I love food. Not generic, out-of-the-box-designed-only-to-be-convenient food, but diverse, right-from-the-person-who-produced-it type of selections. My passion for a meal with a story stems, I believe, from my upbringing on a farm that provides me with insight into how everything on my plate came to be there, a view that is restricted to a very small percentage of the population today. Something tells me that when the average citizen sits down to a meal, the last thing on their mind is a farm and a family and the labor and passion that got the juicy chunk of beef (or pork, or chicken, or lamb, or turkey, or veal) to the plate in front of them. To me, a meal should blow your mind with flavor and at the same time act as a tribute to the people who have devoted their lives to the production of said entree. When I take a bite of excellent chicken, I am in the barn with the caretakers watching proudly as the birds grow and mature into healthy marketable fowl. Take a bite of a hot-off-the-grill steak (medium rare with butter and mushrooms and a little coarse salt, some fried asparagus on the side) and I am not simply tasting beef, I am reveling in the familiar smell of a barn, the subtle but ever present commotion from the cattle, the excited between-chores talk of things to come, and the pride associated with producing something that will make people very happy. Some tasty pork represents a pen of healthy hogs rooting around, lips smacking, while the grower looks over them with quiet satisfaction after another busy day. While blissfully enjoying anything from meats to vegetables, I am grateful to those in the field working with their land and animals to ensure my next feeding frenzy is a success.
These emotions that should come with our meals have been largely erased from the eating experience thanks to cookie-cutter restaurant chains trying only to maintain food consistency (forget quality and originality) across their 3,200 dining centers, diet plans yelling that the only way to a flat belly is to eliminate carbs or starch or meat or eggs or sugar or everything from your daily intake, "doctors" on biased infomercials saying studies indicate eating this food rather than that food will enhance your life with ".000003 micrograms more omega-3-fatty acids"...you know what I am talking about. Add to the confusion an environmental group that portrays farmers as earth-destroyers and animal activists that portray producers as "factory farmers" who cause "untold suffering to farm animals" and the bombardment will make even the strongest individuals actually WANT to sit inside and eat freeze-dried bean sprouts for the rest of their lives. Does anyone else see the tragedy here?
So, on this Earth Day while everyone else is screaming at the top of their lungs that you need to avoid meat to save the World, I will sit here and quietly suggest that you do the opposite. Make yourself and your family a special meal that supports any one of our dedicated cattle ranchers, hog producers, poultry producers, specialty meat guys, and vegetable growers big or small, production or niche. Connect in this way to the people behind the scenes constantly working with the Earth to safely keep it productive and our taste buds content rather than falling in behind someone who advertises "I am saving the World!" as they fly to the next environmental convention that, when said and done, is about as environmental as a toxic waste dump. Enjoy the bounty of the land by way of your food and get real with your efforts to help out the Earth by supporting farmers who work with the environment each and every day; if we all do this, the results will be much more dramatic than "going green" by purchasing the latest electric pushmower advertised in Mother Earth News.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
Walk the Line
Last night I had the opportunity to speak with an individual about my post titled Truth, Inc. The person did not agree with my negative opinion about the film 'Food, Inc,' a movie currently in circulation that portrays production agriculture and the United States food system as an unsafe, unhealthy, uncontrolled corporate animal. From the individual's point of view, 'Food, Inc' is not an anti-agriculture documentary, but a positive get back to the small farm and stick it to the corporations type of film. I can see why 'Food, Inc' is viewed in this light, and I very much enjoy this type of constructive criticism because it forces me to look at what I have said and back it up. Keep in mind as you read this that I am in no way saying the pro-Food Inc opinion is wrong, I am just attempting to provide a stronger counter-argument.
I walk a fine line with my agricultural views and beliefs. On one hand, I am completely about the little guy. I love to see the creativity that stems from small niche producers, I love getting awesomely fresh, unmolested food straight from the source, I love knowing that money spent on a small farm actually makes a difference instead of pouring into a pool of millions of other dollars, and most of all I love my life here on my family's small local-oriented farm. It is incredible that people are trying to seek out local food and that consumers are making the extra effort to go to the farm instead of the grocery store. My life is committed to small farmers, and the feeling I get sharing our farm products with others is something I will never be able to describe.
On the other hand, I am fully appreciative of America's large scale production agriculture and our food system. Unlike many small farmers, I will never accuse production Ag. of being unsafe, unnecessary, unhealthy, and/or destructive. I am grateful for our science-based, zero tolerance food safety system that is in place, I understand that the large family farms (yes, they exist - over 90% of production farms are owned and operated by a multi-generational family) provide very inexpensive food to everyone, and I am sure that our big farms pick up the slack of the little producers (in other words, if your local market is sold out for the week, you will not starve, you will get supplies from the grocery store, i.e. large farms). I believe that my experience growing up on a farm has helped me understand and appreciate production agriculture on a level that many will never be exposed to.
Here is where it gets tricky. Documentaries like 'Food, Inc' play right in to the little guy's hand. Consumers watch the film and are taken aback by what they see and hear (they have no experience to tell them it is false), driving people right to their local farm market, a positive effect of the movie for the niche farmers across the country. The negative effect, however, is that in order to promote the small producer, filmmakers turn the public against the big one, a tragedy that should never happen. Everyone seems to think this is a harmless, even good result, but consider this: there are over three hundred and seven million people in the United States, ALL of whom need to eat. As activists continue to play on widespread agricultural ignorance, the masses begin to actively oppose large scale food production and make attempts to eliminate it. Common sense tells us there is absolutely no chance small farms are able to meet the demand of 300 million+ people (if everyone in Clarion started shopping at the Beef Barn we would be sold out in five minutes, and Clarion is only a few thousand people), and we know that after big agriculture is gone everyone will still have to eat, so the demand will still be there...if the little guys are not able to meet the demand and we have driven away our large producers, where is our food going to come from? Simple: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and everywhere else in the World. If we continue to oppose US large agriculture, our meat supply will switch from a domestically-produced USDA inspected product to an outsourced, USDA APPROVED (NOT inspected, they had no control over what happened to the meat before it got to this country or the facilities it was processed in), questionable one. Has anyone outside of agriculture ever thought about this? I know that 92% of the population is "highly concerned" about food imported from another country, but that same 92% is buying in to smear-campaigns like "Food, Inc" (and garbage produced by the Humane Society) that drive production out of this country! I hope you can see the inconsistency here.
I hope I managed to get the point across to you in this post. The little guys are great; nowhere else will you be able to come face-to-face with the passionate people who are working hard to make a living and provide you with pure food delight. You, too, need to walk the line, however; support the little guy with everything you have, but always remember to avoid getting caught up in the fear-and-ignorance driven wave that tells you our large scale food production is bad. We can eliminate the farms but we will never eliminate the demand, and producers in Brazil, Mexico, and Australia are more than willing to fill that void.
I walk a fine line with my agricultural views and beliefs. On one hand, I am completely about the little guy. I love to see the creativity that stems from small niche producers, I love getting awesomely fresh, unmolested food straight from the source, I love knowing that money spent on a small farm actually makes a difference instead of pouring into a pool of millions of other dollars, and most of all I love my life here on my family's small local-oriented farm. It is incredible that people are trying to seek out local food and that consumers are making the extra effort to go to the farm instead of the grocery store. My life is committed to small farmers, and the feeling I get sharing our farm products with others is something I will never be able to describe.
On the other hand, I am fully appreciative of America's large scale production agriculture and our food system. Unlike many small farmers, I will never accuse production Ag. of being unsafe, unnecessary, unhealthy, and/or destructive. I am grateful for our science-based, zero tolerance food safety system that is in place, I understand that the large family farms (yes, they exist - over 90% of production farms are owned and operated by a multi-generational family) provide very inexpensive food to everyone, and I am sure that our big farms pick up the slack of the little producers (in other words, if your local market is sold out for the week, you will not starve, you will get supplies from the grocery store, i.e. large farms). I believe that my experience growing up on a farm has helped me understand and appreciate production agriculture on a level that many will never be exposed to.
Here is where it gets tricky. Documentaries like 'Food, Inc' play right in to the little guy's hand. Consumers watch the film and are taken aback by what they see and hear (they have no experience to tell them it is false), driving people right to their local farm market, a positive effect of the movie for the niche farmers across the country. The negative effect, however, is that in order to promote the small producer, filmmakers turn the public against the big one, a tragedy that should never happen. Everyone seems to think this is a harmless, even good result, but consider this: there are over three hundred and seven million people in the United States, ALL of whom need to eat. As activists continue to play on widespread agricultural ignorance, the masses begin to actively oppose large scale food production and make attempts to eliminate it. Common sense tells us there is absolutely no chance small farms are able to meet the demand of 300 million+ people (if everyone in Clarion started shopping at the Beef Barn we would be sold out in five minutes, and Clarion is only a few thousand people), and we know that after big agriculture is gone everyone will still have to eat, so the demand will still be there...if the little guys are not able to meet the demand and we have driven away our large producers, where is our food going to come from? Simple: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and everywhere else in the World. If we continue to oppose US large agriculture, our meat supply will switch from a domestically-produced USDA inspected product to an outsourced, USDA APPROVED (NOT inspected, they had no control over what happened to the meat before it got to this country or the facilities it was processed in), questionable one. Has anyone outside of agriculture ever thought about this? I know that 92% of the population is "highly concerned" about food imported from another country, but that same 92% is buying in to smear-campaigns like "Food, Inc" (and garbage produced by the Humane Society) that drive production out of this country! I hope you can see the inconsistency here.
I hope I managed to get the point across to you in this post. The little guys are great; nowhere else will you be able to come face-to-face with the passionate people who are working hard to make a living and provide you with pure food delight. You, too, need to walk the line, however; support the little guy with everything you have, but always remember to avoid getting caught up in the fear-and-ignorance driven wave that tells you our large scale food production is bad. We can eliminate the farms but we will never eliminate the demand, and producers in Brazil, Mexico, and Australia are more than willing to fill that void.
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