ASH CLOUD

The journey toward sustainable beef production in the United States began before the term "sustainability" entered common usage. 
Today we are joined by Steve Wooten, a rancher in southeastern Colorado's shortgrass prairie and a founding member of the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. Wooten manages Beatty Canyon Ranch in a region receiving 11-14 inches of annual rainfall, where the same perennial grass species documented in Native American archaeological sites continue thriving today under rotational grazing systems.
Steve approach to grazing and sustainability changed when he met Alan Savory and learned of his work on holistic management.
Eleven years ago, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association established the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, bringing together the entire beef supply chain—from cow-calf producers through feedlots, packers, processors, and retailers—alongside civil society organizations and universities. This unprecedented collaboration addressed a critical reality. Only 85% of the nation's cows currently brings a calf to weaning. No major corporation would accept a 15% efficiency loss before year-end, yet the beef industry has operated at this level while simultaneously wrestling with climate concerns and supply chain pressures. 
Steve's approach integrates multiple data streams, Agriwebb and Pasture Map for grazing tracking, Enriched Ag camera systems capturing images every six seconds for vegetation analysis, and soil carbon sampling. His drought management plan includes trigger dates in March, June, and October for adjusting stocking rates, early weaning protocols, and strategic culling based on meteorological projections. The ranch maintains ungrazed pastures as drought mitigation, ensuring forage reserves for subsequent years while varying grazing timing to provide near-full growing season rest between grazing events—defined in his environment as March through October.
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Feed efficiency remains one of the biggest gray areas and least understood aspects of livestock production. Yet understanding how much grass a cow consumes to produce a calf or a ewe to produce a lamb is critical not only to farmer and ranch profitability, but also to the sustainability of the industry. At 19 cents per kilogram to grow dry matter, inefficiency compounds rapidly. The difference between efficient and inefficient animals can determine whether operations generate profit or struggle to cover overhead costs.

Today we are joined by Andrew Freshwater, who has spent over 30 years using data to drive efficient breeding decisions across his sheep and cattle production enterprises in northeastern Victoria. Freshwater's family brought Angus cattle and Romney sheep to Australia in 1849, establishing a multi-generational commitment to livestock genetics.
Recent heifer trials demonstrated dramatic efficiency differences between groups run as contemporary cohorts. Through Zoetis genomic testing, Freshwater documented that genetically inferior heifers showed poor feed conversion efficiency and marginal annual returns, while superior genetics in the same management system generated excellent profitability. The lesson is clear: breeding animals is neither pure art nor pure science, but rather a data-informed approach that acknowledges biological complexity while leveraging technology—from genomics to artificial intelligence—to optimize resource utilization across diverse farming systems.

Beginning performance recording in 1989 as a teenager, Freshwater has accumulated over 80,000 sheep records representing approximately 3.5 million data points through long-term progeny testing programs. Rather than relying on static estimated breeding values, he has developed proprietary software that runs Monte Carlo simulations incorporating local climate data, grass types, and historical weather patterns to identify the most profitable animals for specific environmental conditions and management systems.

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Feed efficiency, despite its importance from both an environmental sustainability and farm profitability perspective, remains one of the biggest gray areas and least understood aspects of livestock production.
Today we are joined by Matt Wilson from West Virginia University, who has spent his career studying how efficiently cattle convert grass into food. In 2003, Wilson installed the first individual feed intake system at a central U.S. performance test facility. Since 2019, his team has collected daily individual feed intake, water intake, and body weight data on 600-900 animals annually, building machine learning approaches to determine intakes of grazing animals at scale.
Wilson's research has revealed dramatic variation in resource efficiency. Two similar bulls in his performance tests gained at identical rates, yet one consumed 50% more feed—approximately 7,000 pounds annually—for no additional performance. This difference represents $600 per animal per year at conservative feed costs. For breeding females in the herd for ten productive years, such inefficiency compounds across their lifetime. Unlike feed additives that only work in formulated rations, genetic improvements in resource utilization are permanent, cumulative, and applicable across both feedlot and grazing systems globally.
Of the 90 million beef cattle in the United States, approximately 88% spend their lives grazing on pastures or consuming harvested forages. The remaining 12% are finished in feedlots. Understanding what these grazing animals are actually consuming is critical for accurately assessing the environmental footprint of the beef industry. Grazing animals produce approximately 23 grams of methane per kilogram of dry matter intake compared to 10-13 grams for feedlot cattle—nearly twice as much per kilogram consumed. Since 88% of U.S. cattle and an even higher proportion globally are in pastoral systems where methane intensity is greatest, accurate measurement of grazing intake is essential.
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There is a huge amount we can learn from understanding the connections between soil health, food production, and human metabolic health. Over the last 50-60 years, modern agricultural systems have become increasingly reliant on synthetic inputs that boost yields but degrade soil microbiomes and reduce micronutrient density in our food. This degradation contributes to the chronic disease epidemic costing the United States trillions of dollars annually.
The impact of regenerative agriculture on both environmental and human health cannot be understated. Healthier soils with robust microbiomes produce crops with superior nutritional profiles—more micronutrients and beneficial phytochemicals that express through the soil-plant-human pathway. When people consume these nutrient-dense foods, they show reduced appetite for processed foods and better metabolic outcomes, though randomized controlled trials remain limited.
Today we are joined by Carter Williams from iSelect Fund, a 10-year-old investment firm focused on reducing chronic disease by transforming food systems. Williams coordinates investments across the food value chain—from row crop biologics to novel sweeteners and soil health monitoring.
iSelect Fund targets decommoditizing 5-10% of conventional agriculture rather than wholesale transformation, creating price premiums for regenerative producers while stabilizing markets for conventional farmers. The fund prioritizes nutrient density over yield maximization.
Williams identifies cognitive load as agriculture's fundamental transformation challenge. Farmers with 20 years of conventional experience face learning entirely new systems. This extends throughout supply chains: CPG companies have infrastructure optimized for current grain varieties; input companies have systems built around synthetic fertilizer. Even willing stakeholders face substantial cognitive and financial investment requirements.
The conversation explores modernizing Bureau of Land Management grazing practices. Research showing $200-300 million in upstream regenerative interventions could have prevented $10 billion in European flood insurance losses demonstrates how regenerative livestock management delivers net carbon-positive outcomes while improving rancher economics.
Emerging feedback mechanisms accelerate adoption. Companies like Diatious provide data showing how feeding practices affect omega-3/omega-6 ratios, enabling evidence-based practice changes. Companies like Brightseed build in-silico models mapping how growing practices affect phytochemical expression and human metabolism.
Williams argues consumer voice—amplified by influencers—now drives change more effectively than the previous decade's farmer-led push. As retailers stock out of cottage cheese due to GLP-1 diet trends rather than label-reading, market dynamics shift faster than Nielsen surveys suggested possible.
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Currently beef cattle production faces a profitability challenge driven by rising feed costs and efficiency gaps. For cow-calf operations, particularly where producers operate on forage-based systems, the biggest variable cost is cow feed, yet geneticists lack precise selection tools for measuring and improving forage intake and conversion efficiency. 
Today we are joined by Troy Rowan from the University of Tennessee, where he investigates economically important traits in beef cattle with particular emphasis on cow efficiency, local adaptation, and genetic approaches to increasing sustainability. His research focuses on developing novel measurement approaches to create practical selection tools for grazing efficiency.
The opportunity lies in emerging technologies. While decades of work developed feed efficiency tools for concentrate-fed feedlot environments, these measurements don't translate to grazing systems. Rowan's team explores indicators serving as stand-ins in genetic evaluations, using emissions as metabolic proxies, leveraging precision technologies like AI and computer vision to capture phenotypes previously impractical to measure on large animal groups.
Methane and CO2 are important because they are the best indicator of metabolism currently available. Even though they are imperfect metabolism needs to be included to provide an indicator for cow feed costs.
Looking forward, epigenetics and other "omics" technologies promise to revolutionize individual animal management. Rather than just predicting genetic potential passed to offspring, these tools could enable phenotypic predictions based on epigenetic marks, gene expression, or metabolomics. A feedlot receiving heterogeneous cattle could place animals in appropriate pens and management protocols based on predicted disease resistance, growth potential, or feed efficiency—filling in the 70% of trait variation that genetics alone doesn't capture. After measuring 10,000-plus animals to develop robust genetic evaluations, the next frontier is translating that knowledge into practical tools that work across the one the billion plus cattle worldwide, from intensive North American operations to pastoral African systems where data recording infrastructure remains the primary bottleneck.

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