Advocate: ‘Beef is good’ despite calls to contrary

Virginia cows, such as the one pictured above after a recent snow, are a gift to the state’s soil, said Nicolette Hahn Niman at the Virginia Forage and Grassland Council’s winter conferences. (Photo by Jane W. Graham)

“It’s not the cow, it’s the how” is the message an unlikely advocate for beef cattle brought to the Virginia beef and forage industries last week.
Nicolette Hahn Niman, one-time vegetarian and environmentalist lawyer turned cattle rancher, author, and advocate for beef, outlined the many reasons cattle are important during the Virginia Forage and Grassland Council’s annual series of winter conferences.
Her career choices led her ultimately on a path she never expected and marriage to Bill Niman, founder of Niman Ranch, a nationally known sustainable farming network.
In her view, cattle replace the larger animals, especially bison, that once grazed the land and were part of the ecosystems. She maintains that the gift of the cow is providing much healthier soils.
“Beef on the land helps regenerate soils,” Niman says. “She (the cow) provides a much more healthful ecosystem from the ground up.”
Niman moved from the how of managing beef to defending it as a food.
In her presentation “BEEF IS GOOD FOOD, despite what you may have been hearing,” Niman blasted current mainstream dietary advice that urges people to decrease consumption of meat, especially beef.
Her insights fit well into the theme of the conferences, “The Green Side of Beef: In Defense of Grassland Agriculture.” She sees good management of cattle and their pastures as a key to success in these two basic segments of the industry.
Niman and Dr. Alan Franzluebbes, USDA professor of soil ecology at North Carolina State University, were on hand to provide producers answers to an often-asked question, “Is beef bad for the planet?”
Conference planners said it was an opportunity to learn the science of how proper grazing management enhances water quality, benefits wildlife and biodiversity and sequesters carbon.
“Farming is a livelihood and economic sector uniquely tied to weather, water, seasons and soils,” Niman told the farmers in opening the conference with a presentation called “Regenerative Agriculture Needs Grazing Animals.”
Niman’s view is that industrial agriculture focuses on input costs and production of individual commodities as outputs, treating the earth as something to be mined. She sees regenerative agriculture as functioning like nature. This interconnected way is adapting, recycling and co-operating. It does not separate animals and vegetables.
She pointed to recent soil science finding that has found fungi to be vital to soil health helping to recycle air, soil and water in a living collective.
“When the care of this living collective is at the forefront, the economic and ecological importance of animals is clear,” she stated in her prepared remarks to the farmers.
“For farmers around the world, animals produce meat, milk and eggs for direct sustenance and income,” she said. “Farm animals enhance biological cycling by consuming resources that would otherwise be wasted, and returning nutrients to soils in biologically available forms. Omnivorous chickens, turkeys and pigs can eat kitchen scraps, farm by-products and surplus crops. Grazing cattle, sheep and goats trigger plant growth by pruning and mowing naturally occurring rain-watered vegetation and can be move around according to local conditions. All of these creatures-through the aggregate impact of their mouths, feet, urine and manure-catalyze biological activity in soils. Ecologically vibrant soil fosters water-holding capacity, vegetative growth, and carbon sequestration, building the foundation for ecosystem biodiversity.”
Niman raised her concerns in her first book, Defending Beef, in 2014. She released a second book, Defending Beef: The Ecological and Nutritional Case for Beef last year.
She said, in a telephone interview after the first conference in Wytheville, Va., that she has learned so much since the first book was published that she needed to share new information.
She questions the current mainstream dietary advice that urges people to reduce consumption of meat, especially red meet, even suggesting eating faux meats.
“But this advice is flawed,” she said in her presentation. “For starters, there is no credible evidence that meat is bad for human health. Earlier research that once seemed to show negative health effects from eating meat has collapsed under recent reevaluation.”
She cited a Harvard School of Public Health study that found no link between eating unprocessed red meats and either heart disease or diabetes.
“The type of protein found in meat is the most usable by the human body, and it is not found in plants,” she said. “Likewise, the form of iron in meat is far more absorbable by the human body than that found in plants,”
She declared that ultra-processed foods are the villain, saying the less of it we eat the better.
“The key to healthy eating is real food,” she said. “That means vegetables, fruits, nuts, eggs, fish and many other foods. And that definitely includes beef and other red meats.”
Niman Ranch began in 1969 as a small family operation and has grown to a network of over 740 U.S. family farmers and ranchers whose mission is to raise livestock humanely and sustainably to deliver the finest tasting meat in the world.
Niman traced her path to the ranch from her home town, Kalamazoo, Mich., through college where she studied biology and then went on to law school. She had been living and working in North Carolina to be near her sister. When her sister moved, Niman returned to Kalamazoo and a job with a local law firm. She ran for city council and was elected to two terms.
Her involvement in city government led to her working on local environmental issues and historical preservation. This work took her to Western State University where she heard a speech by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that inspired her to work on environmental issues with the National Wildlife Federation.
She had a second opportunity to hear Kennedy and actually met and talked with him. He ultimately offered her a job with the Water Keepers Alliance, which she accepted.
In this capacity she became involved with working to solve problems of water quality in North Carolina’s Neuse River Basin caused by commercial swine and chicken production. Involvement in that work led her to meet Bill Niman, a rancher with a grass-based operation. In time, they married. She did not plan to work on the California ranch but she has. She has also started eating beef again. She had eaten it before college but was not a big fan. Things have changed.
“I really like it,” she said over the phone.