It’s been one of those quite crazy weeks on the ranch. The ranch work went as planned. Thankfully, we’ve seen quite a bit of sun and the snow is nearly gone. That coveted moisture went into the ground without making it a muddy mess. Our fields are fairly intact after the melt”¦often the sharp hooves of cow and horse can shred and pog it up (pog is actually a word meaning to “muddily track up and poke holes in sod” according to”¦me). Pogging can actually set our grass production back come green-up and I don’t think it is good for the soil critters. So far, we’re looking good, but we’ll see what happens with the moisture spring blizzards and rainy squalls, and what they could still bring.
It was the internet that surged unexpectedly, and crazily. We were uncharacteristically low on inventory because we had completed the transition out of beef from our former processor, and were getting ready for a nice inventory infusion from the new guys when it happened. On Monday morning, Dr. Oz appeared on his TV show with author Mark Schatzker and a representative from Alderspring Ranch. The rep appeared in the flesh between the good Doctor and Mark.
It was a perfectly cooked Alderspring ribeye.
Dr. Oz ate a bite of it. He said it was fantastic (it was a dang nice steak, if I say so myself, finished a couple of weeks ago on our green grass hay). Dr. Oz related how Steak author Mark had traveled for 2 years consuming 200 lbs of steak and found this one to be in their words, the “best”¦from Alderspring Ranch, in May, Idaho.”
Be not dismayed, dear reader. Indeed, it did slam us with orders for a day or so, quickly ridding us of that limited inventory. But the Doctor has a show every day, and I’m sure we became largely forgotten by Tuesday in the minds of most viewers. And we will have a very nice inventory surge hit the webstore starting on Tuesday, March 8th.
I called Mark Schatzker after the segment aired and told him how great it was”¦but there was only one problem. I personally would have a hard time chatting away about the merits of grass fed beef while standing next to a cooling ribeye! It’s hard to be amiable while the fragrance wafts up from a perfectly prepared piece of prime.
Interesting times. We’ve been doing this since “grass fed” was a term we had to describe in brochures and signage as we displayed our beef at the Boise farmer’s market nearly 20 years ago. It’s clear that the grassfed “revolution” is hitting mainstream. Swift, one of the nation’s largest meat processors, even has its own line of grassfed.
Soon, every major supermarket will have its own grassfed line, because the consumer will demand it. Schatzker and Dr. Oz discussed at length the fact that although grassfed is often 30% more money, it is worth it to the consumer from a nutrition, taste and texture standpoint. And the consumer will listen.
There is just one problem with all of this, and it starting nagging at me as I watched the Dr. Oz segment. It had to do with something Mark said in detail in one of the video segments before the Alderspring one.
He related that the reason grain fed beef became all the rage was because the USDA put in place the beef grading system of rating carcasses, and eventually steaks based on fat deposition. In other words, fatty steak production is rewarded by the system.
Mark then showed that producers of cattle soon figured out how to maximize that fat deposition by feeding cheap corn, and by the end of 1950s, feedlots were reproducing throughout the corn belt like rabbits. Within a decade, the amount of grain fed cattle went from 10% in America to 90%
.
And therein lays the problem. The grassfed revolution has very similar economic attributes to the grainfed revolution. How can this be? Check this out:
1. There was more economic margin to be had in raising fatty corn fed beef than leaner grass fed beef. Now that margin has been identified in raising grassfed over grain fed beef.
2. When corn fed beef became more common, price premiums eroded as the supply normalized in the 1970s. In the 1950s, ranchers with just 200 cows netted wages equal to doctors and lawyers. Ranching was profitable. The 1970s found many cattlemen no longer profitable. When the eighties hit with rising interest rates, they disappeared”¦broke. The same will likely happen with grassfed beef. Cheap beef means good for the consumer, right? Maybe. Good in pocketbook often doesn’t equal good in health.
3. Both types of producers (corn fed and grassfed) compete with each other, and try to create operational efficiencies to make their costs of production cheaper. American cattle raisers are by definition capitalists, and given the chance to get more money for grassfed, they will do whatever it takes to make that happen. There will be a window to make great money, before the consumer realizes that their “grass fed” beef isn’t what they think they are.
These operative efficiencies are already happening. In late 2015, the USDA scratched their grass fed certification program. Now, virtually anything can be called grassfed, because there is no standard guidelines. While labeling cannot be untrue, since there is no standard the Federal Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which oversees labeling, will be hesitant to disagree with a producer that claims their beef is “grass fed.”
Even under the old standard, producers were able to feed animals in feedlots, feed them GMO corn stubble and beet waste, use any and all chemicals such as antibiotics, hormones and pesticides and still be totally on the right side of the law while calling them grassfed.
And they will. They already are. Some of that grass fed beef you see in the stores comes from dairy cows no longer able to meet strict milk production minimums. Some comes from South America. Some comes right out a feedlot that looks no different from a grain-based feedlot- just a few tweaks of the rations.
We’ll admit it’s a little hard to take sometimes. A decade ago there was excitement in the grass fed industry, fostered by pioneers with a vision to get cattle out of feedlots and onto permanent pasture, a revolution not only in cattle husbandry but also in the integration of animals and fields into a sustainable agricultural system. This vision has dimmed, largely because of American’s insatiable desire for cheap food, and a system that rewards taking advantage of an uneducated consumer.
Once again, it will up to the consumer to decide who to trust. Third party inspections help. Organic certification allows none of those things I listed above, and we get inspected every year by an Idaho state contractor or employee to ensure that we follow the letter of those rules.
They are pretty meticulous, and usually spend an entire day or two here, inspecting our cattle, fields and facilities, and going through our records. Last year, we spent about $35,000 to be organic. It costs a lot and is a pretty solid certification, in spite of the anti-organic spin I often hear. Sure, there are folks pushing the letter of those rules too (usually mega companies trying to become more “efficient”), but most folks that are small organic, like us, are after spirit of the law rather than letter because we really believe in it.
There are also private grass fed certifications, like American Grassfed Association (AGA), that help to some degree. Some other grassfed beef labels have pretty stringent protocol requirements for a producer to be a partner.
But your best bet is to know who raises your food. We try to connect with you any way we can, and are glad to answer questions as transparently as we can (although sometimes we get busy and miss some of your emails- try us again!). We are proud of what we do, and passionate about work that changes things.
On that last note, we have some great news that we have received a Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Grant to help fund the expansion of the innovative range riding project we tried as a pilot last summer. (We found out after we got it that these grants are very competitive and hard to get, so we are thankful.) We’ll write more about that project-and why it matters to you as the people who enjoy our beef-in our next newsletter.
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