Bison: Sustainability on the Range

About 50 mil­lion bison once roamed North America and they were an inte­gral part of the grass­land ecosys­tem. But by the 1890s their num­bers had dwin­dled to 2,000 as a result of slaugh­ter by European set­tlers. Today, with num­bers around half a mil­lion, the ani­mals are regain­ing their foothold and are increas­ingly ranched and consumed.

Bison’s health advan­tages over beef are rel­a­tively well known. Bison meat con­tains about half the fat con­tent of corn-fed beef and is rich in omega 3 essen­tial fatty acids. Carnivorous food­ies increas­ingly appre­ci­ate the meat whose fla­vor depends on where it was grown.

Now Carter is on a mis­sion to increase aware­ness of the bison’s envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits. Bison are essen­tial for the health of the grass­lands, Carter says. “The grass­land ecosys­tem has evolved through tens of thou­sands of years of graz­ing by large rumi­nants, pri­mar­ily bison,” he points out. “If you take those rumi­nants out of that ecosys­tem, it collapses.”

Grazing bison help pro­mote a healthy ecosys­tem with roam­ing hooves that func­tion as nat­ural trac­tors, aer­at­ing the earth and rotat­ing seeds. Their waste is a potent fertilizer.

“If you take bison off that land, the grass is going to pro­duce about 30 per­cent more growth than it can decom­pose; so after a cou­ple of years it just chokes out and dies,” says Carter.

Although bison do emit methane, their graz­ing helps keep the grass healthy and in turn it absorbs a lot of car­bon by putting it back into the soil, accord­ing to Carter.

Some bison are grain fin­ished, though most are left to graze until slaugh­ter. Sometimes farm­ers use corn feed, but it’s usu­ally a blend of grasses and grain, which is more suited to the bison’s diges­tive sys­tem. There are no reg­u­la­tions cur­rently in place to track if a bison has been fed genet­i­cally mod­i­fied corn. “Grass fin­ish­ing vs. grain fin­ish­ing will be dri­ven by cus­tomer demand,” Carter explains. “The more that con­sumers demand bison be grass-finished, the more that grass fin­ish­ing will grow as the pre­dom­i­nant fin­ish­ing pro­to­col by our pro­duc­ers.” Look for “grass-fed” labels on bison to best avoid any GM-corn-fed bison.

Unlike cows, bison are undo­mes­ti­cated and genet­i­cally unal­tered, which makes for low-maintenance ani­mals. They rarely require antibi­otics, and when they do, it’s usu­ally just one ani­mal. They require min­i­mal, if any, win­ter shel­ter and pre­fer to be left alone. Federal law pro­hibits giv­ing bison growth hormones.

“In their minds, there are still preda­tors out there want­ing to eat them and it cre­ates a lot of dif­fer­ences [from cows] that are very pos­i­tive,” Carter remarks. “Cattle will hang around the water­ing areas and streams, where they can con­t­a­m­i­nate water sup­plies; bison will go down, get a drink and get the heck out.”

Click any image above to see a larger version.

In addi­tion to the eco ben­e­fits, bison can give small agri­cul­tural farm­ers a chance for suc­cess, accord­ing to Carter.

“If you are in agri­cul­ture and want to raise ani­mals, these days there are two options,” he says. “You can be part of a huge capital-intensive farm that raises a generic com­mod­ity with chem­i­cals and genet­i­cally mod­i­fied feed, and you make money by pro­duc­ing more and more volume

“The other path is to find some­thing that’s more labor inten­sive and con­nects directly with consumers—natural meats, one of which is bison. You’re pro­duc­ing a prod­uct that’s not high vol­ume but high qual­ity; it’s about con­nect­ing with cus­tomers who appre­ci­ate that qual­ity and see the value. Yes, it takes longer to pro­duce bison and there will always be some extra cost, but there’s extra value—this is meat that tastes great, is healthy, and is healthy for the environment.”

For farm­ers just start­ing out who want an alter­na­tive to large ag out­fits, bison pro­vide one oppor­tu­nity. “You don’t need com­bines and big trac­tors; you buy some land, get some ani­mals, put up a fence and you’re good to go,” says Carter. “The last thing these ani­mals want to do is go into a barn.”

Carter spends a lot of his time vis­it­ing rural com­mu­ni­ties and stock shows explain­ing to stu­dents and young farm­ers the ben­e­fits of farm­ing bison and the grow­ing mar­ket for their meat. Consumer sales for bison are in their sixth year of double-digit growth, with 2010 num­bers show­ing 11 per­cent growth.

“In recent years farm­ers have been tak­ing any land they can and pil­ing it up with corn because of all the incen­tives for ethanol and what not. I’m explain­ing the incen­tives to young farm­ers about bison so that we can keep that land in pas­ture, and keep the ani­mals out there that con­tribute to a healthy envi­ron­ment,” Carter concludes.