Items Tagged With Cowcus

The 2nd Grass-fed Party New York City Cowcus brought a lot of like-minded people together for conversation, drinks, and excellent food last night. Among the attendees was a grass-fed beef producer from Arkansas, a documentary filmmaker who is working on a film on grass-fed farming, a man who works for the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, a woman who works for the New York State Governor’s Office, a young woman who has worked on organic farms in Oregon, and many others who were passionate about the Party and making our food sources sustainable. We talked about grass-fed farming and food ALL night!  What struck me most about everyone at the Cowcus was that although we all had different reasons for supporting the Grass-fed Party, we all could agree on how exciting and promising grass-fed farming is.  Whether as farmers, cooks, environmentalists, policymakers, teachers, or business people we could all agree on one thing: grass-fed farming provides real solutions to so many problems. Whether we were talking about its health benefits, or its environmental benefits, or even its benefit to family farmers and rural communities, each conversation inspired me to think about how important it is to inform more Americans about grass-fed farming. Our hope for this community site is that it will become a platform for people across the country to talk about grass-fed issues.

Here are some of the topics covered at the Cowcus last night:

The need to create better access to fresh foods within walking distance of more homes in urban neighborhoods.

The potential to create more economic balance between upstate farmers and New York City eaters.

The need for more financial support from banks or the government to help new grass-fed ranchers make a start at a viable business.

How can we bridge the gap between the need for providing healthy foods for the hungry and the growing movement that advocates artisanally produced foods?

How can small farmers achieve a fair share of farm subsidies when faced against the powerful lobbies of big agribusiness?  Can a political leader address this problem and make a change in the status quo?

Last night the first official Cowcus of the Grass-fed Party was held in New York City at Back Forty. The Cowcus was a round-table discussion between experts who have made a significant contribution by vocation to grass-fed industries and knowledge.

Our guests of the evening included, Betty Fussell, Ken Jaffe, and Linda Jaffe. Betty Fussell is a writer of food and America, and has spent the last four years traveling around the U.S. interviewing ranchers and writing her soon to be released book, Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef. Ken and Linda Jaffe are the owners of Slope Farms in Delaware County, New York where they raise grass-fed beef and work to preserve farmlands while helping to promote grass-fed beef production and distribution in upstate New York.

The evening went swimmingly and the conversation went on for four hours! The guests brought a wealth of knowledge to the table and Ulla and I gained quite a bit of new insight into the complicated subjects we are going to be tackling in the coming months.

Here is a list of some of the subjects covered last night. We will be elaborating on the points made on these topics raised at the Cowcus in the upcoming weeks.

• The history of beef in America
• The place of corn and subsidies in commodity beef production
• The production and distribution challenges faced by small grass-fed ranchers
• The regional differences in grass-fed productivity
• The challenges and benefits of rancher co-ops
• The impact of one writer, Michael Pollan, on recent interest in grass-fed beef
• The matching of new generation ranchers and farmers with unused pasture land
• Breeds of livestock and how they do on a grass-fed diet


Questions that came out of the discussion:

• Is a complete switch to grass-fed beef in America possible and what would it take on a practical level?
• How can we support and entice a new generation of farmers and ranchers into the occupation and make it economically sustainable?
• Is the American palate open to grass-fed meats?
• Are there enough acres of grazing lands in this country to support grass-fed beef as a commodity product?