Technology & Its Role in Food Production
By Ridge Shinn

Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., is author of an article in the July 2007 Food and Wine. This article is a result of Dan Barber's interest in how we use technology in sustainable and emerging agricultural systems.

Gearld Fry and I used ultrasound quite a bit in the early days of Bakewell and Hardwick Beef to sort cattle for processing and more importantly to sort out mother cows that would work in our grass-fed , grass-finished programs. Today we use a number of visual appraisal techniques to do the same sort of evaluation. We have found the correlations to the ultrasound readings to be quite high and now prefer to teach producer's how to "see" their cattle and the total health and quality by these visual signs or hide, hair bone and structure.

As mentioned elsewhere on the website, we do use brix readings from a refractometer to learn about the quality of the grass that our cattle eat. This tells us about the sugar content and nutrient density of the grass. Once we have determined the values we use a number of fertilization, cultivation and grazing techniques to increase the brix readings.

I invite you to read this fascinating article by Dan Barber.

http://foodandwine.com/articles/creating-flavor-in-the-field/print