Farm mom highlights Missouri agriculture through tourism

May 06, 2016

Becky Moreland talks agriculture with farm visitors

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

A Missouri farm mom opened up her family’s operation to visitors to engage in discussion about agriculture.

Becky Moreland and her husband Matt run a farm in Cass County, Missouri with Matt’s family. It consist of about 150 dairy cows, fields of corn and soybeans, and a small operation of cow-calf beef cattle.

On top of that, they run an agritourism operation called Red Barn Ranch where visitors can pick their own fruits and vegetables.

Moreland says many visitors come from Kansas City and a main topic of discussion is agriculture.

“I never realized how interested people were in how farming works until we opened our pumpkin patch,” she told Missouri Farmer Today. “They had really great questions and wanted to learn.”

Moreland is involved with CommonGround, a group of more than 100 women farmers who address food concerns that consumers have. She participated in a video called “Ask a Farmer,” where she and other farmers approached consumers in a grocery store to speak with them about agriculture and the labels that appear on foods.

“It gets really intimidating because they don’t know what all that means,” she said. “They can’t help what they don’t know.”

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.