Giving Compass' Take:

• Madeline Ostrander discusses the Mortenson family, who are forefront farmers and ranchers and their work may be the first step toward a better model of animal agriculture for the future of our earth. 

• How can farmers learn from this farming technique? Can this apply to other areas of agriculture? 

• Here's an article on how grass-fed beef may run into roadblocks.

I first met Jeff Mortenson several years ago while working on a tiny reservation on the Big Sioux River in South Dakota.

The tribe I worked for wanted to protect some traditional food plants that grew along the river. An ecologist at South Dakota State University, Carter Johnson, told me about a family in the middle of the state, the Mortensons, who had restored large areas of grasslands and creeks on their land, and were running both a profitable ranch and a small native seed business.

Over the years, they have continued to rotate cattle, scatter native grass seed, and plant thousands of trees. Now more than 90 percent of the 19,000-acre ranch is back in native vegetation.

When I phoned Jeff Mortenson and began asking questions, he said, “Well, I guess I better come out there.” Two days later he showed up and walked through tribal land with the tribe’s natural resources director and me. We stopped at an area of low ground along the river, thick with weeds, and he looked startled, “Oh, this place is very disturbed,” he said.

Read the full article about making beef earth friendly by Madeline Ostrander at YES! Magazine