Grass-Fed Beef for a Post-Pandemic World: How Regenerative Grazing Can Restore Soils and Stabilize the Climate
by Lynne Pledger & Ridge Shinn
Published by Chelsea Green Publishing Co - November 2022 - Paperback - 224 pp – 22.5cm x 14.5cm
How can we learn from our mistakes and pave a way for sustainable, nutritious, local meat?
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.
In Grass Fed-Beef for a Post-Pandemic World, you’ll find information assembled 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 United States and abroad.
You’ll discover how 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
- produce nutrient-dense, healthy meat for consumers
Grass-Fed Beef for a Post-Pandemic World is not just for beef producers, but for anyone wondering how our farmers and ranchers can raise cattle while also caring for the local and global environment.
‘Lynne Pledger and Ridge Shinn have created a readable, usable guide to grass-fed beef—full of both the hows and whys. An essential addition to the libraries of everyone involved in the raising and selling of beef.’ — Nicolette Hahn Niman, author of Defending Beef
‘The next time someone argues that cows are disastrous for the planet, hand them a copy of Grass-Fed Beef for a Post-Pandemic World. Equal parts manifesto and how-to guide, Shinn and Pledger will show you that the solution to our human and planetary health crisis begins with a cow eating grass and ends with the most delicious steak you’ve ever had.’ — Dan Barber, author of The Third Plate
Lynne Pledger is a writer and environmental advocate. She has worked with Ridge Shinn since the early 1980s to preserve heritage livestock breeds and increase regenerative grazing in the northeastern United States. She has also worked in affiliation with NPOs—including Clean Water Action, Sierra Club, and Upstream—on public policy issues such as waste reduction, climate change, and energy. She has been a guest lecturer on sustainability issues at UMass Amherst, Smith College, Leslie University, and the Harvard School of Public Health. In addition, she homeschooled her two children and one grandchild. Now living in western Massachusetts, she is writing a book of poetry.
Ridge Shinn is the founding CEO of Grazier LLC, a.k.a. Big Picture Beef, a 100% grass-fed beef company partnering with farmers throughout the north-eastern United States. Early in his career he became interested in heritage breeds of livestock and cofounded the group now known as The Livestock Conservancy. He was also the founding director of the New England Livestock Alliance, which helped farmers find markets for their meat. In addition to managing his Devon herd in central Massachusetts, Ridge has consulted all over North America, in New Zealand, England, Uruguay, and Argentina, and for the Lakota of the Cheyenne River Reservation. His work has been recognized in Smithsonian, the Atlantic, the New York Times, and TIME magazine, which dubbed him a “carbon cowboy.”
