The Radical Center

Recent events in Washington, D.C., reminded me of an anguished question that I’ve had on my mind since 1997: if ranchers and environmentalists can get along, why can’t Democrats and Republicans?

That was the year I co-founded the Quivira Coalition, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a common ground where ranchers, conservationists, scientists and others could meet to explore their shared interests rather than argue their differences. By doing so, we became part of the “the radical center,” a term coined by rancher Bill McDonald in southern Arizona to describe an emerging consensus-based approach to land management challenges in the West.

At the time, the conflict between ranchers and environmentalists had reached a fever pitch, with federal agencies and others caught in crossfire. It was an example of how the West had balkanized into ideological fiefdoms by the mid-1990s. One important consequence of the trench warfare was gridlock where it hurt the most – on the ground. Very little progress was being made on necessary projects, such as lighting prescribed fires, improving the chances of endangered species on private land, or helping ranchers fend off the predatory interests of real estate developers. Instead, it became a war of attrition, with the only real winners being those who had no interest in the long-term environmental or social health of the region.

The radical center was a deliberate push-back against this destructive process of balkanization. It was “radical” (whose dictionary definition means “root”) because it challenged various orthodoxies at work at the time, including the conventional belief that conservation and ranching were part of a ‘zero sum’ game where one could only advance as far as the other retreated. There were plenty of examples to the contrary, as Bill McDonald and the collaborative group he helped to co-found, the Malpai Borderlands Group, demonstrated. Success, however, also meant working in the “center” – which refers to the pragmatic, middle-ground between extremes. It meant partnerships, respect, and trust. But most of all, the “center” meant action – a plan signed, a prescribed fire lit, a workshop held, a hand shook. Words were nice, but working in the radical center meant walking the talk.

In 1997, two Sierra Club activists – myself and Barbara Johnson – and rancher Jim Winder decided to put the radical center to a test in New Mexico. Jim had an idea: start a nonprofit organization that would step outside the continuum of brawling between ranchers and environmentalists and create a ‘third way’ that emphasized progressive cattle and land management practices. We called it the ‘New Ranch’ and invited any rancher, conservationist, agency person, scientist or member of the public who was interested in “sharing common-sense solutions to the rangeland conflict” to join us. We took a public vow of no legislation and no litigation. We promised ourselves to not waste any energy trying to pry open closed minds. We focused instead on those who literally wanted to start over at the grass and the roots.

Quivira was different from other radical centrist groups at the time principally because we weren’t confined to a watershed or a bounded region. We went wherever we could find ‘eager learners’ willing to try new ideas, embarking on a lengthy series of workshops, tours, outdoor classrooms, conferences, clinics, and public speaking engagements around the Southwest.

In the process, we helped to define what the radical center in the so-called ‘grazing debate’ actually meant, culminating in an “Invitation to Join the Radical Center” signed by ranchers, conservationists, and others in 2003 that we hoped would signal the end of conflict and the beginning of a era of peace.

Here’s an excerpt and a list of its radical centrist conditions:

“We therefore reject the acrimony of past decades that has dominated debate over livestock grazing on public lands, for it has yielded little but hard feelings among people who are united by their common love of land and who should be natural allies. We pledge our efforts to form the `Radical Center’ where:

• “The ranching community accepts and aspires to a progressively higher standard of environmental performance;
• “The environmental community resolves to work constructively with the people who occupy and use the lands it would protect;
• “The personnel of federal and state land management agencies focus not on the defense of procedure but on the production of tangible results;
• “The research community strives to make their work more relevant to broader constituencies;
• “The land grant colleges return to their original charters, conducting and disseminating information in ways that benefit local landscapes and the communities that depend on them;
• “The consumer buys food that strengthens the bond between their own health and the health of the land;
• “The public recognizes and rewards those who maintain and improve the health of all land; and
• “All participants learn better how to share both authority and responsibility.”

Here’s a photo of an early radical center workshop we hosted:

Fast forward to today. Were we successful? Did the radical center hold? Yes, mostly. Indisputably, attitudes toward ranchers and livestock production among a cross-section of the American public, including lawmakers, opinion leaders, newspaper letter-writers and many conservationists, have shifted substantially toward the positive. As a result, the so-called ‘grazing wars’ have largely faded from view, though there is still some shouting going on in places. More importantly, portions of the radical center list above have been successfully enacted to one degree or another. Especially encouraging has been the explosion of watershed-based collaboratives across the West. Collaborative conservation, once an outlier itself, has now become mainstream – to the point of institutionalization by universities, national NGOs, and agencies.

There are other examples of the radical center in action, even in the policy arena, as groups continue their quest for common ground. While the region’s former tribalism has not faded away, it is clear that ranchers and environmentalists can get along when they have larger, common goals in sight. So why can’t Democrats and Republicans? Could there be a political equivalent of our grassroots-focused radical center idea? Could there be progress in statehouses and in Washington, D.C, in the way there’s been productive collaboration in watersheds across the West?

It’s a question I get asked a lot – and I wish I had a good answer. In my experience, the radical center works because it is studiously non-political. We focus on soil, grass and water, literally the common ground below our feet. In the case of the Quivira Coalition, we took a vow to do no litigation or legislation. We also avoided “nuclear” social and natural resource management issues, such as the Mexican wolf and oil-and-gas development. This allowed us to stay neutral politically which we saw as critical to our success as a collaborative conservation organization, as well to the radical center idea in general. Trust needed to be restored after decades of bad blood between ranchers and environmentalists and the quickest way to do that was to focus on soil, grass, and water – the grassroots beneath our feet.

Democrats and Republicans, of course, can’t avoid politics, legislation or litigation. Picking fights and aiming to win elections by defeating the other party are essential elements to any political system and it’s foolish to think they can be minimized to any significant degree. Does that mean there can’t be collaboration, however? Could there be some political equivalent to soil, grass and water in which Democrats and Republicans could come together and agree? In theory, yes. Out West, land restoration and wildlife management are two arenas involving politics and policy where a great deal of common ground has been created in recent years. Locally-sourced food has been another positive contact point, especially between urban and rural residents.

What about guns, however, or abortion or taxes or poverty programs or national defense? Is there a radical center here? Yes, I think. Gay marriage was once a hugely divisive issue in this nation, with little hope of common ground – and now look the progress that has been made! A type of radical center seems to have prevailed with this formerly contentious topic. Could it happen with other topics? I think so – but I’m out of my field of expertise on this. All I can say is that some sort of radical center needs to happen politically in this great nation, and soon, if we’re going to solve any of the mounting, pressing problems we face. The cynic in me thinks it’s impossible given the rivers of bad blood that now exist between Democrats and Republicans, but the optimist in me recalls how bad things looked in the mid-1990s for any kind of détente between ranchers and environmentalists.

So, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Here’s a start, I hope:

Why Grassfed Is Best

I was surprised and somewhat disappointed to learn that Al Gore has gone vegan. I don’t begrudge his right to do so, of course, and I don’t know his specific reason for the switch, though the article I read suggested it was a variation on the “red meat is bad for the planet” argument that ones hears all the time. This was disappointing because there is an alternate take on the meat question that too often gets lost in the news. It’s called grassfed beef. Here’s a profile I wrote recently as part of my 2% Solutions series:

“Eat less red meat” is the most frequent response I hear at conferences when a distraught member of the audience asks a presenter “What’s the one thing I can do for the planet?” What the presenter should have said is “Eat less feedlot meat.” A lot less, in fact.

Actually, the correct answer is “Eat grassfed meat.” It’s the only type of meat to eat – for our health, for the welfare of livestock and for the well-being of the planet.

That’s what Joe Morris has been doing since 1991, when he became one of the first ranchers in California to offer grassfed beef to customers, predating the recent boom in grassfed production by a dozen years. Born and raised in San Francisco, Joe was inspired to give ranching a go by his grandfather, who owned and ran a ranch near San Juan Bautista, south of San Jose. Equally inspired by the writings of Wendell Berry, Joe decided to reject the industrial model of livestock production for a type of agriculture that worked with nature’s principles. When he discovered the holistic grazing practices pioneered by Allan Savory, everything fell into place.

Producing grassfed beef was an easy choice for Joe because it squared with his values. By definition, grassfed means an animal has spent its entire life on grass or other green plants, from birth to death. This contrasts with the feedlot model in which an animal finishes its life in confinement, fattened on grain and assorted agricultural byproducts and pumped full of medication and other chemicals.

For Joe, grassfed was best initially because he knew that (1) cattle were designed by nature to eat grass, not grain, and had merely been doing so for millions of years, and (2) humans were designed by nature to eat grassfed meat, not grain-fed animals, and had merely been doing so millions of years. If nature knew best, then why raise livestock unnaturally?

However, when Joe and his wife Julie founded Morris Grassfed Beef in 1991, a big question on their minds was this: would they have any customers? The answer, as it turned out, was “Yes” – because people wanted a local source of humanely raised beef produced by a good steward of the land. Grassfed fit the bill.

Then came the science. Thanks to a lot of digging in the scientific literature by Jo Robinson, an independent researcher, the health benefits of grassfed over feedlot meat became widely known. They include:

• More omega-3 fatty acids (“good” fats) and fewer omega-6 (“bad” fats).
• Lower in the saturated fats linked with heart disease.
• Much higher in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a cancer fighter.
• Much more Vitamin A.
• Much more vitamin E.
• Higher in beta-carotene.
• Higher in the B-vitamins thiamin and riboflavin.
• Higher in calcium, magnesium and potassium.
• Enhanced immunity, increased bone density, and suppression of cancer cells.
• Does not contain traces of added hormones, antibiotics or other drugs.

As Jo Robinson likes to say “If it’s in their feed, it’s in our food” – which means it’s in us. This is an important reason why grassfed is best. As for eating less meat, Jo said recently, “I’m not one of those who think that eating less meat is good. I think eating less of the wrong kind of meat is very good and very important. I think we can have up to 40% of our calories from meat, and that’s fine as long as it’s healthy meat.”

For more Jo, visit her web site: www.eatwild.com

In 2002, the case for grassfed expanded again when The New York Times Magazine published Michael Pollan’s expose on the sins of our industrial food system in an article titled “Power Steer.” By following a steer (“#534”) from a ranch to the feedlot to slaughter, Pollan discovered a disturbing list of industrial troubles, including:

• Animal confinement, stress and abuse.
• Air, land and water pollution.
• The deleterious use of hormones, antibiotics and other drugs.
• Low-paid, stressful feedlot work.
• Food with less nutritional value.
• The invisible costs – antibiotic resistance, environmental degradation, heart disease, E. coli poisoning, corn subsidies, imported oil and so on.

The only big advantage of feedlot beef, said Pollan, is that it’s “remarkably cheap.” While that makes economic sense – sort of – it makes no ecological sense. Pollan voted for grassfed beef. He concluded “Eating a steak at the end of a short, primordial food chain comprising nothing more than ruminants and grass and light is something I’m happy to do and defend.”

In the past few years, another important advantage of grassfed has emerged: it has a smaller carbon footprint. By some estimates, meat from grassfed animals requires only one calorie of fossil fuel to produce two calories of food. In contrast, feedlot beef requires five to ten calories of fossil fuel for every calorie of food produced. The big differences include the fertilizer used to grow the corn feed and the amount of transportation involved in placing feedlot beef in supermarkets across the nation.

The carbon footprint advantage has been challenged by some experts, however, who claim that methane emissions are higher with grassfed livestock, and the overall impacts on land health and water quality (due to overgrazing) are fewer with feedlots.

Disagreeing with these experts, a report by The Union for Concerned Scientists (UCS) claimed that the overall greenhouse gas impact of grassfed is positive. Well-maintained pastures and careful management of grazing animals can draw greenhouse gasses out of the air and store them in the soil, where they fuel plant growth. Feedlots have no living plants, the UCS noted, just bare dirt and manure. Instead of absorbing greenhouse gasses, as healthy grasslands do, they emit them.

It’s a point that Joe Morris has been making lately with his customers. He also points out that conscientious stewardship has additional benefits:

• Well-managed pasture absorbs far more rain water than most other land uses.
• Well-managed grazing lands provide much needed habit for wildlife and more abundant water for wildlife.
• Grazing lands are among our most picturesque landscapes.
• Holistic management encourages deep-rooted perennial plants which improves nutrient and carbon cycling.

For those who ask “What’s the one thing I can do for the planet?” the answer is clear: if you eat meat, grassfed is best.

For more about Morris Grassfed Beef see: www.morrisgrassfed.com

Here is a picture of grassfed cattle (compare to below):

One of the main criticisms of eating meat is that all cattle, grassfed or not, produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as part of their digestive process (called eutrophic emissions), mostly by belching. Lots of cattle, say critics, equal a lot of methane. Reduce the number of livestock, they continue and the global warming situation improves. They’re not necessarily wrong, but here are some important points to keep in mind when singling out cattle as a significant “cause” of global warming:

• When we dig up fossil fuels, including methane (as natural gas), and burn them we are adding carbon pollution to the atmosphere that hasn’t been there for 300 million years. It’s like turning on an extra tap when filling your bathtub. When we exhale carbon dioxide or belch methane or eat grassfed beef we are in essence recycling carbon that already exists in the system. It is the additional carbon created by fossil fuels that is the main problem today, not cow belches.

• The largest single source of methane worldwide is wetlands (22%), followed by coal, oil and natural gas production (19%), livestock (16%), rice cultivation (12%), with burning, landfill, sewage, manure and releases from the ocean making up the remaining 31%. We’re not going to backfill wetlands, of course, to stop them from producing methane, but is anyone seriously suggesting that we halt rice production? Should we try to bully the Chinese into eating less rice?

• Methane is also produced by rainforests, whales, termites, bison, reindeer, camels, giraffes and many other animals, and has most of it has been in circulation in the atmosphere for millions of years.

• The methane we should really be worried about is the type found in frozen beds of methane hydrates, located below permafrost layers and shallow seabeds, which when melted will release very significant amounts of the potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

• The main problem with industrial agriculture is that it is drenched in fossil fuels.

Author Michael Pollan put this last point this way: “We transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.”

The answer, Pollan says, is to “resolarize” the American economy – which means weaning Americans off their heavy 20^th-century diet of fossil fuel and put them back on a diet of contemporary sunshine. “If any part of the modern economy can be freed from its dependence on oil and successfully resolarized,” Pollan writes, “surely it is food.”

It’s another reason why grassfed is best. Here’s one more: