February 28, 2025 • 96 mins
Join Dr. Carson Roberts as he sits down with John and Johnny Wood from Canton, Missouri, to discuss their experiences raising grassfed beef, goat, and lamb. In this episode: you'll hear John share his stories of providing nutrient dense red meat to world class professional athletes and his best marketing advice, while Johnny dives into his journey of building his small ruminant herds from scratch.
John's Website: https://grasslandbeef.com/
Survey: https://missouri.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7W2aUGOLZ0oKYjs
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Welcome
to the Productive Pasturespodcast, the podcast where we talk about
forage production, foragelivestock interactions
and the business dynamicsof grazing management.
I'm your host, CarsonRoberts, Missouri forage specialist.
Join me to visit withsome of the most progressive minds
in Missouri's forage and livestockindustry.
We'll share ideas that could help maximizeyour profitability
(00:31):
and productivity.
We'll get started.
Here with Peter Ballerstedt.
Okay, great.
And, we're here at the American Forage
and Grasslands Conferencein Kissimmee, Florida.
And it's it's been a pretty funconference where we're just wrapping up.
(00:54):
All the tables are bare now, and,
and so now it's timeto get into the serious conversations.
And and and talk a little.
But, Peter, would you mind sharing with,everybody where you're originally from?
And, some of your work experience and,and what you've done over the years.
(01:14):
I was born and raised in suburban
southeastern Pennsylvania,just outside Philadelphia.
So I'm not a farming background at all.
Came to realize I'd rather live
in rural areathan in suburban or urban area.
And then took a while to figure outwhat to do to earn a living and,
(01:38):
eventually started collegiate
courses on crop production
and the teacher at the two year schoolwas an alum of the University of Georgia.
So that got us from Northern New York
to Athens, Georgia, Undergraduate masters
then went to University of Kentucky,where I did my doctoral work.
(02:01):
After that, I was the forage extensionspecialist at Oregon State
University from 1986 until 1992.
Okay.
So, with your college,what did you major in?
Was it all in, forage or
or agronomy and whatnot,or what were your majors?
(02:21):
No, it was agronomy at the undergraduate.
When I completed that portionat University of Georgia.
And then, actually,it was a master's in weed science.
Okay.
And then, my study were focused at the doctoral
level was in forage productionutilization, ruminant nutrition.
(02:44):
Minor.
Oh, cool. Right.
So what were your projectsduring that time?
What? What were you looking at?
Well, I was looking at ingested behavior
of grazing steers,looking at how height and density
would affect biting rate, bitesize, grazing time.
Oh, cool.
All right, so I'm, I, I guessI'm probably familiar with your work
(03:07):
in a roundabout way during thatbecause that's something that,
if you ever listen to JimGerrish talks, he,
he talks a fair bit about,about the height of the forage
and how it, how it impacts consumption,and stuff like that.
So some of that was your work then?
Well, it's,it's, it's an area that I worked in.
(03:30):
Others have worked in Jim
Gerrish studied under Chuck Dohertyat the University of Kentucky.
Right.
And he was there just before you.
That's exactly right. Yeah. Exactly right.
And, others in other parts of the worldhave been doing this work, and it's why
we do what we do as we manage forage,and grazing livestock on that forage.
(03:52):
The idea that if we force animals
to graze too far down into the sward,
there, ingestion rate goes down.
Part of that's how they eat.
They don't have opposable thumbs.
Cutlery is not an option.
So they have to have forage that's,
you know, tall enough for themto wrap their tongue around.
(04:15):
Right, right.
And, and, and I, I guess the person,the human equivalent of that would be,
I guess if you're a midwesterner
or most places in America,is, is eating with chopsticks,
you know, because because,I mean, intake goes down a lot when you,
(04:35):
when you try to eat with chopsticksif you're not familiar with them.
And, and utilization for a cow
or their ability to consume, the forage.
That's the same way when you're,when you graze it below a certain point.
It's like eating with chopsticks.
A, I don't know what is it, three inchesis, is where it gets really difficult
(04:56):
for a cow to, to effectively graze
and get all of the foragethat she needs for a day.
And soand so you need to raise that up because.
Because it's really inefficient.
I guess you could also compare itto eating, you know,
eating a bowl of Cheerioswith, baby spoon,
(05:18):
you know, and,and how long that would take.
And it would take too long, and,and you still have other things
that you need to do in the day.
You need to sit down in the shadeand ruminate,
in you need to drink water.
And, and so, yeah,
I guess there's not enough hoursin the day.
Well, and animals tend to only spend
(05:41):
so many hours per day grazing.
Right, right.
So if the forage resource doesn't support
a high rate of intake,then their intake is going to be limited
because they'll get to the end of the grazing period.
Yeah.
And and it and and that varies a little.
(06:03):
I guess it used to be,thought that, cows would,
were unionized and they would only grazefor eight hours a day.
But it seems that, you know, cows cangraze for up to probably ten hours a day.
But still, they'rethey're going to leave work at five.
For the most part.
(06:24):
Whether the work is done or not.
And,and the work that you want them to do
is to eat grass and get fat,
so or,you know, grow a calf or grow a calf.
Yeah, yeah. Produce milk. Exactly.
And and of course then there'salso the fact that if you graze
(06:45):
that too short, you're going to harmthe regrowth potential of the grass.
Yeah, exactly.
And if you grow, grazetoo far down into the sward,
you start getting into lowerquality, forage.
And so that's going to influence animalperformance.
It's also going to influence, intake
because the rumen has to empty.
(07:08):
Yeah.
And so if we fill it up with low qualityforage it takes longer for that to empty.
There's not the room for more to come in.
So, with these systems,
there's many factors to accountfor, right?
That's that's pretty cool.
I didn't know that you were involvedwith that kind of work.
(07:28):
That that stuff, that type of workhas been very foundational
to a lot of the knowledgethat we have now in grazing.
It's really it's really neat thatand some of the,
some of the work with regrowthpotential and clipping height.
That's that's been very importantto grazing.
The fact that, that a taller grass
(07:50):
plant will grow quicker than a, than onethat's grazed shortly.
So, so there was a,there was a lot of work done.
I guess it started really in the 40sor the 30s and all the way up to the 80s.
A lot of that foundational work doneto, to understand,
(08:10):
why we need to be rotating animals.
And, and stuff like that, and,
and managing our grazing and, and whatnot.
So very cool.
So then you moved to Oregon? Yes.
I bet that was, near life
changing to to move from Kentucky.
(08:33):
You know, you've been on the eastern sideof the United States,
and then all of a sudden you'reyou're in Oregon
as the forage agronomist,working with a lot of alfalfa, I suspect.
And alfalfa is a very big crop in Oregon.
Yeah, primarily for hay.
A lot of that for export. Right.
Although there's a significant dairy
(08:54):
industryand significant beef industry as well.
Yeah, it's very different.
And one of theit sounds strange, but it took me a while
to think of the coast as being west,because I grew up where the coast was.
East. Right? Yes.
Just, and it's a very diverse state.
(09:17):
There's a tremendous variation
as you go from the northwest cornerof the state,
east in about five hours driving,
you can go from 100 some inchesof rainfall to less than eight.
Right.
And we there's a glacier in this stateand honest to goodness mountains
(09:40):
that cause rain shadows that and theto part the topography varies
tremendously because of the geologichistory, obviously, as it always does.
But some pretty cataclysmic eventstook place in relatively recent times,
and that essentially formedthe Willamette Valley,
which is the region that I live in.
(10:03):
It's where most of the grassseed production in the world takes place
for the major cool season,
perennial grasses, fescue and perennialrye grass.
And it's a diverse agriculture,
many different crops that each have
significant farm gate value.
(10:25):
But wheat is a big crop.
Potatoes is a big crop.
Hay of all kinds is a big crop.
Yeah.
There's there's probably noother place in the world that can grow.
Things like Timothy better than thatarea.
A little bit north of us,up in Ellensburg,
Washington, is a huge TimothyHay producing region.
(10:48):
And again, for export, a lot of that
gets double compressedand put into shipping containers.
Shipped, across the Pacific. Yeah.
Yeah, it's it's crazy.
And, you know, growing up in Idaho,
we had that export market, as well.
(11:09):
And, and it did influence, a bit, fairamount of hay production.
Of course, we had a lot of dairy,and I think
dairy was the main driverof the hay industry.
And in Idaho, at least, and, and so and,
and cow calf to a certain degree,but not very much.
But it always blew my mind
(11:31):
that hay was leaving from Idaho
and going all the way to, you know, China or or,
you know, the United ArabEmirates is a big one.
They buy a lot of hay now.
So it's really cool.
But.
(11:51):
Yeah. So.
So what were some of the thingsthat you worked with there when you were,
when you were at the,I guess it's Oregon State.
Yeah.
So Oregon StateUniversity is the land grant university.
I was the forage extension specialist.
I tried to support
grazing management, grazing systems,
(12:12):
try to support the idea that we're live
ruminant livestock producers are grassfarmers.
Right.
And and there's still a lot of,I’m a beef cattleman.
I'm a sheep producer.
And we do have a significant sheepindustry.
(12:33):
There was, at the time,
a major transition in the seed industry
and the industry
was transitioningfrom producing public varieties
to proprietary varieties.
(12:53):
And there was an explosion in turf
varieties of tall fescue and perennialrye grass.
And when I got there, the.
Tagging of seed as Oregon grown
and endophytefree was a major selling point,
But with the introductionof many of these turf varieties,
(13:16):
they purposely were breeding
and selecting to have a high level
of endophyte and a high level of alkaloid
for the agronomic benefit when in turf.
And people weren't necessarilypaying attention to that.
a lot of byproducts from the grass seed
(13:37):
industry ended up being.
Exposed to livestock.
Livestock ended up being exposed to it.
So so you're saying like an old seed farm
would becomewhat would become, grass farm?
Is that what you're saying, or.
No. No, or some of the seed turf seedwould be bought for cattle farms.
Well, that that could happen.
(13:58):
But primarily it was, while I was there,
they eliminated field burning inalmost all grass seed production.
Okay, they they outlawed it.They did? Yeah.
There was a terrible tragedywhere smoke drifted
across I-5, okay, from a field burn.
(14:21):
And, people drove into the smoke,and there was a multiple vehicle
fatality accident.
Oh, wow.
And that was sort of the final straw
in what had been simmering for decades.
Basically, the Willamette Valley air shed
means that it accumulates in Eugeneand never leaves.
(14:43):
Yeah.
And, and and that happens in valleys.
You know, I grew up in Cache Valley
and were one of the worstair quality areas in the nation.
But those little valleys,what happens is the
the smoke or smogor whatever comes into the valley.
In our case,the winds would blow it in from Salt Lake.
(15:04):
And, and it would settle in the valleyand then we'd get this,
this layering of, of different,
different air pocketswith different temperatures.
And it caused what they call an inversion,where you get,
cold on top of hot air
or something like that,and it traps the and,
(15:27):
or a layer where there's coldair, hot air, and then cold air again.
And it traps all that in there.
And, and there there were weekswhere it would be, you know,
ten degrees negative, ten degrees,you know, in that range.
And you couldn't see morethan, you know, more than a mile
because because of all the smog and stuff,really poor air quality.
(15:49):
But I, I think, living in the Midwest nowand working with Midwesterners,
I don't think you realizesome of the air quality issues that
that, that some of the Western peoplehave to face,
living in those types of valleys andwhat that can do, and it's pretty wild.
But anyway, with that elimination,
(16:12):
after you thresh out the seed
from, say, a tall fescue crop,
you're left with a significant amountof biomass.
Yeah.
That, typically gets,
what happens in Oregon is the standingseed crop is swath.
And then when it's dry,they run the combine through,
(16:35):
and then at some point after that,they'll run a windrow
or through and recut
and swath and then bale okay.
So now now we have a forage.
Now we have a forage.
It's not high quality by any means,but it's usable
forage clean in terms of weed content.
(16:57):
Often some of these varieties,
there's a significant amountof leaf regrowth.
Right.
That then gets baled up in any case,
feeding seed straw when seed is cleaned,
there's the screenings,
that's pelletized and used as a feed.
(17:18):
Oh, wow. Okay.
And it's, most of these fields
will see livestock grazing them.
Yeah.
To manage the vegetation,to keep it, to enhance
the development of reproductive tillers.
Right.
And so you have these animals
(17:39):
on this high
toxicity turf type fescue.
Right.
It was a cold winter. Yeah.
It was bred for longevity.
And and by so doing, you know,you have that high toxicity.
And and again because they didn't
(17:59):
have the experienceof the southeastern US.
Yeah.
They weren't quite as aware of thisas a so that rose up.
And that was a big issuetowards the end of my tenure. Wow.
You know, hey,testing those sorts of things.
It was standard stuff.
Yeah. Did animals die during that time?
(18:22):
There were cases of fescue foot.
There were also cases of animalsthat were affected
by what we would call rye grass stackers.
Okay.
Which is a related endophyte different
toxin, different conditionbut a similar sort of thing.
Yeah.
And and that was somethingthat they hadn't experienced and
(18:46):
so that was kind of a,
veterinary mysteryuntil I just happened to say, you know,
maybe, so, that,that was an interesting time.
Wow. Yeah.
So how long were you with, Oregon?
From 86 until 92.
(19:09):
Okay.
And then what did you do in 92?
I tried to be an independent consultantfor a period of time.
Okay?
I initially workedfor a private seed company.
They were importing, seedfrom New Zealand and then from, Europe.
Yeah.
And, at some point,then I went to work in 95
(19:33):
for, tech company called Hewlett Packard.
And I didtechnical writing and project management
and work for them until 2011.
Okay.
And then after 2011,officially retired or no,
I in 2011,I, was hired by Barron Brook USA
(19:54):
as their forage product manager
and worked in that capacity until 2018.
When I became forage ambassador
to advocate for ruminant animalagriculture and interact with,
extension specialistsand other industry members,
and to try to let them knowwhat was coming, and also to see
(20:18):
what sorts of issues were being identifiedthat,
you know, could maybe come back inand influence research and development.
Wow. Very cool.
And that's what you're doing now?
No, now I'm retired. Oh, okay. Okay.
Well, well, you still are.
And are you still are kind of actingas an ambassador
for forages, which is a great thing.
(20:41):
But but you're doing it, with,
with the health crowd that, the,
I guess the physicians, the dieticians.
Dieticians, general public.
Yeah.
And and that has been evolving since 2007
(21:01):
as a result of my own personal healthexperience.
2010,I started talking publicly about what
I had learned over the previous few years.
And also then I began attendingsome medical events,
meeting,
researchers and, and general practitionersand some specialists,
(21:25):
as well as dietitians and othersand learning from them.
In a broad topic that is basically reducedcarbohydrate nutrition
for addressingchronic illnesses in humans.
Yeah.
And I realized that I knew a lotabout ruminant animal
agriculture that these people didn't know,but were interested in.
(21:48):
And so then I began to bring sort of the,
the health message to the forage communityand then take the forage message
and ruminant messageto the non to the medical community.
Right.
So I've been doing that nowfor many years,
both domestically and,in other countries.
(22:09):
That's pretty cool.
So what was the what was your
I guess, momentwhen you, when you realized that,
that meat was actually healthy?
Go figure.
You know, I mean, it tastes great and,
and it feels and it makes you feel good,so why wouldn't it be?
But but what what made you realize, oh,
(22:31):
this actually is, is a acceptable food?
I read a couple books,
as part of my experience.
You know, if you, if you're goingto limit carbohydrate in your diet,
then by definition, fatand protein are going to be,
more.
(22:53):
Right? They're they're more required.
Well, yeah.
You have to eat somethingand something with.
Yeah, something with energy and indeedand, the first book that I read
was one called Good Calories,Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.
It came out in 2008.
And when I read that book, my initialreaction was I began to get mad. And.
(23:17):
I got mad about was angryabout how the livestock
industry had been demonized
and falsely accused of being the,
the cause of heart disease, for example.
Yeah.
Which that that's still very commontoday.
(23:39):
Unfortunately.
So, but what peopleneed to understand is,
the naturally occurring.
Saturated fats, that come in meat.
Are, have never been conclusively
shown to lead to heart disease.
(24:00):
And, and I realize that can bea controversial statement to hear.
Part of my mission is to share the
the research and,and share the references with people.
But for purposes of the conversation,red meat,
unprocessed red meat is not a health risk.
Okay.
Now, now,this may be the first time that somebody
(24:22):
you know on the podcast might hear this.
And, and so I think the thingthat would be commonly said, okay,
what about that studyor that that group of studies
that talks about,that, that looks at different countries
and their meat consumptionand their heart disease level,
(24:44):
specifically citing the United States
compared to a country like China,
or or, other
countries, European countries,where they have less red meat consumption
and supposedly have less, lessheart disease.
So I think, you know,
(25:04):
the studies that I'm talking about,what what's going on there?
And I completely agreewith what you're saying.
We've heard all this.
And so that that beginsto have a momentum of its own.
Yeah.
The, the truth is that the majority of,
(25:25):
recommendations, dietary recommendationsand policies are built on
something called nutritional epidemiologyof chronic disease.
So how that works is we're goingto identify a group of people.
And, you know, we'll start to study.
We'll collect some datathroughout the course of that study.
(25:47):
We're going to observewhat diseases show up.
We're going to try to collectsome information as we go along.
And part of that is what people eat.
We have very poor tools for doing that.
And it's it we're dealingwith genetically diverse groups of people
that differ in a whole lot of waysthat aren't always tracked
(26:12):
or identified, and all of them
could have a potential impact on health.
At the end of the day,they close the study,
they begin to do their research.
They, you know, they analyze this data,which is low quality data
by their own definition.
It's low quality evidence. Yeah.
(26:32):
And they theythen perform some statistical analysis
and then they say, okay, eating an egga day is worse than smoking a pack
of cigarettes or something to that effect,which is clearly nonsense.
Right.
And and everyoneshould recognize it as such.
And yet that's been a large that
(26:53):
that comes from this kind of an approach
which has been recognizedas a fundamental flaw.
And yetthose studies are relatively cheap.
They're relatively easy to do.
You can collect big numbers.
And so there's a you know, it'svery hard to find large groups
of genetically similar human beingsthat you can completely control
(27:16):
for long periods of time,know exactly what they eat.
And then, as a friend of minesaid, and sacrifice
them at the end of the studyto determine body composition.
Yeah.
You know, there are ethical considerationsat play here, no doubt.
But we have clearevidence of malnutrition
manifesting itself in different ways
(27:38):
across all income level countries.
And so here today at the
AFGC awards dinner,
researcher by the name of Gbola Adesogan
receives the Allen Award of IlluminationAnd he's done a lot of work
with trying to sustainably intensify
(27:59):
animal agriculture in the global South.
And the evidence
of human beings being harmedby too little food in their animal source,
food in their diets in other words,these people are not getting
the essential nutrition that they require
for proper development and function.
(28:22):
Right.
And, basically, vegetarians,but not by choice.
Exactly.
And that's the vastmajority of the world's vegetarians.
Yeah.
Like like something like 90some percent of the world's
vegetarians are economic vegetarians.
They're not philosophical vegetarians.Yeah.
Is is that a a,I guess a political issue.
(28:48):
What what is at some point, I guess so.
But, because of certain
very vocal, well-funded groups.
And they affect policy,they affect funding.
You know,poverty is a multi factor reality.
(29:11):
And so access to animal source foodcan be limited for a number of reasons.
But clearly affordability is one.
But distribution channels is another.
You know infrastructure is a problemin many countries.
You know, people living in
urban areasaren't going to have the access
(29:34):
to perishable animal source foodthat people
living in rural areas are going to havebecause it's right there.
Right.
So there's a number of factors,but something like between a fifth
and a quarter of global childrenunder five years old are stunted.
(29:55):
And this primarily means
it involves in addition to stature,
it means brain development is impaired.
So the WHO saysthe best source of nutrients
that human beingsneed to develop their properly, including
mental development,nervous system development are meat,
(30:19):
eggs, dairy and seafood for children 6to 24 months of age.
Wow. Unicef says that 69 six
9% of global children 6to 24 months of age,
do not eat meat, eggs, dairy, seafood.
So lots of reasons why,
but a big one is a lack of access,a lack of affordability.
(30:44):
And then you can look at things like if
if you look at the half of the world'scattle, live in Africa and Asia,
you know, we think of our cowherd in North America and it's like, wow,
what has to happen has to be there.
That's where the majority of humans are.
(31:04):
If you look across the entire global herd,
about 40% of that herd
gets vaccinated for any reason, right?
Only 40% of the global cattleget vaccinated.
If we could increase that to 60%,
we double beef production.
Really? Okay.
(31:25):
Just simple vaccinations like blacklegor any, any number of conditions
that are around, you know, becausebecause those, those African cattle
and I'm suspectingsome many of the Asian cattle
are much like our southeastern.
I mean, we're in Florida rightnow, and, and, conception
(31:48):
rates in those types of animalsare traditionally quite low.
And so I would suspect that's the casein a lot of these other countries
like Africa, or dealing with a poor quality forage.
And, and I as I understandit, people in Florida are tickled
pink with, you know,with a 70% conception rate or even 65.
(32:12):
But and, and I suspectthat's the same in other countries.
Sure.
Well, Brazil has three timesthe cattle that we do in North America.
They produce less beef, really.
And so that's all the factors of what we,
you know, consider modern, right.
Beef cattle practice and husbandryand it's, it's nutrition.
(32:34):
It's having productive forage species.
It's, it's, veterinary care
and it's genetics,reproductive efficiency.
Genetics. Exactly.
And it's not to imply that, you know,there aren't good managers out there.
Right.
But, and so the same thing would apply, again,
doctor Adesogan was looking because
(32:56):
here we had how many NIRs in the room?
There were twowho I think there were three.
There were three? Yeah.
And he's like.
In in the parts of West Africathat they're doing work
in, they bring bundles offorage to the market.
And it's the same price,no consideration for quality.
It's not something that has been spoken
(33:18):
about or taught or so that's a limitation.
Right.
It genetics is clearly an issue.
Herd management, you know, and I want to speak sensitively
about the cultural issues whereand number of animals is a sign of wealth.
(33:39):
Well, when you only need 1
or 2 bulls to make genetic progress,
that means getting ridof a number of animals and that
kind of conflicts with that,with that paradigm.
Exactly. Yeah.
And there are others as well.
And that's why we need many,many people working in this space.
(34:00):
But even seed production is an issue.
So if if we can identify betteradapted forage
varieties, well,how has that seed going to be produced.
Has a seed going to be marketed.
So, so a whole lot of infrastructuredoesn't exist that we sort of take for
granted because our ancestors developed itand it's still available to us today,
(34:24):
here in North America or in Europe,
or other parts of the world.
So, these are all thingsthat need to be addressed.
So it's it's I want to encourage
people who are coming into agriculturemay be students or what have you, that
improving the productivity and efficiencyof our global ruminant animal systems
(34:47):
is a requirement for us to meet
the needs of the world of 2050 and beyond.
And and that also flies in the face ofsome, you know, other narratives.
And that's okay.
We have the evidenceto support those kinds of statements.
We just need to communicate it better.
Yeah.
And so, I'm excitedabout the future of forage agriculture.
(35:12):
And ruminant animal agriculture.
I think that, you know, we can start with
you cannot have sustainable
food systems without livestock in general.
And ruminants in particular.
Right. Why why is that so important?
And you're speaking broadlyabout a number of row
(35:35):
crops,as they would be considered in America.
Why is that so important?
Well, the majority of the nitrogenthat's used to produce
the human edible crops in the worldcomes from manure.
Okay, so if we didn't have the livestock,
we'd have to replace those nutrientssomehow.
Yeah.
Basically,agriculture is the story of humanity
(35:59):
modifying its environmentswherever those were, to produce
more biomass than those environments wouldhave produced without the intervention.
Right, right.
Yeah.
As we shifted from hunter gatherers.
Right. Yeah. And so this is why.
And in the early days of agriculture
in America, it was the chicken, the cow, the pig,
(36:22):
the tomato plant, the carrots,the potatoes,
all on the same farm and the corn and theand everything else.
It it was all produced on the same farm.
And and you're saying that'sbecause of the ability for the animals
to process, biomass
into fertilizer,also into high value food.
(36:46):
Yeah. Right.
Because the majority of the biomass
that's produced by agricultureglobally is not human edible.
Exactly.
Even if I grow a crop of wheat or corn,over half is not edible by humans.
Right.
We're talking about the stems,the stocks, the chaff.
Exactly. Everything.
And and even in a lot of crops, it'sthat way, cotton is that way, half of
(37:12):
half of the stuff that goes into a cottonpicker is not usable cotton.
Right. Or maybe even more than half.
We're talking about,
or we're talking about the cottonseed, the gin trash.
All of that stuffthat that's actually used in agriculture.
(37:34):
I, you know, cottonseed is,is very important to the dairy industry.
For example, so there's there's tons ofthere's tons of those types of examples.
And, and what's frequentlylost in a lot of conversations
is you cannot replace food productionwith food processing.
Right?
So with a ruminant on grassland,
(37:55):
for example, we're taking a resourcethat we cannot utilize directly,
and we're running it through the ruminant.
And we get out highest value
meat and milk as well as other products.
And then we also havethat animal returning
most of the nutrients it consumesback to the area that it's in. Now.
(38:17):
Hopefully we're managing that animal.
So it goes on to the productive landand not somewhere else.
Okay. Yeah.
And then the point, that upcyclingis critical to the food supply.
Exactly.
And the point should be made thata lot of these, a lot of this land
is not capable of supportingany other type of food production.
(38:41):
Right.
Or we're talking about a highly
erodible steep landscape in some areas.
Areas without water, without enough waterto produce anything but grass.
We're talking about mountain meadows,right?
Right.
So imagine imagine a soccer field
as the Earth's surfacewithin the boundaries of the soccer field.
(39:04):
Yeah. So that's the surface.
The land surface,the agricultural land would extend from
one goal line, would not reach thethe near side of the center circle.
Okay. Right.
So it would be short several meters.
And then the arable land, the landthat is suitable for tillage
(39:26):
would only be from the goal line
within the penalty area,and would only reach the penalty spot.
Wouldn't even be the whole penalty area.
So that's the difference between arable,which you were just talking about,
and agricultural.
So arable land is agricultural land,but not all agricultural land is arable,
(39:47):
right.
And it's best in some casessole agricultural use
is to grow fiber, cellulose.
Sorry grass. Yeah.
To then run that through a ruminantand in addition
then even on the arable landin the southern plains, we can graze
(40:09):
cattle on wheat and pull them offand still have a wheat crop.
So we've got the animals and the cropson the same land in the same cycle.
Right.
In other placeswe might run some multi year rotation
where we run through a shortterm pasture in Oregon.
We're going to graze sheep on grassseed fields
(40:31):
which are crop arable land.
Or in Nebraskawe're going to graze corn stalks.
Yeah that it's such a neat concept that
an animal, can upcycle.
So, so the sheep, for example.
And, and this is a really good examplethat you just brought up.
The sheep are going from, mountain pasture
(40:54):
and sheep are pretty tough critters,all things considered.
As far as their ability to traverse, steep terrain.
And so they're accessing land that thatcould not be used in any other fashion.
And, and then so,so that's all their summer range
and then they're moving to, you know, crop
land that's used for another purpose,like you said, the grass seed.
(41:18):
And and they are they are consumingthe byproduct of something else.
So, so, if you, if you said, okay,
sheep, sheep production is bad
and we need to remove itall, all you would end up left with
is a bunch of unutilized forage, right,or unutilized,
carbonaceous mass, I guess.
(41:40):
And of course, we know thatthen there would be a decline
in the health of that community,that there have been examples
of where, cattle have been excludedfrom national parks in the name of
and what they found wasthe wildlife was actually harmed
because of the decline in the resourcethat supports the wildlife.
(42:02):
Yeah.
So, running animals, on grassland again,is the only form of agriculture
we have that can share the environmentrather than dominate it.
Exactly. Yeah. One of the best.
I mean, the the healthiest elkherd in the United States,
I would say right now is in Wyoming.
And I know there's, I've,
(42:22):
I've hunted there a number of timesand really good elk population.
I mean, they're,they're doing really well with their elk.
But they utilize as much of that
for beef production as they canbecause they are a cattle state.
Their, their politics are driven by cattle
because that's theirthat's their mainstay enterprise.
(42:44):
And and so to say that, to saythat, beef are bad for its,
wildlife,I think Wyoming would prove them wrong
because they've done a really good jobat their wildlife.
They have such an abundant wild life.
And you compare that to California?
And, and this is, this is really timelynow because California
(43:04):
is burning at the moment.
And and what I thinkthe mistake that they made
is they have a bunch of biomass,a bunch of forage that they didn't use.
And and now it'snow it's being used by the fire.
I, I think that's an interesting pointthat should be made.
Well, they're they're a firedominated ecosystem.
(43:27):
Yeah.
From before Europeans arrived.
Sure.
And, and they're not alone.
That's a common thing.
And clearly fire of natural and man caused
was a significant
part of the plains systems
(43:47):
and extending through the East coast,
in woodland management by the,the the Native Americans
that that were therewhen the first Europeans began to show up.
The forest conditionswere very different than they were.
100 years laterwhen a lot of settlement started.
(44:08):
Yeah.
I heard a really neat, by the way,I, I don't mean to cut you off,
but I, I heard a really neat,
presentation by a professor out of Canada,
and, and his dissertation work
was all about, the Native Americans
managing the the grasslands using fireand other means, and,
(44:30):
and and he andand and his focus was on the buffalo
and the buffalo populationsand what he found through his research
is that the reason the buffalo, became,
very close to extinction is because they,
they did not have the managers anymore.
(44:50):
The, the, illnesses
that came from European countriesthat killed so many Native Americans.
And those were the peoplethat were managing the buffalo herds.
And, and therefore, these bison herdsdidn't have,
they didn't have the manager to managethe grassland to, to keep it
and in a condition where it was healthy
(45:13):
and so and so it killed a lot of buffalo.
And he cited many instances,
where, where the,you know, the, the bison
and he any cites all the numbers ofbecause they have pretty good records
of how many, bisonwere killed by hunters.
And he said that was just,that was just a drop in the bucket
(45:35):
compared to the number of bisonthat that starve to death
through, no managementbecause their manager was gone.
Well, in the ecological terms,the capstone species had been removed.
Yeah.
And, there's a
there was a, CharlesSeemann with two N's wrote
(45:56):
a book 1491 and then another book, 1493.
And it was his attemptto assemble the scholarship
about the Americas pre and post Columbus.
And, one of the points
that he makes, citing researchers
is that when the very first Europeans.
(46:18):
So we're talking DeSoto arrived in
what's now Arkansas regionrecording everything.
You know, there were chroniclersthat were part of this expedition, right?
And they saw, densely settled landscape.
And there is no mention of themseeing bison anywhere along the way.
(46:41):
Right.
And 100 some years later,when the French come down.
The people are gone and there's bisonand there's bison everywhere.
And so there are some who suggest that
the vast herds of bison
were actually a pathological symptom
of this disrupted ecology,which is exactly okay.
(47:03):
Said. Right.
So, so itit caused a huge spike in population
because they were goneand because they had died
and they they did not exist priorto this European contact,
and they could nothave been supported much longer.
Because they were so out of balancewith the resource.
Right.
(47:23):
And there's some other, you know,passenger pigeon is another story
that seems to indicate a similarsort of thing.
And we can see, you know, what happened,
when the codfish were overfishedand then we had an explosion
of sea urchinsin the maritime waters off, you
(47:44):
know, Canada, similar sort of story.
So humanity has been in the business,
but we're not the only speciesthat modifies its environment.
Right.
But but somehow there'sthis attitude about humans
aren't part of nature,and they don't belong and they're bad.
And, there are a lot of worldviewsand narratives at play here,
(48:08):
and it gets you into the weedsand it gets complicated
and may get a little too controversialfor some, a researcher
that I collaborate with from Belgiumgave me three key points and number
one human health,public health will be harmed
by further restrictionsin animal source food consumption.
(48:32):
Number one.
Number two is, as I said earlier,livestock are essential
for sustainable food systems.
And if we eliminate livestock, it'snot good.
And ruminants are particularlyso for the reasons we've talked about.
Number three is these foods.
Animal sourcefoods are our ancestral foods.
They're part of our culture and heritage,regardless of where
(48:54):
those cultures and heritages emanate from.
It's how we pass along family stories,cooking and eating together.
It's it's, you know, the history ofthe recipes and all of that information.
And to have some outside sort of entity
try to impose a new eatingpattern is a form of imperialism.
(49:19):
And and so with those things in mind,
I then look at two sort of principles,starting points
for conversations that we people ofgoodwill ought to be able to agree on.
Number one,we ought to strive to provide adequate,
essential nutritionfor as many people as we can.
(49:39):
Right, right.
I agree and and number twois that we ought to focus on
restoring metabolic health.
And so that then opens uplonger conversations.
But we need people to understand thatright now
chronic disease is the biggest burdenthat we face globally.
And that is a form of malnutrition.
(50:00):
And there's a lot of storiesbehind all that, and I'm
happyto help people find that information.
It's a little longer than we can do
in one podcast, but I'm happy to come backand talk more about it.
So you start to put sustainablehealth care
being supported by appropriate nutritionfor the species, right?
(50:22):
Yeah.
And then we start looking at the foodsystems that are going to provide that,
as well as all these other aspectsthat are required for a modern society
that are going to support,you know, rule of law, land ownership,
you know, infrastructure,refrigeration, electricity,
you know, stable government,all those things are critical.
(50:44):
It's not one thing,but it's critical for people
to understand that humanity'sexistential crisis is insufficient.
Animal source food.
We have far better, far more
higher quality, scientifically
speaking, evidence of human beingsbeing harmed by too little
(51:06):
than any evidence of human beingsbeing harmed by too much.
Again, the the the the theory of being,you know, eating too much red meat
is, is based on low quality
scientific evidence of low confidence.
Yeah.
And yet we have evidence of children
(51:29):
from poor parts of the world
who are givenone egg a day as the treatment.
So the mother gets it while she's pregnantand while she's breastfeeding.
And then for the remainderof the first thousand days, right.
We make sure that child gets an egg a day
(51:50):
in additionto whatever else they're eating.
And at age nine, we can measurescholastic performance differences
in those childrenthat got one egg a day, right?
Well, meanwhile, in the US, in high incomecountries,
we've got 20% of women of childbearing agebeing anemic.
(52:11):
We've got probably morethan a fifth of adults
not meeting their essentialamino acid requirements.
So what is by necessity, happeningbecause of
a lack of access and affordabilityin the low and middle income countries
is happening in the high income countriesas a result of choice, misinformed.
(52:33):
Right.
And yeah, to to some degree,because in this country
that there are those who choose that, lifestyle, I guess you could call it,
and, and those who can't afford
or choose not to afford the,
I guess,I guess the, the proteins that they need.
(52:56):
I, I remember living in Mississippi,and I guess this was
I guess this was a couple of years agothat this happened.
I don't go into Dollar General much,but I went in there
one day, and,and and I don't like stores.
Anyways, butbut I had to go in there for something,
and I think I was buying eggs for my wife.
(53:18):
Anyways, the, the family in front of me,
young lady and her 2 or 3 children and,and I could tell
they were purchasing their dinner,just by, I, I don't know, it
just by the way that they looked,and it was about dinner time,
and each child had a a soft drink.
(53:43):
Each child had a candy bar, and,
and, they had a loaf of breadand some other things.
And, and that was their dinner there.
There were no proteins and, and and,
and this is in one of the lowestincome areas in the nation.
Sure.
That that part of Mississippi and I felt,I felt so bad for them.
(54:06):
But but it was very eye opening to methat, Yeah.
Okay.
So in the poorest part of this country,the people are not eating meat
in the wealthiest part of this country.
The people are not eating meat.
So that,
for, for different reasons,of course, I many times,
the many times the wealthy are sayingthey're not eating meat
(54:29):
because, of course,that's the trendy thing to say.
Yeah. Indeed.
Again, affordability, access
and appropriate animal source food. Right.
We're not going to ship beef to Indiaor pork
to an observant Muslim or or to Israel.
(54:50):
Sure.
And the danger here
is to sort of overgeneralize
and get yourself sidewaysinto conversations.
The, the, the basics is still that we
there is information that ought to inform
that protein ought to be of high quality,
(55:14):
which means from animal source,that ought to be the majority
of the protein we're consuming,not from plant sources.
Okay.
And that there's, there has been work,
you know, of course,they're going to estimate what people eat
when we get back into the same problemsof the quality of the data.
But people have looked at existing huntergatherers and tried to look at what
(55:38):
proportion of their food is coming fromanimal sources versus plant sources.
And one studyestablished a range of somewhere
between 100% to 30.
And the 30 was an outlier.
Okay, okay.
The mean was about 70.
So when you say huntergatherers in today's age,
(55:58):
are those people in America or.
No, no, wait, wait, where are thesetypes of populations located?
We're looking at peopleprimarily in Africa.
So remote populations in South America,and they're consuming things
like wildebeest and, all manner anything that hasn't eaten them first.
(56:20):
That's the story of humanity. Okay. Right.
So and of course, that makes sensebecause there's not a lot of cereals,
there's not a lot of sugar there.
That's not right. Yeah.
And, and then there are some interestingadditional points to throw in.
And that is others have said thatwhen a population consumes less than 30%
(56:43):
of their caloriesfrom animal source foods,
they see rapidly rapid increases
in deficienciesof a number of micronutrients.
Right?
Iron being one.
My iron trying a primary one.
Yeah. Globally.
But there are others.
And of course there are nutrients that areonly sourced from animal source foods,
(57:07):
and there are other nutrients that arebest sourced from animal source foods.
And plant source foodsactually contain anti
nutrient components that interferein the absorption of some elements.
Sure. Yeah.
And as plant scientistswere very familiar with that.
Because there's all sorts of anti quality
things that go into animal agriculture
(57:28):
that a ruminant has a difficult timeeating.
So. Right.
And then the so the last point and we in
U.S are not at 30 were below 30.
So we're eating less than 30% of our foodfrom any animal source.
Animal source, food.
And then again,
I already mentioned, another study saidthat if you're not getting more
(57:53):
than 50% of your proteinfrom animal sources,
you're probably not meeting your nonprotein nutrient requirements.
Right.
And you can try to relyon supplements as a solution.
But that's a tricky thing.
Gets into a number of other issues,not the least of which is resources
(58:15):
to buy them. Yeah.
So and and supplements aren't
typically and that, that there's,
there's a such thing as thatthere's a form of exactly
right of the supplementand it's not all created equal.
And calcium from a pill is not the sameas calcium from a whole food.
(58:36):
Yeah. Milk or something. Exactly.
And so, the
the majority of our caloriesin the American diet is now coming from
things that are now termed ultra processedfoods, primarily sugar,
industrial oils, processed,
cereal products, right.
(58:57):
Lots of starch, lots of starch,a lot of sugar,
oils, you know,
our consumption of animal fatshas declined
since the 50s and in fact, was decliningin the 50s and the 60s and the 70s.
Oh really. Okay.
And then they came out withthe thought that, oh, well, this disease
(59:17):
epidemic that they said they were seeing,that was the result of us eating
too much animal source fat.
And it was like, but your data itself,I mean, published
in the same thing,showed a decrease in consumption.
Interesting.
So again, there's there's many piecesI mentioned Gary Taubes, his books, Nina
Teicholz, psychology, wrote a book called,
(59:40):
Big Fat Surprise Why Butter,Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet.
This event,I was giving away copies of a book called,
Why We Get Sick, which focuses on
insulin resistancewith elevated insulin levels
being the root causeof most chronic illness.
(01:00:00):
And so I'm just trying to help peopleunderstand that reality
and then also tie inhow forage agriculture will be
an essential part of our sustainable foodsystems going forward and globally,
that we need people to help us achievewhat I call a ruminant revolution.
(01:00:20):
Like we had a green revolution.
Now we need now to sustainably increase
the productivity and efficiencyof our global ruminant animal systems.
Yeah.
And, Gbola Adesogan today told me aboutsomething called the White Revolution,
which was the dairy revolution in India,and I wasn't aware of that before.
(01:00:41):
So these things are happening.
It's excitingtimes. It's challenging times.
Yeah. Welcome to the herd, by the way.
Yeah.
So, your your message messagefor the American cattle producer.
My message to the, have faith
and courage, which you must have to bein the the cattle industry.
(01:01:02):
Yeah, most of us are optimists and.
Sure.
And and I want people to knowthat, in fact,
they are producing the healthiest formof nutrition for humans, right?
At the same time that hopefullythey're doing it in a way that protects
and maybe even enhances the environmentsin which they're doing that.
(01:01:23):
We know lots of people doing great workalong that line that that was
when I first heard that, the guy talking
said something along the along the lines
of, you are producing a superfood. Yes.
And,and it was the first time I heard it.
And I was like, wow, really?
I it's always been you are producing,
(01:01:46):
heart disease basically, right.
So you're destroying the planet. Yeah.
And of course, you'redestroying the planet,
but but none of those,if you really take a dive into the data
or think logically for that matter,none of those make sense, right?
You know, so so what can what can we do?
(01:02:08):
Those of us, you know,who are we're blessed with the opportunity
to study more or to,
you know, because people who are involvedin the business that's it.
Right?
I mean, often it takes, you know,today's life for many doesn't allow
the luxury of studying and doing a lot ofoutside reading and what have you.
(01:02:30):
They're busy attending to thingsthat, kind of, and that's changing.
Yeah a lot of, a lot of it in part
due to the technologythat we're using right now.
You know, with podcasts and stuff, people,if you want to listen to a book.
Yes. On on and I'm, I'm sure the onesyou suggested are probably on audiobook.
(01:02:51):
Yes, I know that because I own them.
Okay. Right.
So so yeah.
And,and I, I know several cattle producers
that listen to audiobookswhile they're working.
Exactly.
And, and so I think theI think the opportunity is there
for most Americans to educate themselveson a number of issues.
(01:03:12):
Yeah, that's a good point.
And still, I, I want to be available.
I'm now retired, so to have just
a professional fun getter,just just have fun in a number of ways.
Well, yeah, it's a strangedefinition of fun at times, but.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
I want to do whatI can to share this information.
(01:03:35):
And but I like to think of myselfas a bridge builder.
Okay.
Professor
Wilhelm Windisch out of TechnicalUniversity of Munich gave me that.
We need to stop building, like,silos and start building lighthouses.
So how can we become better lighthouses?
Yeah.
And I think of myselfas someone who's trying
(01:03:55):
to, you know, bridge the gapsbetween the silos.
You know, as people
get further and further trained,they know more and more about a narrower
and narrower subject area,which in a certain extent is inevitable.
But what can we do to foster
the communities between those disciplines
(01:04:17):
so that we can connect the dotsbetween human health and ruminant animal
agriculture, and sustainable healthcare and nutrient cycling?
By 2050, 70% of
humanity is going to live in urban areas.
So we're going to be shipping nutrients.
Why shouldn't we be shipping themin the most utilized form?
(01:04:39):
Animal source foods?
Yeah,because animals, they, they upcycle,
but but they really don't, exporta lot of nutrients.
Not to the degree that a wheat cropor a corn crop or a soy crop is going to.
Because they're because they're exportinga lot of they're they're
(01:05:01):
exporting a majority of the nutrientsaway from the field where animals.
Yeah. Managed managed correctly animals.
Because because within pastureanimals export their,
their manure andand urine to typically shade and water.
So yes.
Yes, exactly.
(01:05:21):
There are qualifications to all of these.
Yeah.
So so well-managed forage producersare doing a great service to this nation.
Indeed.
An essential an essential.
Yeah. Service.
And and that includes, from from whatI understand you talking about earlier,
that includes people that are runningfeedlots, and, and, basically
(01:05:45):
most people, pretty much everybodythat's involved in, animal production,
as, as being a help in a cure.
Yes. To a lot of diseases.
Really? Absolutely.
It's it's it'sa new way to think of things, perhaps.
And again, I encourage the conversationand the discussion.
(01:06:06):
But at the end of the day. Absolutely.
And if we think about people who are doinga good job managing grasslands
and the soil health and the infiltration,that, well, that's the watershed.
So people downstream, they benefitand the wildlife and fire suppression,
which we talked about, all of thosewhat are termed ecosystem benefits.
(01:06:28):
So there was a study where they tried toput some value on the ecosystem services.
And and when they came out,
like they could come up with a value
that was above,
you know,the rancher is and compensated for that.
Right?
But the value was significant.
(01:06:51):
And that's before we ever bring whatever
portion of the $4.8 trillionthat are spent in the U.S on health
care can be attributed to averting
or addressingthe chronic disease epidemic, right?
Some portion of thatwe ought to be able to, you know, say,
well, this is because of the health foodthat the Missouri cattlemen are raising.
(01:07:15):
And, yeah,and have a more holistic end to end.
You know, we tend to look at some of thesethings at the farm gate or at the,
you know, whatever, but not all the waythrough the population,
which is then supported to do other things
like innovate, invent, create,because they're not busy.
(01:07:39):
Yeah.
We're eating, into all of those things.
They're all important. Absolutely.
So yeah.
Well, the this has been a pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you for what you're doing for the, beef industry as a whole.
I think that, as this message grows,and I.
(01:08:00):
And I certainly hope it does, the the,
you know, it will be good for,agriculture.
Really.
More people come to value the productyour producing.
Maybe they start coming to you directly.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So opportunities abound.
I've already seen it grow over the briefperiod that I've been involved with it.
(01:08:22):
Right. Thank you for the opportunity.
Congratulations on the challengethat you've taken on.
It's Missouriis, is a wonderful forage state.
And there's lots of work to be done there.
And if there's anything I can do to help,
I hope you won't hesitate to ask.
Sure. Thanks Peter.
(01:08:46):
Thank you for listeningto the Productive Pastures podcast,
brought to you by University of Missouri'sNorthern Missouri Research Extension
and Education Center, Universityof Missouri Extension, and SARE.
The best way to help the showgrow is to complete the survey found
in the show notes.
Welcome
to the Productive Pasturespodcast, the podcast where we talk about
forage production, foragelivestock interactions
and the business dynamicsof grazing management.
I'm your host, CarsonRoberts, Missouri forage specialist.
Join me to visit withsome of the most progressive minds
in Missouri's forage and livestockindustry.
We'll share ideas that could help maximizeyour profitability
(00:31):
and productivity.
We'll get started.
Here with Peter Ballerstedt.
Okay, great.
And, we're here at the American Forage
and Grasslands Conferencein Kissimmee, Florida.
And it's it's been a pretty funconference where we're just wrapping up.
(00:54):
All the tables are bare now, and,
and so now it's timeto get into the serious conversations.
And and and talk a little.
But, Peter, would you mind sharing with,everybody where you're originally from?
And, some of your work experience and,and what you've done over the years.
(01:14):
I was born and raised in suburban
southeastern Pennsylvania,just outside Philadelphia.
So I'm not a farming background at all.
Came to realize I'd rather live
in rural areathan in suburban or urban area.
And then took a while to figure outwhat to do to earn a living and,
(01:38):
eventually started collegiate
courses on crop production
and the teacher at the two year schoolwas an alum of the University of Georgia.
So that got us from Northern New York
to Athens, Georgia, Undergraduate masters
then went to University of Kentucky,where I did my doctoral work.
(02:01):
After that, I was the forage extensionspecialist at Oregon State
University from 1986 until 1992.
Okay.
So, with your college,what did you major in?
Was it all in, forage or
or agronomy and whatnot,or what were your majors?
(02:21):
No, it was agronomy at the undergraduate.
When I completed that portionat University of Georgia.
And then, actually,it was a master's in weed science.
Okay.
And then, my study were focused at the doctoral
level was in forage productionutilization, ruminant nutrition.
(02:44):
Minor.
Oh, cool. Right.
So what were your projectsduring that time?
What? What were you looking at?
Well, I was looking at ingested behavior
of grazing steers,looking at how height and density
would affect biting rate, bitesize, grazing time.
Oh, cool.
All right, so I'm, I, I guessI'm probably familiar with your work
(03:07):
in a roundabout way during thatbecause that's something that,
if you ever listen to JimGerrish talks, he,
he talks a fair bit about,about the height of the forage
and how it, how it impacts consumption,and stuff like that.
So some of that was your work then?
Well, it's,it's, it's an area that I worked in.
(03:30):
Others have worked in Jim
Gerrish studied under Chuck Dohertyat the University of Kentucky.
Right.
And he was there just before you.
That's exactly right. Yeah. Exactly right.
And, others in other parts of the worldhave been doing this work, and it's why
we do what we do as we manage forage,and grazing livestock on that forage.
(03:52):
The idea that if we force animals
to graze too far down into the sward,
there, ingestion rate goes down.
Part of that's how they eat.
They don't have opposable thumbs.
Cutlery is not an option.
So they have to have forage that's,
you know, tall enough for themto wrap their tongue around.
(04:15):
Right, right.
And, and, and I, I guess the person,the human equivalent of that would be,
I guess if you're a midwesterner
or most places in America,is, is eating with chopsticks,
you know, because because,I mean, intake goes down a lot when you,
(04:35):
when you try to eat with chopsticksif you're not familiar with them.
And, and utilization for a cow
or their ability to consume, the forage.
That's the same way when you're,when you graze it below a certain point.
It's like eating with chopsticks.
A, I don't know what is it, three inchesis, is where it gets really difficult
(04:56):
for a cow to, to effectively graze
and get all of the foragethat she needs for a day.
And soand so you need to raise that up because.
Because it's really inefficient.
I guess you could also compare itto eating, you know,
eating a bowl of Cheerioswith, baby spoon,
(05:18):
you know, and,and how long that would take.
And it would take too long, and,and you still have other things
that you need to do in the day.
You need to sit down in the shadeand ruminate,
in you need to drink water.
And, and so, yeah,
I guess there's not enough hoursin the day.
Well, and animals tend to only spend
(05:41):
so many hours per day grazing.
Right, right.
So if the forage resource doesn't support
a high rate of intake,then their intake is going to be limited
because they'll get to the end of the grazing period.
Yeah.
And and it and and that varies a little.
(06:03):
I guess it used to be,thought that, cows would,
were unionized and they would only grazefor eight hours a day.
But it seems that, you know, cows cangraze for up to probably ten hours a day.
But still, they'rethey're going to leave work at five.
For the most part.
(06:24):
Whether the work is done or not.
And,and the work that you want them to do
is to eat grass and get fat,
so or,you know, grow a calf or grow a calf.
Yeah, yeah. Produce milk. Exactly.
And and of course then there'salso the fact that if you graze
(06:45):
that too short, you're going to harmthe regrowth potential of the grass.
Yeah, exactly.
And if you grow, grazetoo far down into the sward,
you start getting into lowerquality, forage.
And so that's going to influence animalperformance.
It's also going to influence, intake
because the rumen has to empty.
(07:08):
Yeah.
And so if we fill it up with low qualityforage it takes longer for that to empty.
There's not the room for more to come in.
So, with these systems,
there's many factors to accountfor, right?
That's that's pretty cool.
I didn't know that you were involvedwith that kind of work.
(07:28):
That that stuff, that type of workhas been very foundational
to a lot of the knowledgethat we have now in grazing.
It's really it's really neat thatand some of the,
some of the work with regrowthpotential and clipping height.
That's that's been very importantto grazing.
The fact that, that a taller grass
(07:50):
plant will grow quicker than a, than onethat's grazed shortly.
So, so there was a,there was a lot of work done.
I guess it started really in the 40sor the 30s and all the way up to the 80s.
A lot of that foundational work doneto, to understand,
(08:10):
why we need to be rotating animals.
And, and stuff like that, and,
and managing our grazing and, and whatnot.
So very cool.
So then you moved to Oregon? Yes.
I bet that was, near life
changing to to move from Kentucky.
(08:33):
You know, you've been on the eastern sideof the United States,
and then all of a sudden you'reyou're in Oregon
as the forage agronomist,working with a lot of alfalfa, I suspect.
And alfalfa is a very big crop in Oregon.
Yeah, primarily for hay.
A lot of that for export. Right.
Although there's a significant dairy
(08:54):
industryand significant beef industry as well.
Yeah, it's very different.
And one of theit sounds strange, but it took me a while
to think of the coast as being west,because I grew up where the coast was.
East. Right? Yes.
Just, and it's a very diverse state.
(09:17):
There's a tremendous variation
as you go from the northwest cornerof the state,
east in about five hours driving,
you can go from 100 some inchesof rainfall to less than eight.
Right.
And we there's a glacier in this stateand honest to goodness mountains
(09:40):
that cause rain shadows that and theto part the topography varies
tremendously because of the geologichistory, obviously, as it always does.
But some pretty cataclysmic eventstook place in relatively recent times,
and that essentially formedthe Willamette Valley,
which is the region that I live in.
(10:03):
It's where most of the grassseed production in the world takes place
for the major cool season,
perennial grasses, fescue and perennialrye grass.
And it's a diverse agriculture,
many different crops that each have
significant farm gate value.
(10:25):
But wheat is a big crop.
Potatoes is a big crop.
Hay of all kinds is a big crop.
Yeah.
There's there's probably noother place in the world that can grow.
Things like Timothy better than thatarea.
A little bit north of us,up in Ellensburg,
Washington, is a huge TimothyHay producing region.
(10:48):
And again, for export, a lot of that
gets double compressedand put into shipping containers.
Shipped, across the Pacific. Yeah.
Yeah, it's it's crazy.
And, you know, growing up in Idaho,
we had that export market, as well.
(11:09):
And, and it did influence, a bit, fairamount of hay production.
Of course, we had a lot of dairy,and I think
dairy was the main driverof the hay industry.
And in Idaho, at least, and, and so and,
and cow calf to a certain degree,but not very much.
But it always blew my mind
(11:31):
that hay was leaving from Idaho
and going all the way to, you know, China or or,
you know, the United ArabEmirates is a big one.
They buy a lot of hay now.
So it's really cool.
But.
(11:51):
Yeah. So.
So what were some of the thingsthat you worked with there when you were,
when you were at the,I guess it's Oregon State.
Yeah.
So Oregon StateUniversity is the land grant university.
I was the forage extension specialist.
I tried to support
grazing management, grazing systems,
(12:12):
try to support the idea that we're live
ruminant livestock producers are grassfarmers.
Right.
And and there's still a lot of,I’m a beef cattleman.
I'm a sheep producer.
And we do have a significant sheepindustry.
(12:33):
There was, at the time,
a major transition in the seed industry
and the industry
was transitioningfrom producing public varieties
to proprietary varieties.
(12:53):
And there was an explosion in turf
varieties of tall fescue and perennialrye grass.
And when I got there, the.
Tagging of seed as Oregon grown
and endophytefree was a major selling point,
But with the introductionof many of these turf varieties,
(13:16):
they purposely were breeding
and selecting to have a high level
of endophyte and a high level of alkaloid
for the agronomic benefit when in turf.
And people weren't necessarilypaying attention to that.
a lot of byproducts from the grass seed
(13:37):
industry ended up being.
Exposed to livestock.
Livestock ended up being exposed to it.
So so you're saying like an old seed farm
would becomewhat would become, grass farm?
Is that what you're saying, or.
No. No, or some of the seed turf seedwould be bought for cattle farms.
Well, that that could happen.
(13:58):
But primarily it was, while I was there,
they eliminated field burning inalmost all grass seed production.
Okay, they they outlawed it.They did? Yeah.
There was a terrible tragedywhere smoke drifted
across I-5, okay, from a field burn.
(14:21):
And, people drove into the smoke,and there was a multiple vehicle
fatality accident.
Oh, wow.
And that was sort of the final straw
in what had been simmering for decades.
Basically, the Willamette Valley air shed
means that it accumulates in Eugeneand never leaves.
(14:43):
Yeah.
And, and and that happens in valleys.
You know, I grew up in Cache Valley
and were one of the worstair quality areas in the nation.
But those little valleys,what happens is the
the smoke or smogor whatever comes into the valley.
In our case,the winds would blow it in from Salt Lake.
(15:04):
And, and it would settle in the valleyand then we'd get this,
this layering of, of different,
different air pocketswith different temperatures.
And it caused what they call an inversion,where you get,
cold on top of hot air
or something like that,and it traps the and,
(15:27):
or a layer where there's coldair, hot air, and then cold air again.
And it traps all that in there.
And, and there there were weekswhere it would be, you know,
ten degrees negative, ten degrees,you know, in that range.
And you couldn't see morethan, you know, more than a mile
because because of all the smog and stuff,really poor air quality.
(15:49):
But I, I think, living in the Midwest nowand working with Midwesterners,
I don't think you realizesome of the air quality issues that
that, that some of the Western peoplehave to face,
living in those types of valleys andwhat that can do, and it's pretty wild.
But anyway, with that elimination,
(16:12):
after you thresh out the seed
from, say, a tall fescue crop,
you're left with a significant amountof biomass.
Yeah.
That, typically gets,
what happens in Oregon is the standingseed crop is swath.
And then when it's dry,they run the combine through,
(16:35):
and then at some point after that,they'll run a windrow
or through and recut
and swath and then bale okay.
So now now we have a forage.
Now we have a forage.
It's not high quality by any means,but it's usable
forage clean in terms of weed content.
(16:57):
Often some of these varieties,
there's a significant amountof leaf regrowth.
Right.
That then gets baled up in any case,
feeding seed straw when seed is cleaned,
there's the screenings,
that's pelletized and used as a feed.
(17:18):
Oh, wow. Okay.
And it's, most of these fields
will see livestock grazing them.
Yeah.
To manage the vegetation,to keep it, to enhance
the development of reproductive tillers.
Right.
And so you have these animals
(17:39):
on this high
toxicity turf type fescue.
Right.
It was a cold winter. Yeah.
It was bred for longevity.
And and by so doing, you know,you have that high toxicity.
And and again because they didn't
(17:59):
have the experienceof the southeastern US.
Yeah.
They weren't quite as aware of thisas a so that rose up.
And that was a big issuetowards the end of my tenure. Wow.
You know, hey,testing those sorts of things.
It was standard stuff.
Yeah. Did animals die during that time?
(18:22):
There were cases of fescue foot.
There were also cases of animalsthat were affected
by what we would call rye grass stackers.
Okay.
Which is a related endophyte different
toxin, different conditionbut a similar sort of thing.
Yeah.
And and that was somethingthat they hadn't experienced and
(18:46):
so that was kind of a,
veterinary mysteryuntil I just happened to say, you know,
maybe, so, that,that was an interesting time.
Wow. Yeah.
So how long were you with, Oregon?
From 86 until 92.
(19:09):
Okay.
And then what did you do in 92?
I tried to be an independent consultantfor a period of time.
Okay?
I initially workedfor a private seed company.
They were importing, seedfrom New Zealand and then from, Europe.
Yeah.
And, at some point,then I went to work in 95
(19:33):
for, tech company called Hewlett Packard.
And I didtechnical writing and project management
and work for them until 2011.
Okay.
And then after 2011,officially retired or no,
I in 2011,I, was hired by Barron Brook USA
(19:54):
as their forage product manager
and worked in that capacity until 2018.
When I became forage ambassador
to advocate for ruminant animalagriculture and interact with,
extension specialistsand other industry members,
and to try to let them knowwhat was coming, and also to see
(20:18):
what sorts of issues were being identifiedthat,
you know, could maybe come back inand influence research and development.
Wow. Very cool.
And that's what you're doing now?
No, now I'm retired. Oh, okay. Okay.
Well, well, you still are.
And are you still are kind of actingas an ambassador
for forages, which is a great thing.
(20:41):
But but you're doing it, with,
with the health crowd that, the,
I guess the physicians, the dieticians.
Dieticians, general public.
Yeah.
And and that has been evolving since 2007
(21:01):
as a result of my own personal healthexperience.
2010,I started talking publicly about what
I had learned over the previous few years.
And also then I began attendingsome medical events,
meeting,
researchers and, and general practitionersand some specialists,
(21:25):
as well as dietitians and othersand learning from them.
In a broad topic that is basically reducedcarbohydrate nutrition
for addressingchronic illnesses in humans.
Yeah.
And I realized that I knew a lotabout ruminant animal
agriculture that these people didn't know,but were interested in.
(21:48):
And so then I began to bring sort of the,
the health message to the forage communityand then take the forage message
and ruminant messageto the non to the medical community.
Right.
So I've been doing that nowfor many years,
both domestically and,in other countries.
(22:09):
That's pretty cool.
So what was the what was your
I guess, momentwhen you, when you realized that,
that meat was actually healthy?
Go figure.
You know, I mean, it tastes great and,
and it feels and it makes you feel good,so why wouldn't it be?
But but what what made you realize, oh,
(22:31):
this actually is, is a acceptable food?
I read a couple books,
as part of my experience.
You know, if you, if you're goingto limit carbohydrate in your diet,
then by definition, fatand protein are going to be,
more.
(22:53):
Right? They're they're more required.
Well, yeah.
You have to eat somethingand something with.
Yeah, something with energy and indeedand, the first book that I read
was one called Good Calories,Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.
It came out in 2008.
And when I read that book, my initialreaction was I began to get mad. And.
(23:17):
I got mad about was angryabout how the livestock
industry had been demonized
and falsely accused of being the,
the cause of heart disease, for example.
Yeah.
Which that that's still very commontoday.
(23:39):
Unfortunately.
So, but what peopleneed to understand is,
the naturally occurring.
Saturated fats, that come in meat.
Are, have never been conclusively
shown to lead to heart disease.
(24:00):
And, and I realize that can bea controversial statement to hear.
Part of my mission is to share the
the research and,and share the references with people.
But for purposes of the conversation,red meat,
unprocessed red meat is not a health risk.
Okay.
Now, now,this may be the first time that somebody
(24:22):
you know on the podcast might hear this.
And, and so I think the thingthat would be commonly said, okay,
what about that studyor that that group of studies
that talks about,that, that looks at different countries
and their meat consumptionand their heart disease level,
(24:44):
specifically citing the United States
compared to a country like China,
or or, other
countries, European countries,where they have less red meat consumption
and supposedly have less, lessheart disease.
So I think, you know,
(25:04):
the studies that I'm talking about,what what's going on there?
And I completely agreewith what you're saying.
We've heard all this.
And so that that beginsto have a momentum of its own.
Yeah.
The, the truth is that the majority of,
(25:25):
recommendations, dietary recommendationsand policies are built on
something called nutritional epidemiologyof chronic disease.
So how that works is we're goingto identify a group of people.
And, you know, we'll start to study.
We'll collect some datathroughout the course of that study.
(25:47):
We're going to observewhat diseases show up.
We're going to try to collectsome information as we go along.
And part of that is what people eat.
We have very poor tools for doing that.
And it's it we're dealingwith genetically diverse groups of people
that differ in a whole lot of waysthat aren't always tracked
(26:12):
or identified, and all of them
could have a potential impact on health.
At the end of the day,they close the study,
they begin to do their research.
They, you know, they analyze this data,which is low quality data
by their own definition.
It's low quality evidence. Yeah.
(26:32):
And they theythen perform some statistical analysis
and then they say, okay, eating an egga day is worse than smoking a pack
of cigarettes or something to that effect,which is clearly nonsense.
Right.
And and everyoneshould recognize it as such.
And yet that's been a large that
(26:53):
that comes from this kind of an approach
which has been recognizedas a fundamental flaw.
And yetthose studies are relatively cheap.
They're relatively easy to do.
You can collect big numbers.
And so there's a you know, it'svery hard to find large groups
of genetically similar human beingsthat you can completely control
(27:16):
for long periods of time,know exactly what they eat.
And then, as a friend of minesaid, and sacrifice
them at the end of the studyto determine body composition.
Yeah.
You know, there are ethical considerationsat play here, no doubt.
But we have clearevidence of malnutrition
manifesting itself in different ways
(27:38):
across all income level countries.
And so here today at the
AFGC awards dinner,
researcher by the name of Gbola Adesogan
receives the Allen Award of IlluminationAnd he's done a lot of work
with trying to sustainably intensify
(27:59):
animal agriculture in the global South.
And the evidence
of human beings being harmedby too little food in their animal source,
food in their diets in other words,these people are not getting
the essential nutrition that they require
for proper development and function.
(28:22):
Right.
And, basically, vegetarians,but not by choice.
Exactly.
And that's the vastmajority of the world's vegetarians.
Yeah.
Like like something like 90some percent of the world's
vegetarians are economic vegetarians.
They're not philosophical vegetarians.Yeah.
Is is that a a,I guess a political issue.
(28:48):
What what is at some point, I guess so.
But, because of certain
very vocal, well-funded groups.
And they affect policy,they affect funding.
You know,poverty is a multi factor reality.
(29:11):
And so access to animal source foodcan be limited for a number of reasons.
But clearly affordability is one.
But distribution channels is another.
You know infrastructure is a problemin many countries.
You know, people living in
urban areasaren't going to have the access
(29:34):
to perishable animal source foodthat people
living in rural areas are going to havebecause it's right there.
Right.
So there's a number of factors,but something like between a fifth
and a quarter of global childrenunder five years old are stunted.
(29:55):
And this primarily means
it involves in addition to stature,
it means brain development is impaired.
So the WHO saysthe best source of nutrients
that human beingsneed to develop their properly, including
mental development,nervous system development are meat,
(30:19):
eggs, dairy and seafood for children 6to 24 months of age.
Wow. Unicef says that 69 six
9% of global children 6to 24 months of age,
do not eat meat, eggs, dairy, seafood.
So lots of reasons why,
but a big one is a lack of access,a lack of affordability.
(30:44):
And then you can look at things like if
if you look at the half of the world'scattle, live in Africa and Asia,
you know, we think of our cowherd in North America and it's like, wow,
what has to happen has to be there.
That's where the majority of humans are.
(31:04):
If you look across the entire global herd,
about 40% of that herd
gets vaccinated for any reason, right?
Only 40% of the global cattleget vaccinated.
If we could increase that to 60%,
we double beef production.
Really? Okay.
(31:25):
Just simple vaccinations like blacklegor any, any number of conditions
that are around, you know, becausebecause those, those African cattle
and I'm suspectingsome many of the Asian cattle
are much like our southeastern.
I mean, we're in Florida rightnow, and, and, conception
(31:48):
rates in those types of animalsare traditionally quite low.
And so I would suspect that's the casein a lot of these other countries
like Africa, or dealing with a poor quality forage.
And, and I as I understandit, people in Florida are tickled
pink with, you know,with a 70% conception rate or even 65.
(32:12):
But and, and I suspectthat's the same in other countries.
Sure.
Well, Brazil has three timesthe cattle that we do in North America.
They produce less beef, really.
And so that's all the factors of what we,
you know, consider modern, right.
Beef cattle practice and husbandryand it's, it's nutrition.
(32:34):
It's having productive forage species.
It's, it's, veterinary care
and it's genetics,reproductive efficiency.
Genetics. Exactly.
And it's not to imply that, you know,there aren't good managers out there.
Right.
But, and so the same thing would apply, again,
doctor Adesogan was looking because
(32:56):
here we had how many NIRs in the room?
There were twowho I think there were three.
There were three? Yeah.
And he's like.
In in the parts of West Africathat they're doing work
in, they bring bundles offorage to the market.
And it's the same price,no consideration for quality.
It's not something that has been spoken
(33:18):
about or taught or so that's a limitation.
Right.
It genetics is clearly an issue.
Herd management, you know, and I want to speak sensitively
about the cultural issues whereand number of animals is a sign of wealth.
(33:39):
Well, when you only need 1
or 2 bulls to make genetic progress,
that means getting ridof a number of animals and that
kind of conflicts with that,with that paradigm.
Exactly. Yeah.
And there are others as well.
And that's why we need many,many people working in this space.
(34:00):
But even seed production is an issue.
So if if we can identify betteradapted forage
varieties, well,how has that seed going to be produced.
Has a seed going to be marketed.
So, so a whole lot of infrastructuredoesn't exist that we sort of take for
granted because our ancestors developed itand it's still available to us today,
(34:24):
here in North America or in Europe,
or other parts of the world.
So, these are all thingsthat need to be addressed.
So it's it's I want to encourage
people who are coming into agriculturemay be students or what have you, that
improving the productivity and efficiencyof our global ruminant animal systems
(34:47):
is a requirement for us to meet
the needs of the world of 2050 and beyond.
And and that also flies in the face ofsome, you know, other narratives.
And that's okay.
We have the evidenceto support those kinds of statements.
We just need to communicate it better.
Yeah.
And so, I'm excitedabout the future of forage agriculture.
(35:12):
And ruminant animal agriculture.
I think that, you know, we can start with
you cannot have sustainable
food systems without livestock in general.
And ruminants in particular.
Right. Why why is that so important?
And you're speaking broadlyabout a number of row
(35:35):
crops,as they would be considered in America.
Why is that so important?
Well, the majority of the nitrogenthat's used to produce
the human edible crops in the worldcomes from manure.
Okay, so if we didn't have the livestock,
we'd have to replace those nutrientssomehow.
Yeah.
Basically,agriculture is the story of humanity
(35:59):
modifying its environmentswherever those were, to produce
more biomass than those environments wouldhave produced without the intervention.
Right, right.
Yeah.
As we shifted from hunter gatherers.
Right. Yeah. And so this is why.
And in the early days of agriculture
in America, it was the chicken, the cow, the pig,
(36:22):
the tomato plant, the carrots,the potatoes,
all on the same farm and the corn and theand everything else.
It it was all produced on the same farm.
And and you're saying that'sbecause of the ability for the animals
to process, biomass
into fertilizer,also into high value food.
(36:46):
Yeah. Right.
Because the majority of the biomass
that's produced by agricultureglobally is not human edible.
Exactly.
Even if I grow a crop of wheat or corn,over half is not edible by humans.
Right.
We're talking about the stems,the stocks, the chaff.
Exactly. Everything.
And and even in a lot of crops, it'sthat way, cotton is that way, half of
(37:12):
half of the stuff that goes into a cottonpicker is not usable cotton.
Right. Or maybe even more than half.
We're talking about,
or we're talking about the cottonseed, the gin trash.
All of that stuffthat that's actually used in agriculture.
(37:34):
I, you know, cottonseed is,is very important to the dairy industry.
For example, so there's there's tons ofthere's tons of those types of examples.
And, and what's frequentlylost in a lot of conversations
is you cannot replace food productionwith food processing.
Right?
So with a ruminant on grassland,
(37:55):
for example, we're taking a resourcethat we cannot utilize directly,
and we're running it through the ruminant.
And we get out highest value
meat and milk as well as other products.
And then we also havethat animal returning
most of the nutrients it consumesback to the area that it's in. Now.
(38:17):
Hopefully we're managing that animal.
So it goes on to the productive landand not somewhere else.
Okay. Yeah.
And then the point, that upcyclingis critical to the food supply.
Exactly.
And the point should be made thata lot of these, a lot of this land
is not capable of supportingany other type of food production.
(38:41):
Right.
Or we're talking about a highly
erodible steep landscape in some areas.
Areas without water, without enough waterto produce anything but grass.
We're talking about mountain meadows,right?
Right.
So imagine imagine a soccer field
as the Earth's surfacewithin the boundaries of the soccer field.
(39:04):
Yeah. So that's the surface.
The land surface,the agricultural land would extend from
one goal line, would not reach thethe near side of the center circle.
Okay. Right.
So it would be short several meters.
And then the arable land, the landthat is suitable for tillage
(39:26):
would only be from the goal line
within the penalty area,and would only reach the penalty spot.
Wouldn't even be the whole penalty area.
So that's the difference between arable,which you were just talking about,
and agricultural.
So arable land is agricultural land,but not all agricultural land is arable,
(39:47):
right.
And it's best in some casessole agricultural use
is to grow fiber, cellulose.
Sorry grass. Yeah.
To then run that through a ruminantand in addition
then even on the arable landin the southern plains, we can graze
(40:09):
cattle on wheat and pull them offand still have a wheat crop.
So we've got the animals and the cropson the same land in the same cycle.
Right.
In other placeswe might run some multi year rotation
where we run through a shortterm pasture in Oregon.
We're going to graze sheep on grassseed fields
(40:31):
which are crop arable land.
Or in Nebraskawe're going to graze corn stalks.
Yeah that it's such a neat concept that
an animal, can upcycle.
So, so the sheep, for example.
And, and this is a really good examplethat you just brought up.
The sheep are going from, mountain pasture
(40:54):
and sheep are pretty tough critters,all things considered.
As far as their ability to traverse, steep terrain.
And so they're accessing land that thatcould not be used in any other fashion.
And, and then so,so that's all their summer range
and then they're moving to, you know, crop
land that's used for another purpose,like you said, the grass seed.
(41:18):
And and they are they are consumingthe byproduct of something else.
So, so, if you, if you said, okay,
sheep, sheep production is bad
and we need to remove itall, all you would end up left with
is a bunch of unutilized forage, right,or unutilized,
carbonaceous mass, I guess.
(41:40):
And of course, we know thatthen there would be a decline
in the health of that community,that there have been examples
of where, cattle have been excludedfrom national parks in the name of
and what they found wasthe wildlife was actually harmed
because of the decline in the resourcethat supports the wildlife.
(42:02):
Yeah.
So, running animals, on grassland again,is the only form of agriculture
we have that can share the environmentrather than dominate it.
Exactly. Yeah. One of the best.
I mean, the the healthiest elkherd in the United States,
I would say right now is in Wyoming.
And I know there's, I've,
(42:22):
I've hunted there a number of timesand really good elk population.
I mean, they're,they're doing really well with their elk.
But they utilize as much of that
for beef production as they canbecause they are a cattle state.
Their, their politics are driven by cattle
because that's theirthat's their mainstay enterprise.
(42:44):
And and so to say that, to saythat, beef are bad for its,
wildlife,I think Wyoming would prove them wrong
because they've done a really good jobat their wildlife.
They have such an abundant wild life.
And you compare that to California?
And, and this is, this is really timelynow because California
(43:04):
is burning at the moment.
And and what I thinkthe mistake that they made
is they have a bunch of biomass,a bunch of forage that they didn't use.
And and now it'snow it's being used by the fire.
I, I think that's an interesting pointthat should be made.
Well, they're they're a firedominated ecosystem.
(43:27):
Yeah.
From before Europeans arrived.
Sure.
And, and they're not alone.
That's a common thing.
And clearly fire of natural and man caused
was a significant
part of the plains systems
(43:47):
and extending through the East coast,
in woodland management by the,the the Native Americans
that that were therewhen the first Europeans began to show up.
The forest conditionswere very different than they were.
100 years laterwhen a lot of settlement started.
(44:08):
Yeah.
I heard a really neat, by the way,I, I don't mean to cut you off,
but I, I heard a really neat,
presentation by a professor out of Canada,
and, and his dissertation work
was all about, the Native Americans
managing the the grasslands using fireand other means, and,
(44:30):
and and he andand and his focus was on the buffalo
and the buffalo populationsand what he found through his research
is that the reason the buffalo, became,
very close to extinction is because they,
they did not have the managers anymore.
(44:50):
The, the, illnesses
that came from European countriesthat killed so many Native Americans.
And those were the peoplethat were managing the buffalo herds.
And, and therefore, these bison herdsdidn't have,
they didn't have the manager to managethe grassland to, to keep it
and in a condition where it was healthy
(45:13):
and so and so it killed a lot of buffalo.
And he cited many instances,
where, where the,you know, the, the bison
and he any cites all the numbers ofbecause they have pretty good records
of how many, bisonwere killed by hunters.
And he said that was just,that was just a drop in the bucket
(45:35):
compared to the number of bisonthat that starve to death
through, no managementbecause their manager was gone.
Well, in the ecological terms,the capstone species had been removed.
Yeah.
And, there's a
there was a, CharlesSeemann with two N's wrote
(45:56):
a book 1491 and then another book, 1493.
And it was his attemptto assemble the scholarship
about the Americas pre and post Columbus.
And, one of the points
that he makes, citing researchers
is that when the very first Europeans.
(46:18):
So we're talking DeSoto arrived in
what's now Arkansas regionrecording everything.
You know, there were chroniclersthat were part of this expedition, right?
And they saw, densely settled landscape.
And there is no mention of themseeing bison anywhere along the way.
(46:41):
Right.
And 100 some years later,when the French come down.
The people are gone and there's bisonand there's bison everywhere.
And so there are some who suggest that
the vast herds of bison
were actually a pathological symptom
of this disrupted ecology,which is exactly okay.
(47:03):
Said. Right.
So, so itit caused a huge spike in population
because they were goneand because they had died
and they they did not exist priorto this European contact,
and they could nothave been supported much longer.
Because they were so out of balancewith the resource.
Right.
(47:23):
And there's some other, you know,passenger pigeon is another story
that seems to indicate a similarsort of thing.
And we can see, you know, what happened,
when the codfish were overfishedand then we had an explosion
of sea urchinsin the maritime waters off, you
(47:44):
know, Canada, similar sort of story.
So humanity has been in the business,
but we're not the only speciesthat modifies its environment.
Right.
But but somehow there'sthis attitude about humans
aren't part of nature,and they don't belong and they're bad.
And, there are a lot of worldviewsand narratives at play here,
(48:08):
and it gets you into the weedsand it gets complicated
and may get a little too controversialfor some, a researcher
that I collaborate with from Belgiumgave me three key points and number
one human health,public health will be harmed
by further restrictionsin animal source food consumption.
(48:32):
Number one.
Number two is, as I said earlier,livestock are essential
for sustainable food systems.
And if we eliminate livestock, it'snot good.
And ruminants are particularlyso for the reasons we've talked about.
Number three is these foods.
Animal sourcefoods are our ancestral foods.
They're part of our culture and heritage,regardless of where
(48:54):
those cultures and heritages emanate from.
It's how we pass along family stories,cooking and eating together.
It's it's, you know, the history ofthe recipes and all of that information.
And to have some outside sort of entity
try to impose a new eatingpattern is a form of imperialism.
(49:19):
And and so with those things in mind,
I then look at two sort of principles,starting points
for conversations that we people ofgoodwill ought to be able to agree on.
Number one,we ought to strive to provide adequate,
essential nutritionfor as many people as we can.
(49:39):
Right, right.
I agree and and number twois that we ought to focus on
restoring metabolic health.
And so that then opens uplonger conversations.
But we need people to understand thatright now
chronic disease is the biggest burdenthat we face globally.
And that is a form of malnutrition.
(50:00):
And there's a lot of storiesbehind all that, and I'm
happyto help people find that information.
It's a little longer than we can do
in one podcast, but I'm happy to come backand talk more about it.
So you start to put sustainablehealth care
being supported by appropriate nutritionfor the species, right?
(50:22):
Yeah.
And then we start looking at the foodsystems that are going to provide that,
as well as all these other aspectsthat are required for a modern society
that are going to support,you know, rule of law, land ownership,
you know, infrastructure,refrigeration, electricity,
you know, stable government,all those things are critical.
(50:44):
It's not one thing,but it's critical for people
to understand that humanity'sexistential crisis is insufficient.
Animal source food.
We have far better, far more
higher quality, scientifically
speaking, evidence of human beingsbeing harmed by too little
(51:06):
than any evidence of human beingsbeing harmed by too much.
Again, the the the the theory of being,you know, eating too much red meat
is, is based on low quality
scientific evidence of low confidence.
Yeah.
And yet we have evidence of children
(51:29):
from poor parts of the world
who are givenone egg a day as the treatment.
So the mother gets it while she's pregnantand while she's breastfeeding.
And then for the remainderof the first thousand days, right.
We make sure that child gets an egg a day
(51:50):
in additionto whatever else they're eating.
And at age nine, we can measurescholastic performance differences
in those childrenthat got one egg a day, right?
Well, meanwhile, in the US, in high incomecountries,
we've got 20% of women of childbearing agebeing anemic.
(52:11):
We've got probably morethan a fifth of adults
not meeting their essentialamino acid requirements.
So what is by necessity, happeningbecause of
a lack of access and affordabilityin the low and middle income countries
is happening in the high income countriesas a result of choice, misinformed.
(52:33):
Right.
And yeah, to to some degree,because in this country
that there are those who choose that, lifestyle, I guess you could call it,
and, and those who can't afford
or choose not to afford the,
I guess,I guess the, the proteins that they need.
(52:56):
I, I remember living in Mississippi,and I guess this was
I guess this was a couple of years agothat this happened.
I don't go into Dollar General much,but I went in there
one day, and,and and I don't like stores.
Anyways, butbut I had to go in there for something,
and I think I was buying eggs for my wife.
(53:18):
Anyways, the, the family in front of me,
young lady and her 2 or 3 children and,and I could tell
they were purchasing their dinner,just by, I, I don't know, it
just by the way that they looked,and it was about dinner time,
and each child had a a soft drink.
(53:43):
Each child had a candy bar, and,
and, they had a loaf of breadand some other things.
And, and that was their dinner there.
There were no proteins and, and and,
and this is in one of the lowestincome areas in the nation.
Sure.
That that part of Mississippi and I felt,I felt so bad for them.
(54:06):
But but it was very eye opening to methat, Yeah.
Okay.
So in the poorest part of this country,the people are not eating meat
in the wealthiest part of this country.
The people are not eating meat.
So that,
for, for different reasons,of course, I many times,
the many times the wealthy are sayingthey're not eating meat
(54:29):
because, of course,that's the trendy thing to say.
Yeah. Indeed.
Again, affordability, access
and appropriate animal source food. Right.
We're not going to ship beef to Indiaor pork
to an observant Muslim or or to Israel.
(54:50):
Sure.
And the danger here
is to sort of overgeneralize
and get yourself sidewaysinto conversations.
The, the, the basics is still that we
there is information that ought to inform
that protein ought to be of high quality,
(55:14):
which means from animal source,that ought to be the majority
of the protein we're consuming,not from plant sources.
Okay.
And that there's, there has been work,
you know, of course,they're going to estimate what people eat
when we get back into the same problemsof the quality of the data.
But people have looked at existing huntergatherers and tried to look at what
(55:38):
proportion of their food is coming fromanimal sources versus plant sources.
And one studyestablished a range of somewhere
between 100% to 30.
And the 30 was an outlier.
Okay, okay.
The mean was about 70.
So when you say huntergatherers in today's age,
(55:58):
are those people in America or.
No, no, wait, wait, where are thesetypes of populations located?
We're looking at peopleprimarily in Africa.
So remote populations in South America,and they're consuming things
like wildebeest and, all manner anything that hasn't eaten them first.
(56:20):
That's the story of humanity. Okay. Right.
So and of course, that makes sensebecause there's not a lot of cereals,
there's not a lot of sugar there.
That's not right. Yeah.
And, and then there are some interestingadditional points to throw in.
And that is others have said thatwhen a population consumes less than 30%
(56:43):
of their caloriesfrom animal source foods,
they see rapidly rapid increases
in deficienciesof a number of micronutrients.
Right?
Iron being one.
My iron trying a primary one.
Yeah. Globally.
But there are others.
And of course there are nutrients that areonly sourced from animal source foods,
(57:07):
and there are other nutrients that arebest sourced from animal source foods.
And plant source foodsactually contain anti
nutrient components that interferein the absorption of some elements.
Sure. Yeah.
And as plant scientistswere very familiar with that.
Because there's all sorts of anti quality
things that go into animal agriculture
(57:28):
that a ruminant has a difficult timeeating.
So. Right.
And then the so the last point and we in
U.S are not at 30 were below 30.
So we're eating less than 30% of our foodfrom any animal source.
Animal source, food.
And then again,
I already mentioned, another study saidthat if you're not getting more
(57:53):
than 50% of your proteinfrom animal sources,
you're probably not meeting your nonprotein nutrient requirements.
Right.
And you can try to relyon supplements as a solution.
But that's a tricky thing.
Gets into a number of other issues,not the least of which is resources
(58:15):
to buy them. Yeah.
So and and supplements aren't
typically and that, that there's,
there's a such thing as thatthere's a form of exactly
right of the supplementand it's not all created equal.
And calcium from a pill is not the sameas calcium from a whole food.
(58:36):
Yeah. Milk or something. Exactly.
And so, the
the majority of our caloriesin the American diet is now coming from
things that are now termed ultra processedfoods, primarily sugar,
industrial oils, processed,
cereal products, right.
(58:57):
Lots of starch, lots of starch,a lot of sugar,
oils, you know,
our consumption of animal fatshas declined
since the 50s and in fact, was decliningin the 50s and the 60s and the 70s.
Oh really. Okay.
And then they came out withthe thought that, oh, well, this disease
(59:17):
epidemic that they said they were seeing,that was the result of us eating
too much animal source fat.
And it was like, but your data itself,I mean, published
in the same thing,showed a decrease in consumption.
Interesting.
So again, there's there's many piecesI mentioned Gary Taubes, his books, Nina
Teicholz, psychology, wrote a book called,
(59:40):
Big Fat Surprise Why Butter,Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet.
This event,I was giving away copies of a book called,
Why We Get Sick, which focuses on
insulin resistancewith elevated insulin levels
being the root causeof most chronic illness.
(01:00:00):
And so I'm just trying to help peopleunderstand that reality
and then also tie inhow forage agriculture will be
an essential part of our sustainable foodsystems going forward and globally,
that we need people to help us achievewhat I call a ruminant revolution.
(01:00:20):
Like we had a green revolution.
Now we need now to sustainably increase
the productivity and efficiencyof our global ruminant animal systems.
Yeah.
And, Gbola Adesogan today told me aboutsomething called the White Revolution,
which was the dairy revolution in India,and I wasn't aware of that before.
(01:00:41):
So these things are happening.
It's excitingtimes. It's challenging times.
Yeah. Welcome to the herd, by the way.
Yeah.
So, your your message messagefor the American cattle producer.
My message to the, have faith
and courage, which you must have to bein the the cattle industry.
(01:01:02):
Yeah, most of us are optimists and.
Sure.
And and I want people to knowthat, in fact,
they are producing the healthiest formof nutrition for humans, right?
At the same time that hopefullythey're doing it in a way that protects
and maybe even enhances the environmentsin which they're doing that.
(01:01:23):
We know lots of people doing great workalong that line that that was
when I first heard that, the guy talking
said something along the along the lines
of, you are producing a superfood. Yes.
And,and it was the first time I heard it.
And I was like, wow, really?
I it's always been you are producing,
(01:01:46):
heart disease basically, right.
So you're destroying the planet. Yeah.
And of course, you'redestroying the planet,
but but none of those,if you really take a dive into the data
or think logically for that matter,none of those make sense, right?
You know, so so what can what can we do?
(01:02:08):
Those of us, you know,who are we're blessed with the opportunity
to study more or to,
you know, because people who are involvedin the business that's it.
Right?
I mean, often it takes, you know,today's life for many doesn't allow
the luxury of studying and doing a lot ofoutside reading and what have you.
(01:02:30):
They're busy attending to thingsthat, kind of, and that's changing.
Yeah a lot of, a lot of it in part
due to the technologythat we're using right now.
You know, with podcasts and stuff, people,if you want to listen to a book.
Yes. On on and I'm, I'm sure the onesyou suggested are probably on audiobook.
(01:02:51):
Yes, I know that because I own them.
Okay. Right.
So so yeah.
And,and I, I know several cattle producers
that listen to audiobookswhile they're working.
Exactly.
And, and so I think theI think the opportunity is there
for most Americans to educate themselveson a number of issues.
(01:03:12):
Yeah, that's a good point.
And still, I, I want to be available.
I'm now retired, so to have just
a professional fun getter,just just have fun in a number of ways.
Well, yeah, it's a strangedefinition of fun at times, but.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
I want to do whatI can to share this information.
(01:03:35):
And but I like to think of myselfas a bridge builder.
Okay.
Professor
Wilhelm Windisch out of TechnicalUniversity of Munich gave me that.
We need to stop building, like,silos and start building lighthouses.
So how can we become better lighthouses?
Yeah.
And I think of myselfas someone who's trying
(01:03:55):
to, you know, bridge the gapsbetween the silos.
You know, as people
get further and further trained,they know more and more about a narrower
and narrower subject area,which in a certain extent is inevitable.
But what can we do to foster
the communities between those disciplines
(01:04:17):
so that we can connect the dotsbetween human health and ruminant animal
agriculture, and sustainable healthcare and nutrient cycling?
By 2050, 70% of
humanity is going to live in urban areas.
So we're going to be shipping nutrients.
Why shouldn't we be shipping themin the most utilized form?
(01:04:39):
Animal source foods?
Yeah,because animals, they, they upcycle,
but but they really don't, exporta lot of nutrients.
Not to the degree that a wheat cropor a corn crop or a soy crop is going to.
Because they're because they're exportinga lot of they're they're
(01:05:01):
exporting a majority of the nutrientsaway from the field where animals.
Yeah. Managed managed correctly animals.
Because because within pastureanimals export their,
their manure andand urine to typically shade and water.
So yes.
Yes, exactly.
(01:05:21):
There are qualifications to all of these.
Yeah.
So so well-managed forage producersare doing a great service to this nation.
Indeed.
An essential an essential.
Yeah. Service.
And and that includes, from from whatI understand you talking about earlier,
that includes people that are runningfeedlots, and, and, basically
(01:05:45):
most people, pretty much everybodythat's involved in, animal production,
as, as being a help in a cure.
Yes. To a lot of diseases.
Really? Absolutely.
It's it's it'sa new way to think of things, perhaps.
And again, I encourage the conversationand the discussion.
(01:06:06):
But at the end of the day. Absolutely.
And if we think about people who are doinga good job managing grasslands
and the soil health and the infiltration,that, well, that's the watershed.
So people downstream, they benefitand the wildlife and fire suppression,
which we talked about, all of thosewhat are termed ecosystem benefits.
(01:06:28):
So there was a study where they tried toput some value on the ecosystem services.
And and when they came out,
like they could come up with a value
that was above,
you know,the rancher is and compensated for that.
Right?
But the value was significant.
(01:06:51):
And that's before we ever bring whatever
portion of the $4.8 trillionthat are spent in the U.S on health
care can be attributed to averting
or addressingthe chronic disease epidemic, right?
Some portion of thatwe ought to be able to, you know, say,
well, this is because of the health foodthat the Missouri cattlemen are raising.
(01:07:15):
And, yeah,and have a more holistic end to end.
You know, we tend to look at some of thesethings at the farm gate or at the,
you know, whatever, but not all the waythrough the population,
which is then supported to do other things
like innovate, invent, create,because they're not busy.
(01:07:39):
Yeah.
We're eating, into all of those things.
They're all important. Absolutely.
So yeah.
Well, the this has been a pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you for what you're doing for the, beef industry as a whole.
I think that, as this message grows,and I.
(01:08:00):
And I certainly hope it does, the the,
you know, it will be good for,agriculture.
Really.
More people come to value the productyour producing.
Maybe they start coming to you directly.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So opportunities abound.
I've already seen it grow over the briefperiod that I've been involved with it.
(01:08:22):
Right. Thank you for the opportunity.
Congratulations on the challengethat you've taken on.
It's Missouriis, is a wonderful forage state.
And there's lots of work to be done there.
And if there's anything I can do to help,
I hope you won't hesitate to ask.
Sure. Thanks Peter.
(01:08:46):
Thank you for listeningto the Productive Pastures podcast,
brought to you by University of Missouri'sNorthern Missouri Research Extension
and Education Center, Universityof Missouri Extension, and SARE.
The best way to help the showgrow is to complete the survey found
in the show notes.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.