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Place your "steak" in a greener futurePrince Agri Products held their 28th Annual Animal Nutrition Summit in Bloomington, Minn., to celebrate their 150th year in the business and I was fortunate enough to be there. Any company that can survive for 150 years must be recognized in today's dog-eat-dog business climate, so I extend my congratulations to them. Among the other presenters at this conference were individuals in the mineral world, micronutrient companies that supply the daily nutritional needs of our animals and those of us who buy them, yet we have probably never even heard their names. For example, a speaker from Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold presented his view about the future of mineral availability and price. To begin with, I had never even heard about Freeport McNoRan Copper and Gold but now I realize their role in livestock agriculture. What is ironic is what happened to me next. I left the Prince meeting and headed to the Arizona Cattle Growers annual convention. Lo and behold, as I am driving to the meeting that was held five miles east of Globe, Ariz., I passed what I learned is the nation's oldest operating copper mine, owned by none other than Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold. It was absolutely impossible to miss the site as you drove through Miami-Globe, as the 300-foot high pile of mine tailings was quite obvious. Interestingly enough, a group of cows were standing on the side of this 1,100-acre pile of mine waste. I later learned that returning grazing capabilities to this area was quite a significant feat. At the Arizona Cattle Growers Convention I met Terry Wheeler, a rancher from Arizona who is probably best known as the originator of Holistic Stabilization and Remediation, a process involving the use of hoofed animals as a tool to build soil on sites in low stages of ecological development. He developed this technique specifically for reclamation of mine tailings. For those of you who are like me and didn't know what mine tailings are, they are made up of rock dust that has been crushed to the consistency of talcum powder and treated with a mixture of chemicals that includes cyanide in order to leach out the copper and other metals sought by the miners. An interesting side note is that copper is present in only 0.5 percent of the rock in this mine and the mining process separates the copper from all that other material. The end result is a pile of otherwise sterile material that Wheeler found a way to bring back to life with the help of a cow. I find this tremendously exciting because it happens to be at a time that most Americans feel some level of guilt about eating beef. Somehow consumers have been duped into believing that beef production is a detriment to the planet instead of a means of sustaining life. If we could only find the correct method to explain what Wheeler has proven in terms of how cows actually benefit the environment, we would all be better off. Wheeler theorized that he could turn the otherwise sterile pile of mine waste back into living soil with the assistance of a cow, so they fenced small paddocks on the powdery piles and threw hay out for the cows to eat. The cows not only crawled the powdery hillsides to eat the hay but, as they did so, they trampled the hay into the powder increasing the organic matter while conducting natural seeding from the hay itself. Manure from the cows fertilized the hillsides and, before long, the sterile material became fertile grass paddocks that cows are grazing today. The bottom line is, quite simply, that with proper human intelligence, stewardship and creativity, livestock agriculture has the ability not only to provide food, fiber, pharmaceuticals and fuel but environmental benefits, as well. Some otherwise noted environmental organizations have come to learn that grazing livestock in the ranges of places like Arizona is tremendously beneficial to environmental sustainability. So you, too, can have a "steak" in the future of green movement as it involves a healthy planet and, fortunately, this time it starts with a rib-eye!
Editor's note: Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.FacesOfAg.com, or e-mail Trent at trent@loostales.com. 8/18/08 Date: 8/14/08 Advertisement
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