Chief Seattle's Letter

"The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people. We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family. The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother. If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers. Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator. Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival. When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left? We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us. As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you. One thing we know - there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all."

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The Easy Keeper

In a recent Kit Pharo newsletter, there was an engaging discussion on the relevance of feedlot feed efficiency for cow-calf producers who rely on grass. The general consensus was that feedlot feed efficiency did not have much relevance, and actually may negatively impact the cow-calf producer. Rather than feed efficiency, the discussion included descriptors such as ‘easy-fleshing’, ‘easy keeping’, and ‘low-energy maintenance requirements’ as cattle traits that will increase the net profit for cow-calf producers.

General I agree with the above assessment for cow-calf producers. However, for the grass-finisher and the grazing dairy, I think the discussion becomes more complicated. Animals need both increased feed efficiency to increase production (Average Daily Gain, or milk production), and also easy keeper traits ensuring that animals have low-energy maintenance requirements. I do think the latter trait is the number one trait for all grazers, regardless of production type. Low-energy maintenance requirements ensure the grazing animal’s ability to thrive through the constantly varying conditions of pastures. This trait also guarantees the animal will not spend the day grazing just to maintain body condition, but can spend more time allocating nutrients for producing the product that will put money in our pockets.

I would be more comfortable aligning myself with the cattle industry (dairy and beef), if the industry would put low-energy maintenance requirement traits ahead of selecting for high production and feed efficiency traits. Cheap grain prices have largely been blamed for driving the emphasis on high production. However, as the discussion in Kit Pharo’s newsletter eludes to, buying into the high efficiency, high production traits is more likely to put money into the pockets of the agricultural industry’s pockets and not into the individual producer’s pocket. The conventional ag industry has not promoted ‘easy keeper’ traits, because these traits put money primarily in the pockets of the producer.

All too often farmers and ranchers primary source of information for making management decisions are the seed salesman, the semen salesman, and the feed salesman. The companies these salesmen represent are primarily seeking to line their pockets at the expense of the farmer. As Ian Mitchell-Inns (Savory Center – Holistic Management) concluded in Kit Pharo’s discussion, “You and only you are responsible and accountable for your decisions! If you allow others (feeder, packer, feed salesman, etc.) to make your decisions for you, do not think that they are not going to help themselves to all they can get! That’s human nature.

At the recent annual Kansas Grazers Association winter conference, Kit Pharo was the keynote speaker. Pharo is an eastern Colorado cattle rancher who has been instrumental in advancing the grass-based cattle industry. Pharo Cattle Company (www.pharocattle.com) primarily sells bulls and semen with appropriate grass-based genetics. Pharo challenges livestock producers to think outside the box and to not get caught up in the production driven paradigm of conventional agriculture. Below are some quotes and concepts from Pharo:

· “It’s not nice or profitable to fool Mother Nature.” Pharo was referring to the need to calve in sync with nature (calve when wild animals would naturally have babies); however, I think this statement has a much broader application to agriculture. Anytime we develop technologies or practices that are in direct conflict with natural ecosystems (monocultures, GMOs, pesticides, feeding grain to ruminants in feedlots, reliance on fossil fuels, etc.), there are a whole host of long- and short-term unintended consequences that may not be the best economic decision for individual farmers or society in general.

· “Dare to be a herd quitter.” We must break away from the status quo mentality. Doing what everybody else is doing is poor business practice.

· “The commodity business is a breakeven business.” If we remove ourselves from this business, we no longer are selling commodities, but products. By selling products, we have more control and are insulating ourselves against price fluctuations.

· “Profitable ranching = the most efficient use of forage resources.”

· To increase profit for commodities either increase production or reduce expenses.

· Management Decisions can be either production driven or profit driven, and these are not necessarily the same thing!

· “Sustainability = Profitability + Enjoyability”

· Grass-based livestock producers are in the business of “converting free solar energy into a high quality food product.”

Wes Jackson Reflections

I recently had the chance to hear Wes Jackson, the founder of the Land Institute (www.landinstitute.org) in Salina, KS speak. Jackson is always an inspiring speaker having such an ingenious use of words and brilliant mind. Sadly, due to the smaller and more intimate crowd and being among friends, Jackson was much more pessimistic about what the future holds. Climatologists continue to paint a grimmer picture for climate change, while policies to control anthropogenic greenhouse gases continue to be stalled. Jackson has been in the forefront of envisioning an agriculture system that is resilient and based on ecology. Below are some of his thoughts:

· So far, the sustainable agriculture movement has focused on produce, which makes up only 7% of agricultural movement. Grain and meat production need to be captured by the sustainable agriculture movement.

· “High energy destroys public knowledge of the biological and cultural variety.” Our dependence on fossil fuels has greatly reduced our reliance and knowledge of our cultural and biological capital, much to the detriment of ourselves and our environment.

· Jackson called capitalism “petri dish economics.” Capitalism (and the discoveries of fossil fuels) has lead to a rapid population explosion and rapid exploitation of all available natural resources.

· We are in the wrong paradigm: We have been trying to solve problems on the molecular level (GMO), but should be solving problems on the ecological level (perennial grains).

· We need to rebuild agriculture on natural ecosystems

· Continuity is better than ingenuity (referring to building agriculture on an ecological versus a molecular level).

GHG Conversations with a Vegetarian

Subject: Grass-finished Beef Methane Emissions

James,

I recently read your article, “Bellying up to Environmentalism” in The Washington Post. I generally, agree with your premises, but question your dismissal of alternative pasture-based livestock production as an environmentally sound and humane alternative to the industrial CAFO model. I was driven to email you after being intrigued with your sources for many of the facts you presented in the article.

I have extensively researched grass-finished beef both in the university and independently, and currently work for an organization promoting environmentally sustainable grazing systems in Kansas. Many of the numbers and percentages you present in your article are so drastically outside the existing research literature that I am familiar with, that I am very curious what your sources are for the facts you presented in your article.

One particular fact that you presented is of particular interest to me. You stated that grass-finished beef produces four times the amount of methane that grain-finished beef produces. I have personally been searching for research studies making this very comparison. There does not seem to be much literature on this, but what little research I found was very inconclusive. Some studies pointed to the lower average gains of grass-finished beef implying that grass-finished beef will be slightly older at slaughter, thus producing more methane over their lifespan. Other research indicates that a high roughage diet may shift the microbe community in the cattle’s gut, reducing methane eructation.

So, if there is research out there suggesting grass-finished beef produces 4-times the amount methane than grain-finished beef, I would like to know of this research. From a net greenhouse grass emissions standpoint, I think a convincing argument could be made for grass-finished beef has a net GHG emission lower than grain-finished beef and most grain production. Grass-finished beef produced from perennial pastures with legumes (removing the need for nitrogen fertilizer), ends up being carbon neutral due to the tremendous carbon sink of a healthy perennial grassland and the minimal fossil fuels need in the production life cycle.

I would be honored if you would share your sources of information with me.

Thank you,

Jason Schmidt
Kansas Rural Center
Topeka, Kansas
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Subject: RE: Grass-finished Beef Methane Emissions

Jason,

Below is just some of the info I relied upon for my methane info. Please let me know if/why anything below is wrong. I'm well aware that "grass fed" is a blanket term that might obscure more than it reveals. But writing for the popular press does not allow for splitting hairs and making qualifications--generalizations are inevitable. It is thus in all sincerity that I ask you to tell me why you think I was wrong to cite the figure as a general reflection of the whole. II write about this stuff all the time and would hate to make the mistake again, if indeed I was mistaken. I don't spend a lot of time researching this--in fact none. I rely on others. So, thanks.
James



For overall GHG emissions I relied on a 2008-9 study by Dalhousie University scientist, Nathan Pelletier. His work is summarized in this article: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/40934/title/AAAS_Climate-friendly_dining_..._meats. An excerpt:

Many environmentalists have argued that finishing up the fattening of beef cattle on corn is worse for the environment than cattle that are raised solely on pasture grass. Pelletier says his team’s analysis finds that at least from a climate perspective, the opposite is true. “We do see significant differences in the GHG intensities [of grass vs grain finishing]. It’s roughly on the order of 50 percent higher in grass-finished systems.”When an audience member questioned whether he had heard that right, that grass-fed cattle have a higher carbon footprint, Pelletier reiterated, “higher. Yes.” The reason: “It’s related to the much higher volumes of feed throughput and associated methane and nitrous-oxide [GHG] emissions.” He added that most pastures were highly managed, and subject to “periodic renovations and also fertilization.” Finally, with grass-fed cattle “there is also a high [grass] trampling rate. So the actual land area that you need to maintain magnifies that [GHG] difference,” Pelletier said. As for the methane problem specifically--I relied on this: http://discovermagazine.com/2008/aug/08-fighting-cow-methane-at-the-source, as well as the work of John Robbins, who writes,

And there are other environmental costs [with grass fed]. Next to carbon dioxide, the most destabilizing gas to the planet's climate is methane. Methane is actually 24 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and its concentration in the atmosphere is rising even faster. The primary reason that concentrations of atmospheric methane are now triple what they were when they began rising a century ago is beef production. Cattle raised on pasture actually produce more methane than feedlot animals, on a per-cow basis. Then there's this, from a 1999 Journal of Animal Science piece: http://jas.fass.org/cgi/content/abstract/77/6/1392 (note this line: "These measurements clearly document higher CH4 production (about four times) for cattle receiving low-quality, high-fiber diets than for cattle fed high-grain diets.")
And Here's this by Peter Singer, who felt comfortable putting the figure at 3x:

To the Editor:Nicolette Hahn Niman (“The Carnivore’s Dilemma,” Op-Ed, Oct. 31) is simply wrong in suggesting that grass-fed beef produces less methane than feed-lot meat. It is the other way around, with grass-fed animals producing up to three times more methane. It may be true that in some trials scientists have found ways to reduce methane emissions from cattle, but until these methods are in widespread use, they are simply not relevant to the consumer choices we face.In any case, globally, only 8 percent of all meat is produced in natural grazing systems, and there is little available unforested land suitable for such systems. To replace factory-farmed meat without further tropical forest destruction is impossible. Hence the call to cut down or eliminate meat-eating, especially beef, should be supported by everyone concerned about the future of our planet.Peter SingerGeoff Russell Barry Brook New York, Nov. 3, 2009Peter Singer is a professor of bioethics at Princeton University and the author of “The Ethics of What We Eat.” Geoff Russell is the author of “CSIRO Perfidy.” Barry Brook is a professor of climate change at the University of Adelaide, Australia
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Subject: RE: Grass-finished Beef Methane Emissions

James,

Thank you very much for your quick and honest response to my email. I appreciate your openness and the sources you shared with me.

The study by Harper et al., 1999 proposed a convincing argument for grass-fed beef emitting more methane than grain-fed beef. However, I noticed a serious flaw in the study. The pasture grazing in the study was very low in forage quality (Crude protein between 3.5% to 11.7% with low digestibility). This forage quality is well below the quality needed for finishing beef cattle, while the grain diet was a high quality finishing diet. It is likely that finishing beef cattle would actually lose weight on pasture of this poor quality, and would have to eat large quantities just for maintenance. The study concludes that feed quality has a greater influence on CH4 production than previous studies have indicated. Six other studies cited found much smaller differences between grain-fed and grass-fed methane emission, although Harper et al. claims the differences between other studies and this study may be due to different CH4 measurement procedures.

I would argue that the poor pasture quality may have been the largest factor contributing to the 4-fold difference in methane production. The study does suggest that cellulose fermentation from forage diets produces more methane than carbohydrate digestion from grain diets, but I suggest a high quality forage diet required for finishing beef cattle with high digestibility and crude protein levels around 20% would increase ruminal passage leading to methane emissions similar to a grain diet. DeRamus et al. (J Environ Qual. 2003 Jan-Feb;32(1):269-77) reports that heifers grazing high quality ryegrass produced one-tenth the amount of methane than heifers grazing low quality bermudagrass and bahiagrass. Similarly, an ongoing study in Vermont reported in The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/us/05cows.html?_r=3&adxnnlx=1244226134-VCIralBRQR6L/gumIykDvA&pagewanted=all) is investing high quality spring grasses as forages that will potentially lower methane emissions below those of grain diets. In addition, tannin-rich forages or tannin supplements decrease methane emissions (Beauchenmin et al., 2007 – J Anim Sci 2007.85:1990-1996).

I am still searching for net life cycle GHG emission from healthy grazed grasslands. I found some preliminary research from the Netherlands (Jacobs et al., 2007), but the study still hadn’t factored cattle emissions into the equation for grasslands. A follow up study to this research by Soussana et al. (Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 121 (2007) 121–134) studied 9 sites in Europe and concluded that even with accounting for the methane emissions of grazing ruminants, grasslands are still CO2-C equivalent sink.

As for other arguments for grass-finished beef being better for the environment, I see increasing grazing management skills among grass-finished beef producers. Missouri research now indicates that well managed rotational grazing can be more efficient at harvesting grass than even mechanical harvesting. Grass-finished beef producers also must maintain high forage quality, perennial forages, and low-inputs (no or very little fertilizer and pesticides) to stay profitable and to produce a satisfactory product.

I do stand corrected that there is convincing research out there concluding that methane emissions are higher on a per cow basis for grass-fed compared to grain-fed cattle. However, I think these differences can be greatly exaggerated, and can be (and are) mitigated with high quality forage diets. I do strongly believe that cattle finished on a healthy perennial grassland will have a much lower net GHG emission than feedlot finished cattle, not to mention all the other environmental and health benefits, and hope to see more research in this area.
Personally, I would like to see large areas of the Great Plains region converted back to grasslands in the near future. Ecological speaking this region needs grasslands and grazers to be a balanced and healthy ecosystem.

Thank you for your interest in our food. I fully agree that our personally habits of how we eat have a huge impact on our environment and we need to closely examine where our food comes from and how it is produced. Please do not hesitate to ask me question about grass-finished beef in the future.

Thank you,

Jason Schmidt

Critique of Modern Agriculture

I believe modern conventional agriculture, like many other modern industries, is pointed in a highly unsustainable direction. Socially, the “get big, or get out” mentality that has driven agriculture for the past 75 years is depopulating our rural communities, and requiring ever increasing capital investments that make entering agriculture risky and difficult. From an energy perspective, we are at the end of cheap fossil fuels that has driven almost every aspect of modern agriculture – replacing manpower and horsepower with machines, replacing biological controls with fossil fuel-derived chemicals, and replacing natural fertility (crop rotation, legumes, and animal manure) with fossil fuel-derived fertilizer. And, finally, modern agriculture has become one of the most environmentally destructive industries polluting our air and water, destroying the health of our soil, eroding our top soil, and producing large quantities of nutritionally void food. The rise in grain production has particularly revolutionized livestock agriculture, leading to many unintended consequences.

New technologies, subsidies, and cheap fossil fuels have helped fuel a huge increase in the production of a few grain commodities. Bomb-making military research during WWI and WWII developed ammonium sulfate and ammonium phosphate out of natural gas. After the wars, the industry found these fossil fuel-derived chemicals were also excellent inorganic fertilizers. The adoption of inorganic fertilizers and subsequent development of highly responsive crops to increased nitrogen fertilizer led to the “Green Revolution.” During this period, huge strides were made in increased crop production with the aid of fossil fuels for fertilizer and labor.

To find markets for these commodities, international trade practices known as “dumping” flooded developing countries with cheap commodities, destroying the development of local sustainable farming in many countries. Cheap by-products like high-fructose corn syrup have come to dominate ingredients in our supermarkets leading directly to a national and international pandemic of obesity. The biofuel industry was developed as a “green” fuel (unfortunately, it takes about the same amount of fossil fuels to produce a similar amount of ethanol). And, livestock have been rounded up off the land and concentrated in confinement operations to make space for more grain production and be fed well over 50% of the cheap grain produced in the U.S.

Ruminants such as cattle and sheep have uniquely co-evolved with grasslands, and each needs the other for a healthy ecosystem. Cattle have highly evolved 4-compartment guts with a host of microbes to efficiently utilize grass and fiber as their primary source of nutrition. Cattle can thrive on a 100% grass diet, especially when grass is managed for high energy and crude protein. Grassland ecosystems also appear to thrive when properly grazed. This means being regularly rested to simulate natural migrating herbivores.

The ruminant gut is also incredibly flexible and the microbe community can be altered to digest a starch-based diet. Modern agriculture, with its glut of cheap grain, realized that consistently higher animal production can be achieved by switching cattle to a starch (grain)-based diet, thus effectively ending the millennia of co-evolution between grasslands and ruminants. With our subsidized cheap grain, the U.S. is the only country in the world to adopt such widespread grain-feeding to cattle. Most every other country in the world and throughout human history has determined it to be more economical to allow the animal to harvest her own food through grazing. Even in the U.S., only during the “finishing” faze for beef and for higher income potential industries like dairy has it been considered economically advantageous to feed grain. Even still, during cycles of higher grain and fuel prices, there is renewed interest in removing grain from cattle’s diet.

This move of industrial agriculture to intense grain production and confinement animal operations has had a host of unintended environmental consequences. This system has removed grasslands and grazing from the landscape and has replaced the landscape with monocultures fertilized, planted, sprayed, harvested, and feed with fossil fuels and lots of human labor. It’s amazing that this system is deemed more efficient with all these steps than the cow putting her face to the ground and harvesting her own meal! Farming has since become one of the biggest contributors to green house gas (GHG) emissions and contributors to global climate change. Monocultures of crops have destroyed the health of the soil, where billions of microbes need complex ecosystems in the soil to stay healthy. Chemical fertilizers of the macro nutrient (N,P,K) have increased yields that mine the soil of the hundreds of micro nutrients which are not replaced, making crops far less nutritious. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides have also destroyed the health of the soil and water. Fields that have very little crop rotation and even fewer perennial crops in the rotation, with very few grass buffers are losing top soil through erosion, destroying the long term health of the land and rivers. Animals concentrated on small areas lead to ground water contamination and runoff polluting our ground and surface water with unsafe levels of bacteria and nutrients.

The “Green Revolution” was not intended to have such negative consequences. But, unfortunately, whenever humans throughout history have attempted to live outside the rules of nature, humans usually end up at the losing end of the equation. Depending on the use of a finite amount of stored energy below the ground (fossil fuels) is shortsighted and increasingly proving to have many unintentional consequences. Farming must become increasingly efficient and productive using only current energy and working within the rules of nature. Modern conventional agriculture is moving in an opposite direction, conquering and manipulating nature through biotechnology, extensive precision agriculture technology, and ever higher inputs of non-renewable energy. Conventional farmers are also losing intellectual autonomy and becoming increasingly squeezed as the agri-business industry is requiring an ever increasing share in the farmer’s profits (higher seed costs, more expensive technology and equipment, crop insurance, chemical costs, “expert” advice, etc.). This conventional model is moving in the opposite direction of long-term sustainability in spite of the occasional adoption of environmentally helpful management practices such as no-till agriculture (that has now been co-opted by the chemical companies as a means to promote increased pesticide use). Thus, the alternative agriculture movement must create a parallel trajectory for the future of agriculture that looks quite opposite from conventional agriculture, burrows heavily on agriculture knowledge prior to the “Green Revolution”, but also adopts new scientific methods of increased production and profit while farming with nature.

A few thoughtful quotes...

“The time to argue about the wisdom of liquidating the resource base of the planet is over.” – J. Michael Fay, essay “The Redwoods Point the Way” in National Georgraphic, October, 2009

“The present agricultural economy, as designed by the agribusiness corporations, uses farmers as expendable “resources” in the process of production, the same way it uses the topsoil, the groundwater, and the ecological integrity of the farm landscape.” -Wendell Berry, essay, “Stupidity in Cencentration”