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A split in the ranks….
….the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) is a major voice in the field and, through the efforts of its executive director Brian Snyder, increasingly a voice in Washington on national farm policy. We haven’t been entirely enthusiastic about the way our representative has represented those of us in the field but, since starting this blog, we’ve mostly stayed away from politics. However, it has seemed to us that Brian has been too willing to compromise on some important issues, such as the animal identification system, and we’ve wondered if he has succumbed to what we used to call “Potomac fever”. That is, whether he has been carried away with the excitement over…
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A warning about Distillers Grain….
….Distillers Grain, or “DG”, has become a popular feed supplement. The ethanol boom has left a lot of DG as a by-product, it’s relatively cheap, and the drought has forced cattlemen to look for something to help with their parched fields. But we’re also aware that some grass fed breeders, even some of the Big Names, have been using distillers grain all along, to fatten their animals. That’s not only a “no-no” in grass fed protocols but it’s an unhealthy practice. Unhealthy for cows and humans alike. Here’s just one report on the subject: http://tinyurl.com/btyhc6j Fifteen years ago, when I was raising Angus conventionally, I tried Distillers Grain at the suggestion of…
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A light at the end of the tunnel….
….signaling the demise of ethanol? The corn-based product has been probably the worst fraud environmentalists have inflicted on us. Ethanol is more of a pollutant than the gasoline it’s supposed to help clean up. And meeting the so-called “demand” has driven up the price of corn to the point where it’s caused starvation in the rest of the world…and food riots. I put the word “demand” in quotes because there’s no real demand….just a government mandate. Fuel companies have been ordered to use more ethanol than they need or buy “ethanol credits”. (A Texas sharpie was recently convicted of selling credits for an ethanol plant that existed only in his imagination. Bilked…
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The antibiotic menace….
….is real and growing. Antibiotics are not used primarily to treat sick animals, but as a weight enhancer. They’re at least as effective as growth hormones but, just to be sure, commercial producers of meat use both. In fact, antibiotics are used more in farming than among humans. Dr. David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, recently said this about the practice. “While the F.D.A. can see what kinds of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are coming out of livestock facilities, the agency doesn’t know enough about the antibiotics that are being fed to these animals,” he writes. “This is a major public health problem, because giving healthy livestock…
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Roundtable: Can I make money selling grass fed beef (continued)….
We could call this Exhibit A in our discussion. Someone who is making money with a small grass fed beef farm. If you want to begin at the beginning, scroll down to the roundtable that featured four men with wide experience in all phases of grass fed beef marketing….local to national…operating solely or in combination with others. But, to see what a “practioner of the trade” would say about all this, we sought out Guille Yearwood of Ellett Valley Beef Company in southwest Virginia. Guille is both a pure bred Devon breeder and commercial cattleman and is a member of the board of the American Devon Cattle Association. Whether you’re…
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Saving the planet….
….not exactly a humble goal, but that’s what is at stake. The earth’s surface has been turning into a vast desert, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere every year than all the fossil fuel engines combined. This “browning” of the planet is the cause of all the hunger, suffering and war than we can possibly deal with. Strangely, while largely blamed for all our environmental woes, it is the lowly cow that holds the key to the problem. (I wanted to write: “our survival”) As pollyanish as it may sound, we do believe that grass fed beef is the answer. Good for your personal health, a grazing cow is good for the…
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Still more on marketing grass fed beef….
….my recent post on the price disadvantage American producers face when competing against foreign grass fed beef (see below “Roundtable: Can I make money selling grass fed beef) needs some fine tuning. My point was that I pay almost four times as much for butchering as my competitor in Tasmania. And so foreign beef can absorb the shipping costs and still undersell American beef. But my good friend Bill Roberts of 12 Stones Grasslands Beef files a mild disagreement (that’s what friends are for, to tell you when you’re wrong. Mildly.) Bill says we’re not up against price competition alone. As I understand it, price is not the main issue in…
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Are food hubs part of the answer….
….we recently hosted a roundtable on the problems smaller producers face in marketing their grass fed beef. (see below, “Roundtable: Can I make money selling grass fed beef”) We were a bit surprised that farmers markets didn’t come up. Several cattlemen we know have tried them and generally found them useful in building a customer base. Eventually, they tired of the commitment, of being tied-down every weekend, and settled for marketing from their farm. A better solution might be so-called “Food Hubs”, which are really a higher octane version of farmers markets. They have legal structure, and financial underpinning, but again require a real commitment from the participants. By coincidence the USDA…
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The “low cost” of beef….
….well, if you import it from Tasmania anyway. Our recent round-table discussion opened up a number of avenues that the “old reporter” in me couldn’t resist. One was the discovery that US Wellness, the largest marketer of grass fed beef on the Internet, was importing some of its meat from Tasmania. (Yes, I had to look on a map, too. It’s about 100 miles south of Australia.) Turns out their northern soil is practically perfect for grazing. Couple that with low wages and low land costs, throw in cheap shipping on boats returning to the States that would otherwise be empty, and you can see what American producers are up…
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I know one when I see one….
…Devon, that is. We’ve had several posts in recent weeks about what might be called “the proper Devon”. Both Devon breed associations spend a lot of time arguing over standards and use all sorts of measurements and “pop science” to prove their case. The gold standard for this kind of thing is the Angus breed, once a perfectly fine cow that has gone a long way down the road to ruin chasing standards that were imposed by giant breeders in league with outsiders (such as feedlots, slaughter houses, and university professors) chasing a supposed ideal. Today, thanks to all the experts, the Angus breed is plagued by a multitude of…