What’s Right with Sustainable Ranching

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Sustainable ranching practices can be used to preserve heritage livestock, such as these Belted Galloways, a hardy, light-grazing Scottish breed.
Sustainable ranching practices can be used to preserve heritage livestock, such as these Belted Galloways, a hardy, light-grazing Scottish breed.
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Ranchers can shorten their hay season by incorporating stands of grazing corn into intensive-management pastures.
Ranchers can shorten their hay season by incorporating stands of grazing corn into intensive-management pastures.
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Well-designed multiple-animal systems can maximize a farm's agricultural productivity while raising soil carbon. Plus, combined feed stations always add a little excitement to the farm.
Well-designed multiple-animal systems can maximize a farm's agricultural productivity while raising soil carbon. Plus, combined feed stations always add a little excitement to the farm.
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Joel Salatin's family has been farming in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley since 1961, when his parents purchased a much-abused farm there and began working the land with regenerative techniques pulled from their Biblical understanding of Earth stewardship and the work of J. I. Rodale, who believed agriculture and health are inseparable.
Joel Salatin's family has been farming in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley since 1961, when his parents purchased a much-abused farm there and began working the land with regenerative techniques pulled from their Biblical understanding of Earth stewardship and the work of J. I. Rodale, who believed agriculture and health are inseparable.

It’s sure hard to measure what isn’t there, folks. Silly as it sounds, this logic underpins many assessments of livestock consumption and production. Instead of studying sustainable agriculture operations, such as Polyface or others like us, academic research studies measure the worst of the worst, factory farms — the most dysfunctional, anti-ecological, abusive, nutrient-devitalizing system conceivable. No wonder they conclude that animal production is bad! Too many people eat up all that junk data whole-hog without recognizing the enormous differences between sustainable ranching and industrial livestock production. It’s enough to make my head explode.

Even when studies account for a few grass-fed livestock producers, they often only include continually grazed livestock on unmanaged pasture. With this sort of education, it’s hard to blame consumers and media for the accelerating and antagonistic anti-meat vibe, which demonizes livestock producers in the United States today.

This simplistic narrative lumps together big and small, organic and pesticide-laden, grass-fed and feedlot. Of course, many animal welfarists condemn us for enslaving creatures and then violently killing them — without first reading Temple Grandin and theories on humane slaughter. A certain strain of environmentalism pins climate change and the depletion of water, soil, and oxygen on — you guessed it — domestic livestock, without first understanding carbon ranching and the benefits of grazing varied ecosystems.

The accusations grow more strident by the day. Frankly, I find myself feeling like a punching bag. I won’t engage these criticisms point by point because plenty of more-credentialed experts have done it better than I ever could. But I will address the initial mistake of ignoring all the folks in sustainable agriculture who are getting it right.

Sustainable Ranches, Not Factory Farms

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