2005 Post Industrial Agrarian Paradigm

2005 Vermont Grass Farmers’ Association Conference Presentation Abstract
by Ridge Shinn

100% grass-fed ruminants are the centerpiece of the new post-industrial agrarian paradigm because they are the ultimate solar collector and wealth creator; this talk will suggest why you need the right kind and how to find or create them.

The Industrial Model of agriculture is broken and cannot be fixed

1. Heart disease; obesity; cancer; Mad Cow; E-coli; Excessive exposure to agricultural chemicals, antibiotics, and growth hormones through our food systems; Stress- both human and animal.

1. Nutrient loading; Erosion of soil and soil ingredients; Compaction and disappearance of a biotic living soil.

1. Rural economy and infrastructure erosion- Chuck Walters of Acres magazine says each dollar spent at the farm gate expands through the economy 7 times-it is not happening.
2. Look at the concept of parity-Cost of food has remained low since the 1950's in spite of tremendous increases in price for real estate, supplies, and every other consumable.
3. Erosion of the human and the family from the agricultural landscape

Today, the facts speak clearly about the disastrous results of the public policies and practices of industrial agriculture. We have virtually eliminated the agrarian and the farm family from farming. There has been a huge erosion of agricultural activity particularly in the Northeast and now there is a vacuum. There is still a lot of land that does not have houses built on it; lots of it is fallow; some is still being mined of organic matter by continuing to make hay with no organic inputs and lots of it is growing up with brush and trees. To illustrate: a recent article explains that "in the state of NH in 1838 there were over 438,000 sheep" whereas today in the whole northeast including NY state there are approximately 40,000 sheep. We can all see the disappearance of dairy farming in the northeast in the last 30 years.

What went wrong? Our quest for bigger & more volume obtained by relying on "cheap" energy led to a breakdown of the natural, biological systems; the ruminant, the soil, the forage and the consumer. We have tried to consolidate and concentrate agriculture on a grand scale: who can imagine diverting the Colorado River to irrigate the dessert of the Imperial Valley, who can imagine feedlots with 10,000 head of bovines kept on one small plot of ground for four months. The size and scale of farms, tractors, cattle, and energy/dollar consumption per unit of output turns out to be totally unsustainable. Today agriculture by and large is bad for animals, bad for the environment, and bad for the health of humans.

We could go back to the 1800's for a model of pre-industrial agriculture where everyone farmed and had a few (perhaps 4 or 5) cows with the surplus being aggregated at the general store and then sent on to larger markets. Some parts of this model make sense, but that model eventually failed in the northeast because a lot of the land was being mined and "farmed out" and folks took the option of moving west to mine that incredible fertility.

We could look to Europe, England and New Zealand for models that have stood the test of time. There are farms in England that have been farmed continuously for 400 years; How did they solve the problems of continuously rebuilding soil and animal health while continuing to harvest protein and fats for human consumption? There are some fascinating contemporary models of agriculture like the Alliance Pastoral in France, which are part of a sustainable agricultural system that returns wealth to the farmer. New Zealand ships meat into our markets because it has figured out the low cost method of production (grass) and it has created consistent sets of genetics for livestock production.

We are at a rare point in history where there is a vacuum in the agricultural economy, particularly here in the northeast, where we also have some of the largest, most discerning markets in the world. The opportunity is tremendous; the market segment identified as the LOHAS, lifestyles of health and sustainability, is a 227 billion dollar market. It is a perfect dovetail for a sustainable, agrarian mode of agricultural production-the post industrial agrarian model. This market is wealthy, already understands that the industrial model is broken and intuitively wants to buy from agrarians but they are also a very demanding market. They want consistent quality products, well processed and packaged.

The key to the success of the Post-Industrial Agrarian Paradigm is the ruminant. Given soil, some water, the sun and plants produce all the building blocks for life. It turns out that science is showing us that the animals that eat the plants produced by the well mineralized soil, water, and sun are some of the best possible foods for the human and are indeed vital (particularly the fatty acids) for human health and viability.

It seems simple, raise ruminants on grass and eat the products that result: milk, milk products, meat and fat for optimal human health. It's not so easy.

All of the successful models include the right ruminant for the environment and the management scenario. Ruminants are quite adaptable to many extreme situations: for instance, there are sheep in England that eat only seaweed and there are cattle that thrive in the Falkland Islands on 8 to 10' of peat and pitiful vegetation. We also have the model of the buffalo in the American West that excelled in their native environment by moving great distances north and south with the season. It is notable that they did not stray east and west very far although there were no fences. Albrecht, the preeminent soil scientist, speculates this is because of the natural balance of minerals in the soils and the moderate amounts of rainfall.

Our challenge is to find the right ruminants for our environment and then learn how to support them with proper mineralization of the soils and plants since they will not typically be free to roam over vast areas to choose the plants that carry the minerals, vitamins, proteins, fats and carbohydrates they need for optimal performance. Most of us do not have the decades it takes to let a set of ruminants naturally evolve to optimize our particular farm's conditions.

Here are the ingredients we need in our ruminants to succeed:

1. Moderate height, significant width and depth
2. Functional Efficiency
   a. Live calve every year
   
   b. Easy births
   
   c. Early maturity
   
   d. Grow entirely on grass
   
   e. Longevity

   Quality

   a. High butterfat or intramuscular fat

   b. Tenderness

   c. High volume of high value retail cuts

   Males that are prepotent and that create these desirable qualities.

These qualities in beef cattle, dual purpose (milk cattle) and sheep will create profitability and health from grass and lead to the success of the post-industrial agrarian paradigm.