Nutritionist Walter Willett states that there is a consensus among nutritionists that America’s obesity and diabetes epidemics is caused by an excess of corn based processed food and corn fed red meat. He also was asked his opinion by the Washington Post on Americas decreasing longevity based on the National Cancer Institute’s study of red meat consumption. Fred Kirchenmann and his fellow scientists at Iowa State University state that there is a need for basic change in industrial agriculture. They propose crop rotations which include pasture and forages and result in substantially less corn and chemical application and much less exposure to erosion. CBF’s restoration scientists who are restoring historic Antietam Creek propose changing corn based CAFO dairy farms to pasture based dairy farms. Three of the oldest agriculture organizations in the Country representing 11,000 scientist and students published Grasslands-the future of sustainable agriculture. Almost a year ago the Wall Street Journal in an opinion titled The Fat of the Land wrote “call the 19% of Kids who are obese in America the children of corn”. They now follow up with a solution opinion titled “Ordering Up Beef That Roamed the Range”. The article reports on a taste test of prime cuts of beef from 5 ranches in the SW, Midwest, and Western US. All tasters agreed that the meat was less greasy and more tasteful than supermarket beef. They also point out that healthful grass fed beef is only 3% of beef sales in the US. If readers have any interest in restoring water quality, stopping massive erosion and improving their health they should only buy grass fed meat. All 5 of these ranchers sell product by mail. We buy pasture-raised veal and beef from St Brigids in Kennedyville MD and beef, pasture raised eggs and chicken from C&J in Seaford DE. These pasture-based grass fed producers can be reached as follows:
Baldwin Grass Fed Beef (800) 896-4857 baldwinbeef.com Hearst Ranch(866) 547-2624 hearstranch.com La Cense Beef (866) 442-2333 lacensebeef.com Ridge Run Longhorn Ranch (575) 666-2697 leanandtender.com Alderspring Ranch alderspring.com
St. Brigids (410) 648 5753 http://stbrigidsfarm.blogspot.com/
C&J Seaford DE. (302) 629-8194 jojo17117@aol.com
Fixing Our Food Blog 
July 7, 2010 at 2:20 pm |
Your post hits it on the mark. I’d like to add a few thoughts. When properly managed, grazing animals can promote significant creation of new topsoil, which has many benefits including: replacing previously lost topsoil, improving soil hydrology, increasing drought resistance of the pasture and connected waterways, increasing productivity of the grass and therefore the animals, and sequestering atmospheric carbon in the new soils. But not all farmers raising grass-fed animals manage their animals and land for maximum health and improvement of soils. For more on this, see Abe Collins’ work through CarbonFarmersofAmerica.com (he’s a dairy farmer in Vermont who has induced creation of 7 inches of new topsoil on his land in a mere 3 years) and the methods of Holistic Management (HolisticManagement.org or SavoryInstitute.org). One clue that pasture management can be improved is if a farmer finds they have to replant/reseed their pasture every few years. With proper management of the herd, weeds are kept to a minimum and the preferred grasses encouraged to flourish.