Finally a burger joint in New York has gone Grass-fed. This had to happen sooner or later, and we know it’s a sign that the Grass-fed Moovement has taken flight. So yesterday Ulla and I popped over to BRGR at 7th Ave. and 26th St. to check the joint out for ourselves. After we ordered, we talked to Marty, the Director of Operations at BRGR who also happens to be a member of the Grass-fed Party. He told us they went grass-fed because it’s healthier. Every day they ship fresh grass-fed beef in from Missouri, where American Grass-fed has a co-operative of grass-fed farms. As it turns out, most of BRGR’s meat and diary products are sourced from small farms. The bacon comes from a small farm in Tennessee, the turkey burgers come from Plainville Farms in upstate New York, and the milk for milkshakes comes from the Ronnybrook Farm in the Hudson Valley.

The burgers were delicious. We also ordered some Fresh Cut Onion Hay, hoping that Angus might make it to our staff lunch. Alas, he ended up getting caught up organizing at Sheep Meadow in Central Park, so we had to devour it ourselves.

The story of the Dust Bowl is an American story, and it is also a grass-fed story. Facing a similar economic crisis we have to look to our fields and grasslands now and ask, what are we doing right? What lessons have today’s farmers learned and implemented, that today’s bankers did not? There was a convergence between agricultural and economic might in the late 1920’s that led to the concurrence of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. As unregulated trading and mortgage lending have once again led to a similar economic downfall, we are now forced to look at the past to glean a vision of our future and relearn forgotten solutions. As we ask today, “Will we wait in bread lines again?” may we also ask, “Will we meet dark dust clouds again?”

There may not be heavy dust clouds during this Recession, but the Grass-fed Party believes it is utterly important to look at the agricultural lessons of the Great Depression, so that we do not have to answer yes to the second question. Ulla and I both read a book recently, The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, that opened up this historical moment on the high plains vividly; we saw the whole of grass-fed causes played out in this time and place. Egan’s story, crafted from interviews with those who had survived what was called No Man’s Land, takes us through a relatively short span of time, when the High Plains went from buffalo grass and dense sod, to overgrazed cattle country, to golden wheat fields, to dust and sand, and finally to experimental conservation districts, pushed by the American Government to restore the drifting plains back to their nature. In this American story, grass and grass-fed come full-circle.

More than just a case for the preservation of grassland by managed grazing, this is a story of the ethos of ambition, self-sufficiency, cooperation, the individual, the American Dream, the balance of nature, the machine in agriculture, and of the human will. Egan’s book reveals the character of the grasslands themselves as well as the character of the people who came and plowed, and the cowboys who stayed on. Historical figures like Hugh Bennett, FDR, and a newspaper man who created a “Last Man’s Club” set new standards for both the character that defines the agricultural west and the agencies, such as the Soil Conservation Service, that work to keep the grasslands together.

I can honestly say that I would be willing to live through another Great Depression, but after reading The Worst Hard Time, I know that I would never wish for my people, my land, or my animals to suffer the terror of the Dust Bowl again. The breadlines are