Gibson Farms

About Gibson Farms

Raises Animal Welfare Approved beef cattle. In the summer of 2010, Leland Gibson visited his father, Harold, on the farm that his grandmother and uncle established in northwestern South Carolina in 1958. After watching his father bailing hay by himself in the summer heat, Leland decided to make a change. He left his city life and career as a mechanical contractor to support the family business. While Leland has helped to make a lot of changes in Gibson Farms’ marketing since returning in October 2010, he joined a cattle operation that has changed very little since the 1950s. Leland and Harold are raising their grassfed, grass finished Black Angus and Charolais cattle as they have always been raised—organic and all natural—even before they received their Organic and Animal Welfare Approved certifications. Their philosophy is that if “we take care of the animals, they’ll take care of us.” Since returning to the farm, Leland says he’s learned that “the animals do very well with very little input from us.” While he has observed other farmers be highly dependent on chemicals for weed control and medications to maintain animal health, Gibson Farms has far fewer problems without any inputs at all. Mob grazing, or allowing cattle to graze at a high-density on a pasture and subsequently allow it sufficient time to recover, has allowed the Gibsons to control weed growth without the use of harsh pesticides others depend on. According to Leland, managing the cattle operation has turned out to be the easy part. Developing a market for his beef raised with high welfare is the big challenge. His management experience is serving him well now that he is as much an advertising agent as a farmer. Becoming Animal Welfare Approved is one way that he is communicating to his customers the quality of his family-farmed meat. While his life has drastically changed since returning to the country, Leland loves his new vocation. He may not have the time and energy to go running like he used to, but he’d “take the cattle over managing people any day,” he says.