Sustainability in Cattle Pt 2
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. Being more sustainable is a good thing that everyone should strive for, but on the practical side, it also has to be affordable.
Samantha Werth, director of sustainability with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, says sustainability discussions must start with a producers’ ability to survive financially …
WERTH … “If we're talking about a new grazing management strategy that is going to help with enhancing biodiversity on the land, are there ways that we can add value for producers to help get them paid, essentially, for that work that they're doing to enhance biodiversity? In anything that we're doing, we're looking at what are the opportunities to get support and what are the ways that we're going to improve profitability for a producer if we're implementing sustainability practices.”
Werth says a large number of people outside the beef industry have their own ideas about beef sustainability …
WERTH … “We get that. A lot of people are coming in and kind of thinking through, hey, we call it carbon myopia, right? The focus is really on how we reduce methane emissions from cattle or how we enhance carbon sequestration. And there are a lot of things that we actually can do and are doing in terms of how we just manage our animals already. So, we kind of try to focus those conversations on what's viable for a producer, and here's maybe why some of the things you might ask aren't viable, but here's a compromise, or here's a workaround that will work.”
That is Samantha Werth of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
