Worlds away from The Ranch, Dale Lasater stands in a corral full of huge bulls, feeding them treats from his hand. Behind him on this warm spring day, the Rockies are still white with snow. Lasater is in his early fifties, with a handlebar mustache and wire-rimmed glasses. He wears worn-out jeans and boot, and a well-ironed, button-down shirt, looking part-cowboy, part-Ivy Leaguer. The bulls that crowd around him seem almost sweet, acting more like a bunch of Ferdinands than like fierce symbols of machismo. They were bred to be gentle, never dehorned, and never roped. The Lasater Ranch occupies about 30,000 acres of shortgrass prairie near the town of Matheson, Colorado. It is a profitable, working ranch that for half a century has not used pesticides, herbicides, poisons, or commercial fertilizers on the land, has not killed local predators such as coyotes, has not administered growth hormones, anabolic steroids, or antibiotics to the cattle. The Lasater’s are by no means typical, but have worked hard to change how American beef is produced. Their philosophy of cattle ranching is based upon a simple tenet: “Nature is smart as hell.”
Dale Lasater’s iconoclasm seems bred in the bone. One of his grandfathers headed a Texas cattleman’s association during the early 1900s and led the fight against the Beef Trust, testifying before Congress and calling for strict enforcement of the antitrust laws. In retaliation, the Beef Trust refused for years to buy Lasater cattle. Dale Lasater’s father, Tom, dropped out of Princeton after the Wall Street crash of 1929 to become a full-time rancher. Hard times forced him to seek ways of raising cattle inexpensively. He decided to let nature do most of the work. He bred cattle to be gentle, fertile, and strong, not caring in the least how they looked. He combined Herefords, Shorthorns, and Brahmans to make a whole new breed, only the second new breed of cattle registered in the United States. And he gave the breed an appropriately American name: the Beefmaster. In 1948, Tom Lasater moved his family from Texas to eastern Colorado. Despite the anger and disbelief of his neighbors, he refused to kill predators or to allow hunting on his land, permitting animals that other ranchers exterminated – rattlesnakes, coyotes, badgers, ground squirrels, gophers, and prairie dogs – to flourish. He thought cattle benefited more from trhe challenges of a natural ecosystem than from any human efforts jto control the environment.
Tom Lasater is ninety years old now, and his memory is failing, but he still has the aura of a strong patriarch. As Dale bounces an old cream-colored Suburban Custom Deluxe along one of the ranch’s dirt roads, his father sits in the back seat, wearing a cowboy hat, a bolo tie, and thick black glasses, silently staring at the Beefmasters scattered across the prairie. He scrutinizes them, and every so often asks Dale about a particular animal. The cattle roam a landscape that appears vast and unspoiled. The Lasater Ranch is a wildlife sanctuary. The native grasses are thriving, tall cottonwoods grow along the stream banks, and hears of antelope graze alongside the cattle. Dale parks the truck, and I walk al short distance to a rocky outcropping. The Suburban now seems like a small, insignificant speck compared to what surrounds it. Pikes Peak and Cheyenne Mountain rise to the west, and in every other direction the prairie extends to the horizon, the shortgrass moving in waves, blown by a steady wind.
Beyond the Lasater property line, the land is not faring so well. Smaller farms and ranches in the area have been disappearing for years. A population loss thart began in the 1950s has recently slowed, but too late. Many small towns have become virtual ghosts towns. In the little commercial district of Matheson, along a dirt road named Broadway, the feed store, the general store, an a repair shop have all been abandoned. The whitewashed buildings have quaint, fading signs, and stand empty. The large, brick elementary school that Dale Lasater attended – is now used by a local rancher to store grain.
Before taking over the family ranch, Dale Lasater spent a year in Argentina as a Fulbright scholar, ran a feedlot company in Kansas, and managed cattle ranches in Texas, Florida, and New Mexico. He has come to believe that our industrialized system of cattle production cannot be sustained. Rising grain prices may someday hit ranchers and feedlots hard. More importantly, Lasater finds it hrd to justify feeding millions of tons of precious grain to American cattle while elsewhere in the world millions of people starve. He respects the decision to become a vegetarian, but has little tolerance for the air of moral superiority that often accompanies it. Growing up on the prairie gave him a view of Mother Nature that I somewhat different from the Disney version. Cattle that are not eaten by people, that are simply allowed to grow old and weak, still get eaten – by coyotes and turkey buzzards, and it’s not a pretty sight.
Dale Lasater recently set up a company to sell organic, free-range, grass-fed beef. None of the cattle used in Lasater Grasslands Beef spent any time at a feedlot. The meat is much lower I fat than grain-fed beef, and has a much stronger, more distinctive flavor. Lasater says that most Americans have forgotten what real beef taste like. Argentine beef is considered a gourmet item, served at expensive restaurants, and almost all of the cattle in Argentina are grass-fed. Recent findings than grass-fed cattle may be less likely to spread E. coli 0157i:H7 have strengthened Lasater’s determination to follow a different path. Along with a number of other innovative ranchers in Colorado, he is trying to raise cattle in a way that does not harm consumers or the land. Hank was a dear friend of his, in many ways a kindred spirit. Lasater doesn’t think that his little company will revolutionize the American beef industry; but it’s a start.
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