Rancher Profile

Bryce Ritz

About 60 miles north of Kearney, Nebraska, and 400 miles east of Denver, near the town of Comstock, Nebraska (population 110), Bryce Ritz raises organic grass-fed cattle on a 1,400-acre plot that includes some 950 acres of pasture and about 450 acres devoted to crops. The land, at the foot of Nebraska’s Sand Hills, has silt loam soil, perfect for growing the kind of grasses, clovers and legumes on which cattle thrive.

Born and raised a half-mile from where he lives today, Ritz, a fourth-generation farmer, purchased his ranch in 1986. His wife Rosemarie is the bookkeeper, and three of their five children help work the ranch. Four of Ritz’s brothers and sisters are engaged in ranching nearby.

Ritz’s views on agriculture were influenced by his family-farm origins, by his formal training in agriculture at the University of Nebraska, and by a year spent studying farming practices in Switzerland and Germany, where monocrop farming is rare and farms are small and diverse.

Drawing on these influences, Bryce Ritz has developed his own style of farming. First, he decided that, in order to run a small operation profitably, he needed to produce a high-value product – and that meant going organic. In 1988, Bryce Ritz Ranch became the 741st farm in the U.S. to gain organic certification from the Organic Crop Improvement Association (OCIA).

Second, he developed an unusual but effective system for ensuring his cattle have abundant grasses and forage while maintaining the integrity of the land. The process involves a six-year rotation cycle. Starting from grass in the first year, he rotates plots of land between grass, forage (alfalfa, orchard grass, red clover and small-grain hay), organic soy and organic corn. The soy and corn crops are sold as ingredients for organic food products, such as organic blue corn chips and soy-based foods, while the grass and forage feed his herd of cattle.

For three of the six years, cattle graze each plot. The ranch’s 130-head herd includes old-line Black Angus and a growing complement of Red Angus, which can better tolerate summer heat and which Ritz considers “a more pure breed” than Black Angus. Ritz buys very few cattle to supplement the largely closed herd.

“My farming practices aren’t the norm for the area,” Ritz smiles. But his rotation system allows the land to be rejuvenated, and it mirrors the nutrient cycle that would occur on nature’s own timetable. Even the three years of cattle grazing contribute by enhancing the land’s fertility. And, thanks to the rotation system, the Ritz Ranch is largely self-sustaining, requiring very few purchased inputs.

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