About
Sustainable Genetics, LLC, established in 2004, is a beef genetics marketing company (dairy added in 2016) dedicated to enhancing profitability in the production segment of the industry. We believe, first and foremost, that a bovine animal was put on this earth to function as a grazing animal. The further we deviate from the grazing principle, the more problems we create. Unfortunately, the industrial agricultural model has created a fossil fuel-dependent machine and has ignored Mother Nature’s original purpose for this solar-powered creature. There are two types of cattle today, corn cattle and grass cattle. Our many years of experience have taught us that grass cattle will work in a corn environment; however, corn cattle are not sustainable in a grass environment.
It takes a crisis to create change, and for an industry built on the premise of cheap corn and cheap oil, change is inevitable. The seedstock industry continues on a collision course with reality. The more, bigger, better mentality of the majority of purebred cattle owners continues to create higher maintenance cows that the commercial sector cannot sustain. The advent of Expected Progeny Differences has made it quite easy to breed cattle. The only tools necessary are a sire summary and a checkbook. What most seedstock owners fail to understand is that EPDs are only measures of outputs, and the antagonisms associated with selecting for extremes create problems that end up costing the commercial producer.
In 2012, Dan Glenn and his family joined the Sustainable Genetics team. Dan is a 4th-generation Irwin County, Georgia, farmer who shares our core values and works hard to breed cattle that work in his environment. He directs market beef and sells seedstock at Deep Grass Graziers.
There are Sustainable Genetics sired cattle on ranches and farms near you. Contact us, and we’ll put you in touch with the satisfied breeders who have taken that step back to basics.
Bill and Di Hodge
Hodge evaluating Sipe Angus, NC
Hodge & (grandson) Jimmy Cuatro relaxing at Grassfed Exchange Conference, Rapid City, SD
Hodge & (grandson) Jimmy Cuatro working trade show display Grassfed Exchange Conference, Santa Rosa, CA
Dan, Jen, & Silas Glenn
Dan working with his herd
Hodge evaluating Pinebank 41/97
Recognition for innovative approach towards the production and genetics of grass-fed cattle.
Bill Hodge’s feature in…
Local: The New Face of Food and Farming in America
by Douglas Gayeton
Bill says, “I’m the product of three different land grant institutions. All my formal training was based on the industrial ag model. Part of my job required me to educate other producers. While traveling home late one night in the mid 90’s, after making a presentation to beef producers on the merits of the mainstream beef system, the futility of what I was doing suddenly struck me.”
“Cattle were not put on this earth to be transported long distances, confined in feed yards and stuffed with concentrate feeds. They were put here to graze. That realization was my…”
Road to Damascus Moment: A revelation, especially about oneself, denoting a change in attitude, perspective or belief.
Bill Hodge says, “My transition began in the mid 1980s when I was victimized by the government’s dairy buyout program” (paying producers to get out of the business by reducing their herds). I’d been ‘stockering’ 700 head at the time (putting weight on the cattle as efficiently as possible) when the bottom fell out of the market, causing me to lose quite a sum of money. From that point forward, I began researching more sustainable beef production systems. My research revealed a very broken industry, one controlled by corporate meat processors preoccupied with shareholder wealth. Still, my love for meat animal agriculture wouldn’t allow me to quit for another ten years.”