When it comes to food buying decisions, there are a lot of terms that get thrown around:
- Grass Fed
- Factory Farmed
- Organic
- Locally Sourced
- Responsibly Raised
- Any Many More
We named our livestock business “Grass Fed”, and I thought I had better explain why we did this so that you know exactly where we stand.
Let’s Begin With A Little History
There was a big shift in agriculture in the United States after World War II, really ramping up in the 1950’s. Between the improvement of machinery, the improvements in technology, the culmination of research by extension agents, the proliferation of hybrid seeds, a great economy and many other factors agriculture really changed course from what it looked like before the war and leading into the Great Depression.
These changes in agriculture revolutionized the world in many, many ways. Nowhere was this more noticeable than in the United States. We have all grown up, for our entire lives, knowing abundant food availability at a low cost. If you are reading this and were raised in the U.S. this has always been your reality.
Over the past 70 years or so the world has become healthier, life expectancies have increased and in first world countries obesity, not starvation, has become the biggest nutrition problem. Food is abundant, and based solely on caloric production there is plenty of food for the entire world today. Politics and oppression get in the way of distributing these calories to all who need them, but on a per person basis there is plenty.
During this same time period there were a lot of changes in agriculture that people now see as negatives. Most of these changes came about to increase production of food. Some of the things that have been looked at as negatives are:
- The use of petroleum based fertilizers
- Chemicals for insect control
- Chemicals for weed control
- Hormones given to animals to increase the conversion of feed into protein or milk
- Antibiotics fed to animals to speed their growth
- Monoculture (growing just one crop) on farms
- Larger and larger farm equipment
- Feedlots
- Concentration of animal waste
- Any many more
Commodities
A lot of crops produced by the bigger farmers in our country are sold as commodities. To over-simplify this, when you sell your crop as a commodity you have no control over the price you sell it for. The market, basic supply and demand, set the price and you get what you get.
This creates a precarious situation for farmers because they lose control of one of the variables that impact their survival as a business. During some years commodity prices can be really high. For example, if the northern tier of the country has a disease outbreak that impacts the corn harvest in a negative way, farmers in Idaho will get much more for their corn because the nationwide supply of available corn has been diminished by disease.
However, when farmers see high prices for a commodity at the end of a growing season they all too often do what looks like the logical thing – plant more of that crop next season. This normally leads to a very large supply of this commodity the following year, and thus a low price.
This dance continues year after year, and as you look at commodity prices as an average through those years you see that there is a very small profit margin for farmers growing crops or raising livestock. For example, a few years back pig producers in the United States commodity markets were making about $2.00 profit on a pig. That’s not much. If your goal is to make $100,000 in profit in pigs, you would have to sell 50,000 pigs that year.
Now you see why farmers have had to become more and more innovative in terms of maximizing productivity of their livestock. If they are selling animals as a commodity, the only way they can make enough to support their families and continue farming is to sell more and more of whatever they are producing each and every year.
Put Yourself In The Farmer’s Place
Now imagine that you are a pig farmer, dairy farmer, beef producer or poultry producer trying to keep up and maintain your lifestyle. At some point keeping all of the animals you need to sell on pasture becomes unsustainable. You either don’t have enough land, or there would be no way to get to all of the animals every day if they were that spread out.
This is where confined animal feeding comes in. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense from a management and economic standpoint. You can manage a lot of animals much more efficiently with less need for labor. Also, you can produce crops on what used to be your pasture that can be fed to the animals. The crops produced can really increase the weight gain of the animal as compared to having them eat just grass (in the case of beef). And, when commodity prices are low you win because you can buy feed for your animals cheaply.
Of course, as more and more farmers continue to do this the profit margin per animal continues to get lower and lower. So now, for that same pork producer to maintain their $100,000 in profit they might need to sell 60,000 pigs rather than the 50,000 they had to sell just a few years earlier. It is a precarious circle.
Farming is not just a business or a means to an end. It is a lifestyle, and the people who love it will work tirelessly to find a way to continue living it. I host a podcast called Off-Farm Income about this topic specifically because so many farmers do all the work on the farm, after they’ve worked a full-time job off of the farm. Just like prospective actors, musicians and artists they work one job just to give them the chance of working the second. This is passion.
Backlash
Since the 1960’s there has been a growing movement against this modern form of farming. People like Wendell Berry, William Kittredge and Joel Salatin have written great books about this burgeoning movement. The movement has grown stronger and stronger following our rising standard of living and the availability of information through the internet.
Today there are basically two sides of agriculture, pitted against each other. There is production agriculture or those farmers who are trying to be as efficient as possible so they can survive in the commodity model. And there are organic or pastoral agriculturists who desire to slow down or abandon a lot of the technology that has led to the massive calorie production in the U.S. in the name of consumer health or animal welfare.
Today, probably due to the amount of wealth that we have in the United States, there is more demand than we have ever seen for vegetables, fruit, wheat and protein that is produced outside of the production agriculture model. This has led to an increase in the number and scope of farmers markets we see across the country. Boise’s is a great example as it got so large that it broke off into two separate farmer’s markets.
I was at Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young’s music festival, Farm Aid, this past September in Connecticut. Each of these gentleman had plenty to say about agriculture during the media event and later during their performances. Neil Young had the crowd chanting about going to farmer’s markets by the end of his set. It was really something to see.
Where Grass Fed Boise Falls
To be blatantly honest with you we like and support both sides of our polarized agricultural community in the United States. I have a degree in Animal Science from Montana State University. My entire education was based on production agriculture. I have worked in production agriculture selling agricultural chemicals, delivering fertilizer tanks and feeding cattle in a confined situation. I have implanted cattle with hormones to boost their growth. One of my current clients is a company that produces seed, and some of it is genetically modified with transgenic traits.
On the flip side, when I was in college I read William Kittredge’s book Owning It All: Essays
We know, first hand, that there are people on both sides of this argument who love agriculture and believe they are doing something very good for their fellow humans. I have met both and had extended conversations with each. They are all good people, but they have fundamentally disagree about where our priorities should be in farming.
Why We Are Grass Fed
We are grass fed for a couple of reasons. To begin, we are a small farm. We cannot hope to have farming be anything more than an unprofitable hobby if we sell our cattle, pigs and goats on a commodity basis. We are just too small to produce the types of numbers that will allow us to survive under this model. So, we have to look for a niche in order to survive. Our niche is selling direct to our consumers, not through a broker in a commodity market.
Our customer’s asked for grass fed and finished beef. Both Autumm and I were raised on beef that were fed grain for the last 6 weeks to 2 months of their life to “finish” them and put marbling in the steaks. I was taught all about the benefits of finishing on grain in college and taught how to assess the grade of beef by the marbling present in the rib eye.
When we first started raising beef for customers we were finishing them on grain, just like we had always known. But then our customers started asking us for beef that never ate anything but grass and hay. At first, we separated our steers into two groups, so we could serve the customers who wanted beef that had never been fed grain. This only lasted a couple of seasons until we realized that we should just make the switch to a fully grass-fed and finished operation.
This switch was not a value based decision, it was a business based decision. Our cattle were on grass and hay for their entire lives, so it was just a matter of no longer finishing them with grain.
With that said, since we eat our own beef, when we made the switch for our customers we made the switch for ourselves. That is the first time either of us ate grass fed and finished beef. We haven’t noticed a difference. As a matter of fact, we cooked up some tenderloins last fall, and I thought it was the best beef I had ever eaten. So, why not? We followed our customers into this world, and we like what we are tasting.
Our cattle are all born on our farm and eat only grass and hay for their entire lives. We also do not implant them with hormones or feed antibiotics. This is an inefficient business model for us. At 18 months of age our cattle weigh less than they could if we implanted with hormones and fed them grain. And, it costs us more because we have to feed hay to our cattle in the winter. And, since we keep mother cows and a bull we cannot raise as many steers for sale to customers because we need some of that pasture to support the breeding animals.
However, there is something we love about turning cattle out onto fresh pasture and watching them eat grass. There is something we love about getting better and better at growing grass for them to eat. And there is something that we love about seeing an old cow get excited, run and kick up her heals when she gets turned into a fresh paddock of grass. This is the pastoral image I had of my eventual farm when I was 18, and we are lucky that there are people who value their beef being raised this way. You allow us to operate this type of farm and enjoy the intrinsic rewards of this life.