Lexington, KY - Call them pedestrian prophylactics.
They were the prescribed footwear on a mid-April field day in Bourbon County sponsored by the Kentucky Beef Council, and to me they were a surprise.
In the fifteen years I've been writing about food and agriculture I've walked amongst lots of livestock and hiked lots of pastures--mostly on organic farms, or those at least bent on sustainable practices. And even with the relatively heightened awareness and concern on those farms about herd health and invasive weeds, I was never asked to bag my feet before entering.
About 50 of us hit four farms in the course of the field day, and all were expected to don fresh plastic booties at each stop, to diminish the possibility of friendly visitors transferring nasty microbes from one farmer's Angus herd to another or delivering stray weed seeds to pristine pastures.
It was an understandable and laudable practice, and still it caught me by surprise. Because my initiation fifteen years ago led me to believe that level of awareness and care was the special province of only a select few farmers--the organic and sustainable fringe/hippie types.
I was also surprised to hear the relatively more conventional Bourbon County cattle farmers who led the tours of their farms talk about their efforts to minimize or eliminate their use of commercial pesticides and herbicides, the rotational grazing and composting that keep their pastures vigorous and productive without the use of commercial fertilizers, and the focus on genetics and nutrition that help keep their cattle healthy so they can minimize or eliminate their use of antibiotics and growth hormones.
Things have changed.
I'm not willing to venture that every one of Kentucky's 29,000 cattle farmers is as enlightened as the four on the Bourbon County tour appeared. But I'm willing to believe that if the mainstream Beef Council, a wing of the Kentucky Cattlemen's Association, highlights members who are paying as much attention to the health of their herds and land as to their pocketbooks--and who were not shy about using words the terms organic and sustainability--it may be a signal that what were once fringe values are edging closer to the mainstream.
And that gets me back to the subject I've been chewing on, like a cow with her cud, over several columns now: the concern surrounding a recent deal made between the Kentucky Department of Agriculture's Kentucky Proud marketing program and Minnesota-based PM Beef Global, Inc.
The deal has PM Beef buying Angus calves from Kentucky farmers and trucking those calves to an Iowa feedlot where for months they eat grain-based rations enriched with trace minerals supplied by Nicholasville feed supplement concern Alltech, Inc. When they've reached market weights, the cattle are trucked about 50 miles to be killed and reduced to what are known as "primal cuts," at PM's slaughtering facility across the Minnesota border. The cuts are then trucked back to Lexington, where Critchfield, a specialty meats and food distribution company, packages the Alltech Angus beef with Kentucky Proud labeling and works with two other distributors to get the product to restaurants and retailers across the state. It's the first opportunity a Kentucky Proud product's had for such wide distribution.
I resisted believing the benefits of this deal would accrue to anyone other than PM Beef's owners. Then I learned their brokers are actually paying higher prices at auction to Kentucky cattle farmers who are able to prove their cattle are bona fide Black-hided Angus, born, raised, and weaned in Kentucky, and in good health. The prices aren't astoundingly better--two or three cents per pound according to the farmers I contacted--but when you consider PM's also willing to buy larger-than-average calves, the difference can be as much as $50 to $60 per head, which means a lot in the often-marginal cattle business.
I wondered why the deal had to involve an out-of-state beef processing company, then learned the arrangement can't be replicated within our borders and still put the product on store shelves and in restaurants at competitive prices. Kentucky does have enough competent small and custom meat processors spread across the state to handle this program's projected 400-head of cattle per week. But none at the moment could handle that number alone, the way PM's Minnesota facility can. That efficiency makes PM the winner, even located four states away from us and even though that efficiency hinges completely on trucking costs remaining low.
When and if the cost of diesel doubles or triples, that advantage evaporates.
Same with finishing the calves on corn and grain in Iowa. I interviewed the site veterinarian, Simon Timmermans, who monitors their health and development as a consultant to both PM Beef and Alltech. Timmermans described the feeding regimen and the reasons for Alltech's inclusion of yeast products and minerals such as selenium in the cattle's feed. It boosts the uptake of nutrients, he said, and suppresses infections, reducing the need for antibiotics. He also said the northern Iowa location of the three feedlots being used makes for a more healthful diet because the corn there is of higher quality than the corn generally raised in the southern plains states such as Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma, and fed to cattle on the big feedlots there.
It seems a reassuringly well-managed and responsible program that makes sense--as long as fuel costs remain low enough that trucking cattle to corn makes sense.
I still had to figure Kentucky Proud was undercutting its own pedigree by introducing a product that competed directly--with all its large-scale agribusiness advantages--against those cattle farmers and small processors who've chosen to deliver honest-to-gosh Kentucky-bred beef, raised and finished right here.
But I no longer believe the competition's all that direct. Most cattle raised to slaughter weights and direct-marketed to consumers here are finished on grass, which purveyors use as a selling point. Consumers know the difference, and not just the difference in prices.
And the Kentucky Proud representatives at the Department of Agriculture say their support for Kentucky's independent farmers and producers small farmers has not slackened in the wake of the deal with the Minnesota company. Communications Director Bill Clary told me Kentucky Proud believes there's room on store shelves for both kinds of product, and that the program supports both with equal enthusiasm because Kentucky farmers and small businesses are benefitting under both approaches.
I have to concede on these points. As noted in my earlier columns, Kentucky Proud isn't deviating from its mission by giving its seal of approval to the Alltech Angus project, because at least some Kentucky farmers and Kentucky-based agriculture businesses are being served. And the project itself appears to be run in an exemplary fashion, selecting cattle with traceable lines and verified health records, and finishing them in controlled and monitored conditions.
Fast Food Nation
Food, Inc.
Like the plastic booties I was asked to wear in Bourbon County, these efforts speak to a cattle farming and beef industry that at least appear to be embracing more careful practices. And that's reassuring at a time when popular books like and documentaries like - not to mention the thousands of cases of food-bourne illnesses annually - force us to ask not only where's the beef, but what's in it, too.
Business Lexington
Still, I am 's local foods correspondent, and the Kentucky Proud Alltech Angus beef coming out of this program ain't local. Its success will be fueled by the diesel for the trucks that take the cows to Iowa, Minnesota, and back, and for the tractors on the Iowa farms where their feed is raised--likely boosted by petroleum-based fertilizers.
That's not a sustainable approach in a fuel-hungry world, and you can't soft-pedal that fact, even in a pair of plastic booties.