In this Local Food, Local Voices podcast episode, we’ll meet the ranchers and farmers who have joined together to create Homestead Natural Foods, and we’ll learn the reasons they’ve turned they’re backs on the commercial beef industry to return to pasture-raised livestock.

Ed Wilsey, a sixth-generation Idaho rancher, believes that if you are what you eat, the same is true for cattle. “You don’t just get the cow, you get what they ate – including the omega-6 fats that come with a grain fed diet. These are the kinds of fats that are more closely linked with obesity, diabetes, cancer, and immune system disorders such as arthritis and asthma.”

Homestead Natural Food’s approach to a more sustainable and healthy food supply is to begin with the soil itself. “We’re all of us grass farmers first, and beef and poultry is the by-product,” says 6th generation Idaho rancher Ed Wilsey. “My granddad always said, “take care of the land and it will take care of you. We’ve cut our soil erosion down to practically nothing – our animals don’t take anything out that they don’t put back in.”