Podcast (sustainable-dish-podcast): Play in new window | Download
Duke Phillips III started his ranching journey without any land to his name and grew it into Ranchlands, a ranching business that encompasses 5 ranches in 4 states. Together with his family and team, Duke stewards almost 400,000 acres with a mission to promote the conservation of ranch lands, ranching legacy, and preserving the quality of life of the people associated with ranching.
In October, I am honored to join Ranchlands at the Zapata Ranch for a full weekend of ranch experiences. Plus, I am presenting my Sustainavore workshop, which includes personalized nutrition consultations. This special event takes place October 26-29, 2023, and space is incredibly limited, so act fast! You can learn more about the workshop here. And be sure to check out all the other events going on at the ranch.
In the meantime, check out this episode with Duke to learn about his unique background and how Ranchlands became a thriving business.
Rather watch this episode on YouTube? Check it out here: Episode 253: Duke Phillips III
Resources:
Sustainable Dish Episode 244: Dr. Paul Manzano
Ranchlands Event: October 26-29, 2023
Connect with Duke:
Website: Ranchlands
Podcast: The Ranchlands Podcast
Instagram: @ranchlands
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connolly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Global Food Justice Alliance members, and listeners.
If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. All sustaining members get early access to ad-free podcasts plus free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join.
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connolly, who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal-source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, on to our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome back to the podcast everyone. I am so happy to have with me Duke Phillips from Ranchlands. I’m going to be doing a workshop there in October. So we’ll be talking a little bit about his background, about how Ranchlands came to be. There’s a couple different locations. And then if this is of interest to you, you can actually join me in late October in Colorado, at Zapata Ranch and see everything for yourself. So I’m so excited to be chatting with you too. Thank you for your time.
Duke Phillips
Sure. I’m a bit looking forward to it as well. Thank you.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, so I don’t know a whole lot about your background. If you grew up on a ranch, how you got into ranching, and how you learned about, you know, regenerative style ranching. So, please take the floor and tell everyone about all about you and the ranch.
Duke Phillips
Okay, thank you. I’ll do my best. I was raised in Mexico on a very isolated ranch that was five hours by road to town. We had a horse community, horse culture, no mechanized vehicles, really – families that lived together at a commissary. It was set back on a year. So it was… I was really lucky to have been brought up in that kind of environment. My first language Spanish, I couldn’t speak English to my grandparents when I was eight or nine years old. So I was really more Mexican, more of a Bushi than anything. So from there, I went to private school in eighth grade in Dallas and spent four years – girls and bicycles and hamburgers, they were all brand new to me at that time. But I think the main thing that happened during that my upbringing was that I was put back… I was put into some very wild, isolated old world kind of place that makes me today see nature and, and how we as cattlemen, or as ranchers manage it very differently. So I’m very, very thankful for that. I used to go out with four or five horses, hide nose to tail, and just go back up into the bush and make a camp and just ride and be up there alone. So that was a really, really fun time that I can remember. But anyway, and then I went to school in Dallas for four years. And then from there, I went to University of Puget Sound and got a degree and read their writing and translation. And I don’t know how I that happened. But I was studying a lot of different like ecology and economics and business and geology, and I just couldn’t find what I wanted until I met a teacher says you could be a writer someday. And so it casts me under that spell for a long time. But anyway, in my 20s, I traveled to Australia and worked out in the bush on great big, you know, multimillion acre properties where there were no fences because I wanted to see what it was like back. You know what it was like back in the 1900s you know, when we had no fences or anything. I worked all over United States on ranches. I was gonna write a book about cowboys around the world and was getting ready to ride from Oregon to Argentina working on ranches when I met a guy that said, I’m buying ranches all over the West, and I want to create a ranch again power, and I want you to come run them so I went to work for him that distracted me from my, from my journey on writing that book and began a career at 30 years old managing your ranch. And for the next 10 years. I basically ran his ranches and worked for other people. And finally, I ran into an opportunity to lease a ranch this Colorado State Land Board gave me put out an RFP for a large ranch in Colorado that I ended up winning. And that was really the beginning Ranchlands the company that my son and daughter and I are full partners in and basically that was the beginning of Ranchlands.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I had… I was not expecting that. That’s fantastic and really interesting. So talk a little bit about what you’ve seen change in your time and maybe different styles of ranching. You know, a lot of people that are listening to this may be familiar with Allan Savory, his work or, you know, have seen my film. But what was it like in Mexico versus Australia? Like, what are the different styles that you saw? And how have you incorporated some of that into your own work?
Duke Phillips
In Mexico that people were living five hours in town, it was a community that was really self-sufficient. And so for example, we would make paint brushes out of Yucca plants and we’d go make whitewash out of rocks. So, we really lived, you know, medicinal qualities of plants were very well known part of the culture. And people you know, we grew our own food. So it was very, very much more about living in harmony with your natural environment. And depending on it, and depending on each other, and our sense of community, you know, families and single man working on a, you know, in a tight place or in a very typical ranching today, where you live, work play together, in a very close connection to each other. Australia was… Australians are amazing. The camaraderie that exists in Australia is incredible, big difference between American ranching and Australian is that in United States, ranching, or cowboys are viewed very, romantically, you know, we’re sitting on the side of the hill chewing on a piece of grass, surveying our kingdom and life is, you know, very cool and relaxed,
Diana Rodgers, RD
Marlboro Man,
Duke Phillips
Not the truth in Australia. Yeah, it’s not like that, but, there’s this global perspective on the cowboy, you know, the Romans, associated with the American West and so forth. In Australia, the Bushman, or the agriculturalists have more of a blue collar. They don’t have that romantic, or as much as as American cowboy. But anyway, when I was there, you know, cattle were run, and out in the wild, and half or three quarters of them were completely wild. And so the skills of capturing wild cattle and keeping them in a herd, you know, using horses and helicopters was very different, you know, a whole different set of terms use for all the different things that happen when you’re gathering cattle. And then the United States working on different ranches. It was, you know, even in the United States, if you look at the big basin, which is Nevada, Eastern Oregon, it’s very different than the say, Arizona, you know, so you have the big base and you have Arizona, you have Colorado, you have Texas, and then I don’t know a lot about the eastern part. But all these different places have different customs different dresses, the way that they dress and different kinds of roping different kinds of ropes that we all use. But so anyway, I don’t know if I answered your question or…
Diana Rodgers, RD
I just wanted to hear a little bit more about your impression. So there was no wrong answer to that I was just so curious because you have had this unique experience that nobody else has had in your background. So roping is one of the things that you teach that our workshop attendees might get to learn. There’s leather crafting, how did your love of ranching turn into what is now Ranchlands? And can you explain your operation today?
Duke Phillips
Sure. Well, I’ve been working for other people, I was raised in an environment where my family was owners and make some things happen, and that whole business went away. And so I had spent, you know, high school and see in my 20s working for other people even into my 40s. And so, leasing that ranch, the Chico Basin Ranch, which is the one that I won through the RFP was my first opportunity to go into business for myself. And I went in I didn’t have anything except 30 cows, seven horses, a welder, a truck, two trucks and you know, just the very basics, a lot of debt with a you know, not 80,000 acre ranch. So that was an adventure and it was like a dream come true. You know, all of a sudden, I was stepping up the door and I was on my place and was really exciting. And I had a young family and so anyway, that’s what… that’s how it all started and slow… in the way I made my living is I took other people’s cattle in. They weren’t so the in… and provided a service of care – care service for their cattle. And then slowly, I started buying cattle. And today, we have five ranches in four states, covering about 400,000 acres. I think the unique thing that happened is that I didn’t have a trust fund or an oil well, or you know, some kind of income, or some, you know, large cash where I could put in so everything that we’ve done, has come literally from the land in what we’ve been able to generate through creating a ranching business. And so, ranching, as you may know, is extremely tight financially. It’s a very, very on economic business, and it’s more of a lifestyle. And so, especially if I was leasing a ranch, my costs were even higher. So I started looking at land, multi dimensionally how many different things can we do by using the land to create a diversified business and so we invited people to come work with us, not a dude ranch. But if you want to come and find out what it’s like to ranch, get up at, you know, early in the morning, go out with us. And we invited artists to come out to the ranch to paint and then we put all that work into an exhibit and thought, well, we make a lot of money on a commission right or, and then we had concerts, we invite people like Steve Earle, American Americana singer songwriters to come to the ranch and have a concert. And we thought, well, we’ll make a little extra money, you know, selling tickets, and Doritos or whatever. We also started an education program that sees about 2000 kids that come to the ranch every year, and to learn about what great they’re important role grazing plays. And we have a new initiative that we call The Collective that is trying to put our constituency together to create a movement that shows what ranching how the compelling model of ranching offers, as the largest conservation alternative there is across American West. So a lot of things have happened, in turn, not only that, we built our business up and we own all the capital we run. But all these other things that we started doing, you know, trying to bring the public out to the ranches, all the kids, all the kids, teachers and families. We have tons of workshops that go from plant ID to roping to painting to photography, livestock handling, horsemanship, so there’s a whole myriad of workshops and clinics that we provide. And so over time, what happened is that we started, the idea of building bridges between people in town, and people who live out on ranches became kind of a core theme of what we do. And all of a sudden, we’re, you know, had become, that has become part of who we are, as opposed to, you know, strictly a business trying to make ends meet. We also have a ranch management guild where we train young people to be leaders in ranching, and all of the ranches that we manage, are led by young people that we’ve trained and we have a lot of young people have gone out and are now managing ranches. So it’s, it’s become, you know, one question that people always ask, they say, How come you guys are so environmentally? What makes you different? Because conservation and environmentalism is a really big part of what we do and I say, well, it’s not really unique to us, all ranchers are like that. Everyone lives on the land, and they have families, and they care deeply for the land. And so it’s not unique to us. All we’re trying to do is tell that story of why it’s so important. Why grazing is so important. That’s all.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, you know, there was a study that was done, I’ll put a link to it in the show notes, and I’ll send you a copy of it if you haven’t seen it, because they they did a study on American West ranches and the economic benefit that having grazing cattle does to the land, and for each animal was over $1,000 worth of benefit. And for every pound…
Duke Phillips
Oh really?
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and for every pound of meat, I believe it was around $2 for every pound of meat. And that was just that wasn’t any fancy branded “TM- style” of ranching, that was ranching. And so I am always trying to get that message out there that ranching is beneficial. We can’t grow other things on that land. We need the cattle on that land. I get in a lot of arguments with rewilding people, often. And the fact is, and actually, there was another study that I just had the author on. He did, he did a review of the Serengeti and looked at the impact wild animals like wildebeests and all the other ones have with their methane emissions and everything and then the impact they have on land. And compare that to the pastoralists who have been there managing the land with cattle. And they found no difference at all in the impact or the methane or anything between the wild animals and the pastoralist slash cattle culture that was there. And so I love this that… go ahead.
Duke Phillips
No, I said, that’s amazing. I look forward to getting those studies. I, you know, we get into a lot of discussions as well. And I think the point that gets forgotten is that nature is not the way it was. It’s changed the human footprint is here, you don’t have the wildebeest herds, you don’t have the bison herds anymore. You know, you have electrical lines going across the whole world. Highways, it’s so different. And so we have to figure out a way to make things work with mankind there. Yeah, that’s the way it is.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and from my angle, not only with that environmental piece, the reality of the you know, we’ve got humans living in these towns, we have young kids waiting for the bus stop that, you know, might not want to run into a wolf while they’re waiting for the bus. And so, you know, introducing a lot of predators to, you know, manage the herds is not a likely scenario, people don’t, and shouldn’t be asked to move from their homes, just to rewild things. But that is actually what is being proposed out there. Especially by one notable person in England who I saw give a give a presentation at an agriculture conference telling all of these cattle farmers that what they’re doing is the worst thing possible for the environment, we all need to be, you know, using government funds to pay farmers to be rewilding their land, and we should all be eating this biological hydrogen protein made out of a machine that is magically can can be just made from nothing, which is actually impossible. But when we pull in not only the human footprint on the land, but then we also look at human health. That’s why I’m so excited to come because we’ve also, at the same time, have a massive health crisis people are… it’s a new form of malnutrition. We have people who are overweight and malnourished, at the same time, they’re overconsuming commodity cropping that’s been transformed into ultra-delicious garbage food. And the government is telling us to eat this, right? That it needs to be at the base of our diet. And the most common nutrient deficiencies are best found in foods like beef, and liver and these traditional foods that humans have always eaten. So that’s the other problem with rewilding, it’s not just the land is going to suffer, we don’t have the herds. But who gets to eat that? Is that the wolves or is it humans? You know, humans need food, too. And so it’s a huge not only environmental service, but public health service that you’re providing by producing this incredibly healthy meat that’s basically just utilizing photosynthesis to produce it. No, we don’t need factories. Meat isn’t… even a burger is minimally processed. It’s just chopped up meat. Right?
Duke Phillips
When and also managing land. So all the ecosystem service ecosystem processes are functioning, you know, which is what happened before we got involved, and he put fences up and you put, take away the bison and you the whole symbiotic relationship that the great herds of ungulates used to provide is gone. So you have to manage that. And we have to do it in a way that emulates nature and if you take away people who are living on the land, who really care for it, and who also have the financial means to pay for that. So what I’m meaning is that if you have a cattle business, and the cattle themselves are the tools that are regenerating the land, well then you don’t have to go out and raise money, like the Nature Conservancy or environmental groups have to do to implement conservation programs. It’s happening. And it’s self-supporting. And it’s emulating the way that nature has always functioned. So it’s really, really important. I don’t really realize that.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Do you have a label for the style of ranching that you subscribe to?
Duke Phillips
Oh, not really. I mean, there’s been so many terms, like regenerative ranching is now thank God it’s taken off. And it’s become a thing much more widely accepted or known. But, you know, Savory grazing or intensive grazing or, you know, so many terms that have come before the regenerative grazing. To me, I guess, it’s intensive management. You know, a lot of people say, Well, do you do intensive grazing and rotational grazing or, you know, whatever term they’re, they happen to know. And I say, No, not really, because what you’re doing when you’re doing these kinds of grazing is you’re intensifying the process, you’re taking what used to be groups of small cattle that are spread out, you’re putting them all into one herd and rotating them in a migratory fashion, so that you have a herd effect on the land, like bison used to have in these huge herds. And so you’re resting all your land. And so as soon as you do that, you know, your little problems become big ones immediately. You need, you can’t run out of water, you can’t have a disease pop up, because your concentration of cattle are so big, it affects everything. So it really is intensive management. And you have to be really on top of your game. To do a successfully. I took my first course from Allan Savory back in early 1980s. And I’ve been practicing it, I guess now for almost 40 years.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So yeah, I think the piece that gets overlooked by people who are trying to analyze all these different styles is that it needs to work for you. It needs to work for your land for the size of your herd, and it needs to work for you economically. Those are all important components of sustainable ranching, and there’s not one size fits all and what works in Vermont, versus Mexico versus Australia versus, you know, to the Chico Basin, or for your family situation. Right. Maybe you can’t physically be on that one Ranch, you know, so there’s just so many variables that, you know, make a any kind of system work or not work for any individual or group of people.
Duke Phillips
Yeah that’s a really good point. And anything detrimental can happen. It’s because people jump in too fast. And you think there’s a one way to do it. But it’s very, very, very right on they’re very true. When Allan Savory first came, and he started talking about putting cattle together and creating pie shaped pastures. A lot of people jumped in and went broke, because they just kind of forgot everything and thought, Okay, I got to do this double capacity on my land, and this and that. And pretty soon they got in trouble. So I’ve always said, Just go really slow. It’s the fastest way to get there.
Diana Rodgers, RD
That’s a wise way to go. And so today you how many had total of cattle and I believe you have bison as well, is that correct?
Duke Phillips
We run a large ranch for The Nature Conservancy, and they have a large herd of bison. It’s a conservation herd that that we manage for them and they’ve owned it since the let me see I guess the 90s some or some of that point. But yeah, that’s a fun project. There’s about 2000, 1500 here – kind of varies within season and conservation herd basically means that you’re trying to emulate a a herd the how bison wants worse. So your female-to-male ratios are as close as you can to 50/50 you don’t brand you don’t do anything you don’t we don’t use gather once a year and sell the ones that you’re going to sell, you know to pay for the cost of operating the ranch. Everything else is cattle. We’re very diversified and our ranching operations we have at seedstock bird that produces all the bowls that we use across all our ranches. That herd is Beefmaster and it’s one of three American breeds. And it’s basically a philosophy that has created the herd body minimum philosophy. So if a cow loses a calf to a coyote, we get rid of the cow, we don’t shoot the coyote. If the herd becomes anemic due to an infestation of lice or flies or some other kind of problem was then we get rid of the cow and the cat, we don’t spray the whole herd. No antibiotics are given only to those that get sick, and they’re, they’re identified and sold separately. So it’s really trying to create an animal that is completely blended into its natural environment. And that breed goes back to the 30s – 1930s. I work for the Lasser family for 10 years out of Colorado. Tom Lasser founded it so. But anyway, so we use a Beefmaster breed of cattle and produce calves and then we take cattle to fit we graze them on pasture and then either sell them as an as you know, our meat product that we sell. Or we’ll sell them you know, on the market.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right? Yeah. And so um, so for someone who’s listening that might want to come meet you learn about this, you know, did they get to meet you at the Zapata Ranch? Like who’s hanging out at Zapata where I’m going to be and also you know, folks can check out the website, but this is not a romanticize… there is no spa services. It is not like a glorified fake ranching situation. This is when you’re actually visiting a ranch and the rooms are very lovely, but it is not luxury, pampering.
Duke Phillips
Right, right. You have the choice of either going out on rides with wranglers or you can go out on the ranch and actually do ranching stuff. The Nature Conservancy has been a long partner of ours. And we work really closely together they own the ranch. It’s right next to Sand Dunes National Park has a full chef staff and it’s a lot of fun. I you know, I’m there a part of the time. We also have other ranches that offer the same kinds of not the same kind, but each ranch is different. For example, we have a packed trip into the Bighorn Mountains that summer. That takes people up for a week, 10 days, we have a ranching experience on the Chico Basin ranches, what we call hardcore ranching, where you’re really inundated in what goes on a ranch and are able to participate in whatever’s happening. But sometimes that’s digging postholes or fixing fences or things like that, not always riding and the Zapata is this incredibly beautiful place that has the Sand Dunes National Park with 14,000 foot peaks behind it. And with you know, beautiful meadows and huge herds of bison cattle as well. So you’ll have fun, you’ll love it. The food is fantastic, too.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yes, I’ve seen pictures and we’ve chatted about other food that’s always important component of my workshops when I go to different ranches, and I am excited to ride. I grew up riding and I’m excited to get back. Okay, so I hope that folks are listening to this and maybe have that last weekend in October available to come check it out. It’s in Colorado, kind of a few hours north of Albuquerque and several hours south of Denver. So you could actually fly into either city, or there’s a little airport right nearby. Is that right?
Duke Phillips
Yeah. Right. Yeah, you can fly into Denver. That’d be your place and take a commuter flight to Dallas is two hours south. Alamosa is the closest town. It’s 45 minutes out. And that’s where you fly into. Yeah, I think we have one of the best horse programs in the country. So it’ll… you’ll have a really nice horse and really good people to take you out into the park and ride in the sand dunes too. Which is really out of the world experience.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I can’t even imagine. I’ve never experienced the Sand Dunes National Park before. So that’s, it’s definitely on my list to check it out. And yeah, I’m just so looking forward to it. And if folks aren’t riders, there’s other options. And I’ll be teaching my course which is a lot like the book Sacred Cow that I’ve just sort of condensed into a course. So I’ll be just talking about how to optimize your own personal nutrition and then I’ll be talking about the environmental benefit of cattle on the land. So complementing what you… everything you just said here and in addressing folks questions and also offering individualized problem solving for folks who have questions about their own health as it comes to food. So figuring out how much protein they might need and things like that, so
Duke Phillips
Right, yeah. Well, I really appreciate all the work that you’ve done on it, you know, cattle ranching and grazing is, I think one of the most misunderstood industries lifestyles are so we have people who think it’s this romantic figure on one hand, and you have other people villainize it, and think it’s the worst thing that could possibly happen. So the realities are very different. And I would encourage anyone who was on the fence to go visit a ranch or come visit us. Come visit me in Wyoming, spend, you know, spend some time and see for yourself, what’s going on, don’t take our word for it. Don’t take, you know, don’t take anybody’s word for it, get out there. And if you’re really interested in it, go visit a rancher and you’ll find they’re very welcoming. And you’ll find that they care deeply about the land. And I think that’s the best medicine. If you really care about something, you’re going to take care of it. You really are. All the ranchers, I know, care deeply about it.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, so I know, for my workshop, there are only eight rooms available. And there are two or three-night options people can do. And so we’ll have the link in there. Or they can just go to the ranchlands.com website and click on stays. And then of the upcoming events. And I know Florence Williams, who’s an author that I’ve had on the podcast is also doing a workshop there. You have a lot of other really interesting workshops. So if you don’t, if you can’t make it to mine, or you already have heard enough of what I say, go check out another workshop. There’s yoga ones or just stay as a guest and experience the ranch and there are not enough actual working ranches out there that offer what you do. So I think it’s a huge service to welcome people onto your ranch. And give them a taste of what it’s like. And I’m really excited so they can buy your meat, too. I just want to give one last plug, they folks can actually buy your meat on your website. Correct?
Duke Phillips
Okay, yes, you can just go to ranchlands.com. And you’ll be able to find links that lead you to it. We’ve also started an initiative called the collective that you should look at if you’re interested more in learning about ranching and the model of you know what grazing actually does. And we’re trying to put together a like-minded group of people who can help us figure out how we go into the future and create healthy lifestyles and support responsible environmental stewardship.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Wonderful.
Duke Phillips
So, yeah, thank you.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I’m excited to learn more about it. Okay, Duke, thank you so much for your time. I’m so excited to come out there. It’s ranchlands.com. And get your tickets soon. Because I do think it’s going to sell out. There’s only eight rooms available. And we’re just announcing it now. So thanks so much. Have a wonderful day.
Duke Phillips
Thank you very much. Have a great rest of your day.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thanks so much for listening today and for following my work. If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. Visit sustainabledish.com/join and become a sustaining member today. All sustaining members get early access to ad-free podcasts plus free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join. And thank you.
