Are You Gonna Finish That?

What I love about farmers is that they’re just so damned practical. Just when I think I’ve got things figured out, and my dogma down, some farmer comes along and schools me in how logic, nature and, history can challenge all our assumptions. 

I’ve interviewed a few ranchers this past year for my blog, Top Carnivore, and I ask them all the same question. Can regenerative agriculture—these back-to-the-basics farming practices everyone is talking about—actually feed the entire planet?

For the most part, my question is answered with a resounding “yes.” There are always caveats of course. And sometimes, there’s a feeling it’s the only chance we’ve got.

That is, until I spoke with Mariposa Ranch’s Seth Nitschke. 

Seth is a bit of a rebel. He’s a straight talking rancher who probably gets a little too prickly on social media when poking fun at Facebook vegans. But his no-nonsense, cowboy hat wearing, horseback ranching attitude is refreshing in a world where straight talking is so darn scary these days. Seth tells it as he sees it.

“I think grass-finished beef can get bigger, but I don’t know that it will be a dominant force.”

Seth’s response might have left me slack-jawed a year ago, but I’ve learned that nothing is black and white in agriculture. Even the granddaddy of grass-fed ranchers, Will Harris of White Oak Pastures, has discouraged folks from taking up the regenerative ranching reigns. Grain-fed beef is just “too efficient,” and grass-finished beef is cheaper from other countries.

Seth is no different. In the beef industry, he’s one of the “itty bitty guys,” and then there are some big guys, and no one in between. And the big guys are HUGE! 

About 80% of our beef comes from only four producers. More than 97% of all cattle spend some time in a Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) or “feedlot.” Seventy percent spend months in a CAFO larger than 1,000 animals. Billions of dollars have been invested in supplying, supporting, and shipping from the almost 30,000 grain-fed programs across the country. There is just so little room for the go-it-alone grass-fed rancher these days.

Then there’s the issue of foreign grass-fed competition. 

“Australia has great big producers. They may be producing 20,000 head on their ranch,” Seth explains. “Those guys will run 20,000 animals with three employees. Look, I love Australia, spent a bit of time there. But I do wish they’d keep their damned beef on their side of the Pacific.”

No one is listening to Seth. More than 75% of grass-fed beef consumed in the US comes from foreign markets. Australia, Argentina, and Brazil (where much of our grass-fed beef comes from) don’t have this problem. There is just more space and more grass more often. US ranchers also actively manage their herds almost daily. Folks like Mariposa, Stemple Creek, and White Oak have to move their animals to scattered smaller plots of land in search of the best grass. More labor = greater costs.

So are we doomed?

“Rather than be perfect tomorrow, let’s be better. It’s gonna take time.”

Seth isn’t one to sugarcoat things. He tells me that everyone likes to say the food system is broken, that we’re not getting the right kinds of foods, and that the stuff we are getting is giving us all these environmental and health problems. He must be reading my blog?

“The food system isn’t broken,” he shouts. “The food system is awesome. It’s safer, faster, cheaper. That’s exactly what we’ve asked for.”

Seth’s point is that we aren’t asking for what we really need. We said we wanted it fast and cheap and safe, and that’s what the American agricultural system went to work on. Turns out we need more than that. We need something a bit more balanced.

Seth has a few thoughts.

Feeding animals things other than their natural diets has been a practice for thousands of years. The chaff of the wheat, the corn stocks, barley mash from the brewery, all of these leftovers were simply thrown into the pigsty or horse manger as free fodder. Today, one of the largest hog farms in Nevada is outside of Pahrump because it’s a quick drive from Las Vegas with its overflowing all you can eat buffet dumpsters. One man’s trash is another pig’s treasure.

“That sounds like recycling to me,” says Seth. “We need some animals to eat all this grain we use to make Bud Light and ethanol, right?”

According to Seth, if animals are allowed to “balance their own ration,” they will eat some grain (or other feed stock), and some grass, keeping their digestive systems healthy. If they’re left on CAFO concrete with a pile of purpose-grown soy in front of them, they can’t make that decision.  Finishing cattle on things other than grass needs active management. Already ranches in California are giving this a try, feeding their herds leftover carrots and oil-pressed olives with some success.

 “The poison is in the dose,” Seth concludes. “You have one beer, its ok, you have 18 beers and shit’s gonna get sideways.”

Something to (dare I say) chew on….

If there is one thing Seth and I can agree on, it’s that humans have to adapt if we are going to continue to thrive on our planet. We can’t keep doing agriculture the same way with our populations getting larger, our resources get scarcer, and our skies get dirtier. 

Seth reminds me that 100,000 years ago, human beings traveled out of Africa to populate the rest of the world with little more than sticks and stones. We put complex societies on Easter Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from the nearest landmass. People today, living in Alaska and the Caribbean wouldn’t dream of swapping places.

“They just adapt and figure it out,” says Seth. “That’s the one thing that does give me hope. One thing that we are is really frickin’ resourceful.”

Amen brother. Let’s hope you’re right.