Give 'em a Chance, Steers WILL Eat Grass

Ghent, N.Y.

FROM his roomy shed three hours north of New York City, a chocolate-brown calf can see acres of Hawthorne Valley Farm's prime grassland.

As soon as he's big enough, maybe in a couple of months, the calf will be free to roam the fields. For two years, feeding on as much summer grass and winter hay as he wants, the calf will grow into a 900-pound steer.

During that time, his manure will help the people who run Hawthorne Valley Farm fertilize a dozen acres of vegetables. His grazing habits will keep the pastures vibrant. And when the time comes, the steer will become dinner for a month's worth of shoppers at the Greenmarket at Union Square in New York City.

The premium price they will pay - $5.99 a pound for ground beef and as much as $19.99 for tenderloin - will be plowed back into the farm's budget.

It's a food chain, Manhattan style.

Although vegetables and fruit grown near the city have been the stars of the Greenmarkets for almost 30 years, pork, beef and lamb from local pastures are fast becoming the new darlings of the stands. New Yorkers, who are among the nation's early adopters of culinary trends, are learning that there is more to meat than uniform grain-fed slabs laid out on plastic trays.

Citybound cooks have discovered that the fat, porky glory of a braised Gloucestershire Old Spot shank or the deep-orange yolk of an egg gathered from a chicken in the spring can tie them to the land and the season as deftly as spring peas or a good New Jersey tomato.

"One of the crimes of industrial agriculture is that we've moved all of the animals off the land," said Steffen Schneider, the manager of Hawthorne Valley. "There's something about green grass and cattle that goes together." ...cont'd

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/01/dining/01anim.html

to have a green lawn kept well-grazed... er... I mean mown.

Wal-Mart buys the cheapest ass meat and produce it can and shovels it out the door dirt cheap. People who prefer their food to have flavor and not be pumped full of salt and additives and fat are perfectly willing to pay more for real quality.

If you look at the supermarket industry, they're all racing to be THE Not-Wal-Mart, so those who care about quality, treating animals humanely, food safety and so on have a lot to be happy about.

Target, for instance, is adding a line of organic beef, and both Costco and Trader Joes just recently did so here. My local supermarkets have premium products (and yes, some of it does cost $20 a lb., but most of it is under $10) and the Farmer's Markets are getting cranked up.

If I could, I'd do all my shopping with local farmers, and during the summer, I only buy local produce.

The cheap meat pushed by Wal Mart and most big-box stores is based on a completely unsustainable model. Cheap meat is dependent upon a plentiful supply of cheap grain, which is dependent upon single-crop farming methods that are in turn dependent upon massive amounts of nitrogen-based fertilizers, not to mention growth hormones to get the cattle to bulk up faster. Runoff from the fertilizers has created a "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey, growth hormones can have some pretty significant effects on the consumers of meat grown with it, and the sheer mass of waste produced by the cattle runs off into watersheds. This doesn't even take into account the wretched conditions at modern slaughterhouses -- or dangers of mad cow disease.

Grass-fed beef, OTOH, pushes the price of beef up to a level that is more commensurate with the true cost to produce it. If everyone had to pay such prices, then we probably wouldn't eat nearly as much beef -- which would in turn create a more healthy diet and more sustainable agricultural model. My wife and I buy only all-natural and organic beef, and we have consciously cut back on the amount we consume because it's healthier AND less expensive to do so.

Thanks for posting this, Dover.

... the last time I checked these animals were ruminants.

-P

that a steer will eat grass when that's been its primary food source for most of its existence. :)

I had always heard that corn fed beef is supposed to be the best, but later found out that corn was terribly unhealthy for cows and caused health problems.

If I were eating meat today, I'd be eating grass grazed for sure.