Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner

by Eileen Weber
 
On a crisp, fall evening, I dined with some very dear friends of mine. Good wine. Good conversation. And some surprisingly good beef. Curious, I asked what kind of meat it was. Was it a special cut? Did it come from an exotic place? No, it was just grass-fed. Even more interesting, the slices next to the grass-fed beef were corn-fed. There was a distinct taste difference.
 
While the corn-fed was juicy, flavorful, and certainly had the beef taste I’ve grown accustomed to, it was definitely fattier. The grass-fed was leaner and had a cleaner, more concentrated taste. The grass-fed beef was less filling, too. With the corn-fed, I felt like I’d just downed a Thanksgiving dinner and needed to unzip my pants just to breathe a little better.
 
The health benefits of grass-fed beef are many. For one, it's high in Omega-3 fatty acids, the kind you find in certain oily fishes. And, grass-fed beef doesn’t come with a side of hormones or antibiotics. There’s no need to give them any. They’re not bulked up on grain to the size of a third world country to sell as quickly as possible. They graze on grass and gradually grow to a proper size. As John Morosani of Laurel Ridge Farm in Litchfield says, that’s what cows are supposed to do.
 
“Cows eat grass and they’re good at it,” he said. “Feeding cows grain is just a mad science experiment.”

 
Morosani said that many people consider cows to be, well, stupid. But he says that’s really not true when it comes to eating what they’re supposed to. He says that the grass has different levels of nutrition depending on the time of year. The spring grass is different from the grass in fall. Cows have an innate signaling system to eat the grass that gives them the nutrition they need.
 
The farmers who raise their cows on grass say they don’t raise cows. They raise grass. The cows do all the rest.
 
For Larry Lampman, owner of Fox Hill Farm in Ancramdale, NY, it's not just about the cows. He says soil is one of the most important resources we have besides water. The soil feeds the grass. The grass feeds the cows. The cows fertilize the grass. It is all one big, sustainable life cycle.
 
Lampman says he specifically works with heritage cows like British White, Murray Grey and Red Devon. “It’s their genetics that makes them better to grow on grass,” he said.
 
Both farms, along with many others, can be found on EatWild.com, one of the premiere sites promoting grass-fed farming. The site, run by Jo Robinson, a journalist and environmentalist dedicated to pasture-raised animals, notes that raising animals in a natural environment has long-term environmental benefits.
 
Just compared to row crops of corn and soy, the soil content in pastures is significantly richer in nutrients. On her site, Robinson notes a study of six Minnesota ranchers who asked researchers to compare their grazed land with that of the surrounding farms found that the grazed land. They found that the grazed land had 53% more soil stability. The study also showed it had 131% more earthworms, substantially more organic matter, less nitrate pollution of groundwater, improved stream quality, and a better habitat for grassland birds and other wildlife.
 
Even better, the grass has actually been shown to absorb more carbon than trees. Pastures also have less soil erosion than farms that typically grow row crops.
 
 Robinson also pinpointed the government’s Conservation Reserve Program, which allowed row crops to revert back to pasture. The newly reverted pasture gained an average of one-half ton of carbon per acre per year during the first five years. This equals to about 18 million tons of carbon removed from the atmosphere.
 
It is debatable that we may never say goodbye to global warming. But that’s one heck of a good start.
 

It’s not often that I think about what happens to my food before it hits my plate. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss. But in this case, I found the pasture-roaming trail from farm to table an interesting one. And certainly, one I intend to repeat.

Photos courtesy of Fox Hill Farm and Laurel Ridge Farm.