Word: taggarts
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Until he saw the light, Jon Taggart--6 ft. 5 in., jeans, white cowboy hat, Texas twang--was a rancher like any other in the southern Great Plains. He crowded his cattle onto pasture sprayed with weed killers and fertilizers. When they were half grown, he shipped them in diesel-fueled trucks to huge feedlots. There they were stuffed with corn and soy--pesticide treated, of course--and implanted with synthetic hormones to make them grow faster. To prevent disease, they were given antibiotics. They were trucked again to slaughterhouses, butchered and shrink-wrapped for far-flung supermarkets...
Today his 500 steers stay home on the range. And they're in the forefront of a back-to-the-future movement: 100% grass-fed beef. In the seven years since Taggart began to "pay attention to Mother Nature," as he puts it, he has restored his 1,350 acres in Grandview, Texas, to native tallgrass prairie, thus eliminating the need for irrigation and chemicals. He rotates his cattle every few days among different fields to allow the grass to reach its nutritional peak. And when the steers have gained enough weight, he has them slaughtered just down the road...
...grass fed at 20% of the beef market--but supply is nowhere near demand. Grass-fed beef can cost from 20% to 100% more than feedlot beef, reflecting in part a longer growth cycle. And quality can be a problem. Bonnell's, a Fort Worth restaurant, sells 65 Taggart steaks a week. "Our customers rave about its tenderness and nutty flavor," says chef Jon Bonnell. But some grass-fed meat is too tough. And it's not easy to revive the art of producing tasty pasture-raised beef. It requires not only rotational grazing but also the genes that allow...
...Taggart ranch, the black Angus swish their tails contentedly. And the Taggarts are content too. Since they switched to pasture, they have doubled their income. More than 1,000 customers are in their database, and they are planning a store in Dallas with grass-fed lamb, pasture-based cheese, and classes on slow-cooking grass-fed beef. Says Wendy Taggart: "People are tuning in to what I call real food...
Perhaps some will follow the example of Dick Taggart, 41, of Old Greenwich, Conn. After 18 years in financial services, most recently at J.P. Morgan Chase, he now works for Progeon, an affiliate of the Indian outsourcing giant Infosys, as its man on Wall Street. One week out of every six or seven, he takes securities firms to India to show them the savings that are possible. He knows the transition is painful for the workers left behind, but he has seen it before. "It was the same thing when we moved from Wall Street to New Jersey and then...