Can Colombia’s ‘Crazy’ Cattle Ranchers Make Beef an Eco-Friendly Choice?

On a humid dawn in Colombia’s livestock capital, Michael Robbin rides across one of his farm’s pastures, where tall green stalks brush his horse’s belly. When he bought the land outside Montería in 2020 he divided it into 125 smaller fields. His neighbours called him crazy at first.

“That’s not how it’s done in this area,” he acknowledges. “Everybody was looking at me like I was from outer space.”

Robbin adapted the land for intensive rotational grazing, a technique developed in the 1950s that involves moving cattle herds on to new pasture at least once a day.

Before Robbin’s foreman, Cesar Mestra, reaches each field’s fence in the mornings, the cattle are gathered, waiting. Instead of yesterday’s chewed-down stems beneath their feet, they’d rather eat the fresh, green leaves on the other side.