by Jean Stramel
Back in the mid 1990’s, Judy Decker was raising kids with her husband on a small tract of land near Emporia. Then she attended the K-State Sustainable Agriculture Conference and heard Joel Salatin speak about grass-fed beef and pastured poultry and she thought “I can get into that”. She knew the feedlot and confinement thing just wasn’t in her. Now 20 years later she is running a successful business on their Renaissance Farms Ltd., incorporated as a Sub-S entity in 1998. She is raising grass-fed Galloway beef and selling all she can produce using the farm website and Facebook as her marketing tool.
“I just have a real love and passion for grassland ecosystems, so this whole cattle thing was very fascinating to me – it gave me an excuse to be out there with the grassland system – managing it”.
Judy has found her place raising high quality grass-fed beef. The low maintenance animals she breeds and raises help her promote a sustainable food product important for building the resilience we need for the increasing challenges of droughts, floods and helping build local and regional food production systems.
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