Give me Iowa and I'll Change the Weather - Interview with Ridge Shinn

Here's the YouTube version of our interview with Ridge Shinn, proprietor of Big Picture Beef. As described earlier, Ridge had the "big picture" in mind for how a thriving grass-fed beef industry in the northeastern part of the United States can help short circuit the CAFOs in the midwest, mitigate global warming, and help solve the American obesity problem. Some highlight quotes are below.

​"Give me Iowa and I'll change the weather." 
- Ridgway F Shinn, Proprietor, Big Picture Beef, 100% grass-fed, grass-finished in America.
"If we graze cattle correctly we sequester large amounts of carbon, we fix the water cycle, and we create jobs." - Ridge Shinn.
​
"In those states (of the northeast) over 600,000 beef cattle are born every year...Over 90% of those are aggregated by the cattle dealers and go west to the feedlots....So, our model is to insert ourselves into that movement of the cattle, so, instead of the feeder calves - a year of age - moving west, we aggregate them and put them on our finishing farm, which is a grass forage only finishing farm in the northeast. We have six of them, and we aggregate a big heard. Then, by moving them 2 or 4 times a day, we can actually finish them - make them fat on grass efficiently - harvest them in the northeast and bring them into the northeast market. “ - Ridge Shinn