October 31, 2022

Collaborating for Progress in Ranching with Cassidy Johnston

55 minutes

Ranchers and Environmentalists are working toward a common goal.

The beef industry is a complex and unknown process for most. On our first episode, guest Cassidy Johnston, breaks down the complexities of ranching beef cattle and how those ranchers are also environmental stewards.

Because of Cassidy’s lived experience, she is able to work to reduce the gap between the ranch and the table. She builds relationships and forms bold partnerships to answer the age-old question, “Where does my food come from?”

At its core, ranching is a family task. Cassidy learned this first-hand as a first-generation rancher. She and her husband, and their three sons, now operate a cattle ranch in Colorado. Cassidy’s unique journey to ranching has given her the insight to communicate with the average consumer about how and where their food was produced.

About our guest: Cassidy Johnston, Not Your Average Rancher - Colorado

Cassidy Johnston grew up in a suburb of Denver but has now been ranching for over a decade. She serves in the gap between the ranch and the table to build relationships and form bold partnerships to answer the question “Where does my food come from?”

She and her husband Robert have lived and worked on ranches in Montana, Colorado, and New Mexico and have three little boys. Besides being an agriculture advocate and speaker, she is a bull and semen rep, podcaster, book enthusiast, and collector of weird socks.

You can find her on Instagram @casskjohn, LinkedIn, and her website.

Episode at a Glance:

[9:19]: If the people hadn’t been so kind

“I kinda fell off the face of the Earth for a summer. It was such a great introduction into this industry. And, if it hadn’t been so welcoming and so open. If people hadn’t been so kind, I don’t know that I would’ve kept up with it.”

[11:04]: We both want the same things

“As an environmental science student, we focused a lot on sustainability and ethics. And, there was also a lot of economics in that major. I grew up outside. If you took a snapshot of my childhood, it would look like a “visit Colorado” ad. I just couldn't understand; if ranchers need wide open spaces, and environmentalists want wide open spaces for plants and animals to thrive, how are they different? If we both want the same things and want to protect wildlife and biodiversity and open spaces and clean water, why does it seem like ranchers and environmentalists are so separate?”

[12:52]: Bridging the gap

“That does carry over a lot into what I do today with advocacy and just trying to bridge this gap between the farm/ranch and the table. It’s a very siloed industry. A lot of people want to know where their food comes from, but it’s actually not that easy to find out the details.”

[19:31]: What the beef industry “should” look like

“We can’t hold so tightly onto our traditions and what the beef industry “should” look like, that it costs us our industry. We’re going to have to loosen that hold. I’m super into tradition. We do old-school big ranching with horseback. But, we don’t need to hold on so tightly to this vision. It’s not even a vision, because a vision implies forward-thinking. This idea of “what ranching is.”; we’re going to lose it. We need to innovate, but innovation doesn’t always come at the cost of tradition.”

[25:05]: We need to welcome what’s coming

“What if we didn’t believe in Temple Grandin enough to get us a squeeze chute? Or all of the other stuff that comes up that we use today that’s just the regular thing that we call have. It wasn’t that way before. We need to be thinking about what’s coming next. And how we can welcome those people who are creating those things.”

[32:50]: Let people in

“There are people who aren’t in the industry, who are probably never going to ranch, whose brains probably think completely differently than ours. They see problems and solutions differently than we do. If we don’t let them in, then we’ve lost something.”

[48:40]: The tradition of helpfulness

“One thing that I love is the tradition of helpfulness and neighborliness. On a ranch, we are solitary a lot. But, when we do work, when we all come together, there’s a comradery that exists that I didn’t feel as a kid.”