Photo by Paige Green
A Message from Our Founder
Our customers have supported us for years knowing they’re investing in soil health and benefiting from the nutrition of the animals raised on the forage grown in that soil. We started Carman Ranch with a focus on raising cattle that spend their entire lives on forage, and don’t go to a feedlot. Earning Regenified certification honor that commitment.
Carman Ranch beef is at the crux of our learning process because our livestock are critical to improving soil health. Their grazing connects us all. Over the past decade, we’ve worked to grow and learn while adopting distinct practices. We’ve made the extra investment in building the health of our land because of we recognize the value of continual learning and improvement, and a sense of accountability to the eaters who support our work by buying our beef.
About Certification
Earning Regenified certification was a rigorous process that audited the ranch, respectful of specific constraints and opportunities related to the land, expertise and existing practices. While the audit process helped assess our farm plan, and soil tests shed light on areas for improvement, it also recognized the regenerative practices already in place: creating more water holding capacity, using cattle to add fertility to crop rotations, reducing and eliminating tillage, and intensifying our grazing rotations to promote longer rest periods. And while we are thrilled to be the first company in the world to receive this recognition, we’re really just getting started. The verification is both an acknowledgement of what we’ve accomplished and shines a light on all the things we can keep doing to make our land more resilient and diverse, and our beef more flavorful and healthful. It inspires us to take our efforts to the next level.
A Commitment to Continual Improvement
As we are increasingly impacted by the climate crisis, we’ve come to recognize the role of agriculture in causing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as land degradation, loss of biodiversity, overuse of water use, and the loss of nutrient density in our food. With everything at stake, we have an imperative not to just to stop degradation, we have to reverse it.
That’s what regenerative agriculture is all about—managing the land in such a way that we can grow food and improve soil health. By incorporating basic principles of soil health,( like minimizing disturbance), in our management practices, and integrating livestock, we can create measurable improvements around soil health, water and biodiversity.
At Carman Ranch, this work on the land has been the focus of our company for decades. Our commitment to the health of the land is clear and strong, as is our commitment to improvements. We believe that amazing things can happen when we make the health of the land the focus of our business -- productive pastures filled with diverse plant species, healthy and happy cattle grazing forage, and delicious beef raised for eaters who value personal health and the vitality of their region.