Texas – the home of American beef production

The US beef industry is expanding, with the national herd growing just under 1% for 2017. Ample feed supplies and improved pasture conditions have spurred ranchers to grow cattle numbers from a six-decade low in 2014.

Texas is the heaviest-populated cattle state in the USA with 12.5m cattle residing in the state. Table 1 outlines the top USA states for cattle numbers.

This growth has meant beef prices remain subdued, with the USDA expecting beef prices to rise about 2% this year, in line with overall food inflation. Retail ground beef has dropped about 13% from a record high in 2015.

While there was much fanfare around Ireland getting approved for the USA beef market in 2015, volumes exported have remained very low and the current Irish price is unable to compete with cheaper USA beef.

Japan and Mexico have been two of the most important markets for US beef in recent years, with 307,559t (24% of export market) going to Japan in 2017. Mexico took 237,972t (18% of exports) in 2017. Current rumblings around trade wars and tariff introductions with important countries for USA beef exports has American cattle farmers getting very worried.

The Birdwell and Clark Ranch

One of the highlights on a trip to the World Meat Congress last month was a farm visit in North Texas to a ranch situated halfway between Wichita Falls and Dallas. Deborah Clark and Emery Birdwell embarked on a lifelong project and purchased the 14,000ac ranch in 2004 for $575/acre. The ranch had previously been run as a typical Texas cow/calf operation.

Emry and Deborah decided to run a “stocker” system, where they purchased weanlings in September/October at 500lbs and sell them on to feedlots. All cattle are bought through an agent and all cattle are sold in mid-July in an all-out policy. When cattle arrive, they are castrated, given a clostridial vaccine and a long acting parasite dose.

Emry studied under Allan Savory in the 1980s, learning the benefits of holistic management which focused on a managed grazing plan that included adequate recovery time for forage between grazing periods and animal impact. Emry started out by subdividing the large pastures by installing 150 miles of single-strand electric fence. This resulted in approximately 140 paddocks ranging in size from 45 to 145 acres.

Paddocks were centred around the water sources, which were the limiting factor on the ranch. In the original plan, the ranch was grazed as three cells of approximately 4,000 acres each: north, south and west. Three herds of 1,500-1,800 head grazed in a managed plan in each cell.

In 2011, drought forced them to sell one of the herds and run the other two groups together. This meant paddocks had a longer recovery time and the system worked well. The average rest or recovery period of any given paddock is a minimum of 50 days and a maximum of 120 days.

The importance of the recovery period and animal impact to the overall improvement in pasture conditions experienced at the ranch in the past 12 months is huge. The ranch takes its wildlife responsibilities very seriously and cover crops are planted to promote plant and animal diversity on the ranch.

Grazing benefits

The recovery period allows adequate time for individual plants to grow and controls over-grazing by keeping cattle from returning to the same or preferred plants. Root systems flourish and establish healthier, stable grasses.

The benefit of animal impact is the result of a concentration of dung and urine adding nutrients back to the soil. Animal impact also provides for the trampling of old grasses that help keep the soil covered as well as exposing new plant growth to sunlight and disturbs existing seed beds for new growth.

This has all led to today’s system where 5,000 cattle are grazed in one group. Twenty-five miles of water pipe service the paddocks and mobile water troughs are moved on a daily basis to provide water for stock.

When moving cattle, poly wire is raised to allow animals walk underneath and once animals get used to it, the system works well. Animals receive a protein supplement delivered via a snacker vehicle fed along the ground every three days.

Loading 5,000 cattle in four hours

The thought of an extra TB herd test is enough to get some farmers stressed out in Ireland. What about loading 5,000 cattle in one go? It’s not a problem on this ranch, with several bud boxes built around the ranch for ease of cattle loading

A bud box (see Figure 1) is a system of handling cattle named after its designer, Bud Williams. The Bud box is a low-stress system of handling cattle and works on three basic principles:

As the animals enter the Bud box, they proceed to the end gate where they naturally turn in an anticlockwise direction back towards the gate they came in. As this gate is closed, this means the animals have no choice but to exit up the shoot.

The positioning of the stockperson is very important in terms of keeping cattle flowing. It’s also important that the handlers don’t get stressed out in any way. This stress transfers to the cattle and the whole system breaks down. The same process could be used in an Irish context for filling a long chute or crush in a cattle handling yard.

Hormone beef

Since the 1950s, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a number of steroid hormone drugs for use in beef cattle and sheep, including natural estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and their synthetic versions. These drugs increase the animals’ growth rate and the efficiency by which they convert the feed they eat into meat, typically increasing growth rate by between 5 and 25%

The FDA approves these drugs only after information and/or studies have shown that the food from the treated animals is safe for people to eat, and that the drugs do not harm the treated animal or the environment. The drugs also have to be effective, meaning that they work as intended.

These steroid hormone drugs are typically formulated as pellets or “implants” that are placed under the skin on the back side of the animal’s ear. The implants dissolve slowly under the skin and do not require removal. The ears of the treated animals are discarded at slaughter and are not used for human food. All approved steroid implant products have a zero-day withdrawal. All of the steroid hormone implants are available for over-the-counter purchase in the US and are generally given by the livestock producer at specific stages of the animal’s life.

Hormones

Promotional material on hormones point to the very low levels that are found in meat after treatment:

There is also a strong argument from the hormone companies from a sustainability point of view.

Recent research in the USA has demonstrated that to raise the same amount of beef without hormone implants, it would take 11m more cattle to be raised, 18m more acres of land for grazing and growing feed and 515bn more gallons of water for producing feed and feeding animals.

Recent analysis by the Irish Farmers Journal would indicate that the efficiencies gained by treating cattle with hormones would be equal to a €1/kg increase in beef price or a 25% gain.

EU ban

The EU introduced a ban on hormone-treated beef in the 1980s. Imported meat from animals with detectable levels of hormonal residues was also banned. The ban was introduced as evidence suggested oestrogenic hormones were carcinogenic at high levels.

The ban has remained but has attracted criticism from the USA. They claim the ban is part of an overall protectionist policy adapted by the EU.

From an EU point of view, the ban means EU consumers have access to the safest, healthiest beef in the world.

Who is Allan Savory?

Allan Savory, born in Zimbabwe and educated in South Africa, pursued an early career as a research biologist and game ranger in Northern Rhodesia (today Zambia) and later as a farmer and game rancher in Zimbabwe.

In the 1960s, he made a number of significant breakthroughs in understanding what was causing the degradation and desertification of the world’s grassland ecosystems. This lead Savory to conclude that cattle were in fact the answer to the world’s climate change issues and that by intensively stocking areas, it led to grasses repopulating desert areas and a biological system to start thriving again.

In 2009, Savory, and a group of colleagues co-founded the Savory Institute in Boulder, Colorado, to serve the world through an international network of entrepreneurial innovators and leaders committed to serving their regions with the highest standards of holistic management training and implementation support. The Africa Centre became the first of the Savory Institute’s locally led and managed hubs.

Savory’s book, Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision-Making (Island Press, 1999), describes his effort to find workable solutions ordinary people could implement to overcome many of the problems besetting communities and businesses today.

A TED talk by Savory on how to fight desertification and reverse climate change in 2013 has received over 4.6m views and was voted one of the most intriguing TED talks of all time.

“We are in a kind of a toddler to teenager system here. We are buying weanlings at 500lbs and taking them to 800lbs where they are sold to a feedlot for finishing” – Deborah Clark

“We got hit with drought in 2011 and we just had to do something differently. We had to sell one herd and started grazing the remaining cattle in bigger groups and found out it worked” – Emry Birdwell

“Our day is spent completely focused on livestock and moving them to new pasture. We move stock five times daily – at 7am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm” – Emry Birdwell

“It’s important that the handlers don’t get stressed at loading time as this feeds into the animals and the whole system breaks down” – Deborah Clark

“The farm is just about able to meet mortgage payments. We have had to draw from other sources of income in tough years to keep things going. We believe in what we are trying to do and believe the ranch is a better place than when we first came in 2004” – Deborah Clark