Raising livestock outdoors on green, perennial pastures improves soil health, water quality, and animal welfare. It can also be profitable. But pastured livestock farms have been criticized as being “too inefficient” to become a serious part of the modern food system.
We’re working with pastured livestock farms producing beef, sheep, pigs, broiler chickens, and turkeys to assess how efficiently these farms can turn pasture and grain into nutrient-dense meat products.
If you own or manage a pastured livestock farm in Pennsylvania or surrounding states, you’re eligible to participate in the study.
Beyond contributing to a dataset that will help livestock farmers everywhere improve their feed efficiency, you’ll also receive:
Participating is simple. First, contact us to let us know you’re interested. We’ll provide you with a brief survey about basic aspects of your farm to see if it’s a good match for the study considering the range of current participants.
If your farm is eligible to participate, we’ll need you to share your production records for acres grazed or pastured, animals produced, hanging weights or meat yields, and feed purchased for each animal type on their farm. (Most farms are already maintaining these records.)
As with all of our research projects, your farm’s data will be kept strictly confidential. We’ll only share general trends and insights.
Private: Farm-Based Research
