Scaling-up Sustainable Livestock Production: Innovation and Challenges for Grass-fed Beef in the U.S.

Abstract

The U.S. grass-fed beef sector has expanded rapidly in recent years, with the rise of consumer and producer interest in alternatives to conventional beef, with its associated environmental, health, and social costs. A nationwide study of grass-fed beef producer groups focused on scaling-up operations reveals that there are significant obstacles along the supply chain—including on-farm inputs, processing and marketing, and finance capital—to expanding individual operations and the sector overall. Entrepreneurial innovations, discussed here, can meet these challenges to some degree, yet broader, systemic approaches need more attention. Further, the benefits of scale must be weighed against potential drawbacks.

KEYWORDS:

• Beef
• cattle
• grass-fed
• niche marketing

Research supported by the Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Studies and the Switzer Environmental Fellowship

Notes

1. For simplicity, I use the term “grass-fed.” Some producers advocate “grass-finished,” as grain-finished cattle eat grass most of their lives; others say “pasture-fed” or “pasture-raised” better portrays open-range production.

2. The definition, which producers must meet in order to use the term “grass-fed” on their product labels, is worth quoting in full: “Grass and forage shall be the feed source consumed for the lifetime of the ruminant animal, with the exception of milk consumed prior to weaning. The diet shall be derived solely from forage consisting of grass (annual and perennial), forbs (e.g., legumes, Brassica), browse, or cereal grain crops in the vegetative (pre-grain) state. Animals cannot be fed grain or grain byproducts and must have continuous access to pasture during the growing season. Hay, haylage, baleage, silage, crop residue without grain, and other roughage sources may also be included as acceptable feed sources. Routine mineral and vitamin supplementation may also be included in the feeding regimen. If incidental supplementation occurs due to inadvertent exposure to non-forage feedstuffs or to ensure the animal's well being at all times during adverse environmental or physical conditions, the producer must fully document (e.g., receipts, ingredients, and tear tags) the supplementation that occurs including the amount, the frequency, and the supplements provided” (USDA-AMS 2007).

3. The agency has proposed a separate label claim definition for this, “naturally raised,” which is still in development. A prohibition on artificial growth promoters is included in the grass-fed standard created by the American Grassfed Association, a national trade organization for grass-fed producers, and administered by the Food Alliance, a third-party certifier based in Oregon.

4. Feedlots are growing: economists predict mid-sized feedyards (5,000 to 25,000 head) will not be able to compete with larger feedyards (50,000 to 100,000 head) due to rising input costs driven by the ethanol-production surge and over-capacity in the feeding sector (Roybal, 2007).

5. The largest agricultural methane source is enteric fermentation, i.e., ruminant burps; ruminants will burp more methane per unit of feed intake (and of meat produced) when eating grass than when eating grain. However, the greenhouse gas emissions from producing that grain, and the potential for grazing practices to sequester carbon, may well compensate for the grain-fed production model's potential enteric fermentation advantage. I will address this in a future paper.

6. As Anderson et al. (2003) note, there is no reporting system to measure subtherapeutic antibiotic use in livestock. The lower estimate of 50% comes from the animal pharmaceutical industry itself. The Union of Concerned Scientists puts it closer to 89%. It is worth saying that human overuse of antibiotics is also to blame for the rise of resistance; reductions must happen on both fronts.

7. The last two years of drought have curtailed the availability of standing grass and hay, which appears to have slowed sector growth (Black, 2007).

8. Unlike certified organic beef, regulated by the USDA, grass-fed beef is not tracked by any agency or organization, and I rely on veterans of the sector; estimates are from members of the American Grassfed Association Board of Directors, personal communication 10-7-08, and Dr. Allen Williams, Jacob Alliance/Tallgrass Beef, personal communication 6-18-07. Part of the large spread in estimated numbers is the lack of clarity until now about what “grass-fed” actually means and whose herds really qualify. The USDA definition may help clear this up to some degree.

9. Continental (European) breeds were used, in part, to make the British breeds larger and lankier, to meet the demands of packers and feedlots (Hendrickson & Heffernan, 2004).

10. A further complication is that many forages typically considered “grass” in grass-fed feeding regimes are not, scientifically speaking, grass. Alfalfa and clover are legumes. Corn, specifically disallowed under most definitions of grass-fed because the mature plant, and the basis of most corn used for feed, is starchy and changes the pH of the rumen and the human nutritional qualities of the beef, is technically a grass.

11. For example, Daley et al. (2005) measured the impact of brewer's waste (distillery grains) on grass-fed beef's fatty acid composition. Leheska et al. (2008) found different levels of fatty acids in grass-fed v. conventional beef, but, like Clancy (2006), they note that whether the differences matter to human health requires further investigation.

12. Some agricultural land trusts buy easements in part to give farmers a cash infusion to develop more profitable enterprises, e.g., grass-fed.

13. Twenty-seven states have state inspection programs, but state-inspected meats can only be sold in-state. An as–yet unimplemented provision in the 2007 Farm Bill allows for interstate sales of some state inspected meats; the rules have not yet been written by the USDA. On meat processing regulations, see Petersen (2005).

14. And current food safety regulations may not make food safer: critics claim that despite regulations, the largest processing facilities compromise both public health and worker safety (Schlosser, 2002; Cook, 2004).

15. The owner sold an option on the land to a housing developer; that deal fell through when the economic downturn and credit crisis hit in the second half of 2008, but he is still planning to retire, and it is not yet clear if anyone will be able to buy and renovate the very old facility to the point that it can keep its inspection status.

16. Unfortunately, such marriages may not last. Three years after this interview, the producer group lost one of its most important wholesale customers because the processor repeatedly was late with deliveries; was the grass-fed group no longer a priority?

17. Five more await USDA certification and inspector assignment. The Western Regional Office of USDA has so far been willing to provide inspectors to mobile units, but it is not clear how many it will allow.

18. The director of a producer cooperative in Central California on the brink of getting a grant of inspection for its own mobile unit said her USDA contacts now favor the mobile model, because of the traceability of the meat, essential to a food safety program.

19. E.g. state-federal inspection equivalency, which will make processing more accessible in states with inspection programs, and USDA being more willing to provide inspectors to mobile processing units.

US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA-AMS). 2007.

United States standards for livestock and meat marketing claims, grass (forage) fed claim for ruminant livestock and the meat products derived from such livestock. U.S. Federal Register 72 (199): 58631–58637.

US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS). 2008. U.S. beef and cattle industry: Background statistics. Washington, DC.

US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). 2008. Inventory of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and sinks: 1990–1996. Washington, DC.