Brazilian beef, Castleberry, Farm bill, Ted Turner, Swift & Co., Winn Meat

"We can put up to 10 cattle per hectare (1 hectare = 2.47 acres) on land like that. That's the richest pasture we have today, but we have the techniques to go further. The sky's the limit."
(Source: Los Angeles Times/Financial Times, July 23, 2007)
Arno Schneider pointing to a stretch of pasture on his 7,500 acre ranch near Cuiaba in central Brazil and talking about that country’s rapid rise in the beef industry.
>PS: Brazil is now the second-biggest beef producer in the world after the United States, producing more than 9 million tons, up from 6 million in 1997.

"So that we can devote all available resources to this investigation, we agreed to shut down our entire facility in Augusta. We will not process any more food there until the FDA and the USDA agrees it is appropriate to reopen. And, we have stopped all further product distribution from our centers."
(Source: Knoxnews, July 23, 2007)
Dave Melbourne, senior vice president for Castleberry's, talking about the extraordinary measures the company is taking to insure the public’s health.
>PS: In addition, the company hired an outside firm to visit more than 8,500 retailers around the country to quickly get recalled products off store shelves.
>PPS: Castleberry’s is doing it right. No hiding behind legalese or trying to obfuscate the problem. . . just taking care of it. As soon as their product is back on supermarket shelves, I’m first in line to buy it.

"I find it hard to believe, but I have to take (Republicans) at their word. It's going to be a shootout at high noon."
(Source: Washington Post, July 26, 2007)
Collin Peterson, D-MN., House Agriculture Committee chairman, saying he didn't know if the legislation could survive the last minute pork barrel polka that’s substantially driven up the cost of the farm bill.
>PS: The gripe is major crop subsidies are left in place, some are increased. Little is included for environmental and nutritional program. Rural Republicans might vote no just to save their seats.

"I felt like I was eating my puppy. When I started getting a few thousand buffalo, I figured I better start eating it and learning about it."
(Source: Rapid City Journal, July 26, 2007)
Ted Turner talking to a crowd of about 300 at the Mount Rushmore amphitheatre as he was inducted into the National Buffalo Foundation Hall of Fame at the opening event of the third International Bison Conference.
>PS: A well deserved award - the “mouth of the South” made the bison business what it is today.
>PPS: May I suggest the National Bison Association give an annual ‘Turner Award’ to the person who does the most for the industry?

“The NGFA recognizes the importance of a strong conservation title as part of any successful farm bill. But we encourage Congress to redirect conservation resources to focus on working lands programs coupled with a shift away from land-idling schemes.”
(Source: Grainnet, July 25, 2007)
Kendell W. Keith, National Grain and Feed Association president, in a letter to the Senate Agriculture Committee, urging CRP rules to be relaxed in their version of the Farm Bill.
>PS: The compelling reason? NGFA noted an Iowa State University study on biofuels showed a need to attract 94 million to 112 million acres into corn production each year to meet expected demand.

"If the government can pick them up and say this one's legal and this one is illegal, why can't they share that with industry? It's kind of ridiculous. You might as well be talking to a wall."
(Source: Forbes.com, July 27, 2007)
Rick Milsap, Petit Jean Poultry president, expressing his continued confusion at the reasons behind the government raid two years ago that nearly bankrupted the business.
>PS: The feds can’t help ferret out ‘illegals’ before they’re hired but they can raid after the fact and grab headlines. Does this two year old story sound ‘Swiftly’ familiar?

"It's not necessarily the market conditions, but more about the tradition we have as a company to run at capacity and maximize our assets. That's the way we like to operate."
(Source: Northern Colorado Business Report, July 27, 2007)
Marco Sampaio, Swift & Co. spokesman, talking about the Greeley plant’s planned second shift and hiring 1,300 additional workers.
>PS: Northern Colorado breathes a sigh of relief. It had been rumored that the new Brazilian owners might close the plant.

"After much thought and months of discussion at every level of our company, it finally occurred to us that the world needs a Dry-Age Cam! What could possibly be more exciting for our customers than watching proteolysis at work! At least 21 days of sheer bliss for the steak that is selected for our dry-age program."
(Source: Company press release)
Jamie Samford, Corporate Chef, Winn Meat Company, talking about putting some excitement into our everyday humdrum lives.
>PS: Thanks, Jamie, but your Dry-Age Cam will have to compete for my attention with watching paint dry and the always thrilling Cleveland Water Crib cam.
>PPS: Click on the Winn Meat Company link to actually witness the Dry-Age Cam in action!

Point: "That's the largest single increase from year to year in my 30 years in this business.”
Garrett Smith, president of American Pop Corn Co., talking about the 65% increase in contract costs to get farmers to plant Jolly Time popcorn and suggesting the rise in price is due to the surge in ethanol production.
Counterpoint: "I love popcorn, and I have no doubt that the cost of popcorn-growing has gone up. But so have Iowa farmland values, corn prices and soybean prices. That's really good news for the Iowa farmer, taxpayers and the Iowa and U.S. economies.
"Monte Shaw, Executive Director of Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, dismissing Smith’s concerns and suggesting other factors are to blame for the increase in price.
(Source: Des Moines Register, July 28, 2007)
>PS: Come on Monte, the MAJOR cause in the rising price of corn is the boost in ethanol production. Look up the word ‘obfuscation’ in your Funk & Wagnalls.

Talking about. . .Food Vs Fuel, COOL, FDA

“We used to have a food economy and an energy economy – two separate entities. Now suddenly, they’re beginning to merge and what is happening is the world price of grain is moving up towards its oil equivalent value because any time the food value of a commodity is less than its fuel value, the market will move that commodity into an energy commodity.”
(Source: FOODweekonline.com –Australia, July 16, 2007)
Lester Brown, founder and president of the US-based Earth Policy Institute, speaking at the CIES World Food Business Summit in Shanghai.
>PS: He was sounding the alarm about an impending “ethanol shock” that ties the price of food to the cost of a barrel of oil.

“Ethanol is getting a bad rap, because people aren’t looking at all the other factors that are involved in food prices.”
(Source: The Voice of Agriculture, American Farm Bureau, July 16, 2007)
Terry Francl, Farm Bureau economist, claiming little evidence that rising food prices have been affected significantly by higher corn prices.

"Comments should be submitted online at regulations.gov. Additional means of comment submission are via e-mail to cool@usda.gov; by mail to Country of Origin Labeling Program, Room 2607-S, Agricultural Marketing Service, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, Stop 0254, Washington, DC 2025-0254; or by fax to 202-720-1112. Additional information on this and the COOL program can be found at www.ams.usda.gov/cool."
(Source: SeattlePI.com, July 15, 2007)
Parker Wilde, Tufts University professor, instructing his blog readers where to send their comments about COOL.
>PS: After five years, this is still in play? Time to make a decision and stick with it.

"I want to make it very clear; [the closures] are for one purpose and one purpose only: to bring the FDA laboratory infrastructure into the 21st century. It's going to be very painful, but we are not closing labs with the idea of eliminating functionality."
(Source: Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2007)
Andrew von Eschenbach, FDA Commissioner, claiming his spectacularly ill-timed announcement suggesting the closing of 7 of their 13 food testing labs ‘was getting an early bad rap.’
>PS: The FDA is swamped with food quality problems, overrun with bad press, wasting away from a lack of funds and personnel and he decides to announce a ‘cut-and-run’ policy? Let’s just hope he’s playing hardball with the U.S. Congress in a bid for decent funding.

(Outbreaks of food-borne illness in 2006 and 2007) “Underscore the need to develop new multidisciplinary and integrated food safety strategies.”
(Source: New York Times, July 18, 2007)
Andrew von Eschenbach, FDA Commissioner, telling the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that closing labs would make the agency more efficient.
>PS: Reducing the head count and resources at an already grossly overworked government agency that can’t even begin to keep up with its duties and obligations will make it more efficient? That’s the kind of fuzzy logic that only works inside the beltway. See previous von Eschenbach comment.

A conversation with Steve Dittmer

Could the Gadsden flag be Steve Dittmer’s personal insignia? The one he flies on his porch every Fourth of July? One of the earliest American Revolutionary War era banners, the coiled snake around the 'Don't tread on me' message projected a prickly “stay away from me” message to King George. Dittmer’s Agribusiness Freedom Foundation certainly endorses the same kind of message to big government. It’s an organization that preaches the most unreconstructed form of free enterprise - keep the government the hell out of the way and let the industry fend for itself. Given a chance, he says, the natural forces of free enterprise will make things right.

To be sure, it is a modernized version of free enterprise. Here’s a quote from a page on AFF’s web site explaining their goals:

To explain the contributions of free market capitalism and advanced technology to
the world food supply and its importance in increasing food availability not
only to all Americans, but to poor populations in the developing world..

He was an active free marketeer when I first interviewed him just over a year ago. Nothing has changed, of course, even his steadfast refusal to reveal the sources of the Foundation’s funding. He certainly doesn’t count R-CALF among his backers. Maybe some of the old line meat groups might be slipping him a few bucks. He does preach that all segments of the cattle industry be free to “operate in multiple segments of the food chain.”

In other words, it’s OK for a packer to own cattle for a lot longer than a few days. Or for a cattleman to “hire out the herd” all the way to the meat case, anathema to men like R-CALF’s Bill Bullard and Dr. Max Thornsberry. It’s an idea that passes muster with the AMI’s CEO Patrick Boyle, though.

Dittmer highlighted the difference in a sharply worded editorial/press release that hit the Cattlenetwork news desk recently. Using his keyboard as a cudgel, he hammered out this opening sentence: “The war of words between R-CALF's Bill Bullard and the American Meat Institute's J. Patrick Boyle highlights a huge problem for the beef industry. Bullard is telling everyone to not think about the damage R-CALF's mCOOL would inflict. He's creating diversionary word games, blaming Boyle, who's only preparing packers and cattlemen for the possible cataclysm R-CALF & its LAG* allies hatched.”

Firing a salvo like that invites a few follow up questions. I spent five more minutes with Steve Dittmer and tried to find out a little more about the Agribusiness Freedom Foundation.

Q. You were talking with CTV, a Canadian television news service, about the revival of the R-CALF-backed law suit asking that the Canadian border remain closed. You were quoted as saying, "Once again, it puts the industry's fate not in the hands of those who know, nurture and prosper by it, but in the hands of the judicial system. It holds the potential for virtually no good and tremendous harm and destruction on top of that already caused."

On the other side of the argument, R-CALF points to the continuing BSE problems in Canada, and the Canadian courts are currently weighing a case that suggests government officials in Ottawa actively hid the existence of the disease for at least a decade. With at least 10 cases of BSE originating in Canada and the “alpha” case of BSE in the U.S. occurring in a Canadian born animal, doesn’t it make sense to ask the courts to consider protecting the health of the U.S. herd?

A. The protection of U.S. cattle herd health properly belongs with USDA, not the courts. Acting on the knowledge that the world’s scientific community had gathered over nearly two decades and on the recommendations of the OIE, USDA had put a multiple-hurdle protection system in place. The importation of cattle under 30 months that do not carry BSE is one prong. The feed ban prevents the spread of any possible infectious material. The surveillance of older animals making up the at-risk population is another.

The USDA went through a thorough and systematic procedure to put their program together and review it. They used both in-house and outside experts to examine the issue.

The courts add no superior expertise in animal disease. Any time you bring the courts into a complex issue, you risk serious damage and unintended consequences from people with lots more authority than they have knowledge and expertise. It is a step to take only when government has not done its job – which, in this case, we consider a preposterous supposition, given the 15 months of study and preparation. We don’t consider putting a key industry issue in the hands of judges instead of trained industry and government experts – and totally beyond the influence of cattlemen – a wise approach.

By the way, the ten cases in Canada are far fewer than the number the OIE would consider a real problem. R-CALF has been fond of characterizing Canada as an undiscovered UK when it comes to the prevalence of BSE among the cow herd. At this stage, the UK was experiencing many thousands of cases each year, not ten total.

While you refer here to animal herd health, it should be mentioned that a separate issue – food safety for human consumption – is achieved from animal sources of any age by Specified Risk Material (SRM) removal at harvest.

We should also utilize the passage of time, and reflect that the dire predictions R-CALF made in its suit have not come to pass – just as science would have predicted. Canada was not poised for a BSE outbreak of gigantic proportions like the UK, BSE has not spread like wildfire through saliva, and the U.S. was not under dire threat of introduction of BSE into the herd; it was already here, but under control.

Q. I found this statement on your AFF web site: “We oppose efforts to put limits on businesses to ally or cooperate with each other. We oppose limits on the abilities of agricultural operators or other food chain participants to utilize the business structures they choose. We oppose limits on individuals or businesses to operate in multiple segments of the food chain. We oppose efforts to undermine the abilities of government agencies to serve and protect the public and agriculture by removing industry expertise and scientific tools from the process. We oppose destructive attacks on consumer confidence in the food supply. We oppose the isolationist, protectionist views of world trade that would condemn American agriculture to a dead-end, no growth future in a world with staggering food needs.” It reads like you’ve taken chapter and verse from Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations.” Let’s discuss those positions. One of the reasons limits are placed on businesses’ abilities to ally or cooperate with each other is to insure fair competition. Do you see any reason to impose limits or do you think the market is self-corrective?

A. Sometimes efforts to examine this question lack perspective. Overall, the competition level in this industry is fierce at the foodservice, retail, packing and certainly, at all production levels. People tend to evaluate the level of competition based on how many competitors there are and that is not valid. Is there no competition in the auto industry because we only have a handful of competitors? Is one packer who harvests 1,000 head per day more competitive than another who needs 20,000 head per day? Numerous studies by all kinds of economists have failed to find evidence of a lack of competition or properly functioning price discovery for the beef industry.

That is not to say that individual operators, especially where distance from an auction market or a packer enters in, may not suffer from less than optimal competition for their cattle. Given the far-flung geographic nature of the cow-calf and stocker business, we need to work a lot harder to get these sources of cattle together with the packers that need quality cattle. And this simple problem of geography is not going to go away.

Unfortunately, many of the suggestions the radical groups have been making would only make this situation worse. Taking away tools like contracting, alliances and branded programs that make it easier for cattlemen and packers to find each other and fulfill each other’s needs is not a positive step. Trying to place unnecessary cost burdens (mCOOL) or damaging packers financially (attacking trade) or damaging their capital base and efficiency (breaking up the big packers) would only further reduce the number and strength of packing plants, guaranteeing longer hauls and shrinking markets for cattle. Such moves also give up revenue sources and pile additional costs on cattlemen.

Rather than enhancing competition, many of the proposed “solutions” would reduce competition by slapping down successful businesses trying to expand or family companies trying to accommodate additional family members. They would forbid the U.S. from profitably taking advantage of our superiority in some areas and utilize needed inputs in other areas (trade).

We have more than enough antitrust legislation on the books presently. In fact, discussion in the general business community more often revolves around the obsolescence of antitrust laws at all. The laws are seldom used because the level of competition globally and the ease of raising capital if a real opportunity arises makes it unnecessary for governments to take such drastic action very often.

Our dedication as a nation to freedom – individual private property rights and limited government interference – is Constitutional in nature and is the basis of our free-market economy. AFF’s concern for the long term is protecting our ability to respond to economic challenges, innovate and serve the consumer in the best ways possible. We must be allowed to harness and foster our American ingenuity. We can’t do that by trying to protect the existence of every individual cattleman, regardless of his abilities, his capital resources or his natural resources. As the Declaration says, we must protect our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We can’t – and shouldn’t -- guarantee the outcome.

Q. Consumer confidence in the food supply has been shaken by the recent spate of E.coli-related recalls and the quality control problems of imported foods and feedstuffs, especially from China. Wasn’t much of the damage self-inflicted? And what steps would be necessary to regain consumer confidence?

A. For the most part, the E. coli recalls are not “self-inflicted,” but they are very much a part of the biological nature of our product. While both public and private research – including checkoff-funded research – has brought us significant tools to use in delivering a safer product to consumers, more needs to be done. We need to better understand seasonal cycles, learn better management techniques in all industry segments and develop even better intervention techniques at the harvest level. The millions of private, association and government dollars and attention spent on lawsuits or defending lawsuits would much better have been spent on projects like these.

That said, trade is no more a zero-risk proposition than is domestic production. We still have one of the best interlocking systems of protection for consumers, while still allowing a pretty free flow of commerce for our economy. The consumer knows this and puts a lot of faith in the USDA and the FDA – far more than some of the radical consumer activist and producer groups do.

It is important to note that any beef in other countries intended for export to this country is harvested under the eye of a USDA inspector, just as happens in domestic packinghouses.

Q. Your position on limiting agricultural operators from utilizing the “business structures they choose” could lead the cattle industry to a point where it closely resembles the poultry industry with front to back vertical integration. It’s a concept that creates fear and loathing among most ranchers. If ownership restrictions are removed, do you agree that the change I’ve just outlined could happen and do you think it would be a good thing for the industry?

A. Comparing the beef industry with the poultry industry is like comparing apples to oranges. The poultry industry is actually more highly integrated, from feed supplies, to contracts with growers to harvest and branded retail programs than any other major livestock specie. True integration of that type does not exist to any significant degree in the beef industry. And unless beef becomes far more lucrative than we can imagine, it never will. A key reason innovative cattlemen, packers and retailers are using contracts and marketing agreements to accomplish predictability is that no one has the kind of capital necessary to own really significant parts of all the segments necessary for beef production from start to finish.

On top of that, the return ranges from stingy (1.8 percent at retail and 2.5-3 percent at harvest) to unpredictable and variable in the production segments. To ever be as integrated as poultry with four big companies, a company would have to amass enough capital annually to rent or own about 200 million acres of grass, lease or own over eight million cows, feed eight million head of feedlot cattle, have the harvest capacity for that many cattle and retail distribution for the resulting beef. We’re talking literally trillions of dollars. And, for just one example, with Swift for sale for years and billions of dollars being raised and spent by hedge funds and private equity firms to take companies private and make money, not a single one viewed a major packing company as a good investment. So much for attracting the trillions necessary for really integrating the beef industry.

There is more than enough existing infrastructure in the ranching and feeding segment of the beef industry that there is little need for contracts with packers to anchor production loans like is done with much smaller poultry raisers in that industry. As for “ownership restrictions,” there are none now and while concentration has occurred (as it has in nearly every business on the globe to achieve profitability and efficiency) integration of the industry has not happened. Ownership limitations now being discussed in the industry, would not help the overall financial health of the industry, but would instead force higher costs and lowered efficiency and a lower competitive situation on the industry, so that more and more participants in all segments of the industry would be forced out of business. Fettering the economic abilities of an industry guarantees a stagnant and declining situation that would remove the beef industry as a competitive protein source.

Q. In the increasingly worldwide scope of agriculture, the phrase “American agriculture” might be as outmoded as my old ’56 Buick or a mule-drawn wooden plow. The big beef processors are all International with businesses like Friboi/Swift a major player in North and South America, Europe, Asia and the Pacific basin. The big agriculture commodity firms have operated on that scale for decades. What’s left of a purely American agriculture and where does that put your worldview vs that of organizations like R-CALF?

A. While the segments of the business that require very large amounts of capital are more likely to have international divisions, that makes them more able to market our products overseas, as well as weather the downturns that see them losing tens of millions of dollars a quarter for multiple years. While large amounts of capital are necessary to farm or ranch today, the amounts are proportionately tiny compared to the billions necessary to harvest, distribute or retail perishable beef. It takes large companies to have the capital to develop and test new products and strategies and weather a food safety crash.

Mandating hundreds of smaller packers or retailers to replace our present players would immediately plunge us into a high-cost, inefficient, non-responsive, slow, non-competitive situation that would hand much of our market share to other proteins and guarantee the eventual trivialization of the beef industry.

Production is still primarily held in the hands of American farmers and ranchers of all sizes and it is likely to remain so for many decades. We have a wide variation in season, terrain and climate. There are significant differences in community and societal fabrics around the country. The resulting wide variation in farming and ranching operations, as well as large capital requirements, make it difficult for very many large operations to amass production capacity in very many regions. The limited potential financial returns for processing and retailing as well as for producing segments limit the flow of capital into food production at all levels. These difficulties plus the independent nature of America’s farmers and ranchers mean that voluntary marketing agreements, alliances and contracts to achieve coordination to improve the product will remain the primary tools of business improvement for a long time.

Q. Again from the AFF website: “The Agribusiness Freedom Foundation is an independent, nonprofit, educational corporation. We are applying for tax exempt status as a 501(C)4 non-profit corporation. Contributions may be a business deduction, but you must consult your tax professional. Contributions are not deductible as a charitable contribution. The names of contributors are kept confidential.” First, have you obtained tax exempt status? And, as a reporter, I’m always wary of the intentions of organizations that won’t reveal the names of the people, companies and groups that fund them. Can you reveal who’s backing AFF? If not, what are the reasons behind keeping the list secret?

A. Yes, we have received approval of our tax-exempt status. And we do promise our contributors confidentiality. The reasons for confidentiality revolve around the business needs of our contributors. Most of our funding so far has come from the production segments of the industry, businesses that depend on neighbors and regional business for their livelihood. The partisan and sometimes vindictive reaction of some people to positions staked out in the industry made it prudent to support freedom and liberty in our industry but through quiet, non-public means. No one can afford to lose customers. We also keep in mind that some of the fringe animal welfare groups pose a very real threat to the safety of animals kept in open pastures and feedlot pens and we wish to invite no retaliation from them.

Ridge Shinn's grass-fed cattle empire

Ridge Shinn is a one man conglomerate - top gun at Hardwick Beef, Bakewell Reproductive Center, even a home building company. It must be that old, New England, Calvinistic work ethic that’s been buried deep within his bones. You might say he’s as genetically predisposed to hard work as his cattle are to giving up gourmet cuts of beef.

He’s a grass farmer, an avid advocate of sustainable agriculture and one of the leading experts on getting gourmet beef from grass-fed cattle. What he’s managed to do is take a product that has been uneven in quality and elevate it to a status that makes foodies drool and gourmet magazines seek him out. How many ranchers do you know that are quoted in Wine Spectator and Food & Wine magazines? And whose products are described with the same effervescent terms used for hundred dollar a bottle wines?

Have we gone from Clara Peller searching for “the beef” at Wendy’s to finding it in the most upscale of institutions? Has beef attained the status of a Joseph Phelps 2000 Insignia Cabernet Sauvignon which Wine Advocate describes this way: "The 2000 Insignia reveals a smoky, rich, cassis characteristic, medium to full body, and an open-knit, lush, generous style . . . Expansive, fleshy and seductive, it should drink well for 15–16 years."

Can we really talk about a t-bone steak that way? Ridge Shinn thinks so.

Q. Ridge, how did you get into the cattle business?

A. I started milking cows in the 1970’s as a herdsman on a typical New England dairy (100 cows). Spent 20 years in the building business and returned to cattle when I started the New England Livestock Alliance (NELA) in 2001. NELA’s core business was figuring out how to finish and sell 100% grass-fed beef.

Q. You’re involved in Hardwick Beef, the Bakewell Reproductive Center and a home-building company called Hardwick Post and Beam. It makes for a busy daily schedule. When you do get a little free time, what do you do?

A. When I do have spare time I generally spend it on my farm. I have a home farm and lease a 150 acre farm in Hardwick and have a herd of Devon cattle there. It takes any spare time I can find.

Q. The Bakewell Reproductive Center is a cooperative venture with Gearld Fry that aims to build a “grass-based bovine gene pool that produces gourmet beef.” You’ve been quoted in Wine Spectator and Food & Wine magazines, two publications aimed squarely at the gourmet crowd, so you must be making some progress. Can you define gourmet beef for me and tell me what you’ve done to build a gene pool that meets your standards?

A. Gourmet beef is beef that is tender and tasty. All beef should be gourmet. Over the years in its quest for volume, the cattle industry lost sight of quality. The industry rewards pounds of beef and size of frame. The result is lower quality (read leaner or less marbled) and tougher beef. The continental breeds that were imported to increase size and volume brought with them lack of marling and slightly tougher beef. In a quest for gourmet beef, one always returns to the “British Breeds”. Historically they had the best fat and tenderness.

Wine Spectator and many others say our beef has a “more robust flavor”. What most people find remarkable is that we can produce beef that is well marbled and tender on a grass-only diet. Visit our web site (http://brcruminations.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html) to see the results of testing done on our meat at Clemson University‘s meat lab. In the first sample, the meat was 87% choice or better and the tenderness values measured by the Warner-Bratzler shear test were better than restaurant quality (average of 3.2 KG of force versus 4.1KG of force for restaurant quality). Remember this is a grass only diet and the cattle tested were steers produced by our Rotokawa® Devon bulls bred to commercial Angus mother cows.

Bakewell Repro imported 12 females from the Rotokawa® Devon herd in NZ and semen from Rotokawa® Devon bulls. Bakewell has harvested embryos and started new herds of Devon cattle in Wyoming, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and a number of herds in the Northeast. Using semen from these bulls on commercial cattle is the quickest way to move toward a set of cattle that thrive on grass. Every cattleman and woman has some cattle in their herd that will work on a grass-only diet-the challenge is to evaluate the herd and then concentrate on the breeding of these cows.

Q. At a time when ‘Angus’ has been marketed as the best source of top quality beef, you’re raising Devons, an old English breed. What advantages do you see in Devon cattle?

A. Angus was a premier breed for top quality beef. I use the past tense because today the “Angus” breed has been polluted by many other breeds. Because black covers all sins, any cattle bred to Angus come out black-indeed the Rotokawa® Devon cross Angus steers are black unless the mother cow has a red Angus gene. Even the Certified Angus Beef programs will admit that quality has gone down hill since it’s hey day. Recently, CAB announced they would not accept any carcasses over 1000 pounds. I am positive that none of the “good old Angus premium beef” came in a 1000 pound Hot Carcass. The success of the CAB marketing and the quality of the beef created tremendous demand and the breed made the mistake of accepting cross bred black cattle into the registry which diluted the original quality. It’s a sad story of a breed’s popularity being its undoing.

The North Devon or Red Devon breed fell out of favor in the ramp up of all other breeds to become “feedlot friendly” cattle. The Devon breeds only crime is that it is too easy-fleshing-they get fat too fast. The feed lot does not want this trait and it won’t work on the feedlot-the Devon will go to yield grade five or six in ninety days on full feed. But if your production method is grass-only you want an easy feeder that is easy fleshing that will get fat on grass. The breed also was never bred for frame size so most of the Red Devon cattle are still moderate in height (48” to 50”) a trait that correlates to early maturity and function on grass.

The Devon historically was known as the butcher’s breed and has always had an excellent meat to bone ratio because of its fine dense bone. When it was popular in the 1960’s and 70’s it won a great share of the carcass competitions they were placed in. Fortunately the breed changed little in the feedlot years and therefore the breed is ready to put back in production on a grass-only diet and return to prominence as the Butcher’s Breed.

Q. Raising grass fed cattle requires a very different management technique to be successful, something that’s foreign to most cattlemen today. Can you walk me through the process?

A. To succeed in raising quality grass-fed cattle one must choose the right kind of cattle. By quality, I mean cattle that will fatten and be tender on a grass-only diet. They need to be moderately tall and wide and deep (some folks say they need short legs but they need a deep body). Look at photos of the cattle from the 1960’s and those are the kind of cattle you need. You can choose a subset of the right kind of cattle from any of the British Breeds but will struggle with the continentals on grass---most cattle in Europe are not harvested until 36 months of age.

The major keys to success in raising grass-fed cattle are to get your breeding season in synch with nature. You want to calve when the wild ruminants have their young---May or June in most parts of the country. You want to have the calf nurse on the mother cow for at least ten months and then be weaned (with virtually no stress) onto green grass. With the right kind of easy fleshing mother cows you will develop reproductive problems if you do not make them work through the winter. Today, the industry typically weans at 6 months so our tall, hard-doing, late-maturing mother cows can build back some condition to make it through the winter. We find that the calves that stay on the mother for 10 months will gain about 15% more than the calf weaned in the fall. With this head start, and being weaned onto green grass, the steers can finish in 18 months on a grass-only diet.

Grass feeding requires grass management. There is no better feed for a ruminant than green grass. The key to success is learning how to keep the grass vegetative throughout the growing season and then figuring out how to extend the grazing season. Every ounce of stored feed fed is extremely expensive. Any time the bovine can walk out and harvest its own feed is like money in the bank. So...one has to give up on a lot of paradigms and be open to learning some new ways of grazing-MIG or management intensive grazing emphasizes the management because that is the intensive part-it is different on every farm or ranch and it is different every season of every year. Electric fence and plastic water pipe to deliver water to paddocks are two of the tools that are critical to our success. Obviously many areas of the country have different challenges, but the key is to let the cattle graze in great density and then move them to let the grass rest and re grow-the circuit around the ranch might be as long as once a year or as quick as every 23 days depending on rainfall, sunshine, etc. The model is the buffalo that moved in herds of incredible density but then they moved on. We need to replicate this with our cattle.

Another level of management of our grass is to measure the Brix of the grass with a refractometer to gauge the nutrient density and sugar content of the grass. The rumen is a remarkable compost facility that needs the proper carbon nitrogen ratio as well as the right amount of protein, energy and minerals to function optimally. It is our job as a grass farmer to optimize the inputs to the rumen in terms of quality, if our expectation is to get quality in the meat that we harvest.

Although this all sounds complicated it is not unplowed ground. New Zealand has spent years farming this way principally because, as well as being the healthiest for the rumen; it is the lowest cost of production. They have to produce efficiently if they are going to access markets that are oceans away.

Q. “Grass-fed” has become a fast-growing niche in the beef business. Some foodies even use terminology similar to that used to describe fine wines when they talk about it. Are those kinds of glowing description justified? And can “grass-fed” escape the niche business?

A. Grass-fed is the current clamor of the market. Many folks do not know what it means. My feeling is that it is critically important that people understand the terms and what they mean. I like to compare 100% grass-fed beef to pregnancy-either you are or you are not. All beef producers want the “grass-fed” claim since all cattle do eat grass for a substantial part of their lives.

The real changes to the tissue and the health benefits of the beef occur when the cattle begin to eat grain. When cattle eat just grass they cannot get Mad Cow (the consumer doesn’t want this); they have almost immeasurable levels of E. coli because acidosis does not occur in the gut. Read about the Cornell research at http://brcruminations.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html. There are no nutrient loading problems since manures are spread evenly daily and incorporated into the soil. Once you remove grain from the cattle raising equation, you eliminate plowing, petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, soil compaction, fossil fuels for tillage, harvest and transport.

The real compelling part of the story is that the fats in 100% grass-fed beef are much healthier for the human. The ratio of Omega 3 Omega 6 is very different in the grass versus grain fed and nearly a perfect 1:1 ratio.

The “story” of 100% grass-fed and finished beef is a compelling story and most people will buy it. The only way that “grass-fed” can escape the “niche” status it has today, is if producers learn to produce gourmet beef on grass and then they put a great piece of beef in the hand of each consumer that buys the “story”.

The challenge today is that many consumers have heard pieces of the story and they find it compelling once they do-the challenge is how we produce enough quality beef to satisfy the demand. As I said to a restaurant crowd in NYC a while back, it took me 2 ½ years to grow the piece of meat you are eating tonight-from a gleam in my eye, to breeding the cow takes 2 ½ years to the plate-so it is hard to ramp up a product like this.

Today with fuel prices, many cattle men and woman are beginning to be open to other options. The feedlots are feeling the pinch and the time of opportunity is upon us. It is a rare time in history when the producer is demanding quality, clean (no antibiotics or hormones), healthy food and they are willing to pay for it-It is a time of opportunity for the cattle industry.