Responsible
At Estancia, we produce high-quality grass-fed beef – but not at the expense of animal welfare or the environment.
Humane Treatment of Animals
We take our responsibility to animals seriously. Each animal has access to two acres worth of green grass and no animal ever sees a feedlot.
Animal welfare is critical to the beef we produce because it makes for a healthier and better-tasting steak; it also is the right way to treat animals. Free-ranging, grass-eating is the tradition in Argentina and Uruguay so the practices are inherent in the culture and tradition. It's a simpler way to raise cattle for the very same reasons it's better for them. Free range, grass fed cattle is beef the way nature intented, not unlike wild game.
When it comes time to slaughter, we use the Temple Grandon methods to ensure minimal animal stress. We do it for the animal, and because the beef tastes better when it’s not stressed. It involves minimal shipping distances, special slanted pens keeping ranch groups together and many other steps to reduce stress.
Sustainability
Estancia Beef sets the standard for sustainable production.
For starters, we sell a significant amount of grass fed beef produced in the most sustainable ways possible. We are developing one of the largest biodynamic herds in the world, we have local production in Virginia and we are developing production in California. Grass fed beef is sustainable because it relies on solar power, rainfall, photosynthesis and natural composting of the soil. Shipping is a minimal part of the overall carbon footprint. Grass fed does not use feedlots which have lots of downstream effects nor does it rely on fossil fuels which are used to produce feed stocks. Overall, Estancia’s products are very low impact, with a low carbon footprint. In some ways we are like the Toyota Prius, not perfect, but a meaningful step forward on a significant scale.
While much of our beef is shipped from Uruguay, our internal audits suggest that the amount of fuel (marine diesel) used to transport chilled containers is negligible when compared to the amount of fuel required to fatten the average feedlot steer. We estimate our fossil fuel consumption per pound of beef produced at somewhere between 1% and 10% of the U.S. commodity feedlot steer equivalent. Corn fed animals use 7 lbs of corn to make one pound of beef and it requires 3-5 months in a feedlot to make this happen. That amount of corn takes lots of fossil fuels to produce, including: planting, fertilizer production and application, harvesting, processing and transportation of the feed stock. In fact, our carbon footprint may even be less than most Western US produced "grass-fed" beef since ranchers feed their cattle hay and alfalfa for 8-10 months per year for the animals' entire life - hay and alfalfa require fossil fuels to produce, harvest and distribute just like corn. Keep in mind the entire process when you consider carbon, please read Estancia's Environmental Impact Statement and take a look at other more detailed files in our educational section.
In some ways, Estancia is in the business of land preservation. Our cattle live in harmony with nature and the fields are full of wild animals and birds. While raising cattle is not perfect nature, it far exceeds the alternative for most ranchers. If you have ever seen pastures converted to soy or mono-crops, you know. Mono-crop agriculture turns a pastoral setting into an area devoid of life other than the crop it’s producing.
The most economic use of land on per acre income is to produce soy or corn and put the cattle into feedlots, but our efforts give the farmers incentives to keep native grasslands. We feel that by preserving a demand for grassland, we are preventing industrial agriculture and all the negatives that go with it.
