Brown beef in skillet. Drain. Add rice, water, onion and salt. Cover and simmer for 25 minutes. Stir in rest of ingredients and heat until cream cheese is melted. Serve with lots of cheese sprinkled over top.
This recipe is requested when there’s fresh homemade bread on hand.
My husband is a welder. I grew up on a farm and was a farm girl to the core. I’ve been very thankful that we have enough acreage to raise our own meat, eggs, fruit and produce. We love life in the country.
Recipe by Mrs. Nevin (Wilma) Champ, Hegins, Pennsylvania
One of my favorite, most festive dishes we prepare on the grill is kabobs, and in this case, beef kabobs. Lots of recipes call for the beef to marinate overnight, but this recipe allows the sauce to be added after everything is cooked. I prepared these kabobs for Father’s Day and they were awesome. The cut of beef I used was a 3.6 lb. tri-tip. The tri-tip is hard to find here in the Midwest, but specifically it is a triangular cut of beef taken from the sirloin, which is the area towards the back of the cow just above the flank and below the tenderloin. It is well marbled, beefy and delicious. For veggies we used small red potatoes, red, yellow and orange peppers, zucchini and mushrooms. We also cubed up some fresh pineapple. We made a bunch of white rice to be served with this. Let’s get started.
Tri-tip chimichurri beef kabobs
Ingredients
3.5 lbs of tri-tip beef, cubed
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
2/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 tsp dried oregano
3 to 4 cloves of garlic – chopped fine
1 to 2 tsp of fresh cracked black pepper
Juice of 1 lime
First, combine everything other than the beef, veggies and pineapple and whisk together to create the sauce.
Secondly, arrange the cubed beef on wooden skewers which have been soaked in water for an hour or so. The cubes were touching each other but not squished together. If they are squished together they don’t cook right. Also, a pet peeve of mine is seeing the kabobs in the store meat cases with veggies, fruit and meat on the same skewer. That is flawed grilling as these items do not cook at the same pace. Nor is the finishing temperature the same. I boiled the potatoes until fork tender and then set them on a cookie sheet covered in foil. The remaining veggies and pineapple were assembled on skewers. I sprinkled with salt and pepper and placed the meat skewers in the pellet smoker initially at 200 degrees, and smoked them for one hour or so. I then brushed the veggies with olive oil and applied salt and pepper to them as well. I placed the vegetable and pineapple skewers in the smoker and increased the temperature to 375 degrees. I turned the vegetables and meat a couple of times and removed everything when the center of the meat reached 140 degrees. Now, if you have been paying attention you will notice those potatoes are still sitting on the cookie sheet. I sprayed those with olive oil and then broiled them in the oven for ten minutes or so until the skin crisped up a little.
In a large and shallow bowl, take the meat, veggies and pineapple off of the skewers. Now add the crispy potatoes. Lastly, drizzle the chimichurri sauce all over the meat and veggies and mix. Serve immediately with the white rice. This quantity of meat served 10 people. Only you can determine how much veggies and pineapple you need to grill. Enjoy!
A recent investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency found that some Colombian supermarkets may be selling beef from cattle raised in Chiribiquete National Park.
There are large gaps in the traceability of the beef produced in Colombia.
The Colombian Agricultural Institute is responsible for vaccinating all 28 million head of cattle in Colombia and has important information that could help authorities design effective strategies to prevent cattle ranching in natural protected areas.
Behind some of the beef sold in Colombian supermarkets is a story of deforestation in protected areas and illegal armed groups who benefit from cattle ranching.
The Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA) is in charge of vaccinating all 28 million head of cattle in Colombia, whether they live in protected or non-protected areas. The ICA has records of the exact locations and names of ranches, villages and cattle owners, the number of cattle owned by each farmer, and the origin and destination of these cattle. This information may be useful in reducing Colombia’s deforestation, illegal cattle ranching, and land grabbing.
The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has documented the links between the deforestation of protected ecosystems, cattle ranching, and the supply chain behind the beef sold in Colombia.
The last link in the chain
The EIA says that a direct supplier of Grupo Éxito and Colsubsidio, two Colombian supermarket companies, purchases between 100 and 300 head of cattle per month from a farm in Chiribiquete National Park, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2018.
According to the EIA, the direct supplier of supermarket companies Grupo Éxito and Colsubsidio has a sales capacity of about 2,000 head of cattle per month. Image courtesy of the EIA.
This direct supplier has a relationship with an indirect supplier who, in turn, has a business partner who is responsible for fattening the cattle. The cattle are fattened on an 800-hectare (nearly 2,000-acre) farm in the northern part of Chiribiquete National Park, which is Colombia’s largest national park.
The EIA confirmed that 400 hectares (nearly 1,000 acres) of land, or half of the farm area, was deforested and converted into pasture for the cattle in 2019. According to the EIA, as of September 2020, the owner of the farm has 600 head of cattle and plans to deforest the rest of the land for the same purpose.
Although the owner acknowledges that his farm is within a protected area, he said that Colombia’s national parks administration does “sometimes bother you to not deforest anymore, but they hardly ever do.” Those who really exercise control over the land in the area are the illegal armed groups, according to the owner of the farm. These groups even charge him a “tax” of $2.79 per head of cattle that he owns.
The farm on which the cattle are fattened is located in the northern area of Chiribiquete National Park. The owner claims that he pays the illegal armed groups in the area a “tax” of $2.79 per head of cattle. Image courtesy of the EIA.
Although the owner of the farm did not name anyone specifically, the Colombian army says that “an armed organized group from the extinct FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia]” operates in the area and has about 1,500 active members.
The beef value chain in Colombia is composed of four parts: production, commercialization, transformation, and consumption. The challenge is that “the market cannot differentiate between livestock associated with deforestation, either through [direct deforestation] activity or through land grabbing,” according to a study by the National Wildlife Federation and the University of Wisconsin.
To corroborate the link between this direct supplier and the two supermarket companies, the EIA said that it contacted and visited the slaughterhouse that processes some of the beef for the two companies.
“Given that in Colombia there is no traceability system for livestock that allows the consumer or buyer to know the true origin of the meat, this involuntarily supports the destruction of protected forests and extortion by armed groups and paramilitary organizations responsible for multiple human rights violations in Colombia,” the EIA said.
The challenge of traceability
In May 2019, Grupo Éxito, along with 36 other entities, signed a voluntary agreement in which they pledged to “eliminate deforestation, promote restoration, and thus reduce the carbon footprint of the beef value chain.” In other words, the goal is to guarantee to the final consumer that the beef they purchase in Colombian supermarkets comes from “cattle that — during all its production phases (breeding, raising, and fattening) — have taken place in areas of Colombia that have not had deforestation since January 1, 2011.” According to the document, these policies will apply to direct, indirect, and intermediary suppliers.
According to the ICA, none of the 71 villages partially or completely located in Chiribiquete National Park have reported the vaccination of animals against foot-and-mouth disease and bovine brucellosis. There are no records of cattle in those areas. Image courtesy of the EIA.
Javier Ortiz, director of the Tropical Forest Alliance (TFA), said most of Colombia’s mechanisms for tracing and monitoring livestock are within the ICA and the Colombian Federation of Cattle Ranchers (Fedegan).
Ortiz told Mongabay Latam that the Colombian government has “such a solid monitoring system — so much so that we can have daily deforestation alerts — yet there is not sufficient action.” He said that although he does not know why this is, he believes the solution lies with the government, not private companies or civil society.
In the first phase of the Artemis Campaign, Colombian security forces recovered 120 hectares (about 300 acres) of forests, captured 10 people, and seized vehicles, weapons, and machinery. Image courtesy of Efraín Herrera/Presidency of Colombia.
Although several organizations say the ICA is extremely protective of its information, Mongabay Latam formally requested it and received relevant documents within 15 days.
In the three most deforested departments in the country — Caquetá, Guaviare and Meta — there are almost 5 million head of cattle. The ICA found that tens of thousands of them live inside or very close to protected areas.
The ICA’s director of animal health, Andrés Osejos, told Mongabay Latam that the ICA has been sharing information on the number of cattle in several municipalities with the Attorney General’s Office and the Ministry of Defense. “We have been turning in the little [information] we have to counteract this phenomenon,” Osejos said.
Osejos added that the role of the ICA is not to combat deforestation; rather, it is to vaccinate animals to avoid putting public health and the economy at risk.
The Artemis Campaign aims to fight deforestation in all of Colombia’s natural parks to protect biodiversity. Image courtesy of Efraín Herrera/Presidency of Colombia.Map of deforestation between 2016 and 2020 in Sierra de la Macarena National Park and Chiribiquete National Park. Image courtesy of the EIA.
Mongabay Latam asked Osejos whether the ICA knows exactly who is deforesting land outside of the agricultural frontier. “As you say it, it sounds like ‘you know and don’t do anything,’ but what we have is a health program, I repeat. When the vaccinator goes to a department, that person does not know with certainty whether that place is a natural park or not. That is learned later, upon seeing satellite images, maps, and other information,” Osejos said.
When Mongabay Latam asked Osejos whether the ICA has considered that this information may be relevant to help stop deforestation, he said the agency has very little time to work on the issue of deforestation because of its day-to-day work. However, Osejos said that during work meetings, the ICA does provide the information on deforestation that it has. He added that government entities can also request this information.
On the week of Jan. 25, 2021, Global Forest Watch issued 144,847 deforestation alerts in two areas that include sections in and around Chiribiquete National Park. Image courtesy of Global Forest Watch.
Deforestation and military operations
Chiribiquete National Park spans 4.3 million hectares (10.6 million acres) and is one of the oldest archaeological sites in the Amazon Basin; it contains ancient rock art on its sheer stone walls, earning it the nickname “the Sistine Chapel of the Amazon.” Scientists have found evidence that this dense rainforest has been inhabited for at least 12,600 years. Not only is Chiribiquete National Park a strategic site for ecological connectivity with the Andes, but it is also a key to understanding the history of human settlement in South America.
None of this has been sufficient to stop the advancement of chainsaws, highways and cattle. The Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM) has recorded 5,315 hectares (13,134 acres) of deforestation in Chiribiquete National Park since 2000. About 41% of this forest loss occurred in 2018 alone.
About 63% of the deforestation in Colombia between 2000 and 2018 occurred in just five departments: Caquetá, Meta, Guaviare, Antioquia and Putumayo. Image courtesy of the National Planning Department (DNP) of Colombia.
Additionally, a recent report from the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) warned that Chiribiquete National Park lost more than 1,000 hectares (about 2,500 acres) between September 2020 and February 2021. “Much of this deforestation appears to be associated with the conversion of primary forest to illegal cattle pasture,” the report says.
Another report, the “National Policy for Deforestation Control and Sustainable Management of Forests” from the National Economic and Social Policy Council, says cattle ranching is responsible for 50% of the total amount of newly used land in Colombia between 2005 and 2012.
According to IDEAM, 2,500 hectares (nearly 6,200 acres) were deforested in Chiribiquete National Park during 2020 and so far in 2021. Image courtesy of IDEAM.
The report also says that conservation strategies have not succeeded in reducing settlement or the development of prohibited activities because of “the low coordination between national guidelines and local realities in terms of environmental land use planning, informality in land occupation, and agricultural production that does not take the aptitude of the soil into account, causing environmental harm and social inequity.”
According to the Colombian military, nine operations against deforestation have occurred between April 2019 and February 2021 as part of the Artemis Campaign (Campaña Artemisa). Four of these operations took place in Chiribiquete National Park, leading to the recovery of more than 5,800 hectares (14,330 acres).
There are currently 22,300 members of the security forces (including from the army, navy and police) dedicated to the “protection of water, biodiversity and the environment” throughout Colombia. The military says a total of 12,358 hectares (30,537 acres) of land in Colombia’s natural parks have been recovered. Additionally, tens of thousands of pounds of illegal items have been seized, including timber, fish, and raw materials used in the processing of narcotics.
Despite this, the EIA discovered the falsification of livestock transportation records, the sale of timber from protected areas, and a lack of coordination between government entities. The EIA recommends “a structural reform to care for many of these problems, starting with declaring the principles of transparency and livestock traceability to be in the public interest.”
Banner image: According to the EIA, the direct supplier of supermarket companies Grupo Éxito and Colsubsidio has a sales capacity of about 2,000 head of cattle per month. Image courtesy of the EIA.
This article was first reported by Mongabay’s Latam team and published here on our Latam site on May 27, 2021.
(NAFB) – Chinese officials announced Monday a plan to buy pork for state reserves to support prices, which rebounded sharply after reaching a two-year low recently.
Hog prices in China, the world’s top pork-producing nation, plunged 65 percent in the first half of 2021 as disease outbreaks triggered panic selling, according to Reuters. China reports average weekly prices entered an “excessive decline” last week. However, China does not disclose how much pork is in state reserves or how much new purchases will total.
A Rabobank analyst told Reuters, “Since the frozen pork inventory is probably already high due to strong imports in the previous months, I don’t think they’ll buy too much.”
China last made pork purchases in February and March of 2019, totaling 200,000 metric tons. So far in 2021, China has imported nearly two million metric tons of pork, up 13.7 percent. The purchases followed a record 4.4 million metric tons last year.
Thanks to the Beef Checkoff Program and the National Pork Board, pairings are allowing both U.S. beef and pork to capitalize on a ‘Buy Local’ trend in Mexico. U.S. Meat Export Federation’s Joe Schuele has the story.
Buy Local Campaign Helping U.S. Beef and Pork Sales in Mexico
The fifth annual Beef Feedlot Short Course, organized and hosted by the Iowa Beef Center at Iowa State University, is set for Aug. 3 to 5 at the Hansen Agriculture Student Learning Center in Ames.
Erika Lundy-Woolfolk, beef specialist with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, says the goal of the event is to optimize participant learning through exposure to new technology, research and best management practices.
"From our initial planning for the first event in 2017, we've focused on providing content in a small-group setting with a mix of hands-on and classroom instruction," she says. "The short course is designed for feedlot managers, employees and consultants, and past attendees have appreciated that focus."
Content-specific portions of the short course will be held at the Iowa State Beef Nutrition Farm near Ames and Couser Cattle Co. in Nevada, Iowa.
The program runs from 12:30 p.m. Aug. 3 through noon Aug. 5. For questions on the content, contact Lundy-Woolfolk at [email protected] or Dan Loy, Iowa Beef Center director, at [email protected].
What’s on the agenda
The topics include:
• bunk management and the basics of starting cattle on feed
• feed-mixing demonstration and evaluation
• feedlot nutrition
• managing and identifying cattle health issues in the feedlot
• facility design and cattle handling
• data management
Who is speaking
The presenters include:
• Bill Couser, Couser Cattle Co., Nevada, Iowa
• Garland Dahlke, associate scientist, Iowa Beef Center, Iowa State University
• Grant Dewell, beef veterinarian, ISU Extension and Outreach
• Terry Engelken, associate professor, Veterinary Diagnostic and Production Animal Medicine, ISU
• Lee Schulz, Extension livestock economist and associate professor, economics, ISU
• Dan Thomson, professor and animal science department chair, ISU
The registration fee, $350 per person, includes program materials and meals listed on the agenda. The registration deadline is midnight July 27, or when the course limit of 30 is reached. All registrations must be made online.
See the short course website for registration information, requirements and links at Beef Feedlot Short Course.
Participants are responsible for making their own lodging arrangements, if needed. A block of rooms is available at Comfort Inn & Suites ISU, 603 S 16th St., Ames. Book by phone at 515-663-9555 or book online.
Source: ISU Extension and Outreach, which is responsible for the information provided and is wholly owned by the source. Informa Business Media and its subsidiaries aren't responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.
