Grass-Fed Beef for a Post-Pandemic World

*With a foreword by Gabe Brown, bestselling author of Dirt to Soil*

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.

SKU 7756, Copyright 2022, Softcover, 206 pages. 

About the Authors:

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 northeastern 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.”

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.