What's For Dinner?

Ed Fredrickson uses a toolkit from 20 years research with USDA's Agricultural Research Service to help Kentucky farmers develop uses of beef and other livestock to improve Kentucky family farms' profitability and sustainability. Expert in desert ecology and nutrition/behavior of range livestock, Ed researched desert-adapted cattle in North Africa for a breed suited to hotter weather and desertified, fragile ecosystems. He then collaborated with a researcher from the Universidad Autonoma de Chihuahua to focus on the Criollo, cattle raised by Tarahumara Indians in the Copper Canyon region of Chihuahua, Mexico to provide milk, meat and draft in Mexico. Their bodies seem to partition energy in ways more suited to arid areas, and they distribute their impact more evenly across landscapes because they graze more widely in rougher country.