(Part One)
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A customer recently asked us a very good question. She pointed out that she had found information about a farm selling “grass-fed” beef for a significantly lower price than us, and inquired about why there was such a difference in price.

Her questions prompted me to do a couple of things. One was to do an informal survey of beef in north-western Oregon (mainly coast range, and northern Willamette Valley) to compare prices, which is something I do periodically. Prices ranged from about $2/lb to about $4.80/lb (plus processing). The other thing I did was ponder (along with Rich) how to articulate what makes our beef, and specifically, our animal and land management practices, different from other farms.

What makes us different:

1) Intensive rotation (i.e Management Intensive Grazing) – not “free range” = improved grass/soil/ecosystem health

Many farms like to tout that their animals “roam free” on their pastures. I think they do this because of the idyllic picture it paints for people… happy cows, allowed to wander at their will. However, the reality of good management is that “free range” cattle creates many problems for the land, from soil compaction along paths, to damage to creeks and riparian areas if that cattle are not fenced out, to poor grass quality (and the need for off-farm inputs, i.e. fertilizers and/or herbicides).

When we bought our property in 2002, we witnessed the results of poor management first hand. The prior owner had more than 50 cattle on the property year around, and as a result, the land had a very poor complement of species, low fertility, high compaction, very poor water retention, and the creeks were degraded by gullies with no riparian cover.

We practice Management Intensive Rotational Grazing (MIRG), and ideas based on Holistic Management. We have 5 main fields with perimeter fencing (which we have worked long and hard to put in place!), and we subdivide these fields into many smaller fields with electric wire and water points. The steers are moved nearly every day in the peak growing seasons of spring and summer in order to take advantage of the huge pulse of growth that happens during that time of year.

Imagine you make a big feast, with a lot of ingredients. The first time you sit down to the meal, you eat some of everything, and especially the good parts. The 2nd day, you need to eat again, and there’s a good spread still in front of you. You probably have some of most of it, but maybe pick around some of the wilted lettuce or less appetizing ingredients. The third day you have it, you probably are very selective about what you eat from it, leaving behind all the parts you don’t really like. As the days go by, the good stuff is mostly gone, leaving the unappetizing-to-downright unpleasant bits to be eaten. You’re not eating as much each time, and it’s generally not as fresh and nutritious as day 1.

Steers do this as well, if left on the same pastures every day. The result is usually that they will eat the grasses they like best, and avoid the ones they don’t like. They will eat the “good” grasses down to the point where regrowth may take a long time. And by making the beneficial, high-nutrition species so short, the species they don’t like have better access to sunshine and are allowed to prosper. The farm then is left with a pasture of less appetizing species, that will probably need to be eradicated through re-seeding, herbicide application, fertilization, etc.

Our approach means that the steers get a fresh feast every day in the growing season. They can eat as much as they want, stopping only when they’re full.. The next day, they are moved to a new paddock and have a brand new feast. This allows the “good” grasses to be eaten down to the point at which regrowth is stimulated, and for the less desired species to not usually have the chance to out-compete the good grasses. In this situation, even the less desirable species get nibbled on as part of the feast, and don’t become a problem.

(Next post will discuss why our steers never receive grain, and also the issue of scale.)

They talk about land, farm cooperation, and meat processing, as well as our favorite advice to meat buyers – meet the meat…Check it out.

Fortunately, Time magazine comes through with something, so we don’t have to. Their new issue has an article on buying beef by the quarter, conveniently, the same way we sell it. A surprisingly well done piece.

The grass-fed beef the students tasted in the surveys came from Portland-based SP Provisions, which processes a brand of beef called Cascade Natural Beef. It’s made from Angus steers in Oregon and Washington that are raised on grass, but for the last four months of their lives are fed grain and corn to fatten them up, said Jim Register, the general manager of the company.

This results in an animal that is more expensive to raise, since there’s the longer time to get to a harvestable weight, which is a result of grassfed production, and then switched to grain, which negates any of the health and taste benefits (scroll down) that result from a grassfed and grass finished animal. It essentially takes the weaknesses of both production types, and calls it grassfed. No wonder it didn’t work out.

While farm to school programs are an excellent way to help farmers and get healthy, local food into our kids, studies such as this one distort the costs and benefits of the program…hopefully they’ll get a more robust study underway to really measure the costs and appeal of grassfed meat.

(via)

The 3/4 acre sacrifice area…note a small amount of mud to the left, and lots of bedding and high ground for happy steers. Click for bigger

One of the livestock management aspects that I’m particularly proud of is the winter treatment of our steers. In our wet Oregon climate, winter can be a pretty challenging time; we can’t let them graze all winter, since their heavy bodies will cause compaction of wet clay soil. This necessitates a “sacrifice area, ” which is an area we allow to get beaten up and compacted, in order to increase grass health on the other 95+% of the farm.

We designed our barn to open onto the best drained soil on the property. While some shallow mud occurs at the entrance, there’s plenty of room for the steers to hang out on firm ground.

Not having our animals in deep muck is not just an ethical concern, but a financial and environmental one as well. Animals who have to live in mud get sick more often, gain weight slower, and are generally less content. Not only would that cost us, and ultimately our customers, but it increases the energy footprint of our operation. A poorly producing pasture requires us to buy in more hay to supplement them…while we like our hay producer, there’s no reason to give them money when we can grow the product ourself.

When you think about it, having to spend the entire winter in shin-high mud would probably darken your mood a bit, as well.

Further, that mud often has to drain somewhere…if there’s not a large enough buffer from a waterway, sediment and manure can end up polluting our streams, which goes against my part time volunteer work.

This is the time of year that good management really begins to pay off. Our animals aren’t hock-deep in muck, are healthy and growing well, our unsacrificed pastures are starting to wake up for the season, and we don’t have a mudpit by the barn running mucky water into our creeks. The triple bottom line in action