All of the beef we produce comes from cattle that spend their entire lives on our farm, eating nothing but the grass that grows under their hooves.
But there is another way to do it.
Roughly half of beef produced in Australia (and 95% in the US) comes from cattle finished on grain in an intensive feedlot. This figure has been steadily rising, possibly because the nature of the lot production system is inherently attractive to larger corporate interests.
All of the inputs - grain, medication, water, the cattle themselves - can be tracked precisely, largely doing away with the traditional vagaries of farming. Animals reduced to data on a spreadsheet.
Admittedly, such a system can produce a fantastically consistent steak which is all that matters for some people. I am not one of them.
