Profitable ranchers are critical to healthy grasslands.

PastureMap’s mission is to help ranchers make profits building healthy grasslands.

Profitable ranchers are critical to healthy grasslands. I wrote this letter in 2015 for investors and funders in our annual impact report. It hasn’t changed much in our 2015, 2016, and 2017 impact reports. I’m posting this with the intent of sharing with our community what we’re about.

This story isn’t about us

We are not the central characters in this story. We are technology enablers of good grassland management. We are not the ranchers putting carbon in the soil through good grazing practices. They are the heroes and heroines of our story. We make their jobs easier, and open pathways for them to make more profits and thrive on the land. The worst thing that can happen in this story is for grasslands to not keep storing carbon. Carbon gets released into the atmosphere when land is converted from grasslands. We lose grasslands to urban development, cropland tillage, and loss of well-managed grazing herds. Grassland ecosystems have co-evolved with grazing herds over millions of years. Grasslands need grazing animals to thrive. Losing a good steward managing the land for healthy soil, water, and wildlife is one of the biggest losses to a landscape

More ranchers making profits from regenerative practices = more healthy grasslands.

PastureMap is an enabler. We help ranchers build healthy grasslands. PastureMap makes it easier to adopt regenerative grazing practices that heal the land. These practices increase soil health. Healthy soil increases carbon sequestration and water holding capacity. This not only sinks carbon from the air into the ground. It also makes land more fertile and better able to hold water every time it rains. Ranchers are uniquely able to create more fertile and drought tolerant landscapes.

Ranchers need to make profits.

None of these grazing practices will gain widespread adoption if we don’t enable profitable ranchers. The next generation needs not only to survive, but to thrive on land stewardship. A profitable rancher has stable margins and predictable costs. They have diversified revenue. They have security, free time, lower stress, and good health. Many ranchers adopt regenerative practices because it increases revenue and lowers feed costs. We are helping them build a knowledge network to speed up rancher-to-rancher sharing. New markets are coming in the next few years. We will help ranchers access carbon markets and sell in regenerative supply chains. Our goal is to enable profitable ranchers to access these markets using their own data.

A vibrant and hopeful future.

Grasslands are 1/3 of global land mass on the planet. Managed grazing is one of the top levers to reverse climate change by drawing down carbon into the soil. There is increasing research (here, here) that carbon friendly beef is real. We can store game changing amounts of carbon. We can make land drought resilient. We can increase clean air, water, and food security. We can enrich rural communities by celebrating the ranchers who do all this. I hope you are as energized and eager to build this vision as we are.

Christine Su // CEO, PastureMap