We are what we eat. This is true for food-producing animals and humans alike. 

If the grazing animals that produce our beef have a balanced diet containing different plant species, they are healthier and produce meat that is healthier for us.

Dr. James Linne is a gastroenterologist-turned farmer who practiced medicine for 35 years. 

“Early in my practice, I met a primary care physician who was hybridizing day lilies. I became interested, and took a master gardening class, and when studying the chapter on soils, I became fascinated by the complexity of soils,” says Linne. 

“I continued that interest, and long before I bought a farm I began attending conferences on soil health, including Acres USA, which was primarily for large-scale organic farming. People from all over the world attended. At these conference Joel Salatin was often a presenter, and Gary Zimmer—a dairyman from Wisconsin.”

He attended conferences and started reading books on soil health. 

“Some of the books that set me on this path included books by William Albrecht, the microbiologist from the University of Missouri (Department of Soils), Aldo Leopold, etc. I was in my late 40’s and realized that if I was ever going to do this myself, I needed to do it.”

In 2005 when he was 52 years old, he and his wife bought a 300-acre farm near Hillsboro, Ohio. He worked with the local NRCS and they told him his land was highly erodible. The farm was mainly silt loam soils with 6% to 12% grades and no flat ground.  It never should have been tilled.

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Linne converted all of it into perennial grasses and realized that the only way to manage it was with grazing animals. 

“I knew nothing about cattle, but I bought 20 head of commercial cows to graze it,” he says. “I understood that the quickest way to increase soil organic matter was through rotational grazing ruminant animals.” 

Working with the NRCS he put in portable fences and water developments and began rotational grazing.

Today his forage production is dramatically better, grass is growing much taller before it goes to seed, and the stand is much denser, with more biodiversity. 

“I was walking across one of the 2-acre paddocks in August, and counted 30 different plant species, representing 13 plant families.  I didn’t plant any of these; they came in naturally when given a chance,” he says.

Holistic management

“That’s the thing about holistic management. Allan Savory’s book is so good in highlighting the importance of biodiversity.  He talks about the carbon cycle, water cycle, mineral cycle and plant community. I kept track of all these things on our farm.  We’ve increased our soil organic matter from 1.5% to 4.5% in the past 18 years. That’s huge, and once you get that into motion, it keeps getting better on its own,” Linne says. It is amazing what the symbiotic relationship between the grazing animals and the forage plants can do, improving the soil biology and carbon content, improving the forage and providing a more abundant and healthier diet for the grazing animals.

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“Of those 30 plant species in my pasture, I have seen the cattle eat all but a few,” he says. Cattle love forbs as well as grass, and are also browse on trees and shrubs. They thrive on a varied diet because it’s a balanced diet. The monocultures farmers were encouraged to grow for many decades (for hay, pasture or other crops), to increase production, are not the best for the soil or the animals or the humans that consume them.

“With grass-finishing, when you go to meetings about this topic, they often tell you to plant annuals like sorghum-sudan grass because your cattle can put on almost 3 pounds per day. Yes, you can increase weight gains, but it’s a monoculture, and probably not a good idea,” he says.

Linne has been involved in several studies and his farm received a Cooperator of the Year award from the Soil and Water District—because of his conservation practices that have improved the land and habitat.

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“In the most recent study we did, looking at secondary plant metabolites, the phytonutrients in grass-fed beef, we found that they correlate directly with the biodiversity of your pastures. Every plant has its own array of secondary metabolites that get transferred into the meat.”  This creates a healthier and better- balanced diet for the human who consumes that meat.

Nature’ cycles drive evolution and changing of species. Stresses are what drive changes and survival of the fittest. 

“If an organism can survive the stress, it becomes stronger. Secondary plant metabolites are made by the plant to protect it from stresses. In agriculture, if we don’t stress the plant (and give it all the nutrients through water-soluble fertilizers, etc.) it is not having to produce secondary metabolites and is more vulnerable to detrimental things and not as nutritionally healthy,” says Linne.

Human health implications

“Most plants’ secondary metabolites have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties for humans, important for our health.” This is one reason that properly finished grass-fed beef, with a varied diet, is healthier for people than feedlot grain-finished beef.

“This the study we’ve been working on, that will prove this fact.  It hasn’t been published yet but is currently being done by Dan Kittredge with the Bionutrient Food Association, partnering with Dr. Stephan van Vliet at Utah State University,” Linne says.  Kittredge has been teaching his concepts and practices (as an organic farmer) across the world, and in 2010 founded The Bionutrient Food Association.

“They’ve collected the data we started in 2021, collecting samples and trying to identify nutrient density in beef.  Thousands of beef samples worldwide have been collected from individual farms, consumers who purchase a steak at the store and send it in to be tested, etc. They’ve looked at grass-fed and grain-fed beef--far beyond just the protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals. This is a new area of research called metabolomics in which they use a mass spectrometer to measure plants’ secondary metabolites. There are thousands of these; you can’t measure them all, but he looks at 200 different metabolites,” says Linne.

“There is a 50-fold difference between a feedlot beef and an animal finished on a biodiverse pasture. That’s huge.”

Stephan van Vliet was at Duke University Medical Center and transferred to Utah State to work with Fred Provenza and is now head of the medical research on nutrition, as well as being in the USDA. “He is doing human research, looking at effects of food on different inflammatory markers in the body, obesity, diabetes, etc.,” says Linne.

“Another interesting thing is the variability he’s seeing in beef.  Even though a label in the store might say it’s grass-fed or grass-finished, there can be huge differences.  Many of these producers put cattle in a feedlot and giving them alfalfa pellets or soy hulls and call it grass finished.”  Even though it’s not grain, this kind of diet is not diverse.

“We participated in a study in 2019 with Jason Roundtree at Michigan State University and Chad Bitler from Greenacres Foundation. Their paper was titled A Nutritional Survey of Commercially Available Grass-Finished Beef. They looked at 12 producers across the Midwest, mainly looking at fatty acid profiles—the ratio of omega 6 to omega 3. There were 3 small farms in this study. One harvested 25 head per year and that was me. Another farm did 30 head a year and the other processed 40 per year. The others were all large, doing 1000 or more head per year,” says Linne.

“The three small farms had omega 6 to omega 3 ratios at 2. The large farms had ratios even worse than what is typically found in feedlot cattle.  Some were 15 to one, some were 12 to one. All grass-fed beef is not the same.”  This is why some people who buy grass-fed beef at the grocery store are disappointed in the flavor and texture.

Differences shown

“The more recent study is more sophisticated, showing these differences. The one with Stephan van Vliet collected soil samples, forage samples, manure samples and meat samples. They did microbiome testing of the manure, forage qualities and phytonutrients in the forage. We all sent in 3 steaks, each from a different animal,” Linne says.

It makes sense that the healthier the soil, the healthier the plants will be, and the animals that eat the plants. “They take meat samples and feed the meat to people to see what kind of results they might have.” The problem with evaluating human health is that it will be hard to determine anything in a short period of time. 

“They will, however, be looking at hemoglobin A1C levels, inflammatory markers, cholesterol and triglycerides, etc. In terms of heart disease and things like that, it will take many years. But it makes perfect sense. We haven’t been able to prove the health relationship scientifically, but now we probably can.”