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. 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. 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. 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. Learn more about Allen
Choosing a New Year's resolution can be challenging, and many of us tend to repeat the same ones each year, hoping for the best. In fact, research indicates roughly 60% of us commit to resolutions, but only about 8% stick to our goals after the ball drops.
Many of the tried and true resolutions we choose are to better our own lives, and without much repercussion, if we fall back to our old ways. This year, we ask that you consider a different kind of resolution, one that will not only improve your own life, but that can impact the future for entire generations.
As we close 2019, food production and environmental well-being have never been more threatened. Centuries of industrial agricultural practices have left us on the brink of environmental disaster, with eroded and unhealthy farmland, contaminated water sources, increasingly severe weather events from an unbalanced ecosystem, and significantly lower food quality. In our attempts to fight these problems, we ended up with more chemical use, more bare and tilled soil left exposed to the elements, and unhealthy modern animal breeds raised to grow extremely fast in confined and inhumane environments.
If industrial, and even sustainable farming practices continue, the United Nations estimates that we would only have about 60 years of farmable topsoil left. With 95% of our food coming from topsoil, it’s clear that change is needed, and that change is regenerative agriculture.
Regenerative Agriculture is a farming method that applies sound ecological principles and biomimicry to regenerate living and life-giving soil. Regenerative agriculture relies on nature, not harsh chemicals or disruptive practices like tilling.
If we restore the health of our soil ecosystem, we restore our own health, the health of our farms, our communities, and our planet. When a farmer is practicing true regenerative agriculture, we like to say, “You know it when you see it.”
What do we see? The return of beneficial insects and pollinators, like bees, dragonflies, grasshoppers, and butterflies. The return of birds such as ground-nesting birds, song birds, migratory birds, and waterfowl. The return of wildlife such as deer, raptors, turkey, and many other furry creatures. The return of soil that actually infiltrates water and restores and recharges our underground aquifers, natural springs, and waterways. The return of a diverse plant species population.
Regenerative agriculture offers a multitude of benefits for our farms, our environments, and our food, including (but not limited to):
So, in 2020, make a resolution to support the Regenerative Agriculture movement.
Here are four simple ways you can do that:
One thing you can do to pursue your resolution is to learn more about regenerative agriculture, the basic principles and terms, and how it differs from industrial and sustainable methods. By arming yourself with knowledge, you will be in a much better position to support regenerative farming in other ways.
Here are several resources to start with:
Maybe it’s unrealistic to say you will only eat or serve regeneratively raised products. Depending on your resources, it could be done, but why not start with something more achievable?
Challenge yourself to use regeneratively raised products a couple of times a week. Chances are, once you start, you won’t want to go back to industrially or even sustainably raised products that lack natural flavor and nutrients.
If you’re a chef, start by adding a couple of regenerative products to your menu, or as a special feature. Make sure you let your customers know what makes it so special!
Once you’ve made the choice to support regenerative, the question becomes, how do I find regenerative products?
Our advice is not to rely on claims, but to engage with farmers and producers directly. Regenerative farming is a complex system, and there’s no “set and repeat” formula that is right for all farms, so it’s important to get to know the farms that produce the food you purchase. Find out what they mean when they say regenerative. Are they just composting on overgrazed land, or have they embraced all of the principles, like livestock integration, and adaptive multi-paddock grazing? Ask about their regenerative practices, or to see them in action if possible. Most farms and organizations that are truly embracing regenerative agriculture will be eager to share with you and welcome you to their farm(s)!
You may be thinking… if regenerative agriculture is as good as we say it is, why isn’t everyone using it? One of the biggest reasons is because people don’t know about it. A second major reason for farmers not transitioning to regenerative agriculture is simply fear. Fear of peer pressure from neighbors, friends, family, and suppliers if they decide to farm differently. Fear of the mountain of debt most farmers carry. Fear of doing something very different than what they have traditionally done. This fear is real and prevents farmers from doing what they should.
Regenerative agriculture is just beginning to seep into the mainstream conversation. The more educated advocates are out there, the faster we can make progress.
Talk about regenerative agriculture with your friends, your family (it makes a great holiday table topic!), the restaurants you frequent, and your social media connections. If you’re a chef using regenerative products, brag about it on your menu! It’s our responsibility to keep the dialogue going about regenerative, what it can do for all of us, and offer support to those farmers moving to regenerative or seeking a transition.
As part of our efforts at Joyce Farms, we introduced educational farm tour events and presentations to help grow awareness, but it could be as simple as a conversation or reposting content on social media!
If you don’t have experience farming or working with soil, now is a great time to start! Take up gardening in your own yard or community garden, or, look into opportunities to volunteer at a local farm. Getting some first-hand experience with the land will give you more context and understanding as you learn about soil health and other regenerative concepts.
Happy New Year from all of us at Joyce Farms!
At Joyce Farms we pride ourselves in paying attention to the little things. Even the REALLY little things, like microbes in the soil. The world beneath the soil surface is full of life and incredibly complex, far more so than life above the soil surface. Without their action in the soil, we suffer. When they are present in large numbers and highly active, we benefit.
A single spoonful of healthy soil contains more life than there are humans on Earth.
When it comes to healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy animals and healthy people, the little things do matter --- a lot. That is why our focus on producing flavorful and nutrient-dense food starts with the soil, and not just the soil itself, but those tiny microbes residing in it.
The soil’s population of microbes is diverse, made up of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes, and others. For now, we want to focus on one -- mycorrhizal fungi.
Mycorrhizal fungi are microscopic thread-like organisms that play an incredibly important role in healthy soil, and therefore, in the production of truly healthy, nutritious food. We are now discovering how critical that role is, and what happens when they are not present in the soil in large numbers.
The activities of mycorrhizal fungi beneath the soil surface are just as sophisticated and purposeful as anything we can point to above ground.
Mycorrhizal fungi can create an incredibly powerful, interconnected exchange network between plants... much like the world wide web of soil. When given the chance, and not disturbed by degenerative farming practices, mycorrhizal fungi spread their feathery tendrils throughout entire fields, attaching to plant roots, connecting every plant in a web of constant communication and mutually beneficial trades.
Plants need nutrients from the soil, but most of those nutrients are 1) out of reach of the plant roots, and 2) bound in the soil and must be dissolved before the plants can absorb them. Mycorrhizal fungi can help. They can greatly extend the reach of the plant roots, and also produce powerful enzymes that break down nutrients and transfer them to the plant… but only for a price.
The mycorrhizal fungi want to eat too, and they prefer the sugars and fats that plants exude from their roots. So, in exchange for nutrients, mycorrhizae receive plant root exudates that are loaded with carbon (produced from CO2 pulled from the atmosphere during photosynthesis).
Mycorrhizal fungi and plants are able to make sophisticated, spur of the moment decisions about their trades, always negotiating the best “deal” they can. It is the world’s oldest bartering system.
In this delicate dance between plants and mycorrhizal fungi, plants can reward high performing fungi with more sugars and punish poor-performing fungi with less sugars. Fungi can also give more nutrients to plants that “feed” them more sugars.
Mycorrhizal fungi can "feed" more nutrients to a plant when it is “paying” them well, or they can store or "hoard" nutrients and wait for a better offer (either from that plant or other plants) before they release the nutrients.
For example, in one experiment, carrot roots and fungi were grown together in a petri dish divided into three equal compartments. Interestingly, in one compartment the carrot roots provided the fungi with more sugars than in the other compartments. The carrot that was willing to trade more sugar with the fungi received more nutrients in return.
These fungi can also move nutrients back and forth from “rich” regions in the rhizosphere to “poor” regions. In the poor regions, where nutrients are scarce, the plants are willing to pay more carbon-rich sugars to get them from the mycorrhizal fungi. Through this feedback system, soils that are lacking nutrients can quickly increase their nutrient availability through this mycorrhizal pathway. Nutrients flow both ways, too. Research shows nutrients oscillate back and forth through the mycorrhizal network every five minutes at precise timing.
As mycorrhizal fungi are forming their network, they use a sticky biotic glue called glomalin to attach to plant roots. Not only does this connect plants together over the fungal “exchange network,” it also binds tiny soil particles together into larger clumps of soil called aggregates.
When the soil is aggregated, it allows for increased oxygen and water infiltration. Without aggregates, rain pools on the soil surface, then runs off, eroding the soil and carrying tremendous amounts of topsoil, nitrates, phosphates, and harmful agricultural chemicals with it.
Mycorrhizal fungi also protect plants from drought by storing an “emergency fund” of water, for not-so-rainy days. Since mycorrhizal fungi can actually penetrate plant roots, they are able to directly place water molecules inside the plant roots for use in periods of dry and drought conditions.
However, like many other functions performed by mycorrhizal fungi, there is a selfish motive involved. They want to be fed during periods of drought, too. So, by placing the water molecules inside plant roots, they assure themselves that the plants have adequate survival to continue to supply them with steady meals of carbon-rich root exudates.
Different plant species produce varying arrays of what are called plant secondary and tertiary nutrient compounds, which are medicinal in nature and promote disease resistance and pest resistance in other plants. They also provide medicinal benefits to animals and humans.
These compounds are transferred from plant to plant via the mycorrhizal highway. Without this occurring, plants are far more susceptible to fungal diseases and to pest insects. In fact, mycorrhizal fungi are the principal immune system for plants against fungal root diseases.
In the past several decades, the use of fungicides by farmers has increased significantly, because typical agricultural practices (like tillage) destroy mycorrhizal fungi populations. In addition, the fungicides used to combat plant fungal diseases are not organism-specific, so they kill not only the target disease-causing organisms, but also the mycorrhizal fungi. This leads to continued disease, and continued use of fungicides, which becomes a vicious cycle.
That is why we practice Regenerative Agriculture at Joyce Farms.
By eliminating tillage, we stop the destruction of the mycorrhizal fungi. By implementing practices such as diverse cover crops instead of perpetual monocultures, and adaptive livestock grazing that stimulates mycorrhizal populations, we not only reduce, but eliminate the need for fungicides. We escape the vicious cycle and turn things back over to Mother Nature.
Soil microbes truly are the foundation of all health, both below the soil surface and above. More than 80% of all plants existing in the world today have developed relationships with fungi. Still others have relationships with bacteria in the soil. If we were to purge the soil of microbes, we would also purge the soil of plants, and purge our world of the ability to produce food.
Implementing agricultural practices that damage or destroy these soil microbes is only doing harm to ourselves and all life around us. Conversely, implementing true regenerative practices that foster, facilitate, encourage, and stimulate these soil microbes provides immense benefits -- our soil is healthy, our crops are healthy, our livestock are healthy, we are healthy, our ecosystems are healthy, and our climate is healthy.
These tiniest of creatures hold the key to solving the primary issues we face today that seem so daunting. If we simply provide for them, they will provide for us. That is why regenerative agriculture and soil health is so important to us at Joyce Farms, and why it should be important to you, too!
We are all familiar with erosion and the soil’s ability to wear away, but few people associate soil with growing upward. The truth is, just like we can use poor farming methods to cause erosion of topsoil, we can use regenerative farming methods to literally grow new topsoil!
Regenerative farming depends on an active and balanced carbon cycle, through which plants, soil, and grazing animals create a circle of life that is powered by sunshine. When the carbon cycle is active and balanced, there is a continuous flow of new, carbon-rich organic matter to the soil.
Plants capture energy from the sun and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Next, they use water and minerals from the soil to produce sugars. Some of those sugars are shared with soil microbes in exchange for mineral nutrients. Those root exudates add carbon-rich organic matter to the soil. Grazing animals keep the cycle going (more on that in a minute).
The question is - when all that new, carbon-rich organic matter is added to the soil, where does it go?
Soil is porous. You may naturally assume that any added organic matter would fill the existing pores or holes in the soil, making it more and more solid. If this were true, and you continued to add organic matter, at some point you would essentially be trying to farm on a slab of rock-hard granite.
The good news is, that’s not how it works.
In reality, soil rich in organic matter is more like a sponge than a slab of rock. It's more porous and holds more water. Carbon-rich soil is not rock-hard, but soft under your feet and easier to penetrate with a shovel. That’s because the soil volume has expanded upward, with the help of Mother Nature.
Here's how it happens:
Through regenerative farming practices, animals graze and naturally fertilize an area of land, trampling plants and other organic matter on the surface as they do.
Worms and dung beetles feed on the trampled matter and the manure. They “churn” what’s on the ground and what’s underneath, creating displacement of soil material from below the ground to above it.
Essentially, they excavate the soil from below the ground and put it on top. In the process, new void spaces, or pores, open up in the soil. This new porosity means the soil can hold more water and give access to flowing nutrients.
This is also why you may find a latent seed bank waking up and starting to grow in your soil, long after you thought the topsoil was eroded. This “churning” can carry seeds up near the soil surface, where they can germinate and grow.
The activity of the grazing animals also stimulates the soil microbial population, especially mycorrhizal fungi.
Mycorrhizal fungi produce biotic glues that bind the tiny soil particles together to create much larger particles, opening up significant pore space for water and oxygen infiltration and movement.
So if both organic matter and porosity are being added, and the soil can’t grow down or sideways without compacting, it can only be doing one thing - growing up!
Many experts and even textbooks will tell you that it takes 1000+ years to grow an inch of topsoil, but now we know we can do it much more quickly with regenerative agriculture. Farmers and grazers can add between 0.5% - 1.0% organic matter in a single year.
One of our farmers, Adam Grady, added 3 inches of new topsoil on his farm, in just 2 years!
The photo below was taken on his farm, where our Heritage GOS pigs and some of our Heritage Aberdeen Angus cattle are raised. That line of color separation you see is called the carbon line. The darker soil at the surface is new topsoil that has been grown from increased soil organic matter!
We can talk about our products, our heritage animals, and our regenerative practices all day, but nothing makes the impact of customers seeing and tasting for themselves on a farm tour.
Transparency is paramount for us at Joyce Farms, so we’re always happy to take customers out to the farms whenever we can. But last year we began hosting larger 2-day farm tour events that not only show the farms and animals, but really educate about why we do what we do, how we do it, and how our practices impact the bigger picture of human, animal, and environmental well-being.
Last week, we had our first Farm Tour event of the year. The 2-day event began with dinner, drinks, and a short introductory presentation at Ashley Christensen’s Bridge Club in downtown Raleigh.
There’s a reason Ashley was the James Beard Foundation’s pick for Outstanding Chef this year! The custom menu featured many of our Heritage products. It was a delicious way to kick things off!
Bright and early the next morning, we headed to the farms. Our first stop was in Kenansville, NC where we visited farm partner Adam Grady. Our guests were able to learn first-hand about his transition from sustainable to Regenerative Agriculture, and the incredible changes he has seen in only a few years.
We partnered with Adam a little over 2 years ago to begin raising animals for our Heritage Pork program. At that time, he was running a sustainable operation. Adam was willing to transition to Regenerative Agriculture, something we require for all of our Heritage farms, but it was not without a little healthy skepticism. After all, industrial practices are still the mainstream method that his neighbors and most farmers practice; they’re even still taught in agricultural school.
In a calculated leap of faith, Adam agreed to transition 30 acres to regenerative management- enough for us to begin our pork program. He worked closely with Dr. Allen Williams, to put regenerative practices in place.
Here’s what happened in less than one year:
After that first season, he said, “I wish I had just done it all!” The results were so incredible that now, he’s farming 100% of his land (over 1200 acres) regeneratively.
During our visit in Kenansville, our guests saw our livestock, but also examples of regenerative methods.
They saw our rotational grazing methods in action. We showed how we divide larger pastures into temporary smaller paddocks using poly wire, rotating livestock between those paddocks daily, sometimes multiple times a day. In fact, we moved some cattle while we were there, just to show quickly and easily this can be done.
We took a close look at the pastures themselves, as Dr. Allen Williams explained the 5 principles of soil health and how Adam implements each of them:
We talked about forbs (aka “weeds”) and Allen explained how they are actually a GOOD thing. They offer medicinal and anti-parasitic benefits to livestock when they eat just a few bites a day (which saves farmers money). They are also excellent microbe attractors because they are deeply and extensively rooted. Those roots send out root exudates or sugars that attract a wide variety of soil microbes, which are critical for soil health.
Adam showed some of his regenerative farming equipment, including the roller crimper he uses to turn live, grazed cover crop into a bed of organic matter that protects the soil. He uses a no-till planter to plant cash crops into that rolled bed of plant matter, for tremendously efficient growth and yield.
As the trolley ride continued, we talked about heritage breeds and how we are working to bring back some of these now-rare genetics that fell out of favor with the rise of industrial agriculture. First we visited the Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs that we raise for our Heritage Pork.
Then, we saw some of the Aberdeen Angus cattle used for our Heritage Beef.
On our last trolley stop, we saw the always impressive rainfall simulator and slake test demonstrations, to further display how land management practices impact the soil’s ability to absorb and hold water.
Our lunch pig pickin' was outstanding thanks to the folks at Original Grills who cooked a Joyce Farms whole hog for the occasion!
After lunch we hit the road for one of our Heritage Poulet Rouge® Chicken farms in Siler City, NC, managed by our farm partner Larry Lemons. Our guests were able to hear more about the steps we take to raise these birds, including bringing in breeder eggs from France and hatching them in our hatchery. They were also able to see multiple flocks of birds at different stages of growth, and get a first-hand look at the amount of space they have to run around and just be chickens!
We are so thankful to our guests who took the time to come out for a 2-day, information packed Farm Tour! All of us at Joyce Farms are incredibly proud of not only the products we produce, but how we produce them, and we are happy to have the opportunity to share more about that with our customers.
See more photos from the tour on our Facebook page!
Each year, Earth Day brings millions of people together to take action against threats to our planet, like climate change, desertification, and endangerment of native animal and plant species.
There are plenty of ways we all can give back to the planet: clean up trash, plant a tree, or volunteer for a conservationist effort, just to name a few.
As chefs and restauranteurs, you have another powerful opportunity to give back to the planet every day by using products from regenerative farms on your menu.
By serving products raised using regenerative agriculture (also known as carbon farming), you support a way of farming that fights threats to our planet and contributes to its rehabilitation from decades of industrial farming practices.
When you serve products grown regeneratively, you give back to the Earth by:
Regenerative agriculture can stop and even reverse climate change, which is the result of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Farming regeneratively builds soil health, and when soil is healthy and full of microbial life, it is able to draw down excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere where it can be used to grow plant life.
Think of how often you hear about reducing carbon emissions to stop climate change - probably every day. But reducing emissions does nothing for what is already there.
The fact is, even if we all stopped driving cars tomorrow, it would do nothing to fix the excess carbon dioxide already in our atmosphere. We need to put that carbon back into the soil, where it can be used. Regenerative agriculture does that and more.
This video from Kiss the Ground gives a quick primer on how the soil can help reverse climate change:
To produce healthy food for generations to come, we need healthy soil. Sadly, degenerative practices like tilling, chemical use, and overgrazing have left most of our soil degraded and barren.
Regenerative farms do not use chemicals or tilling, and use a variety of year-round cover crops to protect the soil from extreme temperatures.
Livestock graze, while naturally fertilizing the land and trampling organic matter into the soil.
Using adaptive grazing methods, the animals are moved to new areas of pasture regularly, allowing plant life to recover and preventing the effects of overgrazing. With a variety of plants, soil life and fertility thrive.
Regenerative farming requires integration of livestock, but that is only successful with animal breeds that fare well in pasture-centered conditions. Old-world heritage breeds are perfect for the pastured life, because they have hearty immune systems (eliminating the need for antibiotics) and flourish on what has always been their natural diet.
Before the rise of industrial agriculture, these historic breeds were preferred for meat production. Unfortunately, most fell out of favor as high yields became the priority in agriculture. Animals were selectively bred to grow bigger and faster in the name of efficiency and price. As a result, many heritage breeds are now threatened or endangered.
When you use heritage breed products, you help protect these breeds and our planet's biodiversity. For example, our Heritage Old Spot pigs are on the Livestock Conservancy’s list of endangered breeds. As we grow our Heritage Pork program, we continue to breed and grow our herd. In doing so, we are helping to preserve these historic genetics for future generations.
Since regenerative farming does not involve chemicals or pesticides, it does not add harmful toxins to the soil, which also prevents those toxins from running off and contaminating our rivers, streams, and other waterways. As the soil draws in carbon and becomes healthier, overall runoff is reduced because the soil is able to absorb water much more efficiently.
By choosing products from regenerative farms for your menu, like the meat, poultry and game products from Joyce Farms, you can take pride in serving memorable meals that are not only more flavorful and nutritious, but that help save the planet. Now that’s something worth bragging about in your menu notes!
The message is spreading about regenerative agriculture, and more and more farmers, consumers, and medical professionals are realizing the importance of making a big change, now.
One project taking big strides to promote the regenerative message is called Farmer's Footprint and is led by Seraphic Group and Dr. Zach Bush M.D. It's a powerful documentary series that shows how critical regenerative agriculture practices are in reviving the health of our environment and fighting chronic disease in humans. Their mission is to regenerate 5 million acres by 2025.
The first short documentary of the series was released last week and features our friend, Dr. Allen Williams. It shares the story of a small family farm in Minnesota transitioning from conventional farming to regenerative agriculture. It also presents eye-opening scientific findings from Dr. Zach Bush about the connection between destructive, chemically dependent farming practices and chronic disease.
Please take the time to watch and share this incredibly powerful film, and learn more about the project at farmersfootprint.us
Farmer's Footprint | Regeneration : The Beginning from Farmer's Footprint on Vimeo.
The love story between livestock and our land began a long time ago as large herds of grazing ruminants like bison roamed from coast to coast. Their natural behaviors helped shape the land as we know it.
As Dr. Allen Williams has explained, “from an ecological perspective, grazing and browsing ruminants have been an incredibly important part of every grassland, prairie, savanna, and woodland system. These ecosystems evolved under the influence of these grazing and browsing ruminants.”
After Mother Nature set them up, the animals and land flourished together, with a true give and take relationship. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, let’s take a closer look at why these two are so good together:
The land feeds the livestock with plant life
Grazing spurs plant regrowth and increased soil life
Historically, bison traveled across our nation in herds and would graze an area, then move on to another, never overgrazing any one spot. As the herds moved, the partially grazed plant life left behind would begin trying to regrow as quickly as possible.
To do that, the plants draw in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it to make sugars. They use some, and exchange some with soil microbes in exchange for important nutrients also needed for growth.
So basically, while the animals are enjoying a nutritious meal from the land, they’re also giving back by strengthening the soil. Each time they return and regraze (after complete regrowth), the process repeats, creating more and more microbial life in the soil and a variety of plant life above ground.
The land feeds the livestock with plant life
Livestock give the soil a protective cover
As livestock graze the land, they are also trampling the ground, creating a flattened cover of plants and grasses that protects and insulates the soil. As the trampled "mulch" of plants decomposes, more organic matter (carbon) is added to the ground. This helps build fertile and biologically active topsoil that is critical for ongoing productive and profitable farming.
The ground cover also creates a perfect environment for micro life, like bacteria, fungi, earthworms and dung beetles (all of which are important for forming new soil).
The land feeds the livestock with plant life
The livestock naturally fertilize the land
As livestock graze, they digest grasses and naturally fertilize the land, giving plant life access to all the nutrients needed to grow. Healthy soil can make use of this above-the-ground fertilization very effectively, but if the soil is already degraded, with no life and no dung beetles, it's unable to carry out this natural process.
As you can see, the relationship between livestock and land is strong - they need each other. Aside from providing meat, livestock plays a number of critical functions on a farm. Unfortunately, in recent years, industrialized farming drove quite a wedge between them. Farmers looked to machines and chemicals to do what livestock took care of naturally, which is expensive for the farmer, leads to dependence on chemical inputs, and produces food that lacks flavor and nutrients.
The fact is, livestock and farms belong together. In today’s world, we no longer have the natural, large roaming herds of bison that can carry out these functions. But by managing our farmland using regenerative practices, including adaptive multi-paddock grazing, we have a chance to put livestock and land back together, forever!
The Secret Is Out! Cows Are Not The Problem... It's How They're Raised.
Allen Williams on Replacing Monoculture Farms with Adaptive Grazing
Dr. Allen Williams Participates In New Study Of Adaptive Multi-Paddock Grazing
Adaptive Grazing: So Old It's New
As we enter the week of Thanksgiving, one thing we are extremely thankful for at Joyce Farms is the growing community of chefs, food and agriculture industry professionals, and consumers who are increasingly eager to learn about our mission and practices and how they promote animal welfare, regeneration of soil and ecosystems, and more flavorful and nutritious food.
Last month, we brought some of that growing community together for a series of four farm tour events. We welcomed chefs and culinary professionals from all around the country, and we were thrilled to find that they were just as eager to learn about what we do as we were to show them!
Our goal was to provide an educational experience on the importance of genetics, animal welfare, and regenerative farming as it relates to the flavor and quality of meat and poultry, and the effect different farming methods have on our environment.
Here's how it went...
Part 1: Bridge Club Dinners
Each farm tour was preceded with a dinner event the evening before, at Chef Ashley Christensen's Bridge Club in Raleigh.
The Bridge Club loft was a perfect backdrop for getting to know our guests better and enjoying a truly memorable meal of Joyce Farms products, expertly prepared by Chef Ashley and her team.
Each evening began with a few drinks, great conversation, plenty of delicious appetizers featuring Joyce Farms Heritage Poulet Rouge™ chicken.
Appetizers included picnic-style Poulet Rouge chicken with hot honey, Poulet Rouge chicken liver mousse, bison tenderloin tartare, deviled egg topped fried green tomatoes, and Poole's pimento cheese with saltines.
Next, we shared a mouthwatering family-style feast that featured our Heritage Beef and Heritage Pork. Main dishes were Chateaubriand of beef tenderloin and braised pork shanks with ramp chimichurri.
And while it doesn't look like it so far, we did more than eat and drink during our Bridge Club events! Before the meal, our guest saw a special screening of A Regenerative Secret, a recently released mini-documentary project that Joyce Farms sponsored and that features our friend Dr. Allen Williams along with Finian Makepeace of Kiss the Ground.
After each evening's dinner, we talked more with the groups about our mission and products, our unique heritage breeds, and our regenerative agriculture practices. We told our guests about the things they would see an experience on the farms the following day, including the recent damage from Hurricane Florence, which hit only two weeks before our first tour.
We prepared our guests to see real, working farms - not "show farms" like some producers use to put their best foot forward (and to hide their worst). We believe in full transparency, and in showing our customers the real story, including successes and challenges. Mother Nature can be unfair, and as farmers and producers, we have to learn to deal with, and recover from, those times. It was unfortunate that the pork farm was heavily flooded with rainfall from Hurricane Florence, and a lot of our pastures were damaged. Rather than canceling our tours, we chose to view the storm damage as a great opportunity to share more information about our regenerative farming practices and how they are helping the farm to recover more quickly.
Part 2: Days On The Farm
Our farm days were full ones with plenty to see and learn. We covered topics like animal genetics, soil biology, and regenerative agriculture, to name a few.
Each farm day started with a visit to Dark Branch Farms, owned and operated by our farm partner Adam Grady. Adam and his family primarily raise the Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs for our Heritage Pork, but the farm is also home to some of our Aberdeen Angus cattle. Our tour guests learned about the history and characteristics of these two old-world breeds, and how we are helping to revive heritage breeds like the Old Spot from endangerment or extinction.
Next, Allen Williams gave a powerful in-field lesson about regenerative agriculture practices and their potential to transform not just the food industry, but our environment overall. He spoke about desertification and the unhealthy state of most of the world's soil. He stressed the importance of healthy soil as a fertile growing environment for flavorful, nutrient-dense food for livestock and for us. With help from Adam Grady, he used real examples from the Heritage Pork farm to cover key regenerative principles like no tilling or chemical use, planting cover crops, and integrating livestock with planned grazing techniques to restore the health of the soil.
The regenerative lesson continued with a Rainfall Simulator demonstration led by a representative from the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Our guests saw how different kinds of land and grazing management affect soil health. For this powerful demonstration, samples of soil are used from different pastures that have been managed in different ways - some with degenerative practices like tilling or chemical use, others were managed using regenerative practices like livestock integration and rotational grazing without tilling or use of chemicals. These samples are placed in trays side to side under an overhead sprinkler, with clear buckets underneath.
When the demonstration begins, the overhead sprinkler simulates a rainstorm. When the water hits the soil, the samples that have been subjected to degenerative management produce much more runoff into the buckets below, indicating the soil is unhealthy and has poor water infiltration. This runoff causes erosion and carries away nutrients and sediment with it. The samples from pastures with regenerative methods in place are able to take in more water, which decreases runoff.
After the rainfall simulator, our guests had plenty of time to "digest" what they learned and ask questions while enjoying a Pig Pickin' on the farm! For all of our farm tour lunches, we teamed up with Original Grills in Raleigh, and they did an outstanding job cooking up one of our Old Spot hogs with all the fixins.
After lunch, we headed to the small farm where our Heritage Black Turkeys and some of our Heritage Poulet Rouge chickens are raised by farmer Larry Lemons.
Coming to the farms, seeing our practices, meeting the farmers, and hearing our story first hand is the very best way to get to know our company and understand the care that goes into our products. Thank you to all of our farm tour guests - it was truly an honor to host such passionate and talented groups chefs and culinary professionals!
Another big thank you to the following groups and individuals who helped make our fall farm tours a success!
It was early September 14, 2018 when Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, and very few were prepared for the wrath she would bring. Heavy rain and extreme winds pounded the coast and swept inward through the Carolinas causing a widespread emergency for the state.
Right in the path of the storm sat our Heritage Pork farm in Kenansville, NC.
As the cone of uncertainty became more certainly pointed in the direction of the pork farm, we were in constant communication with Adam Grady, the farmer who raises our GOS Heritage pigs and lives on the farm with his family.
Adam sprung into action to make preparations. Thankfully, because of our small scale operation and close relationship with our farmers, we were able to move quickly to safeguard the farm and livestock as much as possible.
In the week before the storm made landfall, the pigs were moved to a sacrifice pasture on higher ground where they would be safe from rising floodwaters. Normally, the animals are rotated to fresh pasture every 2-3 days to keep the pastures in good condition and to prevent excessive rooting, which helps regenerate the soil.
During the first day of the storm, we saw wind damage to farm houses as strong gusts peeled back the rooftops. Water rose rapidly in the pastures. As heavy rain continued overnight, water continued to rise, rivers overflowed, and fields and roadways were completely submerged.
By September 15th, the winds were subsiding, but rain totals were reaching 24 inches, putting much of the farm, and Kenansville, under water. At this point, we could not be completely sure that the livestock were ok, but conditions were not conducive to safely check all areas.
Two days after landfall, on September 16th, floodwaters in the area had already risen past the historical highs of Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
The rain had stopped, and we were thankful to find that the hogs were ok. Most areas were only available by boat at this time.
In a very short time, Hurricane Florence brought significant damage to the Heritage Pork farm, particularly our pastures and farm houses. We are, however, extremely thankful that our farm partner, Adam Grady, and his family are safe, and that we were able to protect the animals. This was our top priority as we braced for impact.
Now, we are beginning recovery efforts to rebuild our pastures and farm houses. Unfortunately, by having to keep the pigs in a sacrifice pasture for an extended period of time, we lost a great deal of our healthy soil and forage in that particular pasture. Others were damaged by extreme storm surge that engulfed the farm.
Keep an eye on our blog over the next few weeks for updates and more information on our recovery efforts. Thank you to all of you who contacted us during and after the storm with well wishes and offering support!
We are so excited to finally debut a new documentary project, sponsored by Joyce Farms, produced by Finian Makepeace of Kiss the Ground and featuring Dr. Allen Williams, Ph.D, Joyce Farms' Chief Ranching Officer and a leading expert in soil health and regenerative agriculture.
A Regenerative Secret pulls back the curtain on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and their detrimental impact on our ecosystem. More importantly, it offers an incredible alternative that most farmers, producers, chefs, and consumers aren't even aware of yet - regenerative agriculture.
In the video, Finian visits Allen Williams' farm in Alabama, where Allen demonstrates how regenerative methods can completely restore soil health, and at a rate that we previously never thought possible. These methods can also help reverse climate change by pulling excess carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it back in the soil where it can be used. You may end up asking yourself - why isn't everyone doing this? The main reason is that they just don't know. Help us spread the knowledge by sharing this video!
We hope A Regenerative Secret inspires more and more farmers to embrace regenerative agriculture, and encourages chefs and consumers alike to seek out responsibly raised products from farms that have implemented these practices. The future of our food system and planet depend on it.
If we continue using industrial and even sustainable organic farming methods, we are threatening both the long-term availability of the land to farm as well as our overall health. Regenerative agriculture practices can quite literally regenerate the land by rebuilding the soil, leaving it far better than our generations found it.
Learn more about Dr. Allen Williams, Ph.D
Learn more about Joyce Farms Regenerative Agriculture practices
In May, our Chief Ranching Officer Dr. Allen Williams, Ph.D. wrote a blog titled The Circle Of Life: How The Carbon Cycle Powers Our Ecosystem. In that blog, Dr. Williams said this:
“When the carbon cycle is in balance, carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere, then returned to its source in an ongoing pattern. However, since the dawn of agriculture thousands of years ago, humans have been disturbing that balance with degenerative farming practices, like tilling, that kill soil life and release too much carbon dioxide into the air.
Image credit: Kiss the Ground
Thanks to scientists from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, we can see just how carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere and the effect that practices like tilling actually have on CO2 production.
Using real-world data on atmospheric conditions, the emission of greenhouse gases and both natural and man-made particulates over the course of a year, the scientists produced a carbon dioxide visualization that simulates the natural behavior of the Earth’s atmosphere from January 2006 through December 2006.
The screen capture below shows the level of carbon dioxide (shown in red and purple) in the northern hemisphere on April 23. In March and April, when farmers are tilling to prepare to plant their crops, carbon dioxide is at its heaviest. Through the summer and early fall, as plants are growing and absorbing carbon dioxide, atmospheric levels of CO2 go down.
As a result, by September 20, as you can see here, the amount of CO2 in the northern hemisphere is negligible.
Unfortunately, as we go into the fall, carbon is released from the ground through harvesting. More often than not, the ground is left bare after harvesting. With no cover crops through the winter, when plant photosynthesis naturally decreases, the carbon dioxide again accumulates in the atmosphere through the end of the year and into the spring.
This screen grab from November 13 shows just how much CO2 has accumulated in less than two months.
Carbon dioxide is accumulating in our atmosphere in higher concentrations each year, resulting in the long-term rise of global temperatures. However, by eliminating tilling, adding cover crops, and even grazing those cover crops, we can help eliminate the spike of CO2 in the spring. And as untilled land becomes healthier, more and more carbon can be drawn down, and fall/winter CO2 levels from harvesting would go down as well.
Bottom line – tilling releases CO2, and no-till farming, coupled with cover crops and grazing, keeps the carbon cycle in balance. It’s as simple as that.
See the full NASA video below, and click here to learn more about our Regenerative Agriculture methods.
We are constantly amazed at the incredible results we see from Regenerative Agriculture on our farms. The proof is in the pudding, they say... or in this case, it's in the corn.
The photos below show a comparison of corn crops on different, but neighboring farms in Kenansville, NC. One of them is Dark Branch Farm, where our Heritage Pigs are raised, and the second is a neighboring farm, only a couple of minutes away.
Both photos were taken on May 29, 2018, and on both farms, the corn was seeded during the first week of April, 2018. Now, let's compare their farming methods:
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Dark Branch Farm - Kenansville, NC Corn Planted: First week of April, 2018 Photo Date: 5/29/18
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Neighboring Farm - Kenansville, NC Corn Planted: First week of April, 2018, Re-seeded third week of April Photo Date: 5/29/18
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It's important to note that on the neighboring farm that does not use Regenerative Agriculture, the first seeding failed, and the farmer had to re-seed. That means on top of paying additional costs for chemical inputs to maintain yield, the farmer also incurs a higher seed cost. While some re-seeding is normal/expected in crop farming, the crop at Dark Branch Farm (using Regenerative Agriculture) required zero re-seeding, and zero costs for chemical inputs. This is a great example of how Regenerative Agriculture is beneficial to the farmer as much as it is the land, environment, animals, and our food.
As you can see, the difference in results between the two farms is astounding, especially when you consider the proximity of the two locations! It's the same land, the difference is in how they manage it.
When we began developing our Heritage Pork program in 2016, we partnered with Dark Branch Farm and the Grady family to raise our GOS pigs. Adam Grady then began implementing Regenerative Agriculture on the farm, something we require of all our farm partners that raise our Heritage animals (the corn shown on his farm is milled on site into wholesome grains that are part of our Heritage pigs' diet). The transformation of his farm since that time has been remarkable to watch.
This successful corn crop is just one of the ways Adam has seen his land thrive since he began using Regenerative Agriculture. In fact, his farm was used earlier this year as the field site for the Soil Health Academy, a hands-on educational program led by Dr. Allen Williams (our Chief Ranching Officer), Gabe Brown, Ray Archuleta, and David Brandt, that teaches farmers and others in agriculture and food production about implementing the principles of Regenerative Agriculture.
Stay tuned for more Regenerative Agriculture success stories, here on our blog!
Kids learn about natural circles in school like the water cycle. The big idea there is rain falls, then evaporates back into the air, before coming down again as rain somewhere else.
Despite this simple training in circles, most of us think in lines. In a linear world, we fail to see the connection between precipitation and evaporation, or soil health and the quality of our food. In agriculture, line-based thinking has led to problems.
For decades, farmers have believed using chemical fertilizers increases their output of plants. Like a line, they believe one always leads to the other, failing to consider impacts on the rest of the ecosystem. The eventual result is a breakdown of natural cycles on their farms.
By understanding natural cycles, farmers can adapt and work with those cycles to see their land thrive for generations to come.
It’s time to leave line-based thinking behind and start thinking in circles again, and on pastures, the key circle to understand is the carbon cycle.
The carbon cycle has three components: plants, soil and grazers.
Let's start with plants.
All carbon starts in the air as the C in CO2. Through photosynthesis, plants take the carbon from CO2 in the air, combine it with hydrogen from water (H2O) in the soil and, using energy from the sun, make sugar (CH2O). Rather than being left with a puddle of sticky sugar on the ground, a plant’s metabolism takes that sugar and makes all of the complex molecules of what we recognize as a plant.
Water from the soil is the source of hydrogen in all plant molecules, and it cools the plant as it grows. But other elements and minerals are also required for plant growth. All of those non-carbon elements and minerals come from the soil.
We might have once thought that these minerals were just sitting around waiting to be taken in by the plant, but now we know that the microbiological system in the soil has to bring nutrients to the plants. The key here is that growing roots actually leak sugars. Basically, the plant ‘pays’ the microbes with some of its sugars to go out and bring back the nutrients the plant needs to grow.
Root death occurs when more than 50 percent of the plant leaf biomass is removed, so it's critical to keep the roots growing and pumping out sugars to feed microbes by never grazing more than 50 percent of the above-ground biomass. This can be achieved through rotational grazing. In doing this, we keep pumping a continuous stream of sugars into the soil and fuel the soil microbes to provide an ongoing stream of nutrients funneling back to the plant.
There is one important sub-cycle in all this—the nitrogen cycle. Nitrogen actually makes up a very small fraction of a plant’s total mass, but it’s critical for growth. Although air is highly abundant in nitrogen, plants are completely unable to make use of it directly.
But plants grew before synthetic fertilizer was invented, right? This was because microbes in the soil had the machinery to convert the nitrogen into a form plants could access. In healthy soil, microbes are not only mining the minerals from the dirt, they also are pulling the critical element of nitrogen quite literally out of thin air.
The final piece of the carbon cycle is grazing. Most of the biomass in grass, or any other plant, is tied up in complex polymers like cellulose and lignin, which are a stockpile of stored solar energy. This solar power is completely inaccessible to humans, but it is indirectly accessible to cattle. Cattle are part of a group of animals called ruminants, along with sheep and bison that chew the cud regurgitated from their rumen. Rumen is the first stomach of a ruminant, where food or cud is received and partly digested with the aid of bacteria, before passing on to another part of the animal’s digestive tract.
What enables these grazers to access that energy are the microbes in their rumens. Microbes in the rumen break down grass into fats that the animal can then use.
A ruminant is a solar-powered grass harvesting and processing miracle. Cattle that move across the land (using rotational grazing, eating no more than half the grass) leave partially digested biomass (i.e. manure and nitrogen-rich urine) spread evenly in their wake. What gets left behind is everything the grass needed to grow in the first place—a sort of customized fertilizer. Their trampling also provides an armor of plant life for the soil and feeds the soil microbes, producing new carbon and stimulating new soil life.
Together, the cycles of plant, soil and grazer form the carbon cycle in a pasture. It's powered by sunshine, but enabled by a complex and inter-connected circle of cycles where biological life does all the hard work.
With each turn of the cycle, more carbon is stored below the ground and microbes mine more nutrients to fuel more plant growth. The increasing plant growth is more nourishing to the animal because it has access to more nutrients in the soil. This ultimately leads to more nutrient dense foods.
A balanced carbon cycle can also prevent catastrophic climate change caused by excess carbon dioxide in the air.
Our atmosphere has always contained some carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses -- nature designed it that way. They play a critical role by trapping heat from the sun and using it to keep the earth warm and able to sustain life.
When the carbon cycle is in balance, carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere, then returned to its source in an ongoing pattern. However, since the dawn of agriculture thousands of years ago, humans have been disturbing that balance with degenerative farming practices, like tilling, that kill soil life and release too much carbon dioxide into the air. Today, carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere are higher than ever. By understanding and working with the carbon cycle, we can put the excess to good use by putting it back in the soil.
The bigger story isn’t just about cattle, grass and soil, but about all layers of life in an ecosystem. In the end, our objective is to keep this cycle going over and over, not letting carbon get stuck above or below the ground, which allows us to regenerate the land as we use it. We strive to keep the carbon cycle moving, as it drives the circle of life.
Dr. Allen Williams is a farmer, geneticist, former agriculture professor, and regenerative farming expert. His expertise helped develop and shape the Honest with Nature™ Regenerative Agriculture principles that we apply at the farms where our heritage animals are raised. Right now, Allen is part of a team of scientists involved with an exciting new study of Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing. The study will collect data to analyze how this grazing technique increases farm resiliency, contributes to carbon sequestration, improves soil biodiversity, and impacts animal wellbeing and productivity. Joyce Farms cattle are raised using AMP as part of our commitment to Regenerative Agriculture.
The study is funded by a $1.25 million grant from The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), a nonprofit established in the 2014 Farm Bill with bipartisan congressional support. The grant was awarded to the Arizona State University Foundation for A New American University, and has been matched with funding from McDonald’s USA for a total $2.5 million investment.
Principal Investigator Peter Byck, of Arizona State University, had this to say about how the research will be conducted and the role of participants like Dr. Williams: “We will study what these innovative farmers and ranchers have been researching for 10 to 20 to 30 years on their own land. We feel these producers are the original scientists with AMP grazing – and they put their livelihoods on the line for their research. We will simply measure their results.”
Flavorful, nutrient dense foods can only come from healthy land. Unfortunately, in America we have been destroying our land since the Europeans first arrived here hundreds of years ago. They began settling, farming, and replacing valuable grasslands with monoculture row crops (those famous “amber waves of grain”). In the process, they also killed off large populations of grazing ruminants like bison and elk, throwing the ecosystem out of balance. As a result, our soils lost their ability to adequately absorb and retain water, and the soil microbes that fix nitrogen from the atmosphere were greatly reduced in number.
As modern farming practices continued, our problems got worse. By the early 1800s, in the east coast states, we had lost approximately 10” of our original topsoil layer.
By the 1930s, we witnessed the environmental disaster known as the dust bowl. The ecological disaster was not a fluke of nature – it was caused by ill-conceived farming methods.
July, 1938: Modernized farming practices displace tenants from land in Texas during the Dust Bowl.
Over the past century, modern farming practices have largely continued. In addition to environmental problems, we have seen a drastic decrease in the nutritional value and taste of our food, and an increase in toxicity due to overuse of chemicals.
How do we fix this? Sustainable farming is the “trendy” term you hear today, but considering what we have done to our land, is it really the kind of environment we want to sustain? If we continue using industrial and even sustainable organic farming methods, we are threatening both the long-term availability of land to farm as well as our overall health.
At Joyce Farms, we have moved past sustainable farming to an even more effective approach – regenerative agriculture. The good news is, with the proper practices in regenerative agriculture, we can quite literally regenerate the land by rebuilding our soil, leaving it far better than our generations found it.
Regenerative agriculture is a method of farming that builds soil health and enhances ecosystem diversity. It ultimately offers enhanced profitability to the farmer, a more humane life for livestock, a much healthier ecosystem, and healthier food for all of us. For these reasons, we have become practitioners of and advocates for regenerative agriculture.
Regenerative agriculture is a complex idea, but here is the gist of it:
Conventional farming methods involve strict routines, separation of crops and livestock, and overuse of chemicals. These practices are damaging and unsustainable. Farmers using regenerative agricultural methods rely on the natural balance that Mother Nature provided rather than harsh chemicals, and they are able to adapt their systems to changing conditions.
The regenerative agriculture practices that we have in place at Joyce Farms have shown incredible results in rebuilding organic matter and biodiversity in the soil, leaving the land better than it was before.
Pictures above show the same farm. The left was taken while sustainable farming methods were in place. The right was taken after regenerative practices were implemented.
If you’re building a house, you start with the foundation, and the same applies for agriculture. Soil is the ultimate foundation for success. Without it, we have nothing. To regenerate the land that we have degraded, we have to start by restoring what should be underneath the soil surface: the microbes (our “soil livestock”).
What makes soil healthy? Microbes. 90% of soil function depends on microbes, so healthy soil should contain a strong microbial population. In every spoonful of healthy soil, there should be 50,000+ microbial species and billions upon billions of microbes. These powerful microbes produce soil “glues” that bind the soil together, allowing it to draw in more water and oxygen, which results in less runoff. They also solubilize minerals in the soil and slowly feed them to the plants, helping them grow.
In reality, no soils are completely mineral deficient, but in unhealthy soils, the minerals are bound and not available for plant uptake. In conventional farming, farmers rely on synthetic fertilizers and manures to compensate. Regenerative agriculture allows us to build soil health through a strong microbial population, so we can eliminate the expense of these artificial fixes that, for the last 100+ years, we thought necessary. But chemicals and fertilizers aren’t necessary – we can use nature's own system to do the things that she's been doing for thousands of years to produce highly functional soils.
So how do we build these microbial populations? Plant variety.
You have probably seen farms like this all across the United States:
Copyright: oticki / 123RF Stock Photo
This is an example of what regenerative agriculture is NOT. This is monoculture farming. Monoculture operations are based on planting one kind of crop, growing it to harvest, and leaving the land bare until the next season. Any plants that are not the selected species are considered weeds and killed with chemicals. However, we know that healthy soil depends on a strong microbial population, and that comes from a variety of plants.
Warm season forage mix in Joyce Farms cattle pasture
Every plant produces a different array of root executes that attracts a different array of microbes. The larger the variety of plants, the stronger the microbial population in the soil. Many of the “weeds” that monoculture farmers consider pests to their crops are actually vibrant forbs that are beneficial to grazing livestock, insects, pollinators, birds, and other wildlife.
Different plants also produce different arrays of secondary metabolites, which are highly medicinal to our livestock and wildlife. For example, some of these plants actually act as de-wormers for the animals, meaning the livestock don’t have to be chemically de-wormed. With monoculture and near monoculture systems, you don’t get those benefits.
Livestock are also extremely beneficial in fostering plant variety. Hundreds of years ago, when bison roamed freely, there were 300+ plant species growing all together across the grasslands. The bison grazed wherever they wanted and existed in immense herds packed together for protection. They moved a lot and trampled a lot, and that’s what created the diversity.
All of that variety still exists in the soil - it’s a latent seed bank waiting to be revived. Conventional farming methods suppress those seeds, but by grazing our cattle in a way that mimics the bison behavior, we can tap into that seed bank and recreate that old prairie ecosystem.
To mimic the bison, we raise our cattle and hogs in a rotational grazing method called Adaptive High Stock Density Grazing (AHSD). Rather than leaving the animals to graze on a large area for weeks, we contain them to a smaller area for a shorter amount of time. They forage on all the plants in that area – grasses and “weeds” alike – and then are moved to another area. The foraged area is then allowed to re-grow, naturally, using no chemicals or fertilizers. The plants that grow are the plants that should be there, not something we choose to grow or cause to grow artificially.
AHSD grazing methods in place on Joyce Farms cattle pasture
Studies have shown that with just 5 years of AHSD grazing, significant results can be achieved in terms of building soil organic matter, soil carbon and overall soil health. Adaptive grazing also creates competition among cattle, so they eat more of a mix of forage species. This helps them develop healthier, and tastier, beef.
Regenerative agriculture is a phenomenal system that has always been here, activated by the sunshine and the rain. It not only restores our land in terms of biodiversity and soil health, but also produces incredibly nutrient dense, vibrantly flavored food. It is a system we are proud to say is now the standard for our heritage farms.
Written By Dr. Allen Williams, Ph.D.
A champion of the grass-fed beef industry as well as cutting edge grazing methodology, Allen helps restore natural soil water retention and reduce runoff, increase land productivity, enhance plant and wildlife biodiversity, and produce healthier food. He also serves as Joyce Farms' CRO (Chief Ranching Officer). Learn more about Allen
Last month, NPR published an article that has sparked significant interest among chefs, farmers, and members of the food and agricultural industries at large. The article, found here, points out that the growing popularity of grass-fed beef may soon stall due to the depleting nutritional quality of the grasses being consumed by grass-fed cattle.
The issue raised in this article is very real, BUT it is indicative of ranchers who are grazing very conventionally, and nothing about our program is conventional.
The issue raised in this article is very real, BUT it is indicative of ranchers who are grazing very conventionally, and nothing about our program is conventional. Every one of the ranches sampled in the study are what we call "set stock" or "conventional" grazers. That means they do either no pasture rotations or rotate the cattle between pastures very slowly.
Recent studies pertaining to impact of different grazing practices on soil health parameters and plant species diversity show that conventional grazing practices contribute to a slow degradation of the soil, loss of soil carbon and organic matter, and loss of plant species diversity. However, adaptive grazing practices (part of the regenerative agriculture methods that we practice and teach) do exactly the opposite.
Adaptive grazing practices build new soil organic matter, increase soil carbon, significantly improve plant species diversity and beneficial insect populations (including pollinators), and improve the water cycle. The animals grazing these pastures are healthier as well.
So, while the research presented in the article is concerning, we already know the solution and are actively practicing it. The solutions is biomimicry and eco-mimicry. We are simulating what nature used to do with the positive impact of the large herds of wild ruminants that used to roam the extent of the U.S.
Over the next few weeks, we will continue to address the concerns brought out in this article with other research, and we would be happy to address specific questions in the comments, or you can send us a message.
Written By Dr. Allen Williams, Ph.D.
A champion of the grass-fed beef industry as well as cutting edge grazing methodology, Allen helps restore natural soil water retention and reduce runoff, increase land productivity, enhance plant and wildlife biodiversity, and produce healthier food. Learn more about Allen
We have talked about what is happening in agriculture — the dichotomy between farmers seeking ever higher yields to fix their financial woes, and those higher yields influencing lower prices. I also mentioned what has been happening with our soils and my concerns over what we are finding, with the caveat of hope. This month, I will set the stage for explaining where we are, where we’ve been, and where we need to go.
First, in agriculture, just like in broader pop culture, we have been seeking instant gratification. We have become similar to a lot of today’s kids. They have smart phones, tablets, iPads, etc. at their disposal 24/7 and are seeking instant gratification. If anything takes some time to learn, they become discouraged and often give up on it.
The advent of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, supplements, etc., has taught us to anticipate and expect almost instantaneous results. We think if we do not see visual results very quickly, then what we are doing is not working. So, what do we do then? We get upset and anxious and say to ourselves, “Well that didn’t work, so I’m going back to what I know works”. In the process of doing this we are giving up on biology and trying to work solely through chemistry.
In essence we are destroying biology in favor of chemistry because we believe chemistry works better and we are seeking instant gratification. We are thinking singularly.
I will say this, if what you are attempting to achieve through biology isn’t working, it is not the fault of biology but the fault of management. If one method isn’t working, don’t give up on biology, simply try another route. You need to constantly ask yourself questions about what you are doing and it’s potential impact, all the while being highly observant.
The problem with being highly observant is that it takes time. Time we think we don’t have. In talking with a large, respected Midwest farmer the other day, he told me that farmers are so busy simply trying to keep their heads above water that they don’t have time to “waste” trying to figure out all this cover crop and adaptive grazing stuff. He then went on to say that “if it worked so well, why haven’t all farmers already adopted those practices?” We’ve all heard that statement before and we all inherently know it is not a reasonable question. In fact, I could actually reverse the question back to the farmer and ask, “If what most farmers are doing now is causing them to lose money, why are they still doing it?”
In an October 13, 2016 article in Beef Producer, Alan Newport posed the question, “Can Ultra High Stock Density make 10x stock rate?” Interesting question. We know from experience and data that we can certainly see stocking rates increase two to four times within just 5 years when making the switch from conventional grazing to higher stock density adaptive grazing. In several of my past articles, I have detailed many of the benefits of adaptive grazing. Once again though, we have that pesky question, “If it works so well, why isn’t everyone doing it?”
The simple answer is they either don’t know about adaptive grazing or they don’t know how to implement it. Even those who are interested worry about how to initiate it without negatively impacting their financial positions. Many farmers and ranchers are so heavily in debt that they worry about doing anything differently. The truth is very few will suffer financially by better grazing management and moving their livestock more frequently.
Now that we see where we are, lets dive into where we have been and where we need to go. When our forefathers first settled on the eastern shores and then moved across the continent, they were looking primarily for fertile lands for agricultural purposes. In most instances they found them, but the fertility often played out within just a few short generations. Why? Tillage and a tendency towards monoculture agriculture. This manifested itself in a continuous westward migration, as settlers searched for more fertile lands to replace the land they left behind in the east. What nature had built up over thousands of years, we destroyed in a very short period of time.
How did nature build that initial fertility? One of the primary ways was through herds of large wild ruminants. According to a July 2015 article in The Wildernist, bison were a significant factor not only on the western plains, but all the way to the east coast of the present day U.S. Fossil records show that bison were quite common in the Southeastern U.S. from 200,000 years ago or more. The earliest known species of bison in North America was the Bison latifrons, a long-horned species that weighed up to 3000 pounds and had horns that were 6 feet long. At the time of their existence they had to contend with predators such as saber-toothed cats, giant lions, and dire wolves. These bison preferred an open woodland habitat which was common in the Southeastern region at that time.
Somewhere around 24,000 BP (before present time), the Bison latifrons was supplanted by the Bison antiquus, a smaller species weighing up to 2500 pounds with horns intermediate in size between the Bison latifrons and the modern bison (Bison bison). It is thought that the Bison antiquus was more of a migratory animal than the Bison latifrons. The Bison antiquus disappeared due to overhunting by man (early Native Americans). The Bison bison evolved from the Bison antiquus as a smaller species that was more agile and able to migrate over longer distances to escape the pressure from man and from apex predators.
Due to hunting pressure and the tendency to overhunt, North American bison populations fluxed in both total population size and by region. There was a period of time where bison were far less prevalent in the eastern U.S. and much more prevalent on the western plains. However, in the 1500s, Europeans (primarily Spaniards) visiting eastern regions of present day U.S. introduced infectious diseases that decimated Native American populations. As a result, the bison returned to the eastern portions of the U.S. They repopulated rapidly on the abandoned Indian farmland and grassy prairies of the east, feeding under the trees of the open woodlands. They made good use of the grassy understories and the mast crops. They also favored the canebreaks that were prevalent along the many river and stream bottomlands before wholesale clearing of bottomlands by the European settlers wiped out most of the canebreaks.
The Eastern bison were plentiful in the longleaf pine savannas, alkaline cedar glades, bluegrass savannas and woodland, the coastal prairies and marshes, and the Black Belt prairies of Eastern Mississippi and Western Alabama. Bison bones dating to the 1600’s and 1700’s were plentiful in Indian mounds located in Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, etc. Evidence of old “buffalo licks” still exists around the Southeast.
As the European settlers moved westward from the extreme east coast, they eagerly hunted the eastern bison as a source of meat and for their hides. By the late 1700’s, when the American Revolution was taking place, bison were already a rare commodity in the east. Most written records show that the last remaining eastern bison were killed in the eastern U.S. between 1775 and 1825. In Pennsylvania the last known bison was shot in 1801, in Louisiana in 1803, in Kentucky in 1820, and in West Virginia in 1825. Many of the trails used by the settlers were originally bison trails. These early trails have become modern state highways.
When the bison were exterminated from the Eastern U.S., we experienced a significant loss of ecological diversity.
The bison, as large ruminants, were able to maintain open areas in the eastern U.S. through their high stock density grazing and resultant trampling, eating acorns along the way and reducing tree germination. Due to the impact of the bison, as a large ruminant, habitat for a multitude of species was created. Their impact was key in the creation of soil organic matter and fertility. They encouraged plant species complexity and diversity through their grazing actions, and through seed dispersal as a result of their migratory habits. Many plant species that are rare, or even extinct, today were common when the bison roamed the eastern grasslands and open woodlands. They are not prevalent today because they depended on heavy grazing and trampling by large ruminants to reduce their competition. Bird, animal, amphibian, and insect species that used to be prevalent in the eastern U.S. due to bison presence included many species of insects that are unknown to modern man, toads, ground squirrels, burrowing owls, eastern prairie chickens, bobwhite quail, meadowlarks, and upland sandpipers.
Adaptive grazing, as we interpret it today, is simply a form of biomimicry. We are mimicking what the bison and other large ruminants used to provide in terms of biological and environmental impact.
We may be missing the eastern bison today but we can use our cattle to simulate the positive effects the bison had on our environment.
According to a study by the International Food Information Council Foundation, the majority of shoppers say taste has the biggest impact on their food choices — more than price, convenience, sustainability, or even nutrition. What that means for producers of grass-fed beef is that they can tout its nutritional and ecological superiority all day long, but if it doesn't taste good, people won’t eat it.
One of the biggest complaints about grass-fed beef is inconsistent taste and off flavors. The reality is, grass-fed beef can taste as good or even better than grain-fed beef — the difference comes down to three key variables: grass, grazing, and genetics.
If grass-fed beef doesn’t get the right forage – the perfect cocktail (as we call it) of mature grasses and legumes – it doesn’t always taste good. A lot of grass-fed cattle are raised in what’s called a “monoculture pasture” where the grasses are at a single root depth, and they draw their mineral content from only one layer of soil. The result is meat that can have a metallic flavor. However when grass-fed cattle are raised in multi-culture pastures, eating forage made up of a variety of grasses and legumes that provide a balanced mineral intake from multiple root depths, there is no metallic taste in the meat.
It’s not just the variety of things the cattle eat that matters. It also matters when they eat them. Grass-fed beef can have an off-flavor that tastes of liver or game when the cattle’s forage isn’t mature enough and contains too much protein and not enough carbohydrate (sugars). To prevent this, the forage can be measured for Brix. Without getting too scientific, Brix is a measurement of the sugars, amino acids, oils, proteins, flavonoids, minerals and other nutrients in a food. By monitoring Brix levels closely, the cattle can be brought to pasture for grazing when the forage is at optimum maturity, so they only eat the sweetest grass and have the best tasting meat.
Producing great-tasting grass-fed beef isn’t as simple as just switching to a grass-fed diet; you have to start with the right cattle. Most beef produced in America today comes from modern cattle that have been selectively bred to produce larger animals that finish well in a commercial feed lot; they just aren’t built for a grass-based diet. In fact, less than 5% of cattle genetics in the US will produce quality beef on grass.
Our Heritage Beef comes from true Aberdeen Angus cattle raised exclusively in multi-cultural pastures eating forage that is mature and sweet. Joyce Farms maintains a bloodline of this prized heritage Aberdeen Angus breed – the original Angus of 18th century Scotland.
There are a lot of different grass-fed beef producers out there, and it’s important to know that not all grass-fed beef is the same. At Joyce Farms, we go to these lengths because we’re just like you – if we’re going to eat our grass-fed beef (and we are), we want it to taste delicious (and it does).
