Sustainable Agriculture and Conventional Agriculture

• Recognizing a cyclical model rather than an industrial model
• Minimizing off farm inputs and solutions (an example would be purchasing fertilizer)
• Recognizing and incorporating natural solutions whenever possible

• Hormones - When the primary concern is to sell the most pounds of product at the lowest possible cost in an attempt to make a profit, anything that lends an advantage is considered. Added hormones speed weight gain in feedlot animals and are standard issue in conventional agriculture.
• Crowding – In order to produce off-season animals must be protected from the elements, so shelter is built for them. However, buildings and their upkeep are expensive so we crowd as many animals (production units) into the building as we can, and the building must get used year-round to pay for itself.
• Antibiotics – Crowding brings in a new set of problems. As animal stress levels mount due to overcrowding and inactivity, disease pressure builds. This increases the need to administer drugs. Sub acute levels of antibiotics are administered routinely to animals through feed, water or injection to increase performance and reduce chances of disease.
• Isolation – To reduce the likelihood of introducing external pathogens to animals already in stressful living environments, wild birds, people and other animals are kept away from these facilities as much as possible. This explains the coiled and sometimes electrified wire fences so commonly found around poultry units and hog barns today.
• Manure – Manure is nature’s best form of fertilizer. Feedlots, chicken houses and hog barns often don’t have adequate land on which to spread manure to support grass and/or crop growth, so the manure simply becomes a waste item to be disposed of, often in a very unsustainable matter.
• Feed – In order to put weight on animals in the cheapest possible way all sorts of feeding strategies are incorporated. Did you know that the addition of cement dust to rations improves feed to weight gain ratios in cattle? Did you know that the addition of recycled poultry litter to beef feedlot diets reduces the cost of weight gain considerably?

Sustainable Agriculture - A Better Way

• Cattle are ruminant animals, designed by nature to ingest a diet primarily consisting of long stemmed forages. Our cattle live naturally on pasture all year round. Most of their nutrients come from grass or hay with minimal supplementation
• We do not have to “dispose” of manure off the farm. Grazing cattle distribute their own manure lightly and spread out across the pasture. They even do this at rates commensurate with plant growth and uptake. Nutrient recycling in this system is immediate and very beneficial to both soil and plants. When the proportion of carbon to nitrogen is correct there is no “nasty smell” that is often associated with cattle farms.
• We almost never have sick animals because low stocking density greatly decreases the risk of disease. Unlike large feedlots we do not routinely administer antibiotics to our cattle via their feed or in any other form.
• We do not use growth hormones simply because we don’t need to. We are not trying to produce large volumes of cheap meat at the lowest possible production cost to satisfy a middleman. There is no middleman in our system. Our focus is on producing small volumes of high quality meat. We believe that quality cannot be hurried . . .