Author Richard Manning, in an article entitled Graze Anatomy, introduces two ranchers who have a mission. Will Winter and Todd Churchill have a plan to shrink our carbon foot print, expand biodiversity and wildlife habitat, promote human health, humanize farming, control rampant flooding, radically reduce our use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers and produce a guilt free steak. What is their plan?
“Let cows eat grass.“
Churchill who started Thousand Hills Cattle Company Minnesota sells 1,000 grass fed cows per year to Coops, restaurants and whole food stores. And he is not alone as Denver-based American grass fed association now has 380 members. Rotational grazing is key as it forces animals to eat two thirds of availability forage normally be untouched by moving animals through a series of paddocks every month. This management produces much more beef or milk per acre than does continuous grazing when cattle are left to graze the same plants again and again.
Grass fed beef and dairy have more omega-3 fats and conjugated linoleic acid which reduces risk of heart disease. Farmers can convert corn and soybean land to perennial pastureland and make more money than the highly subsidized farmers. Perennial pasture land is also much better at absorbing water than shallow rooted crop land. Churchill can produce about two steers per acre compared to the same acreage to grow 3,000 pounds of grain to finish a single steer. Grain fed cows also have excess ruminant acids which leads to more parasites and diseases.
Another example was a farmer in North Dakota on a 3,500 acre organic farm who was having trouble making it work until be brought cattle into his operation. He gained manure, controlled weeds through grazing, decreased tillage and energy use and found a use for low market value crops such as grass and alfalfa which helped build the soil and stop erosion.
Richard Manning is also the author of Grassland: the History, Biology, Politics and Promise of the American Prairie. He made the following comments on his website:
“We regard farming as a permanent condition of rural life, but in the arid west, it is, in fact, a brief experiment of 100 years. From the outset, it began failing - a destiny now manifest - and farm subsidies are the best evidence of that failure. Last year, our nation spent a total of more than 22 billion dollars on direct farm subsidies, much of it paid to western farmers to grow wheat, or to not grow wheat, on highly erodible lands."
He said the west had both population and economy for thousands of years in pre-colonial times, and he argues it can have both again.
He also pointed out the exception to a trend in shrinking populations in many western places - Indigenous communities. He said in the western United States, a coalition of 30 western First Nations are bringing back bison as a business, and with the bison are coming elk, prairie dogs, ferrets, hawks and native grasses. He pointed out the deep-rooted perennial grasses uptake more minerals than shallow annual crops.
He hoped for better federal policies to support this "grassland renaissance" or at least the coalition of wildlife interests, ranchers, taxpayers and farmers could convince lawmakers to stop impeding it.
