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Pennsylvania to South Dakota

About a week ago I drove about 23 hours to get to Rock Hills Ranch from State College, Pennsylvania. Hello my name is Ben Patterson and I am a 2019 Summer/Fall Intern at Rock Hills Ranch. I just graduated in the May of 2019 from Penn State with an Animal Science major and an Agribusiness Management minor. My family, my parents and my older brother, are from York, Pennsylvania. My dad is an elementary school principal, my mom works in human resources at a Wellspan Hospital, and my brother teaches 7th grade social studies. As a family we spend most of our time together in the woods hunting.

I do not come from an agricultural background. My grandfather always had a few pigs and a cow here and there. My great uncle had a whitetail, red stag, and dairy farm in Northern PA that I spend some time at during the summers. But overall, I have gotten the majority of my experiences in agricultural over the last three years. During my summer after my freshman and sophomore year I worked at Cedar Hill Pork, a farm that has a 700 sow farrow-feeder hog barn and about 70 registered Angus cow-calf pairs. Last summer I worked at Penn State’s Haller Farm, a rotational grazing research facility that has about 70 cow-calf pairs of commercial cattle.

After those experiences, I wanted to find an opportunity to see a different part of the cattle industry. My friend from college, Matt Kelley, was the summer intern last year and told me how great his experience was here at Rock Hills Ranch, so I decided to apply. After just a week I realized that the internship is even better than I expected. Luke is a great teacher and mentor. Since the first day he has allowed me to jump right in and start experiencing and learning new things. The first week was very busy and we put in a lot of long days but I enjoyed every moment of it. The Perman’s are so gracious and kind; they have really treated me like I was part of their family. I am excited to be able to be at Rock Hills Ranch for the next few months.

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What makes US beef special?

Last week I received an email from the head chef at Keen’s, an award-winning NYC steakhouse, with the following question:  What makes US beef special?  He is going to Japan in May to speak at a New York foods festival and will be speaking on this topic, and wondered how I would answer.  Below is my reply:

Bill,
I’ve thought about your question the past few days, and while I didn’t have any grand epiphanies over the weekend, I’ll share what came to mind.
For me the first thing that comes to my mind, because it is our passion, is the integral part of cattle on the landscape.  North America is home to some of the world’s largest intact grasslands, which play key roles in air & water quality, plant and animal species diversity, and climate change mitigation.  The prairie was developed with bison and elk as a keystone species, and now cattle perform the function of the large ruminant herbivore.  The US beef industry’s foundation is these grasslands.  We have the ability to raise cattle, not in spite of, but in cooperation with a very important ecosystem.  Grazing lands are not a single-use resource, only providing food for humans via beef.  It provides a whole host of ecosystem services, something even a vegan can appreciate.  Even better, this is a regenerative system.  Cattle grazing, done properly, takes nothing away from the resource.  There are very few industries that can make that claim.
US farmers and ranchers have been ahead of the curve in adopting technology to improve the entire production cycle.  From genetic selection, to feed efficiency, to environmental impact, to food safety, we have the most advanced systems in place of any nation in the world.  This makes our beef more predictable, more safe, better quality (with all due respect to Kobe), and more economical than many competitors.  The processors and distribution networks also have very high standards and employ technology to ensure food safety all the way to the consumer.
There are some structural advantages we have as well.  With diverse climate and geography, the US can grow a lot of different things.  Our transportation network means we can move things (cattle and feed) to the appropriate places.  The cattle industry is integrated with other food and fuel systems, utilizing byproducts from the ethanol, soybean, potato, and sugar beet industries, among others.  The US farmers’ incredible ability to grow corn means we can finish as many cattle as we want on a very consistent and predictable feedstuff.  This lends itself to managing cattle flow out of feed yards, providing the processors and then consumers with a steady supply.  It also provides a more predictable finished product than using forage alone.  That said, we have the forage resources to finish cattle to fit grass-fed markets as well.  No matter the consumer preference, the US beef industry has the resource base to provide the eating experience desired.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the people who care for the cattle.  I guess I can’t speak to the traditions and values of cattlemen and women elsewhere in the world, but the for the American farmer and rancher it is a labor of love for certain.  The hours are long and the business climate is filled with uncertainty in markets and weather.  The skill set most farmers and ranchers have would make a lot of CEO’s blush.  Marketing, finance, HR, R&D, strategic planning, operations, succession planning, investing, biology, physics, zoology…these people are the original multi-disciplinarians.  Problem-solving ability develops out of necessity.  “Design thinking” has been a recent trend in Silicon Valley.  It’s been a way of life for generations for farmers and ranchers.
In a nutshell, I think American beef is special not just because of what it tastes like, looks like, or smells like on your plate – it’s the entire process leading up to that eating experience that makes it special.  It’s how cattle-raising in the US is not a zero-sum game, playing key roles in grassland ecosystems and upcycling resources thrown away by other industries.  It’s the way technology is leveraged to create efficiencies and safety mechanisms to provide highly dense nutrition at an affordable price.  It’s the passion that folks have in raising those cattle and caring for those resources.  I think these are what make American beef special.
But I also think Japanese beef is pretty special, which is why we using Wagyu and Akaushi genetics on our Angus cows.  They have a great history.
What would have you said?
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Moving From City to Farm

I sit on a covered porch at 8pm on Wednesday evening, watching the sun decline and listening to the cooing Mourning Doves; it’s a peaceful time of day – the time when work is done and I can catch a breath.  My body relaxes. The dog next to me begins to pant heavily and hides, my warning that a thunderstorm is coming; the crickets are chirping, the breeze is talking. This might be the daily solitude of my backyard in Philadelphia, but today I’m writing this from South Dakota.  The dog is not my own but belongs to the Ranch and he’s filling in pretty-well for the one I left at home. I can watch the same nationally-televised newscast or scan the same standardized Dairy Queen menu, but these people are not the people of my melting-pot American experience.  I haven’t traveled overseas, but I might as well have because I’ve stepped into a foreign culture.

Around the dinner table, we don’t talk about the hassle of detouring around the current street closures, the latest movies or Phillies stats.  These Dakotans use words that I know when digested individually, but when used in combination, stretch my mind in new ways. Words like, “regenerative agriculture,” “soil health,” or “carbon sequestration.”  How about a conversation on “Riparian-area recovery?” “High-density stocking?” Or a “right-side-up prairie?” In my head, I transfer knowledge to try and create a twinkling of meaning; inevitably, I need help understanding.

There are a few holistic ideas that I’ve learned in my first weeks here at Rock Hills Ranch that start to help others fold into place.  One thing I learn is that the Great Plains is as endangered a landscape as the Rainforest. Another thing I learn is that agricultural and livestock farming practices don’t need to work in opposition to the health of these softly, rolling landscapes that were shaped millions of years ago by the glaciers.  

One more big idea at Rock Hills Ranch is “legacy.”  Legacy has a multitude of meanings, like a tree with many limbs.  Stewardship of land is a legacy – using it while also restoring the natural prairie, working in rhythm with the landscape, keeping in mind all the wildlife of the region and not just the beef.  Creating happiness within the family through all the hard work is also part of the vision around legacy. Stabilizing a financial future is also part of it. Garnet said to me, “When someone here gets married, they just don’t marry the man, instead they marry the land.”  The Permans are 4th generation farmers and the future two generations are here right now.  So, “The Land” is a full-partner in every aspect of life; as if it has an endowed faculty chair in the fanciest Boardroom in the best college.  

I am the 6th Ranch-Life intern at RHR – a high school teacher from the metropolis.  I read somewhere that South Dakota has 0.2 people occupying an acre; I believe that Philly probably has a thousand.  I am not young, but I am trying to digest and understand a way of life that I’ve never encountered before beyond the latest cowboy movie.  As I feel more confident in my understanding on the nexus of beef-farming practices and prairie sustainability, I will write more about it.  I’ll also write more about the animals of the farm and the feeling that permeates the Ranch of being a modern-day pioneer. But for now, this is a way-of-life that can only be understood by walking through it.

– Felicia Rosen