The Right Way to Raise Cows
The Right Way to Raise Cows
Free-range, grass-fed, and grass-finished, according to regenerative rancher Loren Poncia of Stemple Creek Ranch
Photographs by David Gurzhiev
I met Loren Poncia last year, over the phone. He was a source for a story I wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle about California ranchers raising retired dairy and breeder cows to produce prized cuts of beef amongst a certain set of chefs. The fourth-generation rancher of Northern California’s Stemple Creek Ranch is keen on the practice — which hails from the Old World but is fairly new stateside — as a more sustainable way of producing more flavorful beef, compared to the American norm of mass-producing steak from younger, fattened-up cows. From time to time, Loren raises what he calls “vaca vieja” (which translates to “old cow”) for chefs, including Junya Yamasaki of YESS. At the end of our interview, he invited me to visit the ranch the next time I was near Marin County. About six weeks ago, we finally did.
The ranch is situated on 1,000 acres of rolling hills in Tomales, California, less than ten miles from the ocean. A winding creek, Stemple Creek, runs through the pasture. The land has been in the Poncia family for over a century since Loren’s great-grandfather Angelo Poncia, an immigrant from Italy, established a dairy farm that endured for three generations. In 2005, Loren and his wife Lisa took over, shepherding the family business into a new era. They began leasing the land from Loren’s parents and bought all 185 of their cattle, eventually moving to lease 17 additional ranches across Marin and Sonoma counties and growing to oversee as many as 2,000 animals at once. Today, Stemple Creek Ranch is a regenerative ranch that raises free-range, grass-fed, grass-finished beef and lamb and pastured pork that’s coveted by California chefs and savvy home cooks.
It’s been a hard year for the Poncia family. They lost Loren’s sister, Jessica Neely Valentine, in March of 2023, followed by their patriarch, Al Poncia, last September. If there is a silver lining in the grief, it’s that Loren feels more proud of his legacy than ever before. “I always wanted so badly to be successful. We’re not done yet, but we can take our foot off the gas a little bit,” he says. “My sister died when she was 51, and she was way healthier than I am. [I want to] worry about enjoying every day and being present.”
Every day on the ranch is slightly different, but on an afternoon in early April, the sun is shining, and the birds are singing. “Unfortunately, these days, there are fences and ownership, but if we were managing the ranch like the Miwok Indians were hundreds of years ago, I ask myself, ‘Where would the animals be?’ And I try to replicate that inside of our fences,” Loren says of his efforts to prioritize soil health, increase carbon, and promote biodiversity on his land, where his livestock graze free. “[Our animals] eat the grass in front of them, stomp on what’s below them, and poop on what’s behind them, like the bison coming across the Great Plains, which makes super nutrient-dense, high-quality food.”
In addition to the cows, sheep, and pigs on Stemple Creek’s graze, there are also owls, ducks, and soon-to-be beavers, each adding something distinct to the ecosystem. For example, pigs have fertile manure, which creates super-sweet grass that cows love to eat. Last year, Stemple Creek Ranch received a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make beaver dams, which will help ensure that their creek runs year-round, even in a drought-ridden Mediterranean climate. As we were falling asleep on the night we spent at the ranch, it was impossible to ignore the powerful sound of ribbiting frogs — a sign, as Pinyon taught us, that there’s a strong ecosystem in place.
Now that it’s springtime, there are more animals around. In the colder winter months, when there is less growth and less photosynthesis, fewer animals are on the ranch. Worm farms are being incubated in old hay bales that were punctured by ravens. Ducks are nesting in tubes, safe from coyotes and bobcats. 500 lambs roam one field while 200 two-year-old cattle graze another rolling pasture of thigh-high grass. Several dozen cows are in a field alongside a bull a couple of hills over, and soon, 90% will be pregnant. Currently, Stemple Creek owns 330 breeder cows, each of which will birth one cow a year.
The Poncias have always had cows and, for at least 30 years now, sheep. Pigs are the newest part of the operation. “About seven years ago, we started doing farmers’ markets, and people really wanted bacon, so we said, ‘Okay, let’s get 10 pigs,’” says Loren. Now, they have hundreds. Compared to conventional pork operations, where pigs are born and raised in enclosed concrete stalls, Stemple Creek pigs move freely in an open-air pigsty. They eat non-GMO wheat, barley, and peas instead of the usual corn or soy, whose production relies on chemicals and tillage (and, thus, are notoriously bad for the environment). Pigs could be fed on grass, too — they eat everything, and quickly. “But it would take forever,” Loren says. “They do really good on carbohydrates.” He adds that, unlike cows with ruminant (four-part) stomachs, pigs are monogastric, like humans. “Grain doesn’t hurt their body, whereas grain hurts a cow’s body.”
As we drive around Stemple Creek in Loren’s tractor, he points out various large, confined feeding operations on his neighbors’ farms. One giant covered structure houses “like a million chickens,” he says. “They call them pasture-raised chickens, but I’ve never seen them outside. Bullshit.” False marketing is one of the issues that bums him out the most. He’s mad at companies like Panera Bread and Chick-fil-A, who have built their brands on regenerative agriculture, sourcing hormone-free, grass-fed, organic meat, only to revert to a conventional supply after being bought or going public.
Another thornier issue Loren faces is how beef production contributes to climate change. Raising cattle is bad for the environment, or so we’re told, because as cows digest food, they emit methane—a greenhouse gas that contributes negatively to global warming. Meanwhile, consuming red meat, particularly processed meat, can have a harmful effect on our health. Loren says cows are being unfairly blamed, particularly those raised regeneratively, like at Stemple Creek.
“We’re pumping liquid carbon from deep into the middle of the planet in the form of liquid oil, and we’re burning it faster than we’re putting carbon back into the soil,” he argues. “The only way we can put carbon back into the soil is through photosynthesis. And to have photosynthesis, you can’t have bare soil or paved concrete or roofs, you have to have a living plant. Yes, cows emit a little bit of carbon, a little bit of methane, but that’s part of the natural carbon cycle, right? They poop it back out, they help create more fertility, and the plant grows again. It’s natural. What’s not natural is that we’re burning fossil fuels faster than we’re photosynthesizing.”
As for whether red meat is bad for us, I’m not an expert in nutrition, but I know it depends, at least partly, on where you’re getting it from. Eating grass-fed, grass-finished beef raised outdoors during the natural carbon cycle, like that of Stemple Creek Ranch, will be much better for you and the planet than most of the beef served and sold in America. It is even better for the planet if you can get it from a local farmer, and not shipped across the country.
Loren and Lisa Poncia took over the reins of the family business almost two decades ago. The first year, they made $10,000 in sales. Last year, they did $9,000,000. Yet Stemple Creek Ranch is a capital-intensive business, so the Poncias’ profits are far from outsized. “You have to reinvest and reinvest and reinvest,” Loren says. “The only way we really make money is if we stopped growing. But we’re not driven by money; we’re driven by the idea of raising high-quality, nutrient-dense food and getting it into as many peoples’ mouths as possible.”
