Beyond Grass-Fed

A field guide to understanding regenerative farming, grass-fed beef and the cattle behind it in the Netherlands.

Grass-fed. Grass-finished. Regenerative. Organic. Pasture-raised. Nature-inclusive.

We have learned to look for these words when we want to buy better meat. They appear on farm websites, butcher counters and restaurant menus, offering some reassurance about what we are buying and where it came from.

But what do they actually tell us?

Our interest began with tallow.

The principal ingredient in Fat of the Land begins with cattle, and sourcing it has brought us increasingly closer to the farms, farmers and animals behind it. The closer we have looked, the less interested we have become in finding the right label and the more interested we have become in understanding the farm itself.

What does a cow eat in January when there is little grass growing? Why can some cattle remain outside throughout a Dutch winter while others are housed? Is grass-fed the same as grass-finished? Does organic mean regenerative? How long does a calf remain with its mother? What happens to a pasture after cattle leave it? And when an animal is eventually slaughtered, what happens to everything that isn't steak?

This field guide is what we wanted to know before visiting a farm.

It isn't a certification system, nor a set of rules for deciding whether a farmer is good or bad. It is a way of looking more closely at the relationship between cattle, farmer and land, and knowing which questions to ask when words such as grass-fed and regenerative aren't enough.

A label can begin the conversation. It shouldn't end it.

What does regenerative farming actually mean?

There is no single universally accepted definition of regenerative agriculture.

Rather than treating regenerative as a badge, we find it more useful to think about what is being regenerated.

The soil. The water. Biodiversity. Nutrient cycles. The resilience of the farm itself.

Wageningen University & Research describes regenerative agriculture as farming that places soil quality at its centre, working with ecological processes to restore soils and agroecosystems. Its research considers not only soil, but water, biodiversity, ecosystem resilience, animal and human wellbeing, and the economic viability of farming.

That immediately gives us a better question than:

Is this farm regenerative?

Ask instead:

What is happening to this land over time?

Is the soil protected?

Is soil life being restored?

Is there greater biological diversity?

How are nutrients cycled through the farm?

How dependent is the farm on inputs brought in from elsewhere?

How are animals integrated into the ecology of the land?

And importantly, regenerative should not become shorthand for “everything this farmer does must therefore be environmentally beneficial”.

The term is still evolving. Research into regenerative agriculture increasingly focuses on measuring outcomes rather than simply prescribing a fixed set of practices.

Regeneration is therefore something worth investigating, not simply something worth printing on a label.

Organic, regenerative and nature-inclusive are not the same thing

This distinction matters.

Organic is regulated. Regenerative is not a single regulated standard. Nature-inclusive describes another approach again.

EU organic rules establish specific requirements concerning feed, medication, housing, grazing and agricultural inputs.

For organic cattle, at least 70% of feed must come from the farm itself or, where that isn't feasible, be produced in cooperation with organic or in-conversion farms and feed operators in the same region.

Cattle must have access to pasture for grazing whenever conditions allow, and organic rearing systems should make maximum use of grazing according to seasonal pasture availability.

Organic rules also restrict preventative antibiotic use and place requirements on housing and stocking density.

But organic certification does not automatically tell us everything we might want to know about soil improvement, biodiversity, grazing management or whole-animal use.

Equally, a farmer may use practices associated with regenerative or nature-inclusive agriculture without being certified organic.

Rather than asking which word is best, understand what each one actually tells you.

Grass-fed sounds simple. It isn't.

Cattle are ruminants, biologically adapted to digest fibrous plants.

But grass-fed can still leave a surprising number of questions unanswered.

Fresh pasture?

Hay?

Grass silage?

Clover?

Herbs?

Maize?

Concentrates?

Grain during finishing?

There is no single universal definition of grass-fed that can simply be applied to every piece of beef sold in the Netherlands.

One useful European example shows how specific a meaningful standard can be.

Under the protected specification for Irish Grass Fed Beef, qualifying cattle must derive at least 90% of their feed intake from grass and spend at least 220 days per year throughout their lives grazing pasture.

Importantly, grass in this system includes both freshly grazed grass and conserved grass fed during winter.

That brings us to something worth understanding:

Grass-fed does not necessarily mean a cow standing in a green field eating fresh grass 365 days a year.

Nor should that automatically be our measure of good farming.

The more useful question is:

What did these cattle actually eat throughout their lives?

Grass-fed versus grass-finished

You'll increasingly encounter another term: grass-finished.

Grass-fed describes a grass or forage-based feeding system, but depending on the standard or producer making the claim, it does not always tell you enough about what happens during the final stage before slaughter.

Grass-finished is intended to communicate that the animal remains on a grass or forage-based system through finishing rather than being switched to a grain-heavy finishing ration.

But terminology and standards differ.

So instead of stopping at:

Is your beef grass-fed?

ask:

Do your cattle receive grain, maize, soy or concentrates at any point in their lives, including during finishing?

A feeding history is more informative than a label.

Is grass-fed beef better for us?

There are measurable nutritional differences between grass-fed and grain-fed beef, but we should be careful not to turn them into an exaggerated health claim.

Reviews comparing feeding systems have generally found higher amounts of omega-3 fatty acids and a lower omega-6-to-omega-3 ratio in grass-fed beef. Some research also finds lower total fat.

But there is considerable variation.

Breed matters. The cut matters. Pasture composition matters. The precise feeding and finishing system matters.

Recent research comparing commercial grass- and grain-finished beef has found substantial variation even within each category, with some samples overlapping nutritionally.

In other words, the words grass-fed alone cannot tell you the complete nutritional composition of a piece of beef.

And differences in the composition of meat do not, by themselves, prove that eating one kind produces universally superior health outcomes in humans.

Our interest in grass-fed beef is therefore not based on treating it as a miracle food.

We are interested in the whole farming system.

A cow outside 365 days a year isn't automatically a better-raised cow

This was one of the most useful things for us to learn.

It is tempting to create a simple hierarchy:

outside = good

inside = bad

Farming is more complicated than that.

Some cattle are particularly well adapted to extensive outdoor systems. Breed, coat, body condition and behaviour can all influence suitability.

But breed is only one part of the equation.

Soil type matters.

Rainfall matters.

Available forage matters.

Shelter matters.

Animal condition matters.

And protecting the land matters.

Even the European specification for Irish Grass Fed Beef describes cattle typically being housed when weather and ground conditions no longer support active grass growth or appropriate grazing.

Bringing cattle inside during winter therefore does not automatically mean abandoning a grass-based farming system.

It gives us another question to ask:

Why?

What happens when cattle come inside for winter?

This may tell us more about a farm than simply asking how many months its cattle spend outside.

Imagine two farms.

On one, cattle remain outdoors longer, but the ground becomes heavily pressured during wet conditions.

On another, cattle are brought inside when winter conditions make grazing unsuitable. They have adequate space, dry bedding, clean water and roughage, while eating hay or grass silage harvested earlier in the year.

The number of months spent outside alone doesn't give us enough information to judge those two systems.

European Food Safety Authority recommendations for beef cattle welfare emphasise appropriate space, comfortable lying areas, access to roughage and clean water, among other welfare considerations.

And importantly:

Hay and grass silage are still forage.

Hay is dried forage. Grass silage preserves grass through fermentation.

A cattle farm can therefore remain strongly grass-based while housing animals during winter.

What we want to know is what replaces the pasture.

Where did the winter feed come from?

Was it grown on the farm?

Is it hay?

Grass silage?

Herb-rich forage?

Maize silage?

Purchased concentrate?

Grain?

And why has the farmer chosen that ration?

Those answers tell us considerably more than the number of months the barn doors are open.

How much time do Dutch cattle actually spend outside?

There is no single meaningful national figure that describes every kind of cattle farm in the Netherlands.

Dutch dairy statistics provide some context, but dairy cattle should not be confused with extensive beef herds, suckler herds or cattle used for nature management.

The latest CBS methodology estimates that Dutch dairy cows that graze spend an average of around 155 days per year at pasture. It estimates 10% of dairy cows graze day and night, 57% have more limited grazing and 33% are permanently housed.

Those figures describe dairy cattle.

Extensive beef farms and nature-grazing systems can operate very differently.

So when a beef farmer tells us cattle are outdoors for nine, ten or twelve months, that is meaningful information.

But it still isn't enough by itself.

Ask what happens during the months that they aren't.

Look down, not just at the cow

When visiting a farm, it is easy to spend the entire time looking at the animals.

Look at what they're standing on.

What plants can you identify?

Are there different grasses?

Clover?

Herbs?

Flowers?

Are there hedgerows?

Trees?

Wet areas?

Insects?

Birds?

Bare soil?

Standing water?

Signs of erosion?

Agricultural biodiversity is not simply about preserving wildlife somewhere beyond the farm. Biodiversity within and around agricultural land can form part of the functioning of the farming system itself.

Which is why a conversation about regenerative grazing should eventually lead us back to the ground.

What happens to a piece of land after cattle leave it?

How long does it recover?

What grows back?

What does the farmer monitor?

Ask how the cattle move

Rotational grazing has become another increasingly familiar phrase.

Again, the label isn't enough.

At its simplest, animals graze one area and are moved, allowing the grazed vegetation a period of recovery.

But there is no magic number of days that makes grazing regenerative.

How long cattle remain in one place and how long vegetation needs to recover can depend on season, rainfall, soil, plant growth and stocking density.

So ask:

How do you decide when to move the herd?

And:

How do you decide when this pasture is ready for cattle again?

Does that recovery period change throughout the year?

What is the farmer observing or measuring?

The interesting thing is not whether the farm follows a fashionable grazing formula.

It is whether the farmer understands the response of their land.

The breed tells you something too

There is no single regenerative cow.

Wageningen researchers looking at cattle for nature-inclusive livestock farming reached an important conclusion:

there is no universally “best” breed.

Suitability depends on the farm, diet, landscape and objectives of the farmer.

That changes the question again.

Instead of asking:

Which breed is best?

ask:

Why this cow, here?

Dutch research into nature-inclusive livestock systems has renewed interest in dual-purpose breeds such as MRIJ, Fries-Hollands and Groninger Blaarkop.

Farmers involved in Wageningen research described Dutch dual-purpose cattle as robust, self-reliant and good at making use of grass and roughage, characteristics that can suit more extensive farming systems.

But breed should fit the farm.

The best cow is not necessarily the cow capable of producing the most. It may be the cow suited to what that particular land can provide.

Some cattle you may meet in the Netherlands

A breed doesn't decide how an animal is raised. But it does tell you what that animal was shaped for, and that is a useful place to start a conversation.

Often outdoors all year: the nature grazers

Much of the year-round outdoor grazing in the Netherlands happens in nature reserves, where cattle are used to help manage the landscape.

Scottish Highland (Schotse Hooglander)

The Highlander is by far the most widely used breed for nature grazing in the Netherlands.

With a long, thick coat and exceptional hardiness, Highlanders in Dutch nature reserves typically live outdoors year-round. They calve outside and are seldom housed.

They aren't wild animals, though. Herds are watched, and may be given extra hay in deep snow or on poor ground.

And it works because of the land as much as the breed: enough space, shelter from woodland and hedgerows, and a herd size the land can carry. The same breed on a small, wet plot may need a very different winter.

Galloway

From south-west Scotland, the Galloway is naturally hornless, with a double-layered coat that makes it particularly hardy. It is one of the main breeds used for nature grazing in the Netherlands, where herds can stay outside all year, winter included.

Hardy, grass-based and often inside for winter

Gasconne

The Gasconne comes from the French Pyrenees, where most of the herd is still kept, and was traditionally summered on high mountain pastures. Its breed society describes it as rustic, maternal and economical, able to make use of poor grazing and scattered forage.

It is the breed raised at Lindenhoff, the farm our tallow comes from, and at Boerderij GAOS.

And yet on both farms the cattle spend winter differently from the nature grazers. At Lindenhoff, when the fields are too wet, they move into an open, straw-bedded “cow garden”. At GAOS, they are kept closer to the farm on wheat straw and fed hay.

A hardy breed can still have good reasons to come inside.

Hereford

From Herefordshire in England, the Hereford is valued for its good temperament and for performing well on grass. It is registered in a recognised Dutch herd book and kept on farms across the country.

Aberdeen Angus

From north-east Scotland, the Angus is a naturally hornless breed, also registered in a recognised Dutch herd book.

What you're most likely to see

Holstein-Friesian

The black-and-white dairy cow is by far the most common cattle in the Netherlands. More than 800,000 breeding females are registered, against a few thousand at most for any other Dutch breed.

That matters for beef too. In the Netherlands, most beef comes from dairy cows. Wageningen researchers estimated that around 560,000 dairy cows are slaughtered at the end of their milking lives each year, compared with about 75,000 specialised beef cattle.

So when a label simply says Dutch beef, it may well be from a dairy cow. That's worth asking about.

Belgian Blue and other specialist beef breeds

Belgian Blue (Belgisch witblauw) is by far the most used beef breed in Dutch breeding, with more inseminations than all other beef breeds combined.

It carries a genetic mutation that produces so-called double muscling. In one study of double-muscled Belgian Blue cows, 89.5% of births required a caesarean section.

Blonde d'Aquitaine, Limousin and Charolais are also kept in the Netherlands. Most Dutch beef herds graze for much of the year and are usually housed in straw-bedded barns at other times.

The same principle still applies:

Why did this farmer choose this breed for this land?

What about calves and their mothers?

On beef farms you may hear the term suckler herd.

A suckler cow is a breeding cow that gives birth to and rears her calf. The European Food Safety Authority describes suckler calves as calves reared by their mothers until weaning, commonly around six to nine months.

That gives us another useful question:

How long do calves remain with their mothers, and how are they weaned?

Again, we would avoid converting one number into an instant judgement about the entire farm.

Ask the farmer to explain the system.

Antibiotics: ask a better question

Antibiotic-free sounds attractive.

But an animal that becomes ill should receive appropriate veterinary care.

Even EU organic rules recognise this. Preventative use of chemically synthesised antibiotics is prohibited in organic production, but appropriate treatment is permitted when an animal is sick or injured and requires it.

So instead of simply asking:

Do you use antibiotics?

ask:

How do you manage animal health, and under what circumstances would you use antibiotics?

And perhaps:

How often has your herd required antibiotic treatment over the past year?

Specific information is more useful than an absolute marketing claim.

Organic does not mean 100% grass-fed

This is another distinction worth knowing.

EU organic rules require grazing access when conditions allow.

They also require at least 60% of the dry matter in the daily ration of cattle, sheep, goats and horses to consist of roughage, fresh or dried fodder, or silage.

That is not the same thing as requiring a 100% grass diet.

So:

organic

and

100% grass-fed and grass-finished

answer different questions.

A farm may be both.

Don't assume one from the other.

And then there is the end of the animal's life

We don't think sourcing should stop at the farm gate.

Ask:

Where are the cattle slaughtered?

How far do they travel?

Who transports them?

How is transport managed?

At what age are they slaughtered?

How is the carcass butchered?

And then ask the question that first brought us here:

What happens to the rest of the animal?

The steaks are easy to sell.

We are interested in everything else too.

The heart.

The tongue.

The liver.

The cheeks.

The tendons.

The bones.

The marrow.

The tail.

The hide.

And, of course, the fat.

Whole-animal use isn't itself proof of regenerative farming. It is a separate question about waste, value and our relationship with an animal after slaughter.

But if an animal is going to be raised and killed for food, we believe that question deserves to be asked.

15 questions to ask your farmer or butcher

You don't need to become an agricultural scientist.

You simply need to become more curious.

Save these questions for your next farm visit, or ask them when buying directly from a farmer.

1. Were these cattle born on this farm?

This begins the traceability story.

2. What breed are they, and why did you choose that breed?

Listen for what the farmer tells you about the land, forage, climate and farming system.

3. How much of the year are the cattle outside?

Then ask why.

4. What happens during winter?

Are they outside or housed? If housed, under what conditions?

5. What exactly do they eat in winter?

Hay? Grass silage? Maize silage? Other forage? Grain or concentrates?

6. How much of their feed comes from your own land?

And if it doesn't come from the farm, where does it come from?

7. Do the cattle receive grain, maize, soy or concentrates at any stage of their lives?

Ask specifically about finishing.

8. Are the cattle grass-finished?

And ask what grass-finished means on this particular farm.

9. How long do calves remain with their mothers?

And how are they weaned?

10. How do you manage grazing?

How do they decide when to move the herd?

11. How long does grazed land recover before cattle return?

There is no universally correct number. You're trying to understand the management.

12. What do you use on the pasture?

Ask specifically about artificial fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides rather than simply asking whether the farm is “natural”.

13. How do you manage animal health and medication?

When are antibiotics or antiparasitic medicines used?

14. Where are the cattle slaughtered?

How far do they travel and how is transport managed?

15. What happens to the rest of the animal?

The organs, bones, fat, tendons, hide and other parts.

Don't look for perfect answers. Look for specific ones.

Compare:

Our cattle are sustainably and regeneratively raised.

with:

Our cattle graze from spring until the ground becomes too wet. We move them according to pasture conditions. The winter hay and silage come from our own fields. The calves remain with their mothers until weaning. We don't feed grain during finishing. The cattle travel twenty minutes to the slaughterhouse.

The second farmer has given you information.

You can ask another question.

And another.

That's how traceability becomes meaningful.

There is no perfect farm

Land differs.

Soil differs.

Weather differs.

Cattle differ.

A system that works on sandy soil may make little sense on wet peatland. A hardy herd managing a nature reserve does not need to live like cattle on a conventional beef farm. A farmer protecting saturated winter soil may make a responsible decision by bringing cattle inside.

Regenerative agriculture becomes less useful when reduced to a collection of commandments.

It becomes much more interesting when we ask whether a farmer understands the relationship between animal, soil, plant, water and place, and manages accordingly.

What we are looking for is not perfection.

We are looking for farmers who can explain their decisions.

Where were the cattle born?

Why this breed?

What do they eat in January?

Where does that feed come from?

How does the herd move through the land?

How long does the pasture recover?

How are calves raised?

When is medicine used?

Where does the animal eventually die?

What happens to the bones, organs, hide and fat afterwards?

The words grass-fed, organic, nature-inclusive and regenerative can all tell us something.

None tells us everything.

We have previously shared our guide to where to buy grass-fed meat in the Netherlands. Next, we are going further.

Fat of the Land is visiting and speaking with farmers across the Netherlands to ask these questions ourselves. Our next field guide will look at where to buy regenerative and grass-fed beef directly from Dutch farms, including what we can verify about how each farm raises its animals, manages its land and uses the whole animal.

Until then, perhaps the most useful question to take with you to a farm isn't:

Is this regenerative?

It is:

Tell me how you farm.