Texas cattle ranchers using regenerative agriculture to restore land, aid in water conservation

Jeremiah and Maggie Eubank’s 2,000-acre Pure Pastures cattle ranch near Canyon Lake is unique by Texas ranching standards. For starters, their herd is grass fed, but the land is green with tall, native grasses and wildflowers that attract an array of butterflies and other pollinators — especially notable given the drought. The herd’s, ahem, “contributions” to the pastures attract something else entirely: dung beetles, as pointed out by Jeremiah on a recent drive around the ranch. He watched as a beetle about the size of a pinky finger rolled up a small ball of animal waste that Jeremiah said was going to contribute to the greater good of the land that he and his wife manage. “You see things like this, and it’s the reason why we do what we do,” he said. “You need everything in nature to come to form and act like nature, because it all has a purpose. These beetles are hard to find, but they are coming back. It’s a sign that we are doing something right.”

Pure Pastures practices regenerative agriculture, a type of ranching that aims to be more ecologically responsible by bringing back old methods of land management used by cowboy-era ranchers before industrialization. Livestock feed on native grasses, rotating from pasture to pasture to prevent the animals from eating all the way down to the roots and to allow the plants to recover and grow back — with a boost from the natural fertilizer left behind by the herd. Unless a rancher has access to tens of thousands of acres, herd sizes have to be limited to make this kind of agriculture work. The Eubanks have just about 100 cattle, about 200 pigs and 200 sheep — significantly smaller than usual for 2,000 acres. Because of that, it’s less profitable than large-scale industrialized ranching, but regenerative agriculture ranchers believe the overall benefits far outweigh the smaller profits. Practitioners say regenerative agriculture reduces or eliminates their feed costs as well as the costs of chemical fertilizers to keep the grass growing. They say the animals are healthier, their meat is healthier for humans and the land is healthier as there are no chemicals used to manage the grass and a more natural ecosystem is restored. The practice is getting more popular. In a 2021 piece in Forbes, it was cited as the “next big trend” in the retail food business, with companies like General Mills, PepsiCo, Walmart and other companies pledging to source products from regenerative properties.