The Virtues of Grass Farming

Today, the majority of our agricultural industry has been split into crop growing and animal raising. This means that the livestock owners are buying the agricultural products of another farm in order to feed their animals. This is very different from the traditional method of animal raising where farmers would feed their livestock from product they grew themselves. There still, however, exist some farms that practice this type of farming.

In the “All Flesh is Grass” chapter of The Omnivore’s Dilemna, Michael Pollan visits one of these farms in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The Polyface Farm is owned and operated by Joel Salatin, a farmer who is committed to the old agrarian-pastorial ideal of grass farming. On 100 acres pasture in another 450 acres of forest, Salatin raises chicken, beef, turkeys, eggs, rabbits, pigs, tomatoes, sweet corn, and berries (Pollan 125). With relatively little machinery, Salatin uses his grasses to raise a large amount of animals in an altogether sustainable process. Every year his perennial grasses provide feed and hay for his animals, without having to be replanted, and his animals provide the constant nibbling and fertilization that is necessary to keep the grass healthy.

This simple yet elegant system served as the foundation for agriculture since man started farming. So what in the last century or two has caused humans to abandon this system? Is it because the old style agrarian system is just too expensive, uses to much space, or would be unable to meet the demands of our population? I would argue that that the higher costs of grass raising animals is what has driven us away from the system. But does it really have higher costs? In my opinion, the health and environmental problems that the current industrial meat industry causes end up far outweighing the additional production costs of the old-style agrarian system. The only problem is we do not have to pay for the costs till later, and our society has a hard time understanding anything but immediate costs.