Picture this: It’s a mild October day. You’re sitting outside with a pasture spread out before you. Wind rustles through the long grass and through the sun-gilded leaves of the nearby poplar bush. You hear cattle just out of your line of sight and gentle music is playing.
Viewers could get hours of that ambience this fall through an internet connection.
Why it matters: With so many Canadians living far distant from the nearest pasture, the project sought to bring a view of the grasslands to them.
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The 10-hour livestream arose from a collaboration between McDonald’s Canada and a Manitoba ranching family. “The Grasslands Channel” aired Oct. 4, featuring views from Kristine Tapley’s family farm near Langruth.
The purpose was to highlight the importance of grasslands, and “to give Canadians from coast to coast to coast a glimpse at how today’s farmers and ranchers are producing the beef our guests know and love,” said Ashwin Ramesh, senior manager of sustainability and strategy at McDonald’s Canada, in a news release.
The stream included different shots of the pasture, ranging from closeups of swaying grasses in the sun to landscape images of the Prairie horizon and distant, autumn-tinged trees. Tapley’s cattle are often heard in the distance and occasionally wander into frame.
“I was surprised at the reactions,” Tapley said. “I wasn’t too sure if people would be expecting to hear and see cattle, and when they did walk through the screen there was lots of comments being excited to see them.”
One viewer took to YouTube’s live chat feature to exclaim, “COOOOOWS!”
McDonald’s, Cargill, the Canadian Cattle Association and Ducks Unlimited Canada were also in the chat, offering facts about grasslands and the work their groups are doing on sustainable beef production.
Tapley, who works with Ducks Unlimited Canada, has one of the first ranches to join the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef’s framework through a pilot with McDonald’s, a precursor to the current certified supply chain program.
“I also think that they wanted to showcase a different area of grass than maybe the iconic Alberta landscape,” she said. “I was very excited to get to showcase what Manitoba grass looks like to me.”
The project fits into the current trend of listening to ambient music and sounds like white noise or natural soundscapes, which may have grown in popularity over the pandemic. In 2020, music service Spotify saw an uptick in streaming of ambient music, background noise and calming sounds, the New York Times reported in December of that year.
Besides a method to cope with anxiety, the Times reported, people were also using those types of sounds to drown out noise from housemates as they worked from home.
