The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerabilities of our globalized food system and highlighted the desperate need for local and regional supplies of healthy meat. We must replace corn-based feedlots, which are responsible for significant climate emissions, nitrogen pollution, and animal suffering. Grass-Fed Beef for a Post-Pandemic World outlines a hopeful path out of our broken food system via regional networks of regeneratively produced meat. In 2017, Ridge Shinn and Lynne Pledger went to market with Big Picture Beef, a company that partners with farmers across the Northeast to increase access to wholesale markets while promoting holistic grazing management techniques. The result? Increased health benefits for consumers, the environment, and livestock. This book compiles information from the fields of ecology, climate science, nutrition, and animal welfare, along with on-the-farm stories from Ridge’s travels as a consultant all over the world. It reveals that regenerative grazing can restore degraded farmland, protect against droughts and floods, increase biodiversity, combat climate change by reducing emissions and sequestering carbon, contribute to regional economic development, and produce nutrient-dense meat for consumers. This book is for anyone wondering how our farmers and ranchers can raise cattle while also caring for the local and global environment. It includes a foreword by Gabe Brown, the bestselling author of Dirt to Soil.
