Steve Normandy raises grass-fed Scottish Highlanders

Following is the introduction for a story I wrote for the 2010 winter edition of Edible White Mountains Magazine on the health and environmental benefits of grass-fed beef along with some links to farms who sell grass-fed beef in the seacoast area.

While many Americans probably don’t think much about what they eat, and what “it” has eaten, more and more farmers are turning back the hands of time and choosing grass instead of cornand soy-based grain mixtures to feed their cows for health, environmental, and sociological reasons.

Cows are natural “grazers”; for thousands of years their diet has consisted strictly of grass and other forage crops. Cows are ruminants, meaning their stomachs have four chambers with billions of bacteria that allow them to ferment the grass and extract the nutrients.

The industrialization of farming in the 1950s and ‘60s gave farmers the opportunity to fatten a steer more quickly with inexpensive (subsidized) grains. Most cattle farmers adapted this “zero grazing” or confined animal feeding operation (CAFO). CAFOs enabled farmers to raise many cattle in a small space, or feedlot, where centralized feeding meant less work and fuel consumed in transporting food to the field.  Click here to read the full article.