Most ranchers sell their cattle to a meat company for the going price, so there’s often little profit or incentive to invest in significant environmental improvements to their land. Something as simple as planting trees among pastures is expensive, especially across hundreds or thousands of acres.
“These kinds of things are great for biodiversity and take carbon out of the atmosphere and create all this public benefit and conserve water,” said Anthony Myint. “But they can’t sell the beef for an extra dollar.”
Myint is a restaurateur and the co-founder of Zero Foodprint, a nonprofit working with Boulder County to support regenerative agriculture projects that can help fight climate change.
A couple of muddy pigs at McCauley Family Farm in Longmont, Colo. on April 23, 2021.
On an early weekday morning in Longmont, the co-owners of the boutique catering company Whistling Boar are busy in the kitchen getting their weekly meal boxes ready for delivery. David Pitula and Debbie Seaford-Pitula moved to Colorado from Brooklyn five years ago with dreams of living closer to the farms they worked with.
“We wanted to be more personal with the farms,” Seaford-Pitula said. “We have farmers who now grow for us specifically, [asking] ‘What do you need this season?’”
The two said that part of that farm-restaurant relationship should be supporting farmers and ranchers in their efforts to reduce their carbon footprints. Agriculture emits more than 10 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gasses, and reducing that number is vital to addressing climate change.