A new study has determined that cows raised on grass (rather than grain) produce milk that’s better for human beings. Those findings held true even after researchers took into account “heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure and smoking.”
Turns out that milk from grass-fed cows has significantly more of something called conjugated linoleic acid (which may create insulin resistance in the body) than grain-fed cows. Some researchers will add that cows fed on grass are just plain healthier. Cows may love grain but it’s not great as a steady diet.
Smart farmers don’t just turn animals loose on pastureland; they follow a process called rotational grazing.
Goats Are Your Offensive Line
Jen Dustin and her husband, Phil Leahy, of Leahy Farm in Lee, Massachusetts, will tell you that Step One is clearing brush, especially the invasive species. This is most efficiently done with goats—nature’s own brush-clearing machinery. They’ll eat the bark right off the trees if you’re not careful. Only when the goats have cleared up overgrown fields will Jen and Phil bring in their cows.
Phil makes sure that his herd of Milking Devons only spends a couple of days on any one area of pasture, so they’re always on fresh grass.
Like a gardener working on a massive scale, he knows that when you cut back a plant—as grazing does naturally—it stimulates growth. The pastures are more productive, the animals healthier and the milk they produce is apparently more nutritious and tastier. And if the cows don’t nibble the grass all the way down to the ground, they are less likely to ingest parasites, which would require medical intervention.
It’s more work to do rotational grazing; Phil and Jen are constantly moving electric fences powered off a car battery. They’re fortunate to have enough land to feed their herd. But many farmers are limited by acreage in how they feed their animals. Grain becomes a necessity or a supplement if pasture is limited.
Helping the Farmer Next Door
Do you live next to a farmer raising animals for dairy or meat? Do you have open land that is lying fallow? Consider leasing that land to your neighbor. You’ll get a nice tax break, a nominal cash payment and fresh meat and dairy. And the inevitable manure factor can be mitigated when a right-sized herd is moved frequently.
“Rich people need organic food to survive.” Wait—is that a joke, or a reality in America today? Or both? The fact is that for all of us to survive in this new century we’re going to have to change the way we source food. And not just as individuals: We also need to re-formulate national policy in line with that same objective because, at the moment, long-standing government subsidies are crushing both our health and our environment.
Let’s Have a Fair Food Fight
You can almost hear Dick Cheney saying “organic food is a nice personal virtue for the radical fringe, but it’s not going to feed the world.” Actually, when you level the playing field, organic (and more importantly, sustainable) food comes out on top.
The fact is organic farmers don’t receive federal subsidies the same way conventional farmers do. Organic and small-time farmers receive “specialty crop grants” that are measured in thousands rather than in millions of dollars. Sad truth: If you’re not growing corn, wheat or soybeans, you get the merest of crumbs from the federal table.
Myth: Organic Food is More Expensive
Today, organic food does cost more than conventional food. Watch an organic farmer hand-weed a row of carrots and you’ll immediately know why. Smaller organic farms require more time, attention and labor to get produce to market.
When I tell people that I like to talk to farmers about what they do, the first response is often “oh, gee, that’s such hard work.” But that’s not what farmers will tell you. They talk about their powerful connection to the land and its inhabitants. How they raised a huge pumpkin from a tiny seed or a calf into an award-winning milk-cow. There is incredible pride in what they can grow with their own hands and knowhow.
Robin Cockerline of Whippoorwill Farm in Lakeville, CT said “there is an amazing rhythm to farming, and scenes of indescribable beauty.” For author and grower Michael Ableman, farming was just like falling in love. “Nature seduced me,” he wrote in his book, On Good Land. “When that intoxicating, blinding draw faded, a deeper relationship formed.”
Farmers enjoy what they do more than most of us. A Gallup-Healthways poll of professions found that farmers came in fourth in terms of overall well-being.
Occupation
Overall well-being
Business Owner
72.5
Professional
71.5
Manager/Executive
70.9
Farming/Forestry
67.8
Sales
67.6
Clerical
66.1
Construction
65.0
Installation
64.4
Service
64.0
Transportation
62.6
Manufacturing
62.1
Source: Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index
Judy Flint, who works as a personal consultant for NY Farm Net, said that farmers are “incredibly hard working. Just really good people who love what they do, and being their own bosses even when they are working at the whim of the weather.”
Most farmers just squeak by financially, and yet they continue to love what they do.
The Pressure Can Be Overwhelming
So many things can go wrong. The weather, a tomato blight, a tractor engine seizes up, an employee walks away at the absolute worst time, the freezer fails—and takes $10K in beef with it. The fact is that farming can be “a heartbreaking way to earn a living,” says family farmer Paul Wigsten. “It’s a horrible addiction. Probably worse than heroin.”
Farming is hard work, yet the farmers I meet are some of the most satisfied people I know. Odd, because in my experience, running a small business can be full of stress and often not a whole lot of fun.
What is different for farmers? Perhaps it’s just that being responsible for life pays tremendous dividends.
Farmers care for their animals and their crops. They’ll scratch a calf’s head, break the ice on the water trough in the dead of winter, raise crops from seed to harvest. Wendell Barry in Bringing It to the Table quotes Terry Cummins, the author of Feed My Sheep, on what its feels like to provide husbandry.
The feeling inside sort of just happens, and you can’t say that this did it or that did it. It’s the many little things. It doesn’t seem that taking a sweat-soaked harness off tired, hot horses would be something that would make you notice. Opening a barn door for sheep standing in a cold rain, or throwing a few grains of corn to the chickens are small things, but these small things begin to add up in you, and you begin to understand that you’re important.
You may not be real important like the people you read about in the newspaper, but you begin to feel that you’re important to all the life around you. Nobody else knows or cares too much about what you do, but if you get a good feeling inside about what you do, then it doesn’t matter if nobody else knows.
I do think about myself a lot when I’m along way back on the place bringing in the cows or sitting on the mowing machine all day. But when I start thinking about how our animals and crops and fields and woods and gardens sort of all fit together, then I get that good feeling inside and don’t worry much about what will happen to me.
But when you start to think of animals as protein and nature as a force that can be controlled, then something switches off in your brain, and you can make decisions that are good for business but not so good for animals and people. As we look to a new decade, it will be good to think about how we can reengage with our food in positive and sustainable ways.
We like to raise healthy and happy animals, who spend as much time as they want in the pastures. Our chickens are a seasonal business, from spring through late fall, to ensure that they have grass as a big part of their diet. The pigs have access to the barn in the winter to stave off the cold, and they eat a lot of alfalfa baleage in the winter as well as an organic grain and soy mix. For the rest of the year they are rooting up marginal fields or woodlots. The cows graze the fields as long as the grass grows, after which they enjoy the alfalfa baleage and hay that we put up for the winter.
Our British White and Murray Grey cattle were bred to thrive on grass. These heritage breeds have never adapted to the feedlot system that forces hormone-filled cows to eat grain and forget about grazing. A grass-fed diet ensures meat that is tender, tasty, high in omega-3s and hormone free. Since our pastures are certified organic, our cows are eating grass completely free of herbicides and pesticides.
In essence, we are trying to turn back the clock—to produce meat and poultry that tastes as good as it did several decades ago before farms got turned into factories.
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