This week, we had the opportunity to sponsor an awesome event through Ripe Revival called the Supper Club Chef Series! Through this program, Ripe Revival sold mail-order meal kits containing our Split Heritage Poulet Rouge® Chicken and products from other sponsors including the North Carolina Sweetpotato Commission, Tidewater Grain Company, and Nash Produce. Those who purchased the meal kits received a link to cook along virtually through a live stream with Chef Saif Rahman of Vidrio Restaurant in Raleigh, NC!
The program was a fundraiser to benefit Ripe Revivial’s pay-what-you-can, Ripe for Revivial 501(c)(3) Mobile Market Program, promoting food equity in many local communities.
Limited tickets were also available to attend the live event at Vidrio to watch the live stream taping and enjoy the prepared dish in their dining room. While we unfortunately weren’t able to attend in person, a few of our team here at Joyce Farms decided to join in the fun and cook along with Chef Rahman from our R & D kitchen, resulting in a delicious meal!
The specially curated meal from Chef Rahman was Pan-Seared Poulet Rouge® Chicken with Curried Sweetpotatoes and Carolina Gold Rice with a side of Bengali Tomato Salad. Here’s a look at how ours turned out!
If you would like to recreate this same dish at home, you can follow along with the replay here. A breakdown of ingredients and utensils needed is also included a the bottom of this page.
We are very proud to have been a part of such a unique event that supports a worthy cause within our community! Be sure to check out the Ripe Revivial website and look out for future Supper Club events!
The Mobile Market Program’s mission is to revive communities through food on the road by utilizing buses that have been transformed into pay-what-you-can markets throughout North Carolina. Support of the Reviving the Supper Club Chef Series event plays a significant role in their goal to bridge the gap between farm excess and food access.
Today we would like to formally announce a leadership transition here at Joyce Farms. As of August 1, 2022, Ryan Joyce, formerly VP of Finance, and Stuart Joyce, formerly VP of Operations, have assumed the role of President and Executive Vice President of Joyce Farms, respectively. Ron Joyce, who has served as President & CEO for the last 40 years, will remain Chairman of the Board and will play an active advisory role with the company moving forward.
This change comes as part of a succession plan to ensure company longevity and success. “Both of them grew up in the business,” says Ron Joyce. “They helped build Joyce Farms into a successful third-generation company. I am proud of them and what they have already accomplished. This will allow Joyce Farms to continue to grow as a family-owned business long into the future.”
Ryan and Stuart represent the third generation of Joyces to lead Joyce Farms since it was founded in 1962 by their grandfather, Alvin Joyce. They follow in the footsteps of their father Ron Joyce, who joined the business in 1971 and spearheaded its growth from a small chicken wholesaler to a multi-species meat and poultry producer specializing in heritage breeds and regenerative farming practices.
“Ron leaves behind big shoes to fill,” said Ryan Joyce, “but thanks to his hard work, we have a strong foundation to build on as we lead Joyce Farms into the future.”
Ryan first joined Joyce Farms in 2008 after graduating from N.C. State University with a degree in Business Management. In 2010, he left the company to attend Wake Forest University, where he earned his JD/MBA, and soon after, passed the NC Bar. Ryan returned to Joyce Farms in 2014 as VP of Finance before assuming his role as President.
Stuart joined Joyce Farms after graduation from N.C. State University in 2010 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Business Management. Before assuming his role as Executive Vice President, he has played an active leadership role in the company, overseeing all poultry operations from the plant and hatchery in Winston-Salem to the grow-out of birds for Joyce Farms’ Heritage Poultry line.
For 60 years, you have trusted Joyce Farms to provide you with safe, high-quality meat and poultry products. Our USDA-inspected plant in Winston Salem, NC has multiple HACCP plans in place to ensure safe practices, and we have continually received high marks on third party GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) audits. Now, we are thrilled to announce that we have achieved British Retail Consortium (BRC) Global Food Safety Certification at our poultry processing plant.
The BRCGS Global Food Safety Standard is a leading global quality and food safety certification program that is recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). It provides a framework to manage product safety, integrity, legality and quality, and the operational controls for these criteria in the food and food ingredient manufacturing, processing and packing industry. Certification is only awarded to organizations that have embraced a top-to-bottom food safety culture and approach throughout their company.
To achieve this, our team undertook a rigorous third-party audit against certification requirements. The audit examined an extensive list of our company programs related to food safety, including, but not limited to, sanitation, pest control, recall and traceability, allergen control, pathogen/salmonella testing, and supplier approval.
Pictured above, from left: VP of Operations Stuart Joyce, Quality Assurance Supervisor Brittany Freeman, Quality Assurance Manager Jennifer Hamby, VP of Finance Ryan Joyce, and President and CEO Ron Joyce.
While this was truly a company-wide effort, our path to certification was led by Joyce Farms’ Quality Assurance Manager Jennifer Hamby. Her enthusiasm, guidance, and attention to detail were invaluable as we worked together to reach this goal.
At Joyce Farms, we always want to offer our customers the very best, and the BRCGS Global Food Safety Standard is what we believe to be the best and most respected food safety certification in the world. With this certification, we look forward to offering you an even deeper level of trust in our products.
Check out the moving moment when we surprised him with the news!
Despite the unprecedented events of the COVID pandemic and the unforeseen shift in our business within the industry, Ron Joyce and the team came together to stay ahead of the curve. Under his leadership and bold philosophy, we continue to support and practice Regenerative Agriculture, protect animal breeds and their welfare, and provide healthy meat and poultry that packs delicious natural flavor to our local communities.
While we took time to celebrate his achievements, Ron Joyce pressed on getting the word out about Regenerative Agriculture's impact. He hopes to continue restoring land, raising healthy animals, and providing customers with nutritional and flavorful products.
Thank you, Ron for your hard work, passion, and dedication. While you may tell us that you'll rest once you've retired, and that you'll retire once you're at rest, we feel it imperative to take this moment in and congratulate you for your contributions - not just to the poultry industry, but to the lives of everyone at Joyce Farms!
Thank you Ron Joyce and congratulations!!!!
In our last blog post, we discussed the tremendous array of phytonutrients available from plants and pasture-raised proteins.
Diversity, particularly plant species diversity, is crucial in building a wide range of health-boosting and healing phytochemicals.
Farm landscapes that encourage and build diverse arrays of plants become plant, animal, and human nutrition centers and pharmacies. And, unlike a typical pharmacy, you don't have to worry about drug interactions, side effects, or overdosing. The medicines we obtain through our foods are in perfect balance and readily available for health and healing.
As farmers, we focus on fostering landscapes that provide a variety of foods for the herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores beneath and above the soil surface.
These landscapes are in sharp contrast to farm landscapes where monoculture crops and livestock production are the norm.
Animal health greatly improves when they can forage from a diverse array of plants. They stay healthy, require no antibiotics, and grow more efficiently with less carbon, nitrous oxide and methane emissions.
Livestock grazing in diverse environments actually are healthy for the climate rather than harmful.
It is only when they are grazed poorly, in monoculture pastures, or in feedlots on grain rations, that we have problems with harmful greenhouse gas emissions from our livestock.
This makes complete sense from a historical ecological perspective, as there were once hundreds of millions of wild ruminants roaming the grasslands, prairies, savannas, and woodlands of the world. If grazing animals were harmful, then nature was conspiring against herself for tens of thousands of years!
At Joyce Farms, we strive to provide as diverse a plant environment to our livestock as possible. As a matter of fact, this diversity is increasing each year.
Herbivores will often eat from 50 to 70 plants a day, if provided a phytochemically rich mix of grasses, forbs, shrubs, and trees.
These animals eat a variety of foods for several reasons:
These are the same reasons we should eat a variety of foods daily.
It is the secondary nutritive compounds that are our personal pharmacy and nutrition center. Plants grown in diverse communities have enhanced above ground (shoot) and below ground (root) phytochemicals. This gives a phytochemical richness to the plants we eat, the meat we eat, eggs and dairy we eat. If grown in a diverse plant environment.
Amazingly, this phytochemical richness provides a host of benefits to the plants themselves, including:
Yes, plants can protect themselves against animals overgrazing any individual plant in a plant diverse environment. However, monoculture and low diversity environments encourage animals, including wild ruminants, to overgraze. These types of environments make plants and animals more susceptible to environmental hardships.
In most of modern agriculture, the production and array of these vital plant phytochemicals (secondary compounds) has been reduced. Monoculture systems have replaced natural phytochemical defenses with synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides. Livestock operations have replaced nature’s pharmacy with antibiotics and anthelmintics (anti-parasitic drugs) to treat disease and parasites. There are even attempts to genetically engineer back into plants the resistance to disease and pests they once had.
We must remember that plants and herbivores have been playing these games for a very long time. They had established a balance that worked well. Modern agriculture interrupted that balance.
We need to understand that plants are sentient beings, receiving and responding to sensations. They are not organisms that feel nothing or understand nothing. Plants can “see” different wavelengths of light, “breathe” through the stomata on the surface area of their leaves and stems, smell, taste, talk and listen in biochemical languages, detect through their smell and taste chemical compounds in the air and on their tissues.
Plants “hear” the sounds of pest insects, such as caterpillars eating on a neighboring plant and respond in self-defense by producing volatile compounds that alert other plants in the community to the predator. These volatile compounds can be sensed by beneficial insects and birds that prey on the pest insect. The volatile compounds also attract pollinators, birds and animals to perform pollination services and seed dispersal.
Underneath the soil surface, the biological world is busy performing vital functions as well. Plant roots interact with soil fungi and bacteria as these microbes search for water and nutrients. The plants transfer food to the soil microbes through sugars spewed out from their roots (exudates). The bacteria and fungi capture nutrients in the soil and feed the plant host. The secondary compounds from the plant root exudates can attract, deter, or even kill insect herbivores, nematodes, and microbes. These same exudates can also prevent competing plants from establishing themselves.
Nature plays a complex offense and defense that has been honed by the interaction between soil microbes, plants, insects, and animals for eons.
This game plan works and works very well. It provides the pharmacy and nutrition center for all these organisms, and for us.
If we attempt to work against nature, we interrupt this delicate balance, and we disrupt the vast array of medicinal and nutritive compounds needed for optimum health.
Modern agricultural devices are foolish compared to nature’s devices. That is why we must always strive to work with nature, and never against. Nature always wins!
Written By Dr. Allen Williams, Ph.D.
A champion of the grass-fed beef industry and the growing Regenerative Agriculture movement, Allen helps restore soil health, increase land productivity, enhance biodiversity, and produce healthier food. He also serves as Joyce Farms' CRO (Chief Ranching Officer). Learn more about Allen
Did you know that the health of plants, animals, ecosystems and humans is inextricably tied to plant phytochemical diversity?
Phytochemicals are compounds naturally produced by plants that help the plants thrive in challenging conditions, fight off competitors, pest insects, and disease.
When you bite into a juicy strawberry or blueberry, enjoy vibrant green lettuce or spinach, munch on a tomato, or chow down on a juicy steak or hamburger you consume much more than vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber. You also benefit from the incredible richness of phytochemicals.
Phytochemicals are comprised of four main categories:
All big words, and they have BIG impacts on our health.
All of these phytonutrients contain powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that are crucial to our health and well-being, and our eventual longevity.
There are tens of thousands of these phytonutrients found in plants, and in the meat of animals that eat those plants.
Why do we all eat, and yet we still have significant health problems in the U.S.?
It is because not all foods are created equal.
Not all tomatoes are the same, not all chicken is the same, not all beef is the same, not all pork is the same.
The soil those plants grow in, the plants that are growing there, and the plants that the animals eat all determine the degree of phytonutrient richness in the foods we eat.
The problem with modern agriculture is its industrialized approach to food production -- planting monoculture and near monoculture crops and pastures, degrading our soils, and destroying soil biology.
Plants thrive when grown in diversity, with many plant species all growing within close proximity of each other, able to share nutrients and phytochemicals through the vast underground network of mycorrhizal fungi.
Modern industrial practices like tillage and use of chemicals, synthetic fertilizers, fungicides, and insecticides can greatly reduce plant phytochemical production and richness.
This shift away from phytochemically rich plant and animal foods to the highly processed foods so many eat today has enabled more than 2.1 billion people to become overweight and obese.
This, in turn, has led to higher incidence of diet-related disease in humans, like diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disorders, and even various types of cancer.
Evidence supports the hypothesis that phytochemical richness of herbivore diets significantly enhances the phytochemical and biochemical richness of the animal proteins that we eat.
Animal proteins from animals eating phytochemically rich diets do not lead to heart disease and cancer. Instead, they actually provide protection against those same diseases, just like the phytochemically rich plants do.
It is only when these same animals are fed high-grain rations and monoculture pastures that their protein becomes an issue for our health.
That methane issue we hear so much about with ruminant livestock? Plant phytochemical diversity stimulates microbes in the soil, such as methanotrophs, that digest that methane. This is how nature took care of methane from the hundreds of millions of wild ruminants that once roamed the face of the earth.
At Joyce Farms, we implement regenerative practices that create phytochemical diversity in our pastures. We restore our soils to their historical ecological context. We sequester carbon and return it to the soil so it can nourish the soil microbes vital to providing our plants and livestock with nutrients.
We recognize that our food is our medicine. We invite you to share in our phytochemically rich foods and enjoy truly healthy meals.
Written By Dr. Allen Williams, Ph.D.
A champion of the grass-fed beef industry and the growing Regenerative Agriculture movement, Allen helps restore soil health, increase land productivity, enhance biodiversity, and produce healthier food. He also serves as Joyce Farms' CRO (Chief Ranching Officer). Learn more about Allen
There are ads all around us for various forms of plant-based meat products, what I term “fake meat.” It’s pretty much "impossible" not to come in contact with this fake meat trend. Curiously, many who are manufacturing and selling these products, as well as their supporters, prefer to call them “clean proteins.”
Most ads tout the supposed benefits of plant-based proteins, and somehow confer on them a “cleanness” that implies they are far better for health, environment and climate change than any real protein could be.
You will hear statements like,
The problem with most of these ads is that they provide little to no documentation of the “facts” they are so freely spouting. There’s quite a lot that they don’t tell you:
Make no mistake about it... The fake meats that are currently on the market are mostly high-processed food products that bear little-to-no resemblance to real, wholesome food. (Recommended reading -- Opinion: Software to Swallow — Impossible Foods Should Be Called Impossible Patents)
The most commonly known fake meat made strictly from plant materials is the Impossible Burger. This product is touted as being, Halal, Kosher certified, and 100% vegan with zero animal products or by-products.
Water, soy protein concentrate, coconut oil, sunflower oil, natural flavors, potato protein, methylcellulose, yeast extract, cultured dextrose, modified food starch, soy leghemoglobin, salt, soy protein isolate, mixed tocopherols, zinc gluconate, thiamine hydrochloride, sodium ascorbate, niacin, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, and vitamin B12.
Looking at the list, water comprises the highest percentage of all ingredients, so people are paying quite a lot of money for water!
The next highest ingredient is soy protein concentrate. While soybean protein is classified as a complete protein, it has potential drawbacks.Soybeans are legumes, which produce phytoestrogens. Too much phytoestrogen in our diet may have a negative impact on endocrine function.
In addition, the Impossible Burger also includes soy leghemoglobin and soy protein isolate. Research of prior civilizations shows that when their food source was derived predominantly from one major component (i.e. soy protein), detrimental body function occurred.
Soybean itself is not a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, and soybean oil has a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids of about 7:1, meaning that we are getting seven times the omega-6 in our diet compared to omega-3. So, while there is omega-3 in soybeans our bodies cannot actually use much of it.
When we also consider the facts that:
...we have to ask, are fake meats really helping the environment, ecosystem, and our own long-term health as much as these ads would like us to perceive?
In order to remove animal products and by-products, are we saying it is okay to…
As we further examine the list, we find coconut oil and sunflower oil make up a hefty percentage of the ingredients.
Sunflower oil is one of the worst oils when it comes to the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio.
The American Medical Association and the American Heart Association recommend our daily diet should consist of an Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio of about 4:1 or less.The average American gets an omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of 20:1 or worse.
Sunflower oil has an omega-6 to omega 3 ratio of 70:1. This is ridiculously high and can lead to tissue inflammation, which can lead to a host of diseases and disorders in the body.
Coconut oil actually has little to no appreciable omega-3 fatty acids, and about 3.92g of omega-6 fatty acids per cup. It is high in saturated fat, with a single cup of coconut oil containing 218g of total fat (87% of that fat being saturated).
The next ingredient “natural flavors,” whatever that means. What natural flavors can possibly be used to simulate the flavor of meat, other than meat itself?
The remainder of the list of ingredients reads like the label of some sort of manufactured chemical solution, which really isn’t that far off when you’re talking about the Impossible Burger and other fake meat products.
To be truthful, it is a display of extreme hubris to think that we, as humans, can design a “food” synthetically that is anywhere near the true nutrient value and composition of real foods produced by nature. As a scientist myself, I believe this represents the height of scientific arrogance.
Manufactured foods will produce unintended consequences. These unintended consequences will carry through to multiple generations through epigenetic effects that are transgenerational. In other words, what we eat today will affect our children, and our children’s children. We have already seen this happen in the manufactured foods that are quite common in the middle aisles of every grocery store.
Let’s examine a comparison of the common nutritional values between real beef and the Impossible Burger.
Considering the same serving size of 4 oz., the number of calories derived from either real beef or the Impossible Burger are very similar, as is total fat and saturated fat. So, the 100 percent vegan version of “meat” does not provide any advantage in fat content.
The Impossible Burger does list 0 mg of cholesterol compared to 94 mg for the grain fed beef patty. However, cholesterol is a required fat (lipid) in our bodies and our brains must be bathed in cholesterol in order to function properly. Cholesterol is the lipid that acts in the brain like oil does in an engine. Take away the oil and the engine seizes up. Take away cholesterol in the brain and the brain seizes up. We call that dementia. While too much cholesterol in our diet, particularly as it influences LDL cholesterol, may be an issue, too little cholesterol creates health issues as well.
Where the Impossible Burger really deviates from grain fed beef is in the amount of sodium (salt) that is in a four-ounce serving. The Impossible Burger has 370 mg of sodium compared to just 89 mg of sodium for the grain fed beef. That’s 4.3 times the amount of sodium in a single serving as compared to beef.
Our bodies do require some sodium for many basic processes to occur. These include muscle function, nerve impulse regulation, and balance of fluids. However, too much sodium in the diet can lead to serious and significant health problems that include high blood pressure, damage of vessel walls, increased risk of atherosclerosis, and increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Additionally, too much sodium can cause edema, manifested in swelling of the knees, feet, and even hands. It can lead to stomach damage, including increased chance of stomach cancer and encourages overconsumption.
Protein in real beef comes in at 28 g for a four-ounce serving compared to 19 g in the Impossible Burger. So real beef has 1.5 times the amount of protein in a single serving. Now, if we make that real beef a grass-fed beef, we have a distinct nutritional advantage over the fake meat.
What sector of the food industry was first to jump on the fake meat bandwagon? Ironically, it has been the fast food sector, also called QSR (Quick Service Restaurants). A high percentage of ads spouting the benefits of fake meat have been from these companies, as if putting a fake burger patty between two buns, smothered in condiments makes it any better for our health than a real hamburger patty. Or, a fake meat fried chicken being better for our health than real friend chicken. So, we can now eat fast food and feel good about ourselves because suddenly we are eating healthy? I don’t think so.
Obviously, there are significant benefits to the fast food companies in doing this. The primary issue with fast food has always been that it has dubious health benefits. The perception that a fake meat is far better for you and for the environment allows the fast food companies to create the perception of healthfulness, directly benefiting their sales.
I must ask the question, “Why do we need fake meat?” Mankind has always had the choice of what to eat from the natural world. If you want to eat an all plant-based diet, you are free to do so. You do not need a fake meat to assist you in that endeavor.
If the contention is you are eating a fake meat to somehow help mitigate climate change, then just how are you accomplishing that? The manufacture of fake meat is not without the expenditure of energy, water, and environmental impacts.
Would it not be better to eat plant proteins in their natural state? What are the main ingredients in fake meat that are being touted as “healthy for you?” Are they not beans, peas, and lentils primarily (never mind all the other ancillary ingredients)? If so, we can simply eat beans, peas, and lentils and we would be achieving a result far better than eating them with their isolated components in a highly processed mish-mash of ingredients made in a quasi-laboratory. At least beans, peas, and lentils are a WHOLE food and are truly healthy for you. We do not have to expend the additional energy, water, and carbon to take a whole food (beans, peas, lentils) and turn it into a highly processed food.
Written By Dr. Allen Williams, Ph.D.
A champion of the grass-fed beef industry and the growing Regenerative Agriculture movement, Allen helps restore soil health, increase land productivity, enhance biodiversity, and produce healthier food. He also serves as Joyce Farms' CRO (Chief Ranching Officer). Learn more about Allen
Human behavior has tremendously impacted the state of our planet for thousands and thousands of years. In fact, if we traveled back in time, even by a few centuries, we may not even recognize the landscape of our own local regions and communities.
On Earth Day, we want to celebrate the incredible essential resources that Mother Earth provides, and to learn from the mistakes of our ancestors by recognizing the (often unintended) consequences they have had on our ecosystems. The practices we use today, in agriculture and beyond, will shape the future of our planet and all who inhabit it.
Most of us have a very narrow vision of what our region was like before our lifetimes. We think only in terms of what we have experienced, or what our grandparents told us.
The truth is all of us have experienced an already significantly degraded ecosystem. In most regions of the U.S., our soils and landscape has been seriously degraded for 300 or more years.
European settlers started the eastern U.S. degradation process in earnest by the early 1600s, in the Atlantic states. Before that time, the American landscape looked much different.
There were hundreds of plant species growing throughout the southern U.S. prairies. The eastern U.S. was filled with bison, elk, deer, and even antelope.
These wild ruminants kept the prairies a prairie and the savannas open and clean of dense, thick understory. They had a profound impact on the landscape of the southern U.S. and all of North America, and Native American tribes depended on these animals for sustenance, and famously used every part.
However, by the mid- to late-1700’s most of the bison, elk, and antelope were eradicated in this region due to the degenerative farming practices that early settlers brought with them to America.
Single tree plows pulled by oxen, mules, or horses did a great job of turning under the prairie and wooded savanna soils of the east, which started the erosion and degradation process. They planted monocultures using the agricultural knowledge they brought with them from Europe and the British Isles.
They were so good at destroying the soil that in 1796, George Washington stated:
“A few years more of increased sterility will drive the inhabitants of the Atlantic states westward for support; whereas if they were taught how to improve the old soils, instead of going in pursuit of the new and productive soil, they would make these acres, which now scarcely yield them anything, turn out beneficial to themselves.”
Think about the gravity of that statement! A brand new country was already suffering from the wounds of poor agricultural practices.
In under 200 years, our ancestors had destroyed the soil health of the Atlantic states, and they did it without the aid of the massive diesel-powered equipment we have at our disposal today.
Planters in the southern Atlantic states had so worn out those soils that, by the early 1800s (as Washington had predicted), they started looking westward for new lands and virgin soils.
Wagon trains of settlers headed west to the prairies and savannas of what is now Alabama and eastern Mississippi.
By the time of the Lewis & Clark expedition from May 1804 through September 1806, things had changed so drastically in the eastern portion of the U.S., that what they encountered and viewed as they moved westward in the early days of their journey was a distinct anomaly to them.
On July 4, 1804, William Clark wrote these words in his diary:
“The Plains of this countrey are covered with a Leek Green Grass, well calculated for the sweetest and most norushing hay --- interspersed with cops (copses) of trees, Spreding their lofty branchs over pools, Springs or Brooks of fine water. Groops of Shrubs covered with the most delicious froot is to be seen in every direction, and nature appears to have exerted herself to butify the senery by the variety of flours (flowers) raiseing delicately and highly flavored above the Grass, which strikes & profumes the sensation and muses the mind, …. So magnificent a senery in a country situated far from the Sivilised world to be enjoyed by nothing but the buffalo, elk, deer & bear in which it abounds……”
Now, Clark was not much on correct spelling, but he did write beautifully. This statement was written from a bluff overlooking the Missouri River near present day Doniphan County, KS.
What strikes me about Clark’s observations is that this sight was so astounding to him. It was so unusual that he wrote about it as if he were viewing the Garden of Eden.
His experience growing up in the eastern U.S., born in 1770 in Virginia, was of a country already devoid of the bounty he witnessed in the far northeastern corner of present-day Kansas in 1804. He had never seen such an amazing sight and it obviously stirred his very soul.
Fast forward just another 100 years and that same midwestern prairie that Clark wrote about was well on its way to becoming a part of the 1930s Dust Bowl.
We often hear today that cattle, and other grazing animals, compact the soil and many farmers want no part of cattle on their farmland. However, when the early settlers first put the plow to the prairie soils (which had been trampled and roamed for centuries by bison and other ruminants), they found them easy to turn over with a plow pulled by a mule. So easy that these early prairie farmers created the disaster we know as the Dust Bowl. These same midwestern soils today would barely be scratched on the surface with a single tree plow.
So, if grazing livestock compact soils, then just how did these early settlers so easily plow the prairie soils? In fact, poor grazing practices do compact the soil BUT good grazing practices, such as adaptive grazing, do just the opposite - creating loose, pliable, highly aggregated soils that are easy to plant with a No Till drill.
So, what should our planet, soils, and ecosystems look like today? Just look to the past and you will open a window into our future potential with solid regenerative agricultural practices. Wherever we implement these principles and practices we see life returning in abundance. Perhaps we too can one day view a scene similar to what William Clark experienced approximately 200 years ago.
Written By Dr. Allen Williams, Ph.D.
A champion of the grass-fed beef industry and the growing Regenerative Agriculture movement, Allen helps restore soil health, increase land productivity, enhance biodiversity, and produce healthier food. He also serves as Joyce Farms' CRO (Chief Ranching Officer). Learn more about Allen
Last week, we shared Episode #1 of Chef Jim Noble's new YouTube cooking series, featuring our popular Heritage Poulet Rouge® Chicken.
Today we have episode #2, where Chef Noble shows how to grill up some delicious, thick ribeye steaks, cut from a Joyce Farms whole grass-fed ribeye.
Check out the video below! And, learn more about our Grass-Fed Heritage Beef here.
By Dr. Allen R Williams, Ph.D.
We often think of ourselves as a single organism called a person. However, we are actually made up of a dazzling array of parts (arms, legs, ears, nose, eyes, etc.) and pieces (heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas, stomach, intestines, etc.). Somehow all these parts and pieces function as one intact organism, or so we believe.
There are actually tiny, microscopic organisms that live in our gut, our mouth, our skin and many other places in our bodies. How many? More than 100 trillion of them.
We have more microorganisms living on us and in each of us than the size of our national debt. Together, all these microorganisms are known as the human microbiome and they are ten times more numerous than the number of cells in our body.
It is said that we are actually our own personal ecosystem, and just like damaging the world’s ecosystem has disastrous effects on human life, damaging our personal ecosystem has disastrous effects on our lives and long-term health also.
Just how important are these 100 trillion microbes? Well, take them away and we die. It is that simple. We cannot survive without our personal microbiome.
This personal ecosystem regulates our digestion, our detoxification process, our absorption of nutrients, our brain function, endocrine gland function, organ function, skin function, the synthesis of essential nutrients and vitamins. Our microbiome is intricately linked to every aspect of our health. From heart disease to diabetes to arthritis to obesity to Alzheimer’s.
Depiction of Microbes in the Human Gut
Let me provide just a little more perspective. The human genome is comprised of about 23,000 genes. Our extended genome, or non-human genome, provided by the trillions of microbes living on us and in us, extends our genome by millions of genes. In our gut alone we have more than 40,000 bacterial species with 9 million unique bacterial genes and over 100 trillion microbial cells. We are far more diverse than a rain forest!
Want to lose a quick 5 pounds? Shed all your human microbes and that is what will happen. The only catch is that to lose those 5 pounds we would also lose our life.
Microscopic View of Microbes in Human Gut
Microbes are not only crucial to our personal health but also to the health of the world... from our soil, to our water, to plants, animals, insects, earthworms, and everything imaginable. All these microbes are intricately linked. The soil microbiome is linked to the plant microbiome which is linked to insect and animal microbiomes which are linked to our microbiome. This is an inescapable fact.
Microbes form the vast majority of the world’s biomass. There are 40 million bacterial cells in a single gram of soil and a million bacterial cells in a gram of water. Imagine an elephant standing on every acre. The weight of that elephant equals the weight of soil microbes in just the top six inches of soil on every acre of healthy, highly functioning soil.
Due to the interconnectedness of all these microbiomes, we cannot escape the fact that what we eat, and how that food was produced, including the very soil it was produced in or on, is critically important to the very health of our own personal ecosystem. Only healthy soils can produce truly healthy nutrient dense foods that fuel our human microbiome and create synergies that support a strong immune system.
We now know that the soil microbiome serves as an external plant immune system. One of those classes of soil microorganisms, mycorrhizal fungi, are the principal immune system protecting plants against fungal disease. Over the past three decades, the use of fungicides in agriculture has increased exponentially. This is directly a result of the significant reduction of mycorrhizal fungi in the soil through tillage practices and the use of synthetics and chemicals that damage mycorrhizae. When we damage them and we consume foods from those same soils, we damage our own personal microbiome.
Research conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology shows that the microbiome is important for the health and development of all living organisms. Results from their studies indicate that the more diverse the diet, the greater the microbial diversity. This accounts for the stability of the plant-soil-animal-human health relationship.
Research conducted by the American Gut Project found that degree of diversity in our diet influences the array of microorganisms present in our gut.
What we eat and the diversity of that diet plays a large role in our overall health and well-being.
One principal factor in all this is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. These endocrine glands are the primary responder to stresses that we incur. They influence our limbic system, our emotions, and our memory.
We know that antibiotics can significantly damage favorable bacteria along with the bad. When we have to take antibiotics, we are told to follow that with probiotics or with fermented foods that help replenish favorable gut microbes. We also know that application to the soil of manures from animals that have antibiotics in their system impacts the soil microbiome. What about eating meats from animals fed antibiotics?
There is a distinct link between our gut microbiome composition and our mental health. Research findings from the American Gut Project show that people with reported mental health issues had a specific array of gut bacteria that was distinctly different than people who reported no mental health issues. This association cut across gender, age, and geographical regions. Another recent study found a connection between anxiety and the lack of specific healthy gut microbes. This was true for various mental conditions that included PTSD, Schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder.
How does regenerative agriculture play into all this? It is clear that the microbiomes of the soil, plants, animals, and humans are inextricably linked. Each depends on the other. What we do to one either benefits or harms the other. This is inescapable. Therefore, the way we treat our soil, plants and animals impacts our individual human microbiome. We are a product of our environment and the food we choose to eat.
Do you want a healthy body? A healthy immune system? Do you want to be able to withstand the challenges of something like the coronavirus? Then choose to eat healthy. Choose foods that are produced by regenerative farmers and ranchers, from soils that are biologically active and from animals that are free from antibiotics. Support regenerative agriculture with your food purchase decisions and you are supporting healthy microbiomes. After all, remember that you are eating for trillions!
Written By Dr. Allen Williams, Ph.D.
A champion of the grass-fed beef industry and the growing Regenerative Agriculture movement, Allen helps restore soil health, increase land productivity, enhance biodiversity, and produce healthier food. He also serves as Joyce Farms' CRO (Chief Ranching Officer). Learn more about Allen
By Dr. Allen R Williams, Ph.D.
As I described in yesterday’s blog, it is getting crazy out there and the panic buying is not subsiding. What is occurring in our nation, and around the world, only serves to substantiate why we need regenerative agriculture now more than ever. It is no longer just about the climate, our water quality, and our ecosystems. They are all still vitally important, but an even more pressing need has emerged.
In the past several decades our agriculture and food systems have become increasingly consolidated and centralized. For example:
Why is this a problem when faced with a pandemic such as the coronavirus? Look no further than your bare local grocery store shelves. Food has to travel more than 1500 miles in the U.S. to get to its final destination of a grocery store or restaurant.
As I explained in my prior blog, we do not have a shortage of food in the U.S., as we have more than 8 billion pounds in frozen stocks. What we have is a transportation problem that is easily overwhelmed.
Centralized food production, processing, and cold storage seem wonderful and awfully efficient when everything is working well. However, when things break down, we find ourselves scrambling for food.
In addition, the larger the farm and the larger the processor, the more people there are that touch your food and everything it comes in contact with. This puts us all at a heightened risk. It's hard not to be in close proximity to your fellow workers in a large, industrial scale food processing plant.
Moving back to regenerative agriculture means we can trend back towards smaller family owned farms that are profitable and support the families that operate them.
This means fewer hands touch the food being produced on those farms. And, more family farms means more local and regional processing. These plants, like Joyce Farms' plant in North Carolina, are substantially smaller than the massive plants operated by the large food companies. That equals fewer hands touching the food in those plants.
Now to be fair, the hands that touch food in any plant, large or small, are gloved hands. But, it is not just hands that transmit viruses - it is the breath of any carrier as well. I am not saying that the big food companies are bad and large plants are bad. No. They have their place. What I am saying is that if they are our only option, we limit ourselves in a number of ways.
Locally and regionally produced food allows for far more options for the consumer. It is easier to transport and get to consumers in a local market. Local and regional production supports rural economies and returns financial stability to the families that live in these rural communities.
More farms practicing regenerative principles equals healthier soil. Healthier soil equals more nutrient dense foods. More nutrient dense foods equals better human health. Better human health equals stronger immune systems and greater ability to fight off challenges like the coronavirus. Better human health is a direct result of supporting a thriving and diverse gut microbiome. That can only come from better foods.
In my next blog I will explain how the gut microbiome is the key to our immune system strength and ultimate health.
Written By Dr. Allen Williams, Ph.D.
A champion of the grass-fed beef industry and the growing Regenerative Agriculture movement, Allen helps restore soil health, increase land productivity, enhance biodiversity, and produce healthier food. He also serves as Joyce Farms' CRO (Chief Ranching Officer). Learn more about Allen
By Dr. Allen R Williams, Ph.D.
We are now experiencing times that many alive today have never been exposed to. We are witnessing our own human condition and our response to something that seems overwhelming and possibly insurmountable. The tangible result is being manifested in widespread panic and fear. Fear that we will run out of toilet paper. Fear that we will run out of food. Fear that our businesses and jobs will implode. Fear that we may contract the coronavirus (COVID-19) and become a statistic.
Across the nation, and in my little town of Starkville, MS, we are seeing grocery store shelves being stripped bare of all paper items (toilet tissue, paper towels, napkins), milk, bread, meats, frozen vegetables, and many other food items. In our hometown Kroger, just yesterday, I saw bare shelves where paper products should have been, where bread should have been, where milk and eggs should have been.
So, why is this happening? Why are people panic buying? Are we in danger of running out of food? Let’s take a brief look at some our actual food stocks in the U.S. Realize that farmers and food processors are still actively engaged in the day to day production of our foodstuffs. Fields are still being planted and harvested, livestock are still being raised and harvested. We have tremendous frozen stocks of many food items readily available in public warehouses.
The January 31, 2020 frozen food stocks in the U.S. are actually staggering. We have 480 million pounds of frozen beef, 563 million pounds of frozen pork, 1.2 billion pounds of frozen poultry (chicken, turkey, duck), just over 1 billion pounds of cheese, and 230 million pounds of butter. In addition, we have 1.1 billion pounds of frozen fruit and 1.8 billion pounds of frozen vegetables. Total food available in frozen storage equals just over 8 billion pounds. With just over 329 million people in the U.S., those food stores amount to 24 pounds of food for every man, woman, and child in the U.S., in just the excess frozen stocks.
So why are we panicking over food? Why do we believe that we will run out sometime soon? It is all because of panic buying. The reason for the bare shelves is not due to a lack of food items, but the inability of our transport system to keep up with the panic buying. We have only so many trucks and so many drivers. They cannot make more deliveries than they currently are.
In this time, it is very important that we not only have food available, but foods that are healthy for us. Foods that feed our bodies the vital nutrients we need to promote strong immune systems and ward off challenges like the flu and coronavirus. That is why we believe so strongly in producing foods through the practice of regenerative agriculture. That is why we believe in pastured proteins. Healthy soils promote healthy foods. Healthy foods promote healthy bodies. Healthy bodies have strong and vibrant microbiomes.
I will close today with a poem from imminent farmer/philosopher Wendell Berry. A poem of encouragement and hope.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry
Written By Dr. Allen Williams, Ph.D.
A champion of the grass-fed beef industry and the growing Regenerative Agriculture movement, Allen helps restore soil health, increase land productivity, enhance biodiversity, and produce healthier food. He also serves as Joyce Farms' CRO (Chief Ranching Officer). Learn more about Allen
