How can we learn from previous food production mistakes and pave a way for producing sustainable, nutritious, local meat?
The Covid-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerabilities of our globalised food system and highlighted the desperate need for local and regional supplies of healthy meat. We must replace industrial feed models, which are responsible for significant climate emissions, nitrogen pollution and animal suffering. Grass-Fed Beef for a Post-Pandemic World outlines a hopeful path out of our broken food system via regional networks of regeneratively produced meat.
In 2017, Ridge Shinn and Lynne Pledger went to market with Big Picture Beef, a company that partners with farmers across the northeastern United States to provide high-quality, 100% grass-fed beef. Their model has increased participating farmers’ access to wholesale markets, and their holistic grazing management techniques offer multiple benefits for the health and wellbeing of consumers, the environment and livestock.
In Grass Fed-Beef for a Post-Pandemic World, you’ll find information assembled from the fields of ecology, climate science, nutrition and animal welfare, along with stories from Ridge’s travels as a consultant on farms all over the world. You’ll discover how regenerative grazing can:
- restore degraded farmland
- protect against droughts and floods
- increase biodiversity
- combat climate change by reducing emissions and sequestering carbon
- contribute to regional economic development
- produce nutrient-dense, healthy meat for consumers
Grass-Fed Beef for a Post-Pandemic World is not just for beef producers, but for anyone wondering how our farmers can raise cattle while caring for the local and global environment.
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Ridge Shinn is the founding CEO of Grazier LLC, a.k.a. Big Picture Beef, a 100% grass-fed beef company partnering with farmers throughout the northeastern United States. Early in his career he became interested in heritage breeds of livestock and cofounded the group now known as The Livestock Conservancy. He was also the founding director of the New England Livestock Alliance, which helped farmers find markets for their meat. In addition to managing his Devon herd in central Massachusetts, Ridge has consulted all over North America, in New Zealand, England, Uruguay, and Argentina, and for the Lakota of the Cheyenne River Reservation. His work has been recognized in
Smithsonian, the
Atlantic, the
New York Times, and
TIME magazine, which dubbed him a “carbon cowboy.”
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Lynne Pledger is a writer and environmental advocate. She has worked with Ridge Shinn since the early 1980s to preserve heritage livestock breeds and increase regenerative grazing in the northeastern United States. She has also worked in affiliation with NPOs―including Clean Water Action, Sierra Club, and Upstream―on public policy issues such as waste reduction, climate change, and energy. She has been a guest lecturer on sustainability issues at UMass Amherst, Smith College, Leslie University, and the Harvard School of Public Health. In addition, she homeschooled her two children and one grandchild. Now living in western Massachusetts, she is writing a book of poetry.
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Gabe Brown is a pioneer of the soil-health movement and has been named one of the twenty-five most influential agricultural leaders in the United States. Brown, his wife, Shelly, and son, Paul, own Brown’s Ranch, a holistic, diversified 5,000-acre farm and ranch near Bismarck, North Dakota. The Browns integrate their grazing and no-till cropping systems, which include cash crops and multi-species cover crops along with all-natural, grass-finished beef and lamb, pastured pork, and laying hens. The Brown family has received a Growing Green Award from the Natural Resources Defense Council, an Environmental Stewardship Award from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and the USA Zero-Till Farmer of the Year Award.
