By Caroline Tracey for Civil Eats.Broadcast version by Deborah Van Fleet for Missouri News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration Jack Southworth’s ranch sits at 4,600 feet in elevation outside Seneca, Oregon, near the Strawberry and Blue mountain ranges. Like many ranchers, his cattle graze private, deeded land in the winter and leased National Forest land in the summer, including a high mountain plateau filled with bluebunch wheatgrass and Idaho fescue and surrounded by Ponderosa Pine forest. Since the valley is “good at collecting cold air,” as Southworth put it, it has a short growing season, and if cattle stay too long in any given place, they will eat the grass down to bare ground, creating conditions for soil erosion. .
In an industry dominated by a handful of large meatpacking companies, member-owned Country Natural Beef has plans to document its ranchers’ practices and encourage a shift toward more regenerative practices.
Oregon ranching co-op launches climate-friendly beef program - KOBI-TV NBC5 / KOTI-TV NBC2 kobi5.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from kobi5.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
REDMOND, Oregon (KTVZ) — The nation’s largest family ranching cooperative, based in Redmond, announced Thursday it has launched a major initiative called Grazewell to test and adopt ambitious regenerative ranching practices on all of its 6.5 million acres across 11 Western states by 2025. “This is the way of the future,” said Dan Probert, a […]