Allan Savory of the Holistic Management Institute spoke recently in Ireland…the full video sat in my browser for a couple of weeks until the holiday madness subsided. Things have calmed down a bit, finally. Here’s an exerpted version

Allan Savory – EXTRACTS – Keeping Cattle: cause or cure for climate crisis? from Feasta on Vimeo.

Some thoughts and observations on it….

Improving our pastures could be a very fast, energy intensive, and expensive proposition, or we could take the gradual, improvement of management approach. Being fundamentally frugal when having to deal with a decent-sized acreage, we’ve gone the gradual approach. In our tenure here, we’ve seen a large increase in the presence of “good” forage grasses, along with vetch and subclover (soil building legumes), with a decline in the weedy annuals that dominated the pastures when we got here.

Marks & Spencer (a high-end UK retailer) spent £200million to take 100,000 cars off the road…in order to reach that level of effect, a 12acre grass fire burning for 15mins will offset all of those cars and money (1.5 acre fire puts out more pollutants than 4000 cars per second). Our seasonally dry climate evolved to burn every few years, and I’d like to include fire in our management at some point, but notwithstanding the conflagration danger, the pollution that it will spew, along with the volatilization of so much of our soil nutrients, makes me think that it’ll be something that we’ll have to pass on.

For the folks who really want to geek out on Holistic Management from the mouth of the prophet, click here for the hour long lecture. It’s a bit dry at the start, but totally worth the time.

(via)

Thanks to Karen for tipping me off about an article about the link between drug-resistant bacteria and animals fed antibiotics. Article here.

The article talks about how the rise of (unnecessary) antibiotics use in animals is leading to drug-resistant infections. For readers who aren’t already aware of this, most of the cows, pigs, and chicken raised for meat in this country are routinely fed antibiotics, not because they are sick, but as a preventative measure because of the close quarters to which they are confined.

Now, we’ve known for a while that using antibiotics when they are not needed is not a good thing… the more they are used, the more likely that bacteria will evolve that are resistant, and the less effective the antibiotics will be in the future. And small farms like ours do not use prophylactic antibiotics… instead, we manage our animals for optimal health.

One of the hog farmers in the article argues customers don’t care about economics of meat production, and just want the $1.69 pork chops for their dinner table.

Antibiotics are a crucial part of Rowles’ business, speeding growth and warding off disease.

“Now the public doesn’t see that,” he said. “They’re only concerned about resistance, and they don’t care about economics because, ‘As long as I can buy a pork chop for a buck 69 a pound, I really don’t care.’ But we live in a world where you have to consider economics in the decision-making process of what we do.”

Well, of course economics are part of any business, including agriculture. However, giving antibiotics to healthy animals may make the meat cheaper in the store, but what about all the costs involved with treating antibiotic-resistant infections? Even if they aren’t included in the per lb price, we still pay it somehow. And I’ll bet if more people understood the link between rampant, unnecessary use of antibiotics in the food supply, and the spread of illnesses such as antibiotic-resistant staph infections, they might chose to pay a little more for their pork.

In the article, it’s noted that Big Ag and Big Pharma have spent millions of dollars this year alone fighting legislation to limit the practice of feeding antibiotics to healthy animals. Their argument is partially the Big Brother one… “how dare The Government tell us how to raise our food?”. Let’s see… we have traffic laws because people can’t be counted on to drive safely without them. And we have government rules about food safety because companies driven primarily by the bottom line can’t be counted on to produce safe food. I don’t generally have a problem with that. (Although I do have a problem when a grocers’ association wants additional regulations on farmers’ markets just because they don’t like the competition, but that’s a whole other post.)

And they (Big Ag/Pharm) also say that (factory farming) is too complicated for government regulations.

Farmers and drugmakers are battling back. Pharmaceutical companies have spent $135 million lobbying so far this year, and agribusiness companies another $70 million, on a handful of issues including fighting the proposed new limits. Opponents, many from farm states, say Slaughter’s law is misguided.

“Chaos will ensue,” said Kansas Republican Congressman Jerry Moran. “The cultivation of crops and the production of food animals is an immensely complex endeavor involving a vast range of processes. We raise a multitude of crops and livestock in numerous regions, using various production methods. Imagine if the government is allowed to dictate how all of that is done.”

Really? Is it so complicated to have a rule that says that antibiotics shouldn’t be used unless animals are sick? I don’t think so…

The truth is that Big Ag and Big Pharm are invested in the status quo… of course they don’t want change because change can be difficult, and costly.

It’s logical that Big Pharma is probably driving the use of antibiotics. If farmers stop using their drugs, they’ll lose a lot of revenue. But it seems to me that farmers could be better off if they changed their practices. Just like the hog farmers in the article, many farmers could raise fewer animals, do it better on pasture and with fewer inputs, have improved quality of life for the animals, and receive more income per animal. It’s not impossible- it just requires a shift in perception and in the farm’s vision.

And if there was no more 1.69 antibiotic-laced meat available in the supermarkets, would that really be a problem?

(note: I edited this post for clarity.)

Gene Logsden has a good post up about the piles of corn that end up in the midwest at the end of harvest season. Oh, my aching HFCS.

With the Copenhagen climate talks stuttering along, it seems like past time to throw in some quick comments

The effect of livestock on greenhouse gas emissions are often overrated, if not entirely exaggerated

Pasture is part of the solution to the carbon issue

Some farms are doing it right

And the systems exist to fix the problem

OK, seriously, I need to post more often.

Our friend Clare was interviewed on KBOO recently along with Joel Salatin…quite a coup. I found it especially interesting to hear Joel talk about the massive gullies that were on his land when his family arrived there, since we are dealing with similar legacies of past land abuses.

They talk about land, farm cooperation, and meat processing, as well as our favorite advice to meat buyers – meet the meat…Check it out.

It’s that time of year again…you have an opportunity to purchase some grass fed beef raised by our neighbors, the Thorntons.  The Thorntons have been on their ranch since the 1930′s, and breed the steers that we raise for our grass-fed beef.  They have 2-3 cows that will be butchered this fall – 1 in about a week, and the other 1-2 in November.

We’re offering quarters (split halves) for sale at $3/lb, plus butcher
charges (which are usually ~$90-100 per quarter).  This is a lower price
than our usual price ($3.75/lb) for a few reasons: 1) fall beef tends to
be less tender than spring due to the quality of the grass at this time
of year, 2) the grazing rotation is less intensive (meaning that they
are moved less), and thus gain weight more slowly.   These cows will primarily provide ground beef,  along with some roasts, and maybe some steaks.   If you’re looking for premium grass-fed beef, I’d suggest waiting for our spring offerings, but if you’re looking mainly for delicious, but more affordable, ground beef, roasts, and stew meat for the winter, this might be a great option!

Just like our steers, these cows are only fed grass and hay, and are not
given antibiotics, hormones, etc.   And we’ll be using the same butcher
as usual – Frontier Custom Cutting in Carlton.  We’re estimating that
the hanging weight will be ~130-160lbs per quarter.

If you’d like to place an order, or ask questions, please contact us by
email (info@mossbackfarm.com) or phone (503 852 9585).  Orders will be
taken on a first come, first served basis, and filling the orders will
depend on having enough customers for each cow (4 per animal).

Thanks!

I found an article from a couple weeks back in the Oregonian about efforts by farmers’ markets to encourage low-income shoppers. I thought it was an interesting article which highlighted the fact that while use of food stamps is up dramatically at several area markets, some markets are having a tough time getting low income shoppers to take advantage of free transportation to markets, or to participate in programs that could help them with their food budgets and meal planning.

I admit to having a bias here… as a member of the Oregon Farmers’ Markets Association board, I’ve overseen grants that have gone to farmers’ markets this year to help fund several of the projects mentioned in this article. So, I’m definitely supportive of the idea of helping people at all income levels afford access to quality food. I think it’s awful that those with the least resources end up eating the worst food… especially because those are the people who probably won’t have the resources down the line to deal with the health issues caused by poor eating habits.

But speaking as a farmer, and a person passionate about the dangers of our industrial agricultural system, I was appalled at some of the comments left on the article. It seems to me like there is a perception that farmers markets are some sort of scam where farmers can charge exorbitant prices for food.

Here are some quotes…

It’s a travesty that it’s so much easier for me to get strawberries from southern California than northern Canby.

From an economics standpoint, farmers markets are highly inefficient.

The buyer does not really have a clear picture if they are getting better value (lower price and/or higher quality) from booth A than booth B.

…all the banging on doors, trying to sell luxury while most people are just trying to survive is just plain shaking the wrong end of the dog.

Of course what people never say in these touchy feely articles is that the vast majority of low income households are single parent, and even if that parent is responsible and does know how to shop and cook where will the time come from?

The problem is that the farmer’s market has become SO POPULAR that the vendors are able to charge higher than appropriate prices due to the sheer number of people coming out to shop.

Well, let me discuss some of the points here…

It’s a travesty that it’s so much easier for me to get strawberries from southern California than northern Canby.

I don’t know where that commenter lives, but it’s actually just as easy for me to get locally grown strawberries as to get ones from California. Easier in fact, because I just walk down the street from where I work, thereby getting a nice break, some exercise, and excellent fruit all at once. (And the California strawberries never taste anywhere near as good as fresh Oregon berries grown less than 10 miles from the farmers’ market.)

From an economics standpoint, farmers markets are highly inefficient.

Hmmm, really? Let’s use California strawberries as an example. Strawberries are grown on a large field, with huge equipment used to spray the plants. Farm workers are paid minimum wage to stoop in the hot sun and pick the berries. The berries are probably put in some other piece of large equipment to be washed, sorted, and packaged into plastic containers. Then the strawberries are loaded onto a truck, shipped 1000 miles to a supermarket, unloaded, and put on a market shelf. Then we pay $2.50 to $5 (depending on whether they are organic, on sale, etc.) to buy them. How many people handled those berries? And where does the money go? Mostly to the market, and the distributor. Very little actually goes to the farmer, and even less to the farm worker. And the cost of all that fuel and machinery? I guess you could say that the cost is small since it’s spread across millions of containers of strawberries.

But efficient? I guess if you are talking economies of scale, it may be more “efficient” to have fewer large scale farms growing produce. But what have we lost in this “efficiency”? And is efficiency the highest good in agriculture? What about environmental sustainability, the retention of farm land on the urban border, the viable family farm, not to mention the amazing flavor and texture of a berry not transported from 1000 miles away?

The buyer does not really have a clear picture if they are getting better value (lower price and/or higher quality) from booth A than booth B.

First of all, how does a supermarket shopper know if they are getting a better value by choosing one type of apple over another? There is absolutely no way, since supermarket shoppers can’t ask the grower personally. These days, we can find out what country supermarket produce was grown in, but unless you shop at a smaller chain (New Season, Roths, etc.) I’ll bet it’s a slim possibility that you could even find out the name of the farm where your produce was grown. And in most cases, you don’t have any choice over variety of a vegetable… it’s one variety fits all… usually the variety that stores and travels the best.

If you don’t know the difference between one grower and another at a farmers’ market, maybe you could start by asking a question of the farmer. Ask them what variety of cucumber (or tomato, or apple) they are growing, and why. If they can’t answer, well, maybe you don’t want to buy from them. But if they can, that makes you a much better informed and confident consumer than if you had just purchased your cucumbers (or tomatoes or apples) from Winco. Isn’t the opportunity to talk with the person who grew your food worth something extra? And if you do have the chance to talk with the person growing your food, doesn’t that make you more willing to pay more? To support their farm, their livelihood, or even their ability to buy clothes for their young children?

And even you don’t (or can’t) care about talking with a farmer, or about learning about your food, even if you only have a very limited amount to spend, isn’t it more satisfying to know that your precious dollars are going directly to the person growing the food, rather than to some middle manager in a long corporate food chain?

…all the banging on doors, trying to sell luxury while most people are just trying to survive is just plain shaking the wrong end of the dog.

Okay, I admit, this quote made me mad. Since when is good, local food a “luxury”? A boat is a luxury. Computer games are a luxury. A Lexus is a luxury. A $100 purse is a luxury. A $50 restaurant meal is a luxury. But quality whole foods, grown conscientiously by hardworking local people? Is that really a luxury? How is it that some people feel that good food is an indulgence? Is good health an indulgence too? I doubt most people would say so, yet health and diet are intertwined. What a sad commentary on how accepting we are of our industrial agricultural system if paying a little extra for some vegetables is considered a luxury.

Of course what people never say in these touchy feely articles is that the vast majority of low income households are single parent, and even if that parent is responsible and does know how to shop and cook where will the time come from?

I have all the sympathy in the world for single parents… as the mother of a 2 year old, I can only imagine how difficult it must be. But as the main food preparer in our household, who works late several nights a week, I have one bit of wisdom here… make large meals and eat leftovers. I often make a beef and vegetable stew on a Sunday afternoon that can be eaten for 2-4 days with rice or pasta. It probably takes me 20-30 minutes max to prep the stew, and I cook it while I’m home doing laundry or other chores. You can make other things as well… soups, etc. If you’re time limited on watching the stove, use a crockpot (cooks while you’re sleeping or at work) or a pressure cooker (stew in ~30 minutes!). As a very busy working mother, I refuse to believe that people can’t make good food. I guess if you’re working 3 jobs, perhaps meal prep could be a bit difficult. But if you have kids, I’ll bet they could substitute some meal prep for some of the time spent in front of video games or tv.

I just don’t buy the “no time” argument for most people. I know that personally, when I buy a packaged convenience food, it’s more often because I’m choosing it…it’s not that it is really necessary. I could save time by buying prepackaged milk for my toddler instead of filling his sippy cup with milk. I sometimes do buy individual servings of applesauce or crackers. And I could buy other prepackaged foods. But I read labels, and I know that most “convenience” foods are filled with artificial flavors and colors, as well as corn syrup, and tons of ingredients that I don’t fully recognize, but that don’t seem to belong in my food. I’d rather take that 30 minutes on a Sunday to prepare a meal that will last several days than to fill my Winco cart with foods that are of dubious quality.

The problem is that the farmer’s market has become SO POPULAR that the vendors are able to charge higher than appropriate prices due to the sheer number of people coming out to shop.

A few years ago, we stopped raising and selling eggs. At the time, we were charging $4/dozen for eggs at farmers’ markets. Some customers liked to tell me that we were charging too much. Apparently they thought we were getting wealthy charging that price. The reality was that we never made a profit during the years we raised chickens. Despite the long hours we put in to provide quality food for our customers, the labor costs, the rising cost of organic feed, and the rising cost of gasoline made our operation economically unsustainable. In order to keep producing eggs, we would have had to raise our price to at least $6/dozen, and we knew that we’d have a tough time getting that, especially when there were other egg producers around who didn’t use organic feed, and were getting the same price as us. We could have lowered our standards, but felt strongly about not using genetically modified corn, and decided to get out of the egg business.

So, are higher prices at farmers’ markets caused by the rising popularity of markets? I doubt that. I would be more inclined to think that if prices are higher, it’s because prices are higher for everything these days. And the price of food in various markets differs based on the economics of each community. Yes, some markets have higher prices/fancier products/etc. than others. Markets in urban upscale neighborhoods are likely to have higher prices than lower income neighborhoods, or than markets in rural areas. And yes, I have seen the same product by the same grower at different prices in different places… But you can’t tell me that it’s not fair for growers to expect a decent price for their product. And if you ask your local vegetable grower what they earned last year, I’ll bet it’s much closer to the poverty line than the income of most of their customers.
___________
While I agree that fresh produce at some farmers’ markets is more expensive than what you can buy at Winco or another discount store, I’d argue that when you buy food at farmers’ markets, you are doing more than just putting food on you own table… you are:

1) supporting a local farmer/family
2) keeping your food dollars in your community, county or state (depending on where the food was grown)
3) helping ensure the viability of local agriculture (imagine if we were completely dependent on food trucked in from out of state… now imagine gas prices going back up to $4/gallon…how much will that spinach cost at Spicer Brothers?)
4) participating in a food system that is inherently safer than the large-scale agricultural food distribution system (Like buying recalled beef? Keep on shopping at large grocery stores…it’s only a matter of time before the food in your freezer will be part of a recall.)

Americans are used to spending a small percentage of our income on food, and not enough people understand the true cost of the industrial agricultural system we have today. It may provide cheap food, but the true cost of our industrial food is not cheap…

And I’ll continue to believe it’s a good thing to help low-income shoppers access quality food at farmers’ markets.

The lack of posts recently can be somewhat attributed to the vagaries and long lists of summer, and somewhat attributed to a bit of farm excitement that happened early in July. I didn’t want to post until I had a complete story, and the story dragged on somewhat.

Now, however, things are back to normal, whatever that is. And here’s the tale:

We had planned to take delivery of our replacement steers from our neighbor a few days after harvest of the last ones, in early July. Harvest went well, and by all accounts, as well as the data from the processed weights, the beef turned out better than it ever has. After a few days downtime, we arranged to have the new cattle brought over. It was in the early stages of our July heat spell, with temperatures in the 90-95F range. We chose a day that was relatively cool (90F), but obviously not cool enough.

The steers were exceptionally skittish (never a good thing in a 800lb beast), due to the heat, as well as the fact that the neighbor had just cut them out of the main herd a day before, so they had never lived by themselves before. One of the steers was a twin, and always hung out tight with his brother. The topping on all this was that there was a yellowjacket nest just outside of the corral where they were acclimating that got run over by the delivery truck. Hot worked up cattle…hot worked up yellowjackets. Get the cattle more worked up, get the yellowjackets more worked up. You see how this goes. They lasted about an hour and a half, when while I was watching, their circling of the pen accelerated until one of them reached escape velocity…namely, enough bravery to dive into a woven wire and electrically charged fence. Where one goes, the others follow, so the end result is a gaping hole in the corral and a small herd of steers running down the road.

But it doesn’t end there. Fortunately, the neighbor’s adjacent pasture was empty, and had a gate located on the road…a quick zip ahead of them to open the gate, and a little light pressure, and they were in, if not in my pasture, at least contained and safe.

So the next day I spent the afternoon in the scorching 95+F heat, patching and beefing up the hole in the corral, as well as dispatching the yellowjacket nest. The neighbors loaded up the boys again in the relative cool of the evening, and we brought them back to the now woven, plus barbed, and twin electrically charged corral. And they stayed there….for about 8 hours. Come morning, I was walking about a couple hundred feet away to check on them, and they decided that I was the cause of all of their discomfort the previous day. Escape velocity was reached again, through the beefed up corral, in the exact same spot they went through the first time. This time, however, they didn’t want to use the convenient gate to get back into the neighbors pasture…they saw some shade in his trees, and bolted over an old fence into some thick doghair fir and vanished…for 2 days. The thought of losing a few thousand dollars of beef on the hoof to the vagaries of the Coast Range was fairly disheartening, to say the least. Add to that the inevitable stories of the ghost cattle in the rain that people would tell for years afterward, and I was getting pretty bummed out.

A couple of days later, we managed to coax them out of the shady trees, and back into the neighbor’s barn…again. Rather than banging our head against the wall…again, we opted for the charm offensive…the steers stayed at the neighbor’s where they grew up, where there was good shade, a big bale of hay, and I’d go over there once or twice a day to give them treats and get them to associate me with good things. After a couple of weeks of that, they would walk right up to me and nudge the bucket, hoping to get some alfalfa. Now that the weather has cooled off, it seemed that we were on track.

So last Thursday night was the big test…around 8pm, we loaded them, again. Drove them over, again. Instead of the little corral, we gave them half of our big pasture. At first, I thought we were going to be starting from zero (or worse) with them…when I’d show up, they would trot down to the far end of the fence and watch nervously. But, at least they stopped at the fence. Now (Weds), they are pretty interested in me, and while still cautious, can be coaxed to walk up to within 20′ of me to eat some alfalfa treats.  The next step is to rotate the pasture in a few days…hopefully I won’t have a story then, too.

Wow, it’s been a long time since we posted. Spring will do that.

Fortunately, Time magazine comes through with something, so we don’t have to. Their new issue has an article on buying beef by the quarter, conveniently, the same way we sell it. A surprisingly well done piece.

I was invited to speak at the InFARMation (and Beer!) gathering next Tuesday evening. Friends of Family Farmers has been hosting these events since the start of the year.

I’ll be talking about our nearly 10 years of experience raising animals, options for consumers who choose to opt out of purchasing factory-farmed meat, and challenges facing meat producers in our state. Chrissie and Koorosh from Kookoolan Farm will also be talking.

The event will be held at Roots Organic Brewery‘s event space, just south of the brewpub at 1520 SE 7th, from 5:30 to 8:30pm. Pints are $2.50 all night long, so come on down to share in the conversation about alternative meat. For more info, please check out the Friends of Family Farmers site.

Hope to see you there!