants and keep their waste dispersed across the landscape. He also had to construct pathways to move the goats back to the barn for milking.

“He was having to put out posts, roll out four wires. He put a lot of steps in, and it took a lot of hours,” Molly said of Sam’s efforts. Now, with the virtual system, “Sam can update the fence lines while he’s drinking his coffee in the morning.”

He does that using Nofence’s app, which creates and updates the boundaries by GPS, with no physical infrastructure other than the collars worn by the goats. Each collar is outfitted with tiny solar panels to continuously charge the battery, and Molly said it’s usually about a month until they have to take them off to charge them manually.

While physical fencing for cattle can be slightly less involved than for goats, since a single electrified wire will keep cows in place (most of the time), cattle grazers need a lot of fencing and frequent movement if they’re pursuing climate and other environmental goals.

To effectively build soil health, Alvez said, farmers and ranchers who use systems referred to as rotational, intensive, or mob grazing, should move their animals to new pastures at least once a day. While continuous grazing depletes pastures and overloads fields with waste, these alternative approaches build soil health by naturally spreading the manure, fertilizing new grass growth, and building healthy communities of microbes.

Traditionally, many farmers struggle to set up enough paddocks for continuous movement, because installing fencing can be expensive and labor intensive, Alvez said. “More paddocks versus less is always better for grazers and climate-smart goals, because you’re always moving these animals to a fresh pasture,” he said. “Fresh pastures mean most [of the other] pastures are in a vegetative state, often accumulating carbon from the atmosphere into the soil where it belongs.”

With virtual fencing, there’s an upfront investment, but adding new paddocks can be done on the fly, without additional costs. Nofence’s collars cost $299 each for cattle and $199 for goats or sheep, and come with a five-year lifespan. In addition, farmers then have to pay a monthly subscription fee that varies depending on herd size and other factors. It’s no small cost—for Georges Mill farm’s 70 goats, it would cost around $14,000 for the collars—but fencing, depending on the type, generally costs thousands of dollars per acre upfront, plus the added daily labor.

The biggest limitation with virtual fencing, however, is connectivity—Nofence needs a cell phone signal to operate, which can be a challenge in many rural areas.

One drawback is that since the lines the system draws are not as exact as a physical barrier, farms may still need to put permanent physical fences up in places where a hard stop is needed, like along busy roads. At some, a physical fence creates the overall farm barrier, while virtual lines create pasture barriers.

The biggest limitation with virtual fencing, however, is that depending on the system, connectivity could be an issue. With Nofence, strong Wi-Fi is not required, but a cell phone signal is, and Meghan Filbert, the company’s adoption program manager, said that if a farmer can’t typically receive calls or texts in their pastures, the system won’t work for them.

That could be a major issue in lots of rural places, including Alvez’s neck of the woods in Vermont, where cell service often cuts in and out. It’s something he hopes will improve (and there are many efforts currently underway to improve broadband in rural areas around the country) because he believes his area could benefit more from virtual fencing.

“In areas where it’s more mountainous, with rugged landscapes and lots of marginal land, having this technology would really simplify the amount of paddocks you can establish,” he said. That’s because putting physical fencing in those places is more difficult compared to areas with flat, open terrain.

Controlling Grazing Near Water and Trees

Virginia’s landscape also has unique characteristics that make virtual fencing an attractive option said Alston Horn, a restoration specialist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation who works with farmers, including Molly and Sam, to implement conservation practices.

In the field at Georges Mill, Horn said that a lot of land in the hilly, populated region is better suited for grazing than other types of agriculture and that he got interested in virtual fencing through his work making sure that grazing benefits the Chesapeake Bay watershed instead of contributing to its pollution. Continuous grazing that allows manure to build up can result in excess nutrients ending up in waterways, and cattle getting into streams can also deposit nutrients and contribute to erosion.

He sees the technology—which can enable more movement and control where animals are in relation to water sources and trees—as one tool farmers could use to better manage pastures.

“Well-managed pastures [are] good for water quality because we’re actually infiltrating more water, and there’s less runoff going down to our local creeks and streams,” he said. “If our local creeks and streams are cleaner, ultimately, the rivers—and as we go east, the Bay and everything else—they have better water quality too.”

Virtual fencing may also aid farmers in implementing agroforestry practices that reincorporate trees into farm systems and come with significant climate and biodiversity benefits. For example, a quick swipe of a finger on a virtual fencing app could allow a farmer to protect riparian buffers, strips of bushes and trees alongside streams that prevent runoff and support wildlife, from cattle until the plants are well-established.

That’s the application Alvez is most excited about, because the difficulty of putting up fencing that can contain animals and also protect trees as they grow is often a complicating factor in getting agroforestry systems off the ground.

And in a system where sheep are grazing in alleys between fruit trees, a farmer might try to put up a fence and encounter difficulties because of tree roots. “With virtual fencing, you could put the line six feet off the trees and still have the benefit of the shade for the animals and at the same time protect the trees,” he said.

The Way Forward for Virtual Fences

At this point, of course, agroforestry systems are about as novel as virtual fencing. And even with the many companies gearing up to expand, it will be some time before the systems are widely available. Nofence is prioritizing its sales in Norway, the United Kingdom, and Spain, where it is already widely available. While the system will officially roll out in the U.S. in 2024, Meghan Filbert said it will be slow and that “availability will be limited.”

Alvez is working with a developer in Brazil to bring another product to the U.S. that works in a similar way but uses an ear tag instead of a collar. That system will also provide data like body temperature from the cattle that wear it, and Alvez hopes to begin using it as a research tool.

Back at Georges Mill, Molly and Sam didn’t opt to use virtual fencing in order to better incorporate trees and livestock, but during their pilot of the system, that happened naturally.

One recent morning after a thunderstorm, they moved the goats to a distant field across a road. Only after they got them there did they notice a cherry tree—which is toxic for goats—had fallen in a thicket within the field.

In the past, Molly said, that would have meant “moving the herd all the way back into the barn while Sam totally cuts it up and clears it out, because you can’t have any of the leaves around—if they eat them, they’ll die. It’s a huge disruption, a huge amount of time.”

This time, however, “We were able to just draw an exclusion zone around it and keep everybody off of it,” she said. “That was huge.”

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