Joe Howard’s family has been farming in England since 1888, and during the last two decades of the 20th century, Howard Farms was focused on intensive and irrigation crop farming, but then the farm’s soil began to deteriorate and yields fell off a cliff. So in 2003, Joe’s father Max introduced cattle to the farm hoping that a return to a mixed farming approach would improve the soil quality and balance, and the results were as you might expect. Joe Howard took over the livestock enterprise in 2016 and is very generous with his time, explaining among other things how genetic selection has been important for the success of the operation, and demonstrates how profitability is such a vital part of what makes a farm actually sustainable