Regenerative Minimum Standards for Retail Food Claims
These industry stakeholder workgroup sessions will help draf a guide for retailer buyers to use when reviewing retail food product packaging that displays regenerative claims. It is important to provide a clear decision tree based on what inputs and practices are reported by the brand.
Regenerative Minimum Standards for Retail Food Claims
Ruminant Livestock Management
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Please join us for our next stakeholder session on Minimum Regenerative Standards for retail food claims. This session will focus on ruminant livestock production. Guest panelists include Carrie Richards of Richards Regenerative, Matt Maier of Thousand Hills, Dawn Sherman of the Tanka Fund, and Lucille Contreras of Texas Tribal Buffalo Project.
As our work groups sessions unfold, we now turn to how ruminant livestock in managed from birth to slaughter. It’s imperative to know feed is grown, how grasslands are managed, and how grazing is accomplished. Hormones, vaccinations, antibiotics and other pharmaceutical use will be examined. Animal welfare and environmental outcomes are key. And, we can talk livestock without examining how Big Meat is curtailing access to retail and institutional markets and promoting imported product.
This session on regenerative livestock production builds on previous conversations about Synthetics, Soil Health and Fertility and Compost, Manure, and Cover Crops and Tillage Practices by asking what are the best practices – and worst practices – when managing ruminant livestock production in a regenerative system, especially within the constraints of a tightly controlled market. Our panelists are practitioners with skills honed from decades of experimentation and learning. They also bring cautionary tales of shortcuts and unpredicted outcomes.
In this session we are addressing the complex issue of RUMINANT LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION. To make it easier for everyone to follow the conversation, we are breaking it up into distinct parts. At the end, we will try to put those parts all together.
First, to establish a baseline we will describe the historic range of buffalo and their essential role in North American ecology: grass to protein; urine, manure and hoofs on the soil; instinctive movement to fresh pastures.
Second, how can we replicate parts of this system? We will discuss appropriate ways to raise cattle, goats, and sheep on large and small operations to achieve the same ecosystem benefits of wild herds.
Third, when done right, can we avoid the ecological challenges of industrial livestock production such as deforestation, GMO grain production, low animal welfare, the use of antibiotics and hormones, and contaminated manure?
Next, what about the workarounds and shortcuts we see in many industrial ruminant production methods? How do we address areas of tension like GMO and monoculture grain finishing, early weaning, sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics, vaccinations, and confinement feeding? Are they deal-breakers?
Finally, what is our right relationship with livestock animals, the planet, and with each other? We will address the human aspects of ruminant livestock farming such as economic and food security, community culture and vitality, local slaughter and processing, government regulations, access to wider markets.
Note on Regenerative Minimum Standards
In drafting a guide for retailer buyers to use when reviewing retail food product packaging that displays regenerative claims, it is important to provide a clear decision tree based on what inputs and practices are reported by the brand.
Our expert panelists will try to answer these questions based on their hard-won experience — and pose new questions as well. We invite you to attend and participate in this session. The session begins with about 45 minutes of wide ranging prompts discussed by the panelists and moderator.
You will then be able to ask your own questions through a moderated Q&A function. Finally, we will open up the call for public comments on the topic.
You can also submit written comments or questions any time via the Reply section on the main regenerative minimum standard program page.
All session info at https://ifoamnorthamerica.org/regenerative-minimum-standards/ New podcasts released every three weeks.
Okay, well, we will get started. Good morning, everyone. Welcome. My name is Christy Pettis. I'm the Food Standards Manager at Natural Grocers. I'm joined today by our co-hosts, Alan Lewis and Elizabeth Bennett, also of Natural Grocers. So these work group meetings that you've joined for focus on a dual challenge, ensuring shoppers can trust regenerative claims and preventing brands that don't meet a minimum standard from using the term. So our goal is not to create new seals or start new certifications. Our goal is to establish a consensus standard that retailers, brands, and producers can use that match consumer expectations. So today's session will specifically address different ruminant livestock production practices that affect soil health, reduce wheat exposure, and incorporate organic matter with a focus on how they may seem to sometimes conflict with the principles of regenerative agriculture. And one of the frictions that we must navigate through this process is economics. So transitioning a farm takes time, it carries a financial risk. We need to determine several things. How do we incentivize farmers and brands during the transition period? Which practices should be stopped cold turkey? Which practices require a drawdown? And where do we draw a line on ruminant livestock production methods? Draw the line on ruminant livestock production methods to meet an informed consumer expectation of the term regenerative. So please remember this initiative isn't about calling out conventional producers. It's about supporting those who are already committed to a verifiable regenerative path. And also, we have discussed soil health and tillage and fertility on previous sessions. We hope you'll catch those on the iPhone link. But our next deep dive will be on hogs and poultry on August 27th. Some engagement guidelines for today. Please be aware that the attendees and participants are well versed in the topics and principles of regenerative agriculture. So please be mindful that questions and comments should dig deep and focus your questions and comments on specific points of friction and technical complexity. Your participant cameras and microphones will be turned off until the QA panel segment about 45 minutes from now. We are not using the QA button for questions. We ask that participants post into the chat directly to Elizabeth Bennett, and she will manage the questions from there. And during the public discussion segment, you can use the Zoom's raise hand feature to request to share your perspective via your audio and video, which will be turned on and available to you at that point. The Zoom chat feature will be used for posting additional information and announcements from the admin team. So you can keep an eye on there for any further clarification or questions. And today we do expect and welcome some different points of view based on practical experience. And while we may manage conflicts differently during a Zoom panel, please rest assured we're collecting all perspectives. And to that end, please access the iPhone link and we'll periodically post into the Zoom chat to leave detailed public comments where you're welcome to leave your comments there. So right now I'm going to pass the microphone over to Alan Lewis. He's the vice president of advocacy at Natural Grocers. He's an active member of various boards and organizations, including iPhone North America, and he will be your host for this event.
SPEAKER_02Thank you and good morning to everybody. Welcome. I want to thank our host and partner, the Nonprofit International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, also known as Organics International, for sponsoring this series on the iFoamNorthamerica.org website and supporting the success and reach of these important stakeholder sessions. iFoam Organics International is now celebrating its 50th anniversary and supports the global effort to produce nutritious food with health, fairness, ecology, and care using equitable regenerative methods. Through this voluntary cooperative initiative, we hope to facilitate a consensus about what materials and practices should prevent the use of a regenerative claim. Note that's not a definition of regenerative agriculture. That's been done many, many times, but it is an actionable set of guardrails for retailers and shoppers to ensure transparency. Think of it as a negative definition. What inputs and practices might prevent the use of a regenerative claim on a retail food product? Today we're addressing the complex issue of ruminant livestock production. To make it easier for everyone to follow the conversation, we're breaking it up into distinct parts. At the end, we will pull all these parts together. Part five is going to be really fun. First, we will describe the historic range of buffalo and their essential role in North American ecology. Second, we will look at how we can replicate and mimic parts of this natural system. Third, when done right, can we avoid the negative consequences that are inherent to industrial livestock production? Fourth, what are the workarounds and shortcuts we see in industrial rumen and production systems, some of which claim to be regenerative, but we should likely reject. And last and fifth and funnest, what is our right relationship with livestock animals, the planet, and with each other? We have a really great group of panelists today. Lucille Contreras is the founder and CEO of Tribal, Texas Tribal Buffalo Project, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring Southern Plains bison to native Texas lands, rematriating and trust relationships, and promoting food sovereignty and environmental healing. Don Sherman is executive director of Tanka Fund, a native-led organization dedicated to buffalo restoration, regenerative agriculture, and economic development on tribal lands. Matt Mayer runs Thousand Hills Lifetime Graze, which is focused on one mission to nourish the soil, the plants, the cattle, and the people by holistically grazing cattle for their lifetime. For their lifetime, period. Now, quick disclosure: remember, Thousand Hills is a major beef supplier to natural grocers. We have a deep and uh trusting relationship there. Last but not least, Kiri Richards owns and runs a fifth generation ranch in Northern California, Richards Regenerative, that has transitioned exclusively to regenerative farming. And her mission is to provide the highest quality grass-fed beef to her customers and do so in the most transparent and sustainable way possible. As a reminder, yet again, remember, we're assuming that the audience here has some deep experience with regenerative. So the panelists are not going to give a lot of that background information. They're jumping into the prompts that we're providing to uh get and get ahead of uh get ahead of the issue and dig dig in deep. All right. Um, Elizabeth and Christy, do you have anything at the moment? Just to pause before we get going. All right, we're good to be. We're ready. We have a wild number of participants today. That's awesome. Let's start part one by describing key aspects of purely regenerative livestock management management within our traditional heritage buffalo herds. So, this is a question about ecology, soil biodiversity, um, the the role of hoofs in yours and manure moving animals uh across the prairie. Um, let's see. For instance, now you guys get to talk over these uh these images just for fun, but Don, please take some time to describe the regenerative buffalo ecology that built our continent's prairies and topsoil reserves Europe.
SPEAKER_01Yes, thank you. Thank you, Alan, and welcome everybody. Uh in Petruwash Day and Takayapi. My name's Don Sherman. Um, and uh obviously with Tonka Fund, our mission is to return buffalo to the lands, lives, and economies of indigenous people. Um, we've been here for about 12 years, but to um discuss the ecology, um, you know, we always have to recognize the past in order to move for the future. So part of this is uh recognize the ecology that the buffalo built in in the North America and um down into northern Mexico and clear up into Canada. We had northern and southern herds, and we've never really known what the number was. We hear 50 million, 60 million that um all across the United States. So, you know, um disturbing the seed banks and they graze, our buffalo grazed with the seasons, right? So sometimes they would be in the north, other times they'd be in the east, and then they'd move to the south during the winters, um, up into the mountains. So as they were grazing and the and the way they eat, they don't usually graze clear down to the root. Um, they're they're eating based on those seasons, and naturally, because they are a keystone species of the land, everything that they do regenerates the land. So it's a natural ecology. So we always say when they come back, um, the land come back, the amphibians come back, the bugs come back, everything, um, even including the um, we call it a symbiotic nature to to Mother Earth and to the two-legged and the four-legged and everything that's involved. Um, so when we talk about that, is um when they decimated it, it took less than 10 years for them to kill over 50 million buffalo. And in today's standards, it's taken us almost 100 years to get up to 500,000. And that's just that's wrong, right? We need to be opening up more spaces. They need such large pieces of land. But by decimating them, all that ecology and regenerative ag went away, right?
SPEAKER_02So, Lucille, I'd like to add Lucille pick up from there. That was best introduction ever, Don. But Lucille, when you think about the buffalo in a food system, um where that symbiotic relationship is. Could you just give your point of view, your overview of this ecology, this uh codependent or interdependent ecology?
SPEAKER_05Yes, and hello, and thank you, everybody. Uh, thank you, Alan, for inviting me. Hi, Sister Dawn. It's always good, and everybody else on the panel, thank you all. Um, you know, this is a segue and it dovetails into this statement. Uh, this is a really let me just prepare you all. This is a very strong statement, but this was the mindset coming out of what Sister Dawn just described. The statement is from uh General Sheridan. He said, let them kill skin and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle. So with that, this is how buffalo have been always part of our food system that supported two-legged animals on this beautiful, beautiful continent that we call Turtle Island. Buffalo at one point were everything to our people, home, shelter, even music, spirituality, even examples of governance, how to treat each other as relatives by watching the buffalo, but also as Don described, all the relationships that the buffalo had with other animals. This food system was a complete holistic food system. Even the hoofs, even the collagen within the hoofs were used for elders, for medicine. The gut was used, every single part of the buffalo was honored in some way, and nothing, nothing went to waste. This was a system of trade, of kinship, of intergener, interregional trade. This is how some tribes in uh northern Mexico also had a relationship with buffalo, the same as tribes in the northern part of Turtle Island. And so this food system is something that we are working towards. Groups like Tonka Fun, Texas Tribal Buffalo Project, and other indigenous organizations are working towards regaining, reclaiming, and rematriating this regenerative agriculture system.
SPEAKER_02So, Lucille, when a guy like me gets all excited that I've invented regenerative agriculture, just give me a quip back. What would you tell me if if you heard me saying that? Don, don't laugh.
SPEAKER_05You know, I would say, thank you, brother, for trying your best that we all can continue trying our best in a good way to work towards what is best for our mother. Our mother, our mother earth, our planet, the planet that we all share. And then I would say our ancestors have been working with regenerative, holistic, sustainable agriculture for millennia. The way that fire was used to manage the beautiful prairies, the prairies that were exhausted, not only was the decimation of the buffalo something that impacted the two-legged and the other uh critters out there, like sister mentioned, but the soil, the microbes, the seed bank, all of that was affected. And so, but today this is what what we believe there is a balance that we can have with traditional ecological knowledge that native people have carried for thousands of years with modern, holistic, sustainable, regenerative ways. There is a balance.
SPEAKER_02Don, um we're gonna transition here to this part two about what parts of the system can we adopt, mimic, adapt. Um, and the lead question there is from your knowledge, how much uh open prairie is left to run a true buffalo herd? Now we know the answer, but it's it's the good transition question. But go ahead, let me just open that up that topic to you.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, what um when we talk about how much uh prairie is left, um when you're looking at reservation, you know, our our prison camps basically, um we protected our land from the beginning. So um out of the Virgin Prairie, that what 3% of Virgin Prairie that's left that hasn't been uh plowed, over half of that is on indigenous land. And that was that's intentional. That's because of those practices, as Lucille talked about. Um, so obviously, no, when we talk about the history of this, the buffalo don't do need to be managed at this point, right? With the fencings and everything that's out there to be able to have a large swath of land, um, I always say it takes a herd. So it does take an Alan Lewis and a Matt and a Lucille and right, it takes everybody to, you know, recognize that and uh work together and collaborate. Because, you know, if we're gonna have like a swath for those uh buffalo to move like salmon, I say buffalo, you know, are the salmon of the prairie. They they want to move right through through the season. So it's, you know, these ranchers opening things up to allow a corridor, right? You know, working together instead of saying, oh, it's gonna hurt my cattle, they're giving me disease, or no, your buffaloes, you know, and then it's vice versa. No, the cattle's given the buffalo disease. You know, let's just work on the problem together, right? That's what doesn't work is creating silos and saying, oh, it's your fault, oh, it's my fault. No, let's work together and as a group, like she said, that we're a community, right? We're all here on the same planet, and we want it to be here for seven generations with our children. So there is not enough land to have the 50 million, 60 million that we want, but we definitely, you know, cattle should not outnumber a keystone species, is kind of where we're at to allow that regenerative grazing. And the practices that do work are the rotational grazings, like you know, Matt, you know, we talked about um the rotational grazings, allowing those animals to eat during the season, seasons, allowing the things, um, the soil to rest and the plants to rest. And then also part of it, too, is um as we're going into getting them on the shelves is allowing some of those old cows and those old bulls. You know, we um an indigenous people, there's animals that are born and raised and will never be harvested. It's all natural. Interesting, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yep, that's I'm gonna bring Matt and Carrie into the conversation for part two. Elizabeth, I don't see Matt on either of my screens. Oh, he just showed up. All right, never mind. Looking good, guy. Um, the this part two is building on what Don and Lucille just shared. And by the way, Lucille, I'm gonna bring you back in this uh in this part after we hear from Matt and Carrie. But Matt, we're talking about replicating parts of this ancient system. Uh, you use the word mimic and and um and replicate and adapt. Uh, what are the appropriate ways to wake raise cattle to achieve some of the ecosystem benefits of wild herds? And please feel free to take 30 seconds to tell people what you do, what thousand Hills is, um, and and then let's get into this the things that you learn from traditional from our heritage system and how you're how you've translated that to Thousand Hills.
SPEAKER_04Well, hello everyone. Thank you for having me. Um, you know, what Thousand Hills does just expanded in my head just listening to the previous speakers. Um we're really our goal is to have cattle on the land to regenerate our soil so we can rebuild our food system in a much more nutrient-dense way. Um, and there's all kinds of benefits that go along with that. And yes, we have biomimicry of buffalo using cattle. Um so I'm I guess I would say I'm ruminant agnostic um in that it does, I believe it takes all of us just uh to be able to put ruminants on the land at scale that can positively affect the land in all the ways that it does. And so uh that's that's what we're doing is we we you know we're lifetime grazed um on purpose because that's we've that's their natural diet, uh ruminant on forage, grazing, expressing their natural behavior. And you know, in the areas that we graze, there you know, we have a big chunk of the corn belt, and we've quite frankly have are we have lived off the topsoil that the buffalo created for who knows how long, thousands of years, and we've extracted from that for hundreds of years now, without with putting less and less back, just even in my lifetime, witnessing what's happened around my farm and in the thick of the corn belt, how different the practices are even from when I was a child. Well, that wasn't yesterday, no surprise there. It's still one lifetime, and we've just what we have put back for inputs have done more damage than help in petrochemical and attempts to kill everything we can possibly kill except for one plant in our current egg system, and we just we we don't really want to kill anything, we want to keep we want to grow and we want to build the soil, and and uh it feels a little weird saying it um after that introduction um by dawn, but uh I do envision having cattle on the land and and ruminants on the land again, agnostic to which. Ruminant really, but uh we've learned how to graze cattle in a way that can mimic some of what the buffalo did. It's imperfect, um, but we can do it, and we do see the results. Um that that exponential increase that you see after a conversion with your own eyes that I see of wildlife pollinators, insects, birds, water retention, all of that happening like it was designed. And you know, I sit here with much more reverence than yesterday after those introductions and understanding.
SPEAKER_02The the videos I chose, by the way, we first saw that the uh outtakes of the tanka uh buffalo on on pasture, and I just ran the ones of uh Matt Matt your regenerative renegades out takes of the of the cattle on pasture to note the similarities, certainly differences, but the similarities of of what the animals are eating, how they're gathered in the field, and how they're constantly moving. So um that's that that's my devious plan in the background. Carrie Richards, I got I got a starting question for you, and then a lot you can get some time, but you only got into regenerative beef um in some other ruminants in 2011, right? So there's there's a bit of a backstory there about what captured your imagination and what started you on this journey. Um, I'd like to hear about that and then segue into the practices that you're using in your local ecology uh that are kind of direct descendants of the prairie ecology that we've been talking about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you so much. Um yeah, listening to everybody talk, it's it's really eye-opening because, like, like you said, uh we started our beef company in 2012, and we were just raising grass-fed beef, and it was about a time where I was having some health issues, and I realized that um what I was eating wasn't working. And so we were like, hey, can we raise beef on our property? And can we raise them grass-fed and grass-finished? And that grew into what we have now, which is uh Richard's Regenerative, and we have multiple producers. And where where my mind shifted is when I, when we started our beef company, we were very tiny, we were selling holes and halves to friends and family. I was living in San Francisco Bay Area, four hours from the ranch. And I was raising a family, starting to raise a family, and I wanted to know where my food came from. So what happened was I decided to move to the ranch and take over. Oh, sorry. Where's somebody's sorry, I thought I heard somebody talking? Uh, I decided to come and be the sibling, there's four of us, to move to the ranch and take over. And when I got here, what I saw was dry pasture animals that were like in the front field for 365 days a year, flies and eye problems. And I thought there had to be another way. So, fast forward to becoming American Grass-Fed Certified, I reached out to Carrie Baucom and she introduced me to the Savory Institute, which introduced me to regenerative and holistic grazing. So that's like the fast-forwarded version of where I am today. So I dove in headfirst into holistic management because what I loved about it is it actually brought in the human. It didn't kick the human out of the system because you have to have healthy land, healthy animals, healthy humans to have a full circle. And so what we started with is just giving our land rest. And then we started adding compost, and then we started working with um Chico Center for Regenerative Ag here in California to do experiments on cover cropping and all sorts of things. And what we do now, um, the most success we've had is multi-species grazing because we are a very dry ranch. And we we take our cows out of here in the summer when it's dry and bring them up to high country, where they have natural uh grasses all throughout the summer, and then we bring them back here from November to May, which basically mimics the herds leaving, giving the land rest, letting that fall rain come in, and then the cows come home. And so on our ranch, that's that's how we are trying to mimic um, you know, the big herds coming in and leaving because our ranch is really dry in the summer and it really suffers having those animals here.
SPEAKER_02You mentioned multi-species. What other um animals are you running?
SPEAKER_00So we were running sheep, um, and we and we will run them again. And that was actually because we do soil testing, that was one of our best. The the years that we were running the cattle and then the sheep, those were some of our best years with soil testing as far as like carbon and water infiltration. So we're trying to economically figure out how to do that again. We did not have enough employees to continue that um that process, but we saw the results. And so I I'm constantly trying to figure out how to get sheep back on the land.
SPEAKER_02We also we were gonna bring sheep and goats into this discussion, and I decided it's different enough from cattle that it might need its own.
SPEAKER_00And then the other animals, the other animals we work with um are uh pigs, and we raise them in the trees where the grass isn't. Yeah, and let them root up the rant the land, and then we bring in the cattle behind them, and they graze all the little baby grasses, and usually within two or three seasons, we can convert that understory into grassland for the cattle.
SPEAKER_02So that is beautifully put. You are in fact not only replicating but referencing how this is supposed to work. Right. Um, I I'd like to ask uh Lucille a practical question here. Don't get don't get too deep into this, Lucille, but y'all have X number of acres available on any particular operation. Uh, it's fenced in, there's real, there's interstates nearby, and you're moving the buffalo using managed grazing. All of those practices are in place. Right. Yes. I mean, I kind of just described it, but just confirm that and give me some color on that.
SPEAKER_05Yes, and before I say that, I want to say, and Carrie, that is really impressive. I would love to come and um, you know, meet you and learn more about what you're doing, um, because a lot of the things you mention are some goals of mine and the work we do at Texas Tribal Buffalo Project. But what we do is we have approximately two ranches 90 miles apart from each other. One is 150 acres, the other is a lot smaller, 77 acres. And then coming online soon is another smaller 25 acres. And within each one, the 150 acres, of course, has more capacity. So there are more buffalo, and we're we just moved on to that property. It's been a little over a year, so we will be starting our cross fencing so that we can do rotational grazing within in our smaller 77 uh pasture. We already have some cross fencing. We're adding a little bit more cross fencing. We're constantly uh reducing the stock as we also take to processing at a USDA facility that's about three hours away. And then with that, we feed, we don't usually feed uh unless it's uh about August, September, and the drought is really bad in Texas, and we get native grass that we feed to our buffalo as well. And we use cube feed like everybody else does to, you know, entice them uh with Scooby snacks when we want them to move. And one thing um that I thought about while both Matt and Carrie were visiting with uh talking is that, you know, um I know that Dawn has experience with cattle and bison operations on some of the reservations. And I just want to throw that out there. Like as we continue, you know, thinking about, and I won't get too deep, Alan. I know you said don't get too deep.
SPEAKER_02Only because we're gonna go deep later. Keep that in mind.
SPEAKER_01We do not look for cattle, everybody, right? That's not what we're here for, is because we do have cattle and bison. We just went to a ranch, uh, 25,000 acres, one of our ranchers, and he has cattle and bison roaming together.
SPEAKER_02And those cattle principles we're seeing here is that you can scale up by getting bigger and bigger and bigger, but it's best to scale up by replicating the system with additional producers. That I love the 25,000-acre ranch, but um it's may I suggest you the idea that we could get a hundred families with access to the right amount of land and tools to raise their smaller herds with intensive management. Um, I'm bringing this up not to say the obvious, but because certain people who are out in the big ag world don't respect the 25-acre parcel. Um and they start to respect 25,000 acres and then they realize uh you have to break that up into usable pieces. Um Matt's been a master of scaling by replication. Um any last thoughts on that, Don?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I agree there. Um as we talk about it, like we have 40 ranchers currently. Um we're adding, you know, we're gonna have up to 60, hopefully, by uh end of next year. And they range from uh literally 40 acres, or like Lucille said, a small 25 acre our partners clear up to the 25,000 acres, which are you know, we have less of those. We have two 25,000 acre ranches, all the rest are 200 acres and less. Um, running by floor cattle. So we I agree with you. It's really replicating that and allowing these individual ranchers to be able to uh enter into these systems, right?
SPEAKER_02Because they're practically based on their abilities, their tolerance for risk, their capital, their tools, their family, all of that it all gets very personalized. Yes, it does. I want to move to part three, and just a heads up. Carrie dropped off her video because uh it was just frozen, but she's here, so I'm gonna be asking her questions directly um because she can't chime in by giving me the eagle eye on the video. Um but moving to part three, and this is a kind of lightning round. We're avoiding a bunch of things, practices, inputs, um, an ecological challenge that industrial livestock production um is happy to undertake, to externalize the cost to all of us and the environment and the animals. And we've done an incredible job of painting the picture of how this can work beautifully. Let's let's put on our grimaces and say, here's the things we're not doing. So this is called the lightning round. Last time I called it the no or no. That were your answers. But um, but uh, I'm gonna start with Carrie if you're still there. Um Carrie, are you cutting down forests so you can grow grain for livestock feed? No. No or no? Okay. How many of your animals get so sick that they need antibiotics? I'm gonna leave that one with Carrie also. Very few. Right. And last one for you, Carrie. If you have to treat an animal, which you should, what happens to that animal in terms of its status and certification and its its value in the marketplace?
SPEAKER_00We are American Grass-Fed. It's a no antibiotics, so they get a special ear tag and we tag them in our system so we know that they can't go into the meat program.
SPEAKER_02They don't get the AGA seal. So, and that's this motivation to do everything right, keep your animals healthy, treat someone if they get sick to personalize that animal. Um, but that brings them out of the herd, so there's a big economic advantage to keeping animals naturally healthy. Um hey Matt, are you uh planting uh GMO alfalfa just to get a little extra brick testing going? Or no or no?
SPEAKER_04No, we're not. Uh we do use alfalfa, but there's a value to every plant that goes along with the alfalfa and the symbiotic relationship. So no on the GMO.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, but to be clear to everyone, that is an invasive uh species since Tom Vilsack put it out into the world unregulated, it does show up, which raises the question of what to do with it. But I wanted to insert that practical comment in there. Um anybody using just GMO crops for grain production in a grass-fed ruminant system? Trick question. Yep, bunch bunch of no's. Um are you actually feeding any grain or finishing on grain? Which is not a trick question. Sometimes that happens uh for any number of reasons. We grass is gone, there's an economic motivation, there's a anyone want to step in and touch that issue about specifically can you finish an animal with grain, some kind of grain for some amount of time, and still claim to be within the regenerative family?
SPEAKER_05I we don't finish with the grain. I'm sorry, Matt.
SPEAKER_02Were you gonna no go ahead, Lucille?
SPEAKER_05Um we do occasionally supplement with hemp seeds and the buffalo, and uh there's a uh guy up north, I haven't bought any yet, but I do plan on he makes um cube out of hemp seeds, and for the buffalo, I've seen like really fast uh their horns get really bright and shiny, and and anyway, the impact is really fast, but no, we we do not finish with green.
SPEAKER_02What about synthetic fertilizers on pasture, grain? Is that something that you need in your system and would like to protect the ability to use it? Lots of no's y'all gotta say heck no. Heck no, heck no, okay. Uh again, we live in a world of of principle of practice, and we're up against a big system that wants to bend all of these rules, which is why I'm getting these clarifications. Um and lastly, kind of getting ready for the transition, do y'all um put your animals in a feedlot and gather up all the manure in a big pile and then uh liquefy it and send it out to the pastures? That is what conventional producers do. That's the pump that takes the liquid manure out of the lagoon, very high pressure. That's a thousand-foot pressurized hose, and they're pumping manure lagoon detritus back onto the field. This is American agriculture in one picture. They defend this as a circular system, however, the amount of pharmaceutical residues, uh hormones, uh heavy metals concentration in that fluid the way it's done, uh probably isn't what we're looking for. So let's see where I am here. Um this is a big yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01I wanted to I wanted to add on that grass finish. Obviously, um just just because we are so unique and we, you know, it's all indigenous ranchers, like I said, it's on Virgin Prairie. So there's none of those chemicals ever going on, no plowing. Um, and 90% of our ranchers, those animals are being harvested in the field with grass still in their mouth. They're not being put on a truck and hauled over, they're not being finished on anything. They're you know, literally with chewing on it. And you know, I've been to Lucille's and watched it. Um, even if they do do the facilities, the facilities are going to the property, um, like Lucille's doing on on her. So ours is a little different because they give them choice sometimes, we call it choice, but if the buffalo has the food out there, they never come in. So there's a few that do that, but everybody else.
SPEAKER_02Uh seeds andor whatever running on top, they're they're going after that high nutrient value. That's a little bit different than growing that for them or collecting, harvesting the grain and feeding it to them. But I think it's an important nuance as we get pushback from industrial agriculture. But yeah, cattle and and buffalo end up eating grain, but it's not the core of the system. It's not uh something that y'all are working on. Uh, we're we're looking at this wonderful picture of a big feedlot. All of that stuff on the bottom right is the collection of urine and feces. That's the liquid manure that's being sprayed back onto cropland. It's a huge problem. Everybody knows it. It it accumulates salts, heavy metals, and all of the other accumulated pharmaceuticals from the feedlot, um, including antibiotic resistance and gene transfers and just a mess. We we probably need uh a whole segment on that, but let's uh move move on at the moment. That's our spraying. Um, let's see what we got. That's our cute goats. So part four was just doing some confirmations here. Because when we think about a guideline for the average meat buyer in this instance, looking at people saying, This is regenerative meat, what questions are gonna they're gonna ask and which answers would cause that buyer to say, we may sell your product, but we're not letting you tell our customers it's regenerative. So you y'all pumping uh liquefied manure back onto cropland, probably a thumbs down. Um, you're not intentionally finishing on grain. There is some use of feedlots. You may be feeding dry matter, but essentially at some point you need to concentrate the animals, whether that's for vaccination or to collect for slaughter. But is there anything anything in the use of feedlots that you want to give some nuance to about um how you use it and and and how it's uh a part of the system? Matt, you're I think you can speak to that.
SPEAKER_04Well, we don't it's well going back to the manure lagoon, um it's amazing when I think about all of that manure. For you know, if you forget about the heavy metals and everything else that's in there because of the what the cattle have been fed and other other reasons. Something you know, that's gold. That manure is gold. And to we can as humans, we have this great way of taking something that is so good for nat for nature, for our food system and everything, and make it something absolutely terrible and become a big problem for water pollution, air pollution, all of you know, there's many things wrong with it. But when I think about our herd grazing, the worst thing, the all this gold is put out of the land to feed something. And the the closest I can get to that is that if the cattle are we we move daily, if the cattle are in a spot under a shade tree or something where they've concentrated themselves, there might be a little odor. But it's not the stench that you get out of a feedlot. It's it's kind of a sweet odor. And and you might get a little odor that might last 12 hours uh before it dissipates. I I'm just amazed at how we can do this because it it's just so right to have the animals know exactly how to spread all that manure and urine across the land. They know how to do it if we just allow them to do it and it will not create problems. Not even not even like if you take the worst example of a wetland and the cattle crossed across the stream and they maybe beat up the bank a little bit when they were doing it. Well, if they're not there for more than a few days, which is what Roman attempts to do, it'll it'll repair itself in a matter of days. You'll have green shoots coming right back up, it won't be damaged to a point that it's gonna take months to recover. It's literally days and hours before you see green shoots coming back up. So I I'm just constantly reminded about how if we do mimic nature and and not try to manipulate nature, the answers are right there in front of us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well said. Um, I'm gonna get a couple more of these out of the way, then we're gonna go to part five, the fun part. But um, anybody feeding antibiotics to increase the rate of weight gain? No, no, and that is standard practice for industrial feedlots.
SPEAKER_04And um how about beta agonists, Alan? Anyone giving beta agonists right before death to get an extra couple pounds of gain out of those animals? Right before we eat them, right before we eat them. Let's do that, shall we?
SPEAKER_02And then um another, you know, cautionary tale. No, you're not doing this. I hope you're not, Don, but are you bioengineering the the buffalo so that you get different uh behaviors and and uh tolerances out of them? Is that is that no you making cuss custom animals at this point? No. All right.
SPEAKER_05Um only to throw people higher. No, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02That was um this is this is the thing that's happening now, but but just be behind the the curtain, so to speak. The pig industry is just waiting to release their bioengineering pigs, and they're waiting to make sure that they develop shopper tolerance to the idea. They're desperately afraid that if they release it too soon or don't do it in a transparent way, the shoppers will just reject all pork, knowing that almost all pork will become bioengineered. Why? They're trying to reduce the susceptibility to um lung conditions, bronchial conditions, which are caused by the hog confinements. So that's their answer. Not stop confining hogs um out of the sun with thousands of animals in a barn, but it's oh, let's make an animal that can uh tolerate what we want to do. So I want to get Carrie back into this conversation. Unfortunately, she had that video issue, but she is still here. Um Carrie, actually, could you just step in and we asked you to you know the why you wanted to do regenerative production, but I'd like to just hear all the reasons that you refused to do industrial production. Um, this may rehash some things, but I want to give you a chance to double down.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, like I said, in my late 20s, I was having some health issues, and um, it was very obvious it was directly correlated to what I was eating. And I started reading Omnivore's Dilemma, like many people do, and realizing that it's all connected. And what I wanted for our ranch is not only for it to be thriving, because like I said, when I moved here, it was not. I wanted to create products that I could be proud of and I could understand exactly what went into them and know that the products that I'm producing is actually giving back to the land and not just extracting, because our our system right now is very extractive, and holistic management is all about giving back. So I felt like that was the obvious way to farm and ranch, and then was hit with the wall of um, it's not how everybody does it, and why are you doing it this way? And this is crazy, and all of those things that you get when you do something out of the norm, which I wasn't really expecting. I was kind of like, look how great our ranch looks, and it's like you left too much feet on the ground. Like, what are you doing? So it was it was an interesting transition. Um I hope I answered that question.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that was perfect. Uh now, last thing is I took a pot shot of about a dozen practices, also known as tools, in the conventional industrial livestock toolbox. Did I leave anything out? Are there other things that you would see someone doing or using that in your opinion you'd say, nope, that's not regenerative.
SPEAKER_00Are you showing it right now? All I see is the feedlot image.
SPEAKER_02Oh, uh well, I what did you want me to show you?
SPEAKER_00Oh, sorry. I thought you meant I thought you were showing something that had the No, no, no, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02I was just referring to that proverbial toolbox that everybody wants access to all the tools. There's certain things we're saying we're not going to allow to in a regenerative system to be used on a label.
SPEAKER_00Right. Um, you know, confinement is one big one because you have the you have the manure issue, you have the disease issue. Obviously, we need to combine them here and there to gather preg check, you know, deliver vaccines and whatnot. Um, so there is a little nuance there, but confinement is something we will not do. Um, we want them to be eating mostly natural grasses. We do supplements GMI um in the winter, uh, as well as a little bit in the spring. Um and chemical everything. We don't use chemical fertilizers, herbicides, any of that. So we are actually a very organic, a non-certified organic ranch. So those are those are basically like the absolutely knots. Um, we will also, like Matt said, we will not feed anything before harvest or feed any synthetic or medication to them to boost yields, because that's not, we want to do that naturally with the grasses that are on the ground. We try to we try to basically finish those animals in our different leases in areas of California when that grass is ready and perfect for finishing.
SPEAKER_02So, one complicated issue, thank you for that, is uh I want to bring it up now because I'm anticipating pushback in the future on what we are envisioning as a regenerative system here. And vaccinations, uh um y'all can bow out of this conversation. I would make my statement that uh a old school vaccination, um, the way we used to make vaccines, which are still currently used in cattle, are um a really critical component to keep cattle healthy, to prevent downstream use of pharmaceuticals and a whole lot of suffering. Um anyone want to chime in with a different or similar comment about why vaccinations and a regenerative system are still part of the course.
SPEAKER_00Go ahead, Carrie. Go ahead, Carrie.
SPEAKER_01You started. You started first.
SPEAKER_00I was just gonna say, yeah, I was just gonna say that when I moved here, we did a ton of vaccinating. And we are very, very, very minimal now. And our cattle, with the way we manage and whatnot, are very healthy. So I, you know, I do what we need to do, um, but I don't do more. So that's kind of our our ethos here.
SPEAKER_02Matt, I'm gonna point you out. It I don't know if this is true, but if your ranches are buying in new caps and they're they're being integrated with a herd, is there a pause moment there where there's a deep inspection of their health and a potential vaccination to make sure that they're not bringing something infectious?
SPEAKER_04Well, that I think that's true beyond even bringing in feeders to finish or you know, heifers uh to for seed stock or bulls or whatever. That whenever you you know, you you have a lot of risk with cattle if you're introducing cattle from anywhere else, regardless of the practices that they've had, um, because of the immunities that either have or haven't been built up. So that does, in my view, require vaccinations um when you're moving cattle around. Now, in in my own herd, we've been able to close that enough that we've almost eliminated vaccinations um because we're not exposing the cattle to potential disease. Um, I don't know if that's the right answer or not. I'm not gonna die on that hill, you know. It just it just seems right if we don't have to do it um and the cattle are healthy, then why do it? It's as simple as that or as complicated as that. So um, you know, and then every the the thing I do allow for every one of our producers is that first of all, they all come from the mindset of less is more. So whether that's uh input of synthetics or whatever it is, it's it applies to vaccines too. You know, there's a short list that probably are pretty much required for producers, but I let them make that decision. You know, of course, mRNAs have not been introduced at all in cattle. Uh, a lot of consumers are worried about that technology and vaccines. But much like Carrie, uh, our producers are winnowing down the amount of vaccinations that are necessary or they deem necessary, but the risk is so big that every producer needs to decide that based on their own herd and their own practices and whether they are bringing in cattle from outside sources or not. Um, I don't I really don't want to be in the position of dictating that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you. And just uh for the record, we we can't find any evidence that there's an mRNA vaccine uh created and approved for use on cattle. When you see that online, uh there's no source for that statement. We're talking about traditional, uh traditionally made vaccines, which in this case have a really good track record. All right. Thanks for uh thanks for letting me take that sidebar, but I thought we'd we'd approach it head on.
SPEAKER_01So and Alan, I just wanted to address jump in.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because buffaloes are an amenable species, no antibiotics, no hormones ever, right? It's you know, that is part of that animal itself. So when it comes there, but I'm with Matt, it's like there are times when they do have to do that. Some of our our ranchers, it it is so and that they know which one they did, right? There, there's that log there. But every once in a while, the the calves, right? What they want to make sure there's a little boost of vitamins or something like that for the success, you know, during that time. So once in a while I'll see that. But otherwise, because they're amenable, we don't ever see any vaccines, you know, that are uh given to the buffalo, like on a even during roundups, there's never any of that, you know, very few of them, unless you get into the big commercial part of the buffalo, right? Where they're preg checking, doing all that stuff.
SPEAKER_05But what we do make sure we watch is the parasites and parasitology as we're moving buffalo up and down around the country, uh, what is going with them in their gut as well. So we are always staying on top of that and making sure that uh we do our fecal samples. We down here in Texas work with Texas AM. And I know up north a lot of folks work with South Dakota State University. Uh, also the flies are really something that we have to watch down here in the South, especially with that new screw worm. And so we use a lot of diatomaceous earth in the wallows. That's something distinct that buffalo do, that uh cattle do not do, is they create these wallows. So we put diatomaceous earth in there as well as partner with the fecal samples and uh, you know, uh soil health that is improving and improves the buffalo health, improves the people health, and it's continuously working together in that way.
SPEAKER_02So I'd make the observation that all of us are highly uh engaged with technology and new technologies. There's no fear there, there's no uh ideological event that we're not going to use technology. We just use the right ones the right way, um, and we uh really avoid technologies that don't serve our regenerative system. Fair enough. Okay. Um we're going to move to the fun part here. Christy, just gonna just to check in with you, did did we get the highlights for what you that what we're looking for in terms of a guide?
SPEAKER_07This has been really great and very helpful and I think supportive to you know what we want to see in a true regenerative product. And for us as a retail buyer, being able to ask the right questions and dig into details to sift out whether something is, you know, not really in the spirit of regenerative. You know, there's this idea of, you know, letter of the law or spirit of the law. And I think we want to do both, but we especially things that are in the spirit of, you know, what you're trying to do. And when you talk about um use of feedlots or liquid manure, that's really helpful. I did have one question for the group, if it's okay to ask, about a bottleneck that I hear um from producers, and Matt and I just exchanged an email about it yesterday. Is can any of you, or is this open to the group, speak to the bottleneck of processing? And if we want to grow regenerative agriculture, what uh not necessarily identifying the problem of processing, but what are maybe solutions to this bottleneck of not enough processing for product um and what do we do about it? How do we do how do we address it? I don't know.
SPEAKER_03So I'm gonna hear from it.
SPEAKER_05Thank you. Um, Texas Trevor Buffalo Project, we're actually getting a USDA modular processing unit at the end of this year. So now in our sustainable uh holistic system, it's also including social economic development, workforce development, as well as training. And so uh we want to do, like Don mentioned, USDA field harvesting, where we can honor the buffalo in the field, pray, drum, sing, all the things culturally that are very important to us as we take the life of this buffalo and then go through the all the USDA standards, the HACCP, all of the things that are needed to go through the system of the American meat processing, you know, requirements and partake in that as well. So uh I think that for us, what we have found as a solution to that bottleneck, because it's difficult to find processors that are USDA certified that will take buffalo. And so that is something that is very important to us in our entire system of what we do, how we uh our relationship with the buffalo, with the soil, and with each other, as well as providing for that economic base.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's really helpful. Who's got the echo?
SPEAKER_01Lucille, I think. Oh, okay. I wanted to add to that. Um there's the USDA standard, and also, you know, um, a lot of our ranchers, we talk about state certification, which is just as good as USDA um and those standards that they have to be held to. Um, because of um the USDA and those floors, uh, you know, I'm just gonna call it out. It's all about capital. You know, those floor spaces are being taken up one, two, three years in advance, and that floor space. So they always say floor space is gold. Well, yeah, because you got to pay gold, these little ranchers, it will take that family rancher down to have to pay, you know, or um, they're not quite, they only need to do two or three animals a year. And they're like, we won't even turn on the house for that, right? So they're just being pushed out of the supply chain.
SPEAKER_02And that's the we're working on is always getting the custom processors to be legally be able to process a few animals at a time for producing we're doing good on time, but uh I want to add one question in here on on Christy's behalf. Um, and I'm gonna ask it in a teasing way of Lucille and and Don. Um, which of our certifications do you want to have on your regenerative system? And really the question is, do you use a certification? Do you think they're important? Does anybody ask you for those uh when you're when you're uh on on native lands using regenerative systems to raise animals?
SPEAKER_01Um I can answer some of it on ours. So most people don't even ask for the certification because they know the buffalo and where that animal's coming from on that. So a lot of times it's not. Um the most of the any of the certifications that I go for would be, you know, um if it's for the health of the person, if it's really gonna hurt them, like the gluten-free things such as that. Um, and then um a lot of times they aren't unable to get certified because it's so cost restrictive for the ranchers. Um, so that's where we can step in. So we ask them what's important for them. Is it organic? Is it right? What is that there? So we let the ranchers lead what that is, that standard they want to put on the label so they can access the market. That that's important to them.
SPEAKER_02That's a great answer. And in Christy's case, she would just go out to your farm and be your certifier. Um a reminder, I'm a little go ahead. Sorry, go ahead, Lucille.
SPEAKER_05Could I add just a little bit to that? You know, I think also it'd be great to uh take into consideration uh something else is that, you know, we talked about the devastation of the buffalo and why it happened. Now, here as native ranchers and producers, uh, we're building our own tables that we have not had access to, different producer tables. But with that comes this, I think it's a um a plus, a positive distinction, something to acknowledge that a buffalo raised and cared for uh by a native producer living with the buffalo in a relationship of kinship. And it'd be great to see that acknowledged on a label uh in the future, something that is like, you know, um elder certified or uh regenerative indigenous or something like that. Uh, I would love to see that in the future. We do use the USDA uh certification. And when we take our buffalo to processing, it always has to be because we sell to tribes as well and tribal commodity programs. And so those do have to be USDA. And recently we've started getting our buffalo halal certified as well, so it's uh prayed over and prayed over and prayed over.
SPEAKER_02So Matt and Carrie um use American Grass-Fed. A disclosure, I'm on that board, and I'm gonna make the pitch. The way American Grass fed would apply their buffalo standard, their crash fed buffalo standard, um, you would be audited by someone, a third party who's already on your land for $100, $200 for a year and a half, right? It's a it's a sound and sensible set of audits so that the third party is saying, yeah, these these guys are real, and there's no big membership fee on top of that. And that's because AGA is a bunch of ranchers who understand the pressures on the system, but also understand that retailers and institutions like to have that third-party stamp on there. So I I I like the way you guys presented that, uh, which is no, we're Native American producers. That self certifies. That's a legitimate statement. Um, Lucille, you still I'm gonna move on. You you stepped on um you you got you got into this, but I want you to give you some some some air to really get into it. Um, does the Texas Tribable Buffalo Project aspire to create a comprehensive system that addresses all dimensions of regenerative principles? And this is your moment to just describe the system and the interconnectedness. I know you could take 10 hours, but I also know you're getting really good at the elevator speech. So let's hear what you've got to say about the whole system.
SPEAKER_05Sure, thank you. First of all, you know, the the mission and goals of Texas Tribal Buffalo Project are to re-establish our kinship as relatives and our kinship to the buffalo as a relative and our kinship to the soil, even as a relative. This is how we move in life. This is the rematriation of agriculture where we are regaining. And by the way, rematriation is working throughout everything as we move in life with the point of view of the indigenous woman, the mother, the caretaker, the caregiver, the life giver in our communities. So as we move through that way, we have we're in our fifth year only. And uh we will be this November entering our sixth year. And we've created the social economic development way of reconnecting that helps not only Indigenous people, but all people have access to the buffalo in ways that are mentally, physically, and spiritually beneficial. That spiritual connection is ancestral to a person who has always relied on the buffalo for everything, as I once I stated earlier. Texas Tribal Buffalo Project, we are holistically creating this connection through regaining access to agriculture. Many of us don't have the opportunity to say we are fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh generation ranchers because as recently as 1860, you were a walking target, uh, walking in South Central Texas as a Native American to have your land, your home, and everything taken away from you brutally. So, Texas Tribal Buffalo Project, we have created curriculum. Our curriculum is on Moodle. It'll be available this year where we educate on Texas Indigenous history, on regenerative agriculture with that rematriation point of view, on meat processing, and how we can uh process in this, sit in this industry table with this rematriation basket. It's like this buffalo basket way of moving. And so we have been acquiring land. We have been connecting with other farmers and ranchers that are aging out of being able to caretake for their own homesteads, but want to allow Native people a chance to also partake in agriculture. And we've that's how we acquired our Floresville, and we're looking for more. We have an opportunity to purchase a ranch near Paint Rock, Texas of 1,551 acres to continue growing our buffalo herd, having those uh satellite ranches. We want to be able to do the same work uh in that way that Carrie and Matt are doing as well as replicating and and merging, like I said, traditional ways with modern ways of being and moving and doing that to some of the work. And we supply USDA certified bison meat across the country, yeah. And we accept EBT online, we're the only producer that accepts EBT online.
SPEAKER_02So so, Matt, you're getting pretty big. I know you have deep respect and reverence, and you refer to um uh the the indigenous community. What you just said sounds a lot uh uh like your philosophy, and I'm not trying to compare the two, but what does that sound like to you when you know how much work you've done in terms of the education, the building community, the awareness? Just I want to give you a how it's a question, I guess, is how close can you get? How is that the direction you're moving?
SPEAKER_04Well, yeah, I'm glad I was just taking notes, you know, about that same topic. Um you know, the parallels that we have, I think, go back to that connection to the land, the spiritual connection to the land and to the animal. And when when you're when you get closer to the land and you experience that, you can't help but have more reverence for the land. You can't help but want to help it thrive. And when you have more connection and you really care for an animal, and it's not one of 25,000 that are factory fed in a feedlot, but you're actually caring for these animals daily, you develop a connection, and that leads to reverence, and then that leads to utilizing that whole carcass that was discussed before, because you know what went into raising and producing that animal and stewarding that animal in that land. So you can't it's a it's a draw that I think if if you if you have any kind of EQ at all, you move into this uh spiritual realm about what you're doing. And I I personally can't explain it. I try sometimes and I I can't quite get the words to describe it. I just know it when I feel it. And it it's it's so fulfilling to have conversations with other producers on that same level. Um, and that leads to, I want to, I want to say out loud, that leads to even processing. I grew up in a rural area that, yes, the processing of the reverence of the animal, of course, but also I grew up in a in a smaller farm area, but there were seven different processing facilities that we didn't have to drive more than 15 miles to get to. It just depended on the direction, because whatever direction you drove for 15 miles, you could find processing for your animal, at least for the harvest of that animal. Uh well, what does that lead to? That leads to community, it leads to uh a decentralization of our food. Uh and that I believe is where we've really tripped up. We've we've we've eliminated small farms, we've eliminated small processors, we've eliminated small towns to a large degree. I know not 100%, but to a large degree. So we've eliminated community and that interconnection with our food and our community and what producers are providing what and what resources are there for everybody to be able to participate. And when you start to recreate that community through decentralization and through stewarding the land, it's hard, it's it's harder and harder to truly steward the land, to truly observe the land, to truly observe the animal and steward in the best way possible as you scale and scale and scale. There's an inverse relationship to stewardship and an inverse relationship to community. That's what I have to say.
SPEAKER_02That's fantastic. I'm glad I fumbled through that question. Good, good save, man. Um uh we got one more minute, and then we're gonna hand this off to Elizabeth for some questions that have come up. But I want to bring Carrie back into this because this thread of processing um is the same thread as I'm going like this as I thought, is the same thread as access markets. And you, Carrie, have had decent success getting institutions and schools and others to to buy the meat. But can you just chime in on what those challenges look like and what you've been able to overcome?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so out here in the West, our our challenge isn't the actual processing anymore. Um, there's actually lots of openings, it's gone kind of the other direction since COVID. Um what our challenge is is our our customers like the schools, um they want you to be the the answer to that what they're looking for. So we started with 14 school districts, and now our product is in over 55 school districts. And you would think that you know that's a great success, and it is, but we couldn't scale as fast as that program scaled. So we had to bring in other producers that maybe weren't part of our producer group, and it's you know, I joke it's kind of the American way bigger, stronger, faster. And I would have rather grow slower. I would have rather grow slower, bring in more producers, make sure everybody's certifications are aligned. But the the giant food system that is our food system, they want it cheaper and they want it quicker and they want it faster. And so that's been our challenge is um, you know, I joke our company has grown and shrunk like three or four times because we get these big industrial customers that say, okay, great, we want to buy 10,000 pounds a month. How quick can you get to 100,000? And it's just like it's this overwhelming question.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna move the back to Elizabeth for QA, but uh um that partnership, for instance, between natural groceries and thousand hills, those long-term commitments for large amounts of product, is if I may, and you don't get to comment on this, uh Matt, but that's what's allowed you to really improve your supply chain um so that uh we have never missed a delivery from you. All right, Elizabeth, you're on. We can have some questions from uh from the audience or the participants.
SPEAKER_06Yes, sir. So um just as a reminder, everyone, if you'd like to um give your questions verbally, you can raise your hand and we'll try to work those into the questions that people have been submitting throughout the discussion. But I'm gonna start um with Kate Batson Barrel. She asked, um, on the grazing question, what does the panel think about integrated farm operations? She says that she works with several farms that raise both grains and row crops alongside the cattle. Um, and they said they may raise these as feed or simply graze out the stubble and crop residue. Um, does the panel consider this a regenerative practice?
SPEAKER_02Anybody? I think that might be for you, Matt.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, multi-species uh grazing, if that's what we're talking about, I think it can absolutely is regenerative. Um, you know, we've learned that uh sheep and goats consume different forage than cattle and they can be commingled. Um it really ends up being uh, I think it was referred to earlier, uh uh infrastructure issue with any specific farm or ranch. As you take on species, you need more infrastructure to accommodate each of those species. So we've had our, you know, personally our our goats and our our hogs, and it just it it becomes a labor issue and an infrastructure issue. But in incorporating multi-species is absolutely regenerative, it's probably uh regenerative on a higher plane, quite frankly. Um that's how that's how nature operates.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. So Colin Bogle um did say that uh he just got to visit Lucille up at her um farm in February, and that he is planning to come visit again with some um some corn, uh heritage corn as gifts. But uh he he asked a couple of questions. I'll give you guys the first one. Um he asked the panelists if they can speak about the various prophecies from um indigenous uh culture that deal with both indigenous and afro-descendant land stewardship and how the farmers are fitting themselves into that.
SPEAKER_01You want me to start, Lucia? Um for for me, um I'm sitting here in you know in Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in uh Lakota Territory, Dakota, Dakota Territory. So the Buffalo are our creation story. Um we were we were Buffalo before we were people. Um, you know, there's a lot of stories around that creation, but you know, we lived under the earth as you know, people see our whole story in the heart of the Black Hills, which you guys all have heard that, right? We um we own the Black Hills, it was taken from us, right? We're still trying to get that back, but that's where we were born, at a Wind Cave party, which is in Custer State Park, as far as that there. So um our connection is really deep when we talk about that. So a lot of our I say ranchers because I'm talking into a pre-colonial right aspect here. But when I'm here on my land and or when I'm at Lucio's work, um, we always refer to those are our aunts, those are our aunties, our uncles, aunts or grandpas, our grandpas out there. There's a you know a respect for those animals because we, you know, it is our grandma out there. So we do, you know, we do take that respect there because um we were always told if you follow the buffalo, they're gonna teach you. Um that's how we learned what plants to eat and what not to eat and everything like that. So from the time we were born and came out of that cave, they said to follow the buffalo and they wanted to show you everything that you need. So that connection is really, really deep as far as that. Um there's stories, you know, all around um the buffalo ate us first. And then there was the great race around the Black Hills, and all of the animals ran, um, including the buffalo. And then there's a story about the bird, our Zenkala is what what is it called? The bird, and he was on the back of the buffalo, and he flew ahead and won the race. So then we weren't, we we had to eat the four-legged instead. So that was kind of there's another story around there. So a lot of our inner connections with the animals, it comes from the create our creation story. Um, so you know that that's where our ran our and our ranchers do not like to be called ranchers, but like I said, I'm in this context. Um they're stewards, they're actually caretakers, and it's like the buffalo are actually taking care of them. And that's kind of like what Matt said there's this reverence there, and that's the reverence that you feel is because you're you're actually the animals are taking care of you at this point. You're just out there kind of helping them out do their things because regenerative is hands-on, there's very little hands-on management. So you're actually learning from there and saying, wow, look at them do that. I've never seen them do that before. And it's, you know, just the action out there regeneratively. So um our creation story, you know, that's the biggest story around, you know, in most indigenous um the 500 over 500 tribes plus have a creation story around the buffalo, um, or how they were born around that buffalo. Um, it's just a little bit different on that side. So I'm I'm gonna stop it there.
SPEAKER_02That was a perfect, perfect addition. Uh, Elizabeth, what else do you have?
SPEAKER_06Um how this is again from Colin Vogel. How is the risk of screw worm being mitigated or addressed, particularly in Texas, within the context of regenerative farming, and how does that impact your systems?
SPEAKER_05Well, we're using, like I mentioned earlier, a lot of diatomaceous earth and monitoring the buffalo. We're not giving them any other medication aside from what is needed when we do uh fecal testing and we find out that they have a certain number of parasites. And with that, and so it's also, you know, the soil health, the the grass health, we're really grass farmers, right? Like we want to make sure that our grass is healthy, and if we're our grass is healthy and there's a balance, there's gonna be parasites no matter what. The new screw worm, uh, Texas has been releasing these sterile flies, and I know that's been helping, and so it's just a lot of watching and managing by watching and treating as necessary.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna jump in, Elizabeth, which is your least favorite thing, but I just got back from Texas. They are confident that the current methods for treating screw worm will work if we reinvest, get the investment back up. All the border states are participating, and actually no one's waiting for the feds anymore because the feds kind of dropped the ball, if I may add that. Um, and uh I have uh I've pulled screw worms out of hogs in Haiti in the 1980s. You don't want that job. That's quote. Um, related to that, I'm gonna throw this question, Jan. I'm I think Colin has it too, but the the uh prairie mealybug is decimating pastures now in in southern Texas, and it just eliminates your grass. Is this on anybody's radar? Because that's harder to treat. We don't have a system for that. Okay, so everyone's got fair warning.
SPEAKER_06Um I will go ahead and go and move on to um next question from Richard Tufton. Uh Richard does work for um Regenerified and Regenified, and he says he's really enjoyed the panel. Um, and that he wants to make sure all consumers buy everyone's products on this panel. Um, what do you guys think would move the needle for consumers? And what will they connect with to make consumers choose your products? Um, and then he says keep up the great work.
SPEAKER_01I think Natural Grocers does a great job around consumer education. Um, for us is to be able to get that, you know. Our good friends Diamond Rancher on this call also, you know, we got Matt ICK's on here. Um that education, continuing to educate to let them know. Also, you know, looking at buying by the seasons, right? Eating seasonally, our plate should look different. Um, but I think natural grocers is continuing to educate, educate, educate. But buffalo is higher in omega-3s and sake salmon. It's leaner than you know, everything. So when you look at the nutritional and the nutrient dense of round regenerative cattle and buffalo, um, it's a lot more nutritious for them. So for us at Tonka, even at Tonka Bar when we had Tonka Bars, was really just continuing that education and having good supporters like the natural grocers, um, the Nyman Ranches, the Thousand Oaks, right? Really getting that education out there because this is a platform we have, right? As vendors and as you know, being responsible so our consumers know to buy response responsibly and understand.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for the shout out. Appreciate it. That's all Christy's work, by the way. She's a great educator, but anything else?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, could I jump in on that? I I there's so many benefits to regenerative. When you're really practicing regenerative, there's many benefits, but health is personal to all of us, and that is also the topic that'll get our attention the fastest, is anything to do with our health. And so, like Don referred to, when we prove out with new technology on nutrient density and be able to really isolate and measure the nutrient density and know that food is medicine and that you know there's things happening on the uh conventional big health side too that kind of parallel this. But you know, we can I just I just got off a podcast with a uh registered dietitian, and she was talking about her conversations with people and about the you know, we talk about the resiliency of our regenerative practices, but our bodies are resilient if we just feed it the right things, the right nutrition, and days we can change ailments. And it's I think that'll be the thing uh that'll get the most attention from consumers is what's in this, what's not in it, what's in it, what Nutrient density, because if we can change our health or an ailment in a matter of days by changing a practice of what we're eating, I think that has all kinds of potential.
SPEAKER_02All right. Thanks for that. Um, we're really good on time, but I'd like to give each of our four panelists kind of a moment to give some last thoughts about the value of regenerative and remember this idea that people are coming to us every day saying they have regenerative meat, and we have to say prove it, right? Um, or we we may sell it, but you can't call it regenerative, it's not proven. Um, that's this practical uh part of these sessions. But Carrie, I'm um I'm gonna uh ask you to chime in one more time about just your your vision here um and and where this takes us in terms of retail uh meat sales.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um hopefully you guys can hear me. I turned off my camera. I'm so sorry. I don't know why I don't know why this keeps happening. Um the prove it. So I've been really, really adamant about getting soil testing, water infiltration, and bulk density and um resiliency testing every year on our property. And we've been compiling that data for years. And to be honest, some years are better than others. Like I said, our best years were when we were doing multi-species. But as much as there is so much greenwashing going on, connecting directly to the brand that you like and finding out who they are and what they do is probably the most efficient way to find out if they're doing exactly what they're doing. Um, so that to me, that is the quickest way is connect directly with a brand that you love and find out what their practices are, why they do the certifications they do. Because if you don't get a response, then that's the answer. And if you do get a response, it's usually one that's very, very um in-depth involved and will tell you exactly what you're looking for.
SPEAKER_02Lucille, last thoughts.
SPEAKER_05Yes, thank you. I just want to say, yeah, you know, with regenerative agriculture, I think it's important, like Carrie said, to look at the brand and look at the practices and values of what is going into caretaking for that animal that we're going to consume. It is true, we are what we eat, and we want to be strong mentally, physically, and spiritually. That's the holistic method. That's what I learned when I was 20 years old from Crystal Market in Boulder, Colorado, way back in the day. But I want to leave us with these words from our uh Hunk Papa Lakota elder, Sitting Bull, who said, uh, during the time, this is during the time of this mass extermination that we started with. Let us put our minds and our hearts together to see what life we can make for our future, for all of our future and all of our future generations. And for me and Texas Travel Buffalo Project, that's our rematriation work in um this regenerative agriculture way of being.
SPEAKER_02Okay, Matt, let's jump in and um which thoughts, which last thoughts?
SPEAKER_04Well, um this is what I think about regenerative agriculture. It's there's it there's a different definition for regenerative agriculture depending on what food category you're talking about or even what animal you're talking about. But the same spirit is this is the same that we discussed earlier, so I'm not going to repeat all that. But the bottom line is, I believe, is that we as a people will either decide that we want to adopt this and and move it, move these practices across the country or the continent, or it'll be decided for us. And I believe things go much better when you decide and take action than some than other forces deciding for us that this is a direction, and that could mean you know, collapse of the food system or whatever. Uh I I just I believe that we still have the chance to be able to scale regenerative agriculture in whatever form that looks like. And it's still in our grasp to do that, and we either choose it or have it forced upon us, and that's where we are today.
SPEAKER_02All right, Don Sherman, you get the last word, but I want to point out what's on screen here, our next session, Thursday, August 27th, hog and poultry. Great set of panelists. So, Don, wrap this up for us.
SPEAKER_01What it Yeah, uh, we always say like uh Matakiase, which means we're all related. Uh you know, we're all here, like we've said before. Um, it takes a herd. So individually, it always takes one, and then we're all together and it makes us stronger. Um, I've all you know always end with, you know, Buffalo face the storm. And this is a storm, as we all know. But eventually um they continue to face it and they walk out because they know that storm's gonna break and open up instead of walking with it, you know, always going against it. So, you know, as long as we stay strong together and I'm with Matt and the group, um, I don't think we're past that breaking point. This could, you know, this can scale. Um and really just look at your local, you know, like Christy said, there's um, we know which brands we want and research and you know, um feel comfortable with them and moving forward with the regenerative um part. So, but yes, Matakayase, thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Matakayase. Um, thanks everybody.