What is Regenerative Agriculture?

 

Thousand Hills Lifetime Grazed has fully embraced regenerative agriculture to share the health benefits of Lifetime Grazed 100% Grass Fed Beef and to create a sustainable ecosystem with increased soil fertility, biodiversity, clean water retention, and soil carbon sequestration. Learn more about our mission to provide nourishing grass fed beef delivery and shop our store today!

 

What Is Regenerative Agriculture?

 

Regenerative agriculture is a set of holistic land management practices and grazing strategies that seek to restore and enhance the natural resources that are used, rather than deplete them. Regenerative agriculture looks holistically at the agro-ecosystem to build soil health, increase clean and safe water runoff, improve biodiversity and ecosystem resiliency, and increase carbon draw-down. At Thousand Hills Lifetime Grazed, we are fully committed to regenerative agriculture because we have seen firsthand the way this approach can restore diverse grasslands, eliminate the need for synthetic fertilizers and chemical herbicides, and improve the nutritional value of meat – all while helping rural economies to thrive. Our Thousand Hills Regenerative Renegades™ use regenerative agriculture practices on 600,000 acres to produce healthy and nourishing Lifetime Grazed Grass Fed Beef.

Organic Regenerative Pasture Grazing and the Rule of Thirds

 

Soil destruction creates a vicious cycle, in which less carbon is stored, the world gets hotter, and the land is further degraded.  Our regenerative grazing process helps to solve this problem by applying the rule of thirds: graze a third, trample a third and leave a third.  This promotes photosynthesis in the plant by forcing it to regrow, because once a plant is fully grown, it goes dormant and the photosynthetic process does not occur.  This moves the carbon from the atmosphere into the soil which is fueled by carbon molecules, in return those microorganisms feed all the plants, those plants feed the animals, and then feed us.  Healthier soil, healthier cows, and a healthier planet leads to a healthier you.

 

pasture grazing rule of thirds

Ecological Outcome Verification is not based on reaching thresholds, but rather continuous improvement. It looks at an aggregate of ecosystem services including soil health, sequestered carbon, water and biodiversity. By design, EOV encompasses a much larger scope than just carbon. While carbon is the doorway through which many are entering the regenerative space, there are a multitude of reasons to include a broader range of measurements, which demonstrate a stronger indication of overall environmental health, while simultaneously building a stronger carbon model. EOV shows producers, through leading indicators of ecosystem function, how to read their land quickly and pivot management accordingly through shorter feedback loops. It also provides an annual report that shows how their land is trending.
 
Ecological Verification + Land to Market
EOV and L2M are critical to each other’s success. One does not exist effectively without the other. They are two puzzle pieces that fit together. EOV measures land health on the farm. L2M picks up from the farmgate forward and deals with any and all market differentiation and accounting of impact. The power of EOV is that we measure the same variables the same way all over the world. The power of L2M is that we are communicating that data and accounting for the impact the same way all over the world. EOV cannot be used in the marketplace without L2M.

“Properly managed grazing, if applied on 25% of our crop and grasslands, would mitigate the entire carbon footprint of North American agriculture.”

—Teague & Rowntree 2016

 

“Soil from properly managed grazing operations can sequester 4-7 tons more carbon/hector/year compared to continuous grazing.”

—Teague 2018

Photosynthesis &
The Soil Story

Our Stance on mRNA Vaccine Use with Livestock

Due to the increased  volume of questions about mRNA vaccines we want to make sure that everyone is aware of the following that is included in our protocol:

mRNA Vaccines: many of our consumers are requesting that we provide an update regarding our position on the use of mRNA vaccines for cattle in our supply chain. In the past, Thousand Hills has allowed the producers to determine what vaccines to employ, if any. However, in the case of the COVID or any mRNA vaccine, due to the experimental nature and lack of long-term studies, we are prohibiting their use until further notice for all livestock entering our supply chain until more can be learned of their effectiveness, potential side effects and potential need for such vaccines in managing livestock herd health in general.