Back in the early days of the Savanna Institute, we received funding for an outreach project focused on silvopasture. One of the coolest components of the project was that we arranged a series of farmer-to-farmer interviews, in which aspiring silvopasture farmers were invited to interview experienced silvopasture farmers and record their conversations. 

One of the best interviews was done by a college student at Iowa State University named Jesse Matt. Jesse got to interview a farmer who has been a role model for lots of people doing silvopasture and managed grazing: Greg Judy. In our latest podcast episode, we listen back to their conversation, which was recorded over the phone. Jesse had some pretty detailed questions for Greg, and it’s fun to hear how quickly the conversation got real and stayed real.

Transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Jesse Matt: So I guess I’ll introduce myself. I’m a 22 year old senior at Iowa State University. I study forestry, and I come from a livestock farm up in northeast Iowa. So we’ve got about 240 cow-calf pairs, we graze on pasture and woodland, and we finish about 300 steers in a feedlot. Since I’ve been doing some research on silvopasture, your name has come up and you’ve been doing some really interesting work, especially with the multi-species grazing on your owned and leased farms. So maybe you could introduce yourself?

Greg Judy: Sure. I was doing everything conventional years ago, and not doing very well that way. So I started looking at different ways to graze livestock and to try and make a living from the land. And it came back to the big thing that turned things around for us, which was leasing land. And so that’s what we started doing. And I actually started custom grazing of other people’s cattle. And we have 16 farms today, and they’re all within about five miles of our residence. And so we can keep our cattle basically as one large mob and then the sheep and the pigs and the chickens, wherever those can fit into the operation, we do that. And so, yeah, we do grass-finished beef, lamb, and pork. 

We’re starting to do more of the silvopasture because that’s what we have. We have 1620 acres. 900 of that is in timber. 700 of it is actual pasture. So we have a lot of opportunities out here to go out and start managing some of these woodlands, cleaning out some of these trees and improving things that are not being managed.

Jesse Matt: Has silvopasture made anything more difficult for you in terms of time or money or just overall management?

Greg Judy: Well, when you start out, especially the way we’re doing it, you’ve got to be pretty committed to it because it is a lot of work. I mean, to go in and take out that many trees – it’s work with the chainsaw. So we do it ourselves. 

It is more work, but boy, when you get there and you see the smiles on those cattle’s faces on a really hot day… I just think the landscape looks better with some trees on it. And I wish more of the row croppers would embrace this, because it’s going the other way here in Missouri.

Jesse Matt: Do you have a takeaway message for anyone in or outside of agriculture?

Greg Judy: Well, first of all, I think we need to mimic nature as closely as possible. And the more we can do that, the more money you leave in your pocket, and the healthier the environment will be around you, and your animals, and your community.  

You can see more of Greg Judy and Green Pastures Farm on our YouTube Channel:

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