REGENERATIVE BEEF: IT’S THE HOW, NOT THE COW.
At RootLab, we are on a journey to reach our mission to make the most nutritious and eco-conscious food for our dogs, ourselves, and the planet. Recently, we’ve learned that cattle raised using regenerative practices can be a source of eco-conscious beef. It’s all in how the cattle are raised.
WHAT IS REGENERATIVE?
Regenerative agriculture is a system of farming and ranching that promotes natural ecosystem cycles. Practitioners aim to enrich the health and fertility of soil, improve watersheds, increase biodiversity, enhance crop resilience to drought and other climate change factors, and benefit farmers’ livelihoods
Regenerative is about embracing nature and its processes. It’s working with nature and not against it.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?
Healthy soil is more valuable than oil. In addition to the benefits mentioned above, healthy soils capture more CO2 from the atmosphere and in concert with plants and photosynthesis put this carbon back into the ground. This process is called carbon sequestration.
WHAT ABOUT THE COW?
Planned grazing is an important regenerative agriculture principle. Animals, in this case cattle, mimic natural wild behaviors of bison grazing on the plains. As they are grazing, cattle crush a portion of grass, eat a portion of grass, fertilize a portion of the grass, and aerate the land with their movement.
Then the cattle are moved onto another grazing paddock so that the area they were just on can absorb all the benefits of their grazing. This symbiotic relationship between the land and the cattle builds healthy soil which enables greater carbon sequestration.
