Organic Help for Ranchers
By Clifford Woods
In the industry of beef production, especially in the United States, organic ranches are the exceptions. While the majority of ranchers truck calves off to feed lots to be plumped up on grain that is supplemented with all types of nutritional enhancements, there is a new breed of ranchers. This new ranchers keep their young calves close to home, allowing them to spend the final months prior to slaughter grazing on the green grass of their own ranches.
One of the leaders of this “alternative” ranching movement is the Lasater family who own an organic ranch in Colorado. It is at their ranch where it is being proven that it is possible to nurture high quality beef that is organic using procedures that many of the researchers say are not only better for the environment, but also healthier for people who eat beef. However, sceptics don’t believe that these methods will be able to supply enough beef to consumers, while others credit ranchers like Lasater’s with showing the benefits of the movement for “grass-fed” or organic ranching.
Generations ago, all cattle being raised for beef were grass-fed; spending their complete lives grazing on organic ranch lands or prairies. These days, beef calves normally pass the last few months of life in huge feed-lots, where there is hardly any room to move away from fattening up on special feed as well as drugs to ward off disease. Producers in the mainstream of this industry say that these methods have guaranteed a stable, sensibly priced, stream of beef being trucked to grocery stores and into the refrigerators of consumers.
On the other hand, there are critics who say cheap beef has come at the expense of safe beef. These critics debate that modern methods have had dangerous outcomes, for instance, the spreading of food-borne illnesses that are caused by bacteria resistant to the huge amount of drugs that are given to cattle at feed-lots, and deadly “mad cow disease,” a neurological disease that is fatal, caused by consuming contaminated beef.
Scientists theorize that mad cow is spread by giving cattle food in feed lots that include bone meal and spinal cord or brain tissue from cows that are diseased (a practice that is banned in the United States and other industrial nations).
To avoid such problems, present-day awareness and educated ranchers feed their cattle only pasture grass, hay, and legumes. Though a significant proportion of masses still believe inorganic beef production cannot be of much of a problem to them, the reality of this being totally opposite is true, however.
Microorganisms, such as fungi, bacteria and viruses are considered to be problems by ranchers due to destruction to crops and animals, but actually there are beneficial microorganisms. Fungi and bacteria in the soil are important for decaying of organic matter and recycling old plant components. Moreover, some of these soil fungi and bacteria form relationships with the roots of plants, providing essential nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen.
Also, by fungi colonizing upper areas of plants, they provide organic help for ranchers and their crops, helping their crops to be more tolerant to drought, more resistance to insects, have more heat tolerance and also more resistance to plant diseases. All of this without having to spray these crops with any harsh chemical products.
Most beneficial is the tolerance to drought and heat. Many areas of the country are in the middle of the worst drought and record heat not seen in decades with experts saying it is part of global warming and is not going to get better any sooner.
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