Award winning environmental author, Richard Manning says we can reduce water pollution, increase soil-water percolation, decrease flooding, decrease soil erosion and sequester millions of tons of carbon each year by switching from a corn-based animal protein finishing system to one that lets animals harvest their own food from a perennial pasture. And to top it off, we can do all of that and make more money to boot.

In a recent article published in Mother Earth News magazine, Manning makes the claim that farmers and ranchers can produce the same amounts of animal protein using perennial pasture as they currently do using the industrialized feedlot finishing model, if a proportion of corn acres are restored to some semblance of native grassland. We can save the environment and produce much healthier meat at the same time.

I have been a proponent of meat production models that take advantage of the animals’ natural abilities for decades, so grass finished meat is a no-brainer to me. Animals raised and finished on pasture live a much better and healthier life, aren’t prone to becoming obese, and are more able to fulfill their genetic destiny. Healthy and happy animals produce healthy meat. I don’t care what any industry pundit says … fresh grass-finished beef is better for you than box-store meat that’s been injected with “flavor enhancers.”

As a child and student of the prairie, I am also thrilled that Manning makes the point that perennial grasslands, in conjunction with large herds of grazing animals, are precisely what built the fertile, farmable soils that we grow most of our corn and soybeans on in the first place. Plowing a prairie or pasture releases incomprehensible amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere … and over time, the once fertile soil is depleted to the extent that it is little more than a medium for planting seed that will be nurtured with artificial fertilizers. It’s time to pay attention to how prairie soils were made and to use that knowledge to pull carbon back out of the atmosphere.

It’s not only about carbon and the air, however. It’s also about clean water and flooding Many folks don’t realize that water runoff percentages from tilled fields are surprisingly close to those from paved parking lots. If water was air, then perennial grasslands would be the lungs that pull that air back into the earth. Soils high in organic matter (exactly the kinds of soils that develop beneath perennial pastureland and prairie) have excellent water filtering abilities and sponge-like water storage capacities. You only have to look at a lush green stand of Kansas Big Bluestem in August to know that there is plenty of water down there … even though it hasn’t rained for a month.

I don’t suggest that all farmland should be converted back to perennial grasslands, but I am pleased that Manning challenges conventional agriculture and conventional environmentalism to rethink the role that animals might play in creating a healthier and safer food supply and a healthier and more sustainable environment. There is no magic bullet for these global problems. No single lifestyle change, no single food production model, no amount of legislation will fix the messes we have made. I believe that integrated solutions achieved with balanced thought will keep us keeping on ... not anti-intellectual zealotism, no matter how empassioned.

Manning’s analysis points to the importance of open-mindedness to the process. So let’s remove the single-issue blinders and face the true complexity of our environmental and food issues. I know we can do it.

If I think of our 120 acre farm in Osage County as its own little world—and I do—then that topography is marked by special places strung together as on a treasure map or one of those magical hand drawn maps from The Lord of the Rings (yes, I admit it, I’m a fan).  As I and my five dogs wend our way on regular walks, we mark off and enjoy each landmark: the four very different ponds, the draw creek, the CRP prairie, the wooded areas, the pine grove.  One of my favorite spots is what I have come to call “the picnic grove”.  It’s really just a hedgerow, but it’s a hedgerow of fully grown Osage Orange, and they provide a welcome and ample canopy of shade at a high point of the land, affording a pleasing and peaceful view of the 110 Mile Creek valley.

If you want to understand Osage County, you have to know about the Osage Orange tree.  In Osage County and in the central and southern rural midwest in general, the Osage Orange tree—which I had never heard of until I moved here, is a lynchpin of the prairie topography and culture.  You see this useful and attractive tree lining the fields and meadows, and, in another incarnation, as knarled, irregular fenceposts which will stand for generations. 

Dave Mahon , the realtor who showed us what is now our place (“I think I’ve found your farm,” he had said on the phone—and he was right) called them “hedge” trees. He’d learned that descriptive name from his father-in-law, who is a Kansas farmer.  Osage Orange appear all over eastern Kansas along the borders of fields—as hedges and full grown windbreaks—excellent as barriers and for shade and shelter.

Osage hedgerows, from a distance, remind me of the fields in England with their much lower and lusher hedgerows of rough bushes that substitute for fences and which break up the bright green countryside into a charming irregular checkerboard with their darker green hedge lines.  Hedge trees in Kansas are big tough trees, more suited to the wild winds and sometimes blinding sun and heat of Kansas and the prairie, but they do demarcate the fields in a pretty way that brings variety and contrast to the landscape.

As I said earlier, Osage Orange trees make great fence posts. They do not rot; they will last forever.  In fact, Orange were originally planted and pruned as an early form of barbed wire fence (they have thorns)—or rather barbed wire fence came along to mimic the effect of an Osage Orange hedge—“Horse High, Bull Strong and Hog Tight.”  The wood is exceptionally dense and heavy—and the heartwood is truly “orange” as are the very tips of its wide-ranging roots, roots  I once mistook for a snake in the creek.  The wood was  highly prized by Native Americans for making bows—and thus in other areas it’s called bois d’arc or bodark.  Osage Orange trees really do grow a fruit that mildly resembles an orange, but only on the female trees.  Around here folks call them “hedge apples”.

So this is a tree of the prairie—humble, uncelebrated, strong, tough, durable, useful and really very attractive with its twisted rough bark and broadly spreading branches.  And the shade in the Osage Orange picnic grove on our farm—well that’s a special gift.  On Mother’s Day, my husband and our youngest daughter took our typical circuit around the farm. When we reached the picnic grove, I found that they had put a wooden bench under those trees as a surprise for me.  So now on our treks across the farm, we can stop a while to sit and enjoy a quiet moment under the canopy of those tough, sheltering trees.

For more information on Osage Orange Trees:
http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=2523
http://www.gpnc.org/osage.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osage-orange
http://www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/volume_2/maclura/pomifera.htm