Can you produce beef — from the calf to the dinner table — without adding net carbon to the atmosphere? Could you even sequester carbon? Dave Fischer believes he can, and he is on a mission to make it happen.

Fischer and wife Diana operate Fischer Farms in Dubois County, Ind. They focus on natural, high-quality beef, which is delivered weekly to Indiana University dining halls, 150 restaurants, and multiple retailers and online customers. Dave manages the farm and 450-cow beef herd, while Diana makes sure natural beef, pork and other meats get to customers on time.

Indiana farmer Dave Fischer hopes other producers will join with him to grow high-quality beef with climate-smart production practices. (Photo: Fischer Farms)

Dave also manages a multimillion-dollar five-year project designed to explore new ways to produce beef with fewer greenhouse emissions. He hopes to expand the business model into a network of like-minded producers. Last year, Fischer Farms was one of only a few non-institutional entities to obtain a Climate Smart Commodities grant from USDA. He hopes other producers will join with him to produce high-quality beef using climate-smart production practices, which scientifically monitored and measured to create verifiable climate-smart meat for consumers. Read more about his project here.

“We have over 20 producers working with us now, and the goal is to reach 100 by the end of the project,” Fischer says. “They must follow the guidelines we require, and if they do, they can earn handsome premiums over regular market prices.”

The project will include as many as 100 livestock producers and will support Fischer Farms’ market expansion into other areas. (Photo: Fischer Farms)

How they capture carbon

Fischer relies heavily on annual ryegrass as a primary forage and cover crop on his rolling land. Not only does it make good haylage to mix with corn silage in a total mixed ration, but it returns carbon to the soil, in part, due to the mass and depth of roots it produces.

“My research indicates ryegrass can produce 4,000 pounds of roots per acre, about the same as corn,” Fischer says. “Wheat only produces about 1,500 pounds, and soybeans around 750 pounds.

“Besides, it is a great scavenger of nitrogen. Annual ryegrass haylage normally averages around 16% in protein, but I know of an instance where someone applied a large amount of manure and later harvested the ryegrass. It tested over 40% for protein!”

Documenting carbon capture not easy

One of Fischer’s early goals in the project is documenting just how much carbon he captures in the soil. Accurate carbon measurement is often cited as one of the biggest challenges in carbon market contracts. In his case, Natural Resources Conservation Service staff used a hydraulic probe truck to pull dozens of soil cores, each over 3feet deep, from various fields late in 2023. Currently, Geospherics LLC, a company with experience in quantifying carbon, is analyzing those cores to determine carbon content at various depths.

“Students from Indiana University environmental study classes visit the farm occasionally, and time and again, students think I should be planting trees on these hills to capture more carbon,” Fischer says. “One thing we’ve learned already from coring is that we have built up far more organic matter with annual ryegrass and other cover crops in the past 20 years than in our woods.

“Cores in the woods show about 4inches of topsoil. We’ve built back from a few inches of topsoil to 9 to 14 inches in some of our fields already. You can build back soils and capture carbon faster with cover crops than trees.”

Next steps

What will it take to make his beef operation carbon negative, capturing more carbon that it releases into the atmosphere? Check out these practices:

· Capture carbon through plants. “We’ve made the first step by building our nutritional program around forages,” he says. “We’re capturing more carbon. The only corn we grow here is after we chop annual ryegrass, and it is for corn silage. Then the field goes back into cover crops.”

· Reduce methane emissions. “We feed brown kelp as an additive, and that knocks down methane production around 10% to 30%,” Fischer explains. “Red kelp is much more effective, but it is difficult to obtain right now.”

· Reduce nitrogen use in crops. Some products already on the market claim to reduce the amount of nitrogen needed for corn by helping plants obtain a portion of what they need from the atmosphere. They deserve a closer look and more testing, Fischer says. · Build up soil biome. “We also utilize the Haney test for soil health to measure soil biology,” he says. “From five tests sampled last year, four showed very high activity and one scored high. These tests help us gauge how well we’re doing at building up soil biology.”

· Continue searching for answers. “I believe we’ve only scratched the surface in what we can achieve through utilizing soil health,” Fischer says. “Twenty years from now, I believe we will apply far less nitrogen and phosphorus than we do today.

“We must learn to manage economically and environmentally at the same time. We can’t just manage for the environment,” he says. “What we do must be economically sound too. We’re making progress, but it will take time.