NYC “meating-up” Mondays

“Meatless Mondays” are just too mundane for Chef Christian Ragano of New York Central restaurant in the Grand Hyatt New York. According to Meatingplace.com, the culinarian has turned the idea on its head and introduced “Meat-filled Mondays” at his popular Midtown eatery.

As reported by the NY1 all-news channel in New York, the Monday menu offers an ever-changing three-course meat meal (with dessert as an optional fourth course). Diners can expect to see proteins they don’t usually get in restaurants, such as buffalo, elk and ostrich, along with beef and pork of course!

Terms in ag sound funny to the consumer

“Let’s go round up that pen of steers from the backgrounding lot to process.”

To the average person, this sentence probably sounds like another language. I know sometimes there are even terms that farmers and ranchers use that I’m not used to. It can become confusing when you really don’t know the meaning. I know I don’t usually ask what they mean, so I’m sure others don’t ask either.

If I didn’t know any better, this sentence might sound something like, “Let’s go rope a confined area of cows from the background over there to butcher.”

This really should be a good lesson to us in agriculture. We need to be better at defining what we mean by these terms. It’s important for others to understand them so they really understand about their food.

A Nebraska feedyard owner, once a foodie city girl from Florida, Anne Burkholder, does a good job of this in her blog, Feedyard Foodie. But she really understands the concept because she was once the consumer. She’s got quite the story and you should really read all about Anne by clicking here.

In her most recent blog, “Mama, why did you just say that calf was ‘green’?…” Anne explains a term that her daughter heard her say one day in the feedyard.

“This question came from my oldest daughter when she was learning her colors as a young child.  I was talking to someone on the phone about a group of cattle that had just arrived at the feed yard, and commenting that the cattle were“pretty green”.”

She goes on to say, “We all know that cattle are not the color green—so what was I talking about?  A “green” steer or heifer is one that is not carrying a lot of flesh.  “Green” is a term used by cattlemen to describe an animal that is relatively thin.”

Anne also lists a variety of terms that are often used in her feedyard and explains their meaning. Thanks Anne for taking the time to describe the production methods we take and do in agriculture and why we do it!

Read my similar post, "'Buzzwords' in Agriculture".

Serving U.S. Beef to Japan Tsunami Evacuees

 

Imagine traveling through the Japan countryside, through beautiful, green rice paddies and tree covered mountains when you turn the bend and see the coast. You can easily see the water two miles away because what once was thriving coastal cities, is now a layer of debris, mostly flat except for the piles that workers have begun to sort the wreckage.

The earthquake and tsunami in Japan was March 11 and the disaster area is still very devastating to see. (Watch a video of the tsunami of the area we were in here) Buildings flattened, cars crushed, hundreds of boats inland. It was a very emotional sight, but the Nebraska Corn and Beef teams had a great mission in front of them - to cook and feed 500 servings of U.S. beef to evacuees.

The U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) team set up at a hotel that was on top of a hill near a fishing village on the coast that was spared. The hotel owner opened up the hotel as a shelter for people from the area. This shelter was open to feeding the people staying there, as well as local cleanup workers to come and enjoy a free meal.

The team cooked U.S. sirloin steaks that were donated by many U.S. companies through USMEF for the relief effort. Sam Harada, USMEF senior director, said they have partnered with trade organizations like food service, wholesale, processors, etc., to lead the cooperative relief effort. They have gone to more than 30 locations, served more than 93,000 servings of beef and pork and have a goal of serving more than 100,000.

"The relief efforts are very important to lead to a recovery of the meat market," said Harada. "It is great for the Japanese people, but also to help show the compassion of U.S. beef and pork producers."

All of the evacuees were very grateful for the U.S. beef, as many of them did not have meat for more than one month after the disaster. It was humbling to walk through the line of evacuees waiting for the beef bowl lunch and receive handshakes, thank you’s and big smiles.

 

You can see more pictures of the tsunami disaster on our team’s Flicker online photo album.

U.S. Beef BBQ in Japan

I returned from Japan last week on a corn-fed beef trade mission with Nebraska Corn Board and the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) and wanted to share on some my observations. I helped organize this trip as a trade mission to help promote Nebraska corn-fed beef and a way for the Nebraska farmers that organized the Japan Relief Grain Donation Program through the Red Cross to see how their efforts were utilized in Japan.

First, Japan is a great importer of beef and pork – especially from the states. The USMEF has an office in Tokyo and does an excellent job of marketing U.S. red meat and creating demand in a competitive market for the lean protein source from the U.S. They have created the “We Care” campaign for U.S. beef after the 2003 BSE scare to help consumers know that beef from the states is safe and U.S. farmers and ranchers care about the beef they produce to send to Japan.

After we arrived in Tokyo, our team went to The Prince Hotel to observe a U.S. beef and pork promotion. The Prince Hotel is a high-end hotel chain in Japan, and USMEF has worked with it to serve all of its red meat dishes of U.S. red meat.

The team had the chance to try U.S. beef tongue, short ribs and steak, as well as U.S. pork tenderloin and sausage prepared by USMEF Japan office staff at the in-table BBQ grill.

You can view more pictures on the NCB online photo album here.

Wordless Wednesday | U.S. Beef in Japan

I just returned from Japan - more updates to come but I'll share a few pictures of U.S. beef in Japan:

Check out more pictures on our team's Flickr album.

Which shape do you prefer?

In a high-end  Japan supermarket today, my team of the Nebraska Corn and Beef participants, were actually observing the U.S. beef and pork being marketed.
But I got really distracted by the art that were these melons. And the outlandish price, but I would probably pay it too if I could get melons this unique and pretty!
More to come on the Japan mission.

Electric Fence First On XIT Ranch

Part 5:

My favorite memory of electric fences is the bag that my dad strapped to the four-wheeler that contained the fiberglass fence poles – a golf bag! I thought it was so silly, but it was the perfect size to hold a lot of small poles and easy to carry as you’re putting the fence out (I think my Dad should also be on the 10 Greatest Beef Innovators list!).

One time, I was putting the poles out by myself and found a rattlesnake skin. I sneakily put it in the front pocket of the golf bag and it gave dad a good scare when he opened it!

Electric fence has been used so much on our ranch, and it is one beef innovation we have taken full advantage of. Enjoy this history by J.T. Smith, full story here.

Electric Fence First On XIT Ranch
First claimed to be cheaper, need less posts and serve as a telephone line.
By J.T. Smith

In 1882, Texas was just itching to build its grand state Capitol building in Austin — aiming to make its dome slightly higher than the U.S. Capitol.

A lofty idea — there was no place for small thoughts in Texas, of course. Trouble was, Texas had bold plans but no money.

So the state bartered to build.

By May of that year, Texas had traded 3 million acres of land up on the Plains to Chicago investors in exchange for building the state Capitol. The Chicago group was known as the Capitol Syndicate.

The Capitol Syndicate immediately began fencing its millions of acres. It had to do this rapidly as herd after herd trudged across the High Plains up from South Texas to stock what, at the time, was considered sort of a barren wasteland. The Texans thought they got the best of the trade with the Chicago investors.

The vanguard was bossed by Ab Blocker, who suggested the famed "XIT" brand.

In its heyday, as the world's largest ranch, the XIT ran 150,000 cattle on its seven divisions. The XIT Ranch was so large it comprised all or parts of 10 counties running down the border with New Mexico. So cowboy lore had it the XIT brand stood for "Ten in Texas." Closer to reality, it may have just been a difficult brand for rustlers to change.

Thousands of miles

With all of its border and interior cross fencing, more than 6,000 miles of wire and fencing materials were required for fencing this titanic Texas ranch. The XIT used so much barbed wire, it bought fence staples by the carload.

This was costing the Chicago investors lots of money and time. So in 1888, an electric fence was used for the first time on the XIT Ranch.

That year, D.H Wilson of the United States Electric Fence Co. contracted to fence one of the XIT pastures and construct a 30-mile telephone line, according to the Texas State Historical Association.

The idea was that electricity from a generator using an overshot wheel would charge the top two wires of a four-wire fence. This electrified fence was supposed to need far fewer fence posts, cause less injury to cattle than traditional barbed wire, and even enable fence riders (cowboys riding the fence) to communicate with the ranch headquarters by telephone!

The nearby LX Ranch of W.H. Bates and David T. Beals north of Amarillo (the brand and part of the land later owned by the Lee Bivins Estate) soon decided it would experiment with the "electric fence." But LX cowboys were skeptical about the innovation, and the electric fence didn't prove practical there.

Electric revival

Despite its early hurdles to win ranchers, the electric fence would rebound and find a strong place with both ranchers and farmer-stockmen during the 20th century.

The electric fence soon would be used by the military in World War I, and was revived agriculturally in the modern era, with ranches across the nation now using the electric fence extensively.

While the primary purpose of today's electric fence is keeping cattle or other livestock inside an area, many farmers make use of electric fence to keep critters such as feral hogs on the outside. (It usually takes at least two hot wires to slow down wild hogs, however).

The modern electric fence with just a single wire remains a standard for grazing winter wheat pasture in the Southern Plains, and is growing in popularity nationwide for internal fencing subdivisions and better-managed grazing. Often, the modern electric fence is battery powered and solar charged.

As far as the Texas capitol in Austin, when the lights were turned on April 20, 1888, it was one of the world's largest buildings at the time, with its height at 308 feet to the top of the dome, a length of 628 feet and a breadth of 290 feet.

Meanwhile, the Capitol Syndicate starting breaking up its land and selling its many ranches in 1901, and by 1912 it had disposed of the last of the XIT cattle.

Barbed Wire Shaped Western America

Part 4:

I look at barbed wire as a form of art. The hundreds of different designs in the wire, the barbs, the twists, etc. But it was created for a use: to help manage where the cattle could roam.

Think of the U.S. before any pastures – one big open range with natural landmarks the only way the cowboys could somewhat corral their herd. But with the innovation of fencing, cattlemen could better round up the herd, whether it was to move them to another pasture, or to load them up to take to market. Dan Crummet’s history and perspective makes for a good read. Article from here. 

Barbed Wire Shaped Western America
Fortunes made and land transformed by the invention of wire with barbs built in.
By Dan Crummett

If the end of the Civil War opened the Old West era, the coming of barbed wire shortly thereafter marked the beginning of the end of that much-heralded period in U.S. history.

After the end of the Civil War, the Great Plains became a destination rather than an obstacle to westward movement for our young nation's growing population. As settlers, mainly farmers and ranchers, moved into the open spaces, normal fencing materials on which they depended east of the Mississippi River became scarce.

Still, the lush prairie was ideal for grazing cattle, and new developments with steel plows made the prairie soils ripe for growing crops — a dichotomy that would rumble across the Plains in violent confrontations between ranchers and farmers for years. Barbed wire would play a part in that turmoil, and its use eventually would be found to protect crops and to make intensive animal agriculture economically possible in the vast Plains.

The first U.S. patent for barbed wire was issued to Lucien B. Smith of Kent, Ohio, in 1867, but the barbed wire we know today became popular in 1874 when Joseph Glidden, DeKalb, Ill., perfected it and received patents on his version. At that time, Glidden, Jacob Haish, Frances Washburn and Isaac Ellwood were known as the "Big Four" in the development and marketing of the specialized wire. By 1874, Glidden and Ellwood were through fighting one another for various patent rights and joined forces to form the Barb Fence Co. in DeKalb.

The real boost for the new technology — which had just recently begun to spark the imagination of cattlemen — came in 1876 when an associate of Ellwood, John Warner Gates, fenced off Military Plaza (the area in front of the Alamo in San Antonio) and penned cattle there successfully. That first "demonstration project" convinced the crowd of barbed wire's ability to restrain cattle, and within a few hours Gates had become relatively wealthy in the lobby of the nearby Menger Hotel, taking orders for the wire for Ellwood's Illinois company.

Not long afterward, however, Gates parted company with Ellwood and started his own unlicensed and highly successful barbed-wire manufacturing business in Texas. Finally, as the industry began to consolidate with more than 150 manufacturers making wire for the demand the Old West was creating, Ellwood and Gates buried the hatchet and created the American Steel and Wire Co. That firm would later become part of U.S. Steel Corp., which held a monopoly in the market into the 20th century.

Because barbed wire was an economical way of enclosing large tracts of land, it became popular with cattle and land companies dependant upon grazing the millions of acres of the Great Plains, both north and south. By the 1880s, enough competition existed in the Plains that northern cattle migrating away from blizzards became a problem for southern ranchers, and all cattle were a problem to farmers trying to grow crops. In 1885 southern ranches had fenced their northern borders to prevent migrating herds, and extreme weather killed up to 75% of the migratory cattle at the fence line in what is known as the "Big Die Up."

Range wars involving cattlemen who wanted to maintain the open range and those who didn't, along with farmers who wanted to be left alone, erupted through the period, until a federal law passed in 1885 prevented fencing across public domain lands. Within 15 years, enough wire had been stretched on private property that "open range" was a relic term for the history books, and many historians say that fact, alone, was the end of the Old West, as it made migration of native populations of humans, buffalo and introduced cattle impossible.