Bring the ‘sexy’ back to farming!

PHOTO: civileats.com

Lots of folk are genuinely concerned about the aging population of famers in the USA. Who is going to grow our crops, raise our livestock and put food on the American table when this generation of farmers is too old to farm and quite literally dies out?  How serious is this threat to our food system and are we right to be worried about the future of food?

One outspoken ‘celebrity’ farmer in the USA who oozes optimism, joie de vive, and who is not afraid to tell you ‘how it is’ isn’t so worried; he sees the current ‘age crisis’ as a rallying cry for change. “The aging farm population is creating cavernous niches begging to be filled by creative visionaries who will go in dynamic new directions” Joel Salatin.

So instead of bemoaning the aging population of farmers in the USA we should be celebrating the fact that we are opening up a niche for the younger generation to fill – with their fresh ideologies for a sustainable planet, their embracement of new technologies that can actually bring sustainable farming into the 21^st century.  ‘Natural’ farming methods don’t have to work against science, and importantly science doesn’t have to work against nature; we are teetering on a brand new age for farming.  A new age of agriculture where we can farm sustainably hand in glove with new technologies, without resorting to genetically modified organisms, without spraying our crops with a deluge of chemicals, where livestock can be raised as nature intended – without bars, without mutilations, without being forced to eat a diet which makes them sick, and where they are able to engage in their natural behaviours. This new age is ripe for moving to new levels, and we need an optimistic and energetic youth to take it forward.

Why does farming need a re-vamp?  And why should we be relying on the younger generation to do it?  In answer let’s take a brief look at the last eighty years of farming…

When and why did it all go wrong? In the mid part of the 20^th century farming for the most part turned its back on nature, as a result of the culmination of different reasons and different forces at work  - although many anecdotally attribute the birth of factory farming to the Kentucky (or was it Kansas?) chicken farmer who accidentally ordered too many chicks from the hatchery and had to raise them indoors because she had nowhere else to put them; then finding it so successful did it again with the next flock …and the rest is history (thanks to Frank Perdue).  So that story aside here is my exploration of an event that shook the fabric of the whole world, and changed the global population in every facet of its culture and way of life, including farming, and potentially is an encompassment of the many reasons for the demise of 20^th century agriculture – World War II.

Up until the first quarter of the 20^th century farming was a way of life  - what your grandfather did and what your father did – farming, as an occupation, was what you inherited not what you necessarily chose.  A farmer born and bred didn’t question why he was doing it, or what he could be doing differently with his or her life – one farmed and one got on with it.  Then after WWII the attitude of folks globally had a radical change.  The world had shifted and regular Joes shifted with it.

Some of the lads that would have gone into farming were drafted to fight for their country and saw a different world-view.  They had to grow-up quickly without the security of home, they saw new technologies, different cultures, and discovered that a much bigger world existed outside of their farm acreage.

Agriculture during the war was in the hands of the women and the farmers too old to be drafted, and between them they did a magnificent job of producing food whilst the younger men were fighting on the front lines.  However, a bigger industry was growing during this period – science, technology and engineering – these industries were busily producing the munitions, machinery and the accouterments of war: the era of science and technology was in full throttle. By the time the lads, lucky enough to come back from the war fields, arrived home the fields of agriculture were no longer appealing, and the celebrity of the farmers holding the fort on the home front waned quickly after the war.

With this new modern view of the world, folks started to view farming as a lowly career, where one got ones hands dirty, Why toil in the dirt with smelly animals from sunrise to sunset 365 days a year, be at the mercy of mother nature whilst donning rubber boots and a pair of overalls, when factories with regular guaranteed pay, and jobs in cities with clean offices beckoned, where new technologies were being developed, where one could leave the vicariousness of nature behind and not have to worry about paying the bills after swine fever or a crop failure left one broke.

PHOTO: http://www.wamt.org

BUT then came the dawn of modern farming – if the rest of world could modernize why not farming too? Under this modern umbrella farmers could produce more in less time, machinery could do many of the jobs that before had to be done by hand, weeds could be annihilated by chemicals, hundreds and thousands of animals could be raised on a relatively small acreage and their growth sped up with synthetic hormones, animal fodder came in bags and not from foraging the land…the dawn of industrialization of farming hit the ground running. So why wouldn’t farmers embrace this, why wouldn’t farming seem attractive again?  This was the promise of a new land, the old farmstead inherited from grandpa and grandma could be brought up to speed, perhaps there was a career in farming after all. The baby boomers could be modern, efficient, produce prodigiously, and make money.  Suddenly agriculture was attractive again.  

The modernization of farming has brought with it many problems  - dubious animal welfare, environmental damage, and methods that many agree are injurious to human health.  This is the agriculture that the new generation has inherited and which many are rejecting and reevaluating. This is the dawn of a food revolution, the toll of industrialization is now plainly evident and more and more people are questioning how food gets to the table, more and more farmers’ markets are opening up across the USA, more and more people are wanting to close the chasm between the food producers and what they put in their bellies.  A demand for healthy and clean food is on the increase.  The time is right for young folks to eschew the industrialized practices of their parents and grandparents (the ‘baby boomers’) and move forward with a sustainable yet modern agricultural system.  The baby-boom generation of farmers is getting older and many are ready to pass on the mantle of farming to the young folk – a chasm that can be filled by “creative visionaries who will go in dynamic new directions”.   I was at a sustainable agricultural conference recently and my colleague (‘the Epicurean’) pointed out that the room was filled with folks that looked like they belonged on the pages of an Abercrombie and Fitch magazine rather than Farming Weekly! Now this is not the “sexy” I am talking about here but the point of this observation is that it is very exciting to see so many young folk (who embrace new technologies like ducks to water) engaging with sustainable agriculture, and we need to keep them engaged.  Many of the older farming generation are stuck in the old ways – and ironically the ‘old ways’ are the modern industrialized methods - so it’s time for young folk to jump into the farming seat and ‘post-modernize’ farming with sustainable and high animal welfare standards as the linchpins thereby guaranteeing a healthy future for our food, our health and the health of the planet.

PHOTO: http://www.agweb.com/

So let’s be hip, cool and many of the other trendy adjectives in the lexicon of ‘vogue’ because in order to engage the young people and make farming attractive this is truly the way forward – we need to bring the “sexy” back to farming!

~ THE ACTIVIST

Slaughter: The Problem

One of the pork producers in our network has an on farm slaughter facility where the hogs are double-stunned, once to the brain and once to the heart.  When an animal is stunned to the brain you have about 90 seconds to hoist it and exsanguinate it before it begins to regain consciousness  - that's not a lot of time if you have issues with the hoist etc.  - double stunning ensures that it will not regain consciousness.  A double stun with cattle is not an option so the efficiency lies in a skilled stun gun operator with equipment in good working order. Inefficiency on kill lines and faulty equipment in the mega processing facilities means that animals can and do regain consciousness - the lines are too fast and are sometimes operated by inexperienced workers - the onsite USDA inspectors are too few to adequately inspect, and anyway their main job is to inspect food safety not to ensure animal welfare (despite the Humane Slaughter Act).

Discomfort, stress, pain and fear leading up to slaughter are huge factors in poor animal welfare.  Animals often travel long distances from the feedlot/CAFO or farm to the processing plant – extreme temps often leave animals in a distressed state during transport and on arrival. In really hot temperatures animals can die from heat exhaustion, in the winter it is not uncommon for pigs to get frozen to the sides of the transport truck, which means they are literally ripped from the sides of the truck on their arrival.  These are extreme examples of animal abuse, but the general stress placed on livestock from long journeys, overcrowding, and a heightened sense of fear are daily happenings that would not be reported as animal abuse as they are less tangible and an accepted part of the meat packing process.   Temple Grandin has suggested guidelines that are inexpensive to put in place at existing facilities and that can at least alleviate some of the stress once at the plant. Transportation is a huge problem that needs to be addressed but due to economies of scale will be a difficult one to tackle.

We need smaller and local processing facilities (the kind of plants that have been bought out and shut down by some of the big plant operations) where slaughter-man and farmers have a relationship, where the farmers are guaranteed that their humane raising standards are not nullified by an inhumane kill, where they can ensure that the meat they collect from the processing facility came from their own livestock.

A farmer can have the best animal welfare in place at the farm but unless we address the inadequacies and poor animal welfare standards within the slaughter system, then there can be no such thing as humanely produced meat.

~ THE ACTIVIST

Have you met the movement yet?

By GUEST BLOGGER Carries Abels: Humaneitarian 

Reading a short history of veganism while traveling to a sustainable meat conference may seem like an odd thing to do, but trust me, it made sense. As I flew to Atlanta last week for the inaugural Southeastern Sustainable Livestock Conference, I gobbled up Erik Marcus’s excellent short history of the vegan movement and realized that the humane meat movement can learn a lot from America’s vegan and vegetarian pioneers.

Wait — the humane meat movement?  Few people may be calling it that at this early stage, but the seeds of it have been planted. It’s a movement comprised of ordinary Americans who are choosing to eat humanely raised meat & dairy, organizations that are certifying and promoting such products, and farmers who are raising them. And just as veganism grew slowly but steadily after it took root in the 1940s, the humane meat movement is growing slowly and steadily — like a healthy heritage-breed chicken!

This is where the Atlanta conference comes in. Although geared towards Southern farmers and foodies, it included people from around the country who educate the public about humane animal products, so it felt like a gathering of many like-minded advocates. Three of them were Emmy Bernard of GoEO and Gillian March and Kate March of Vital Awareness. These women (who run organizations similar to Humaneitarian) have long been like rock stars to me, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to meet them!

Kate and Gillian organized the April 26th conference. They’re a dynamo mother-daughter team who visit and promote humane, sustainable farms in the Southeast. They’re tireless when it comes to getting the message out about ethical eating — and they were sleepless in the days leading up to their first conference, but it went off without a hitch!

About 130 people came — with all the spokes of the humane meat movement represented. There was Kate & Gillian, Emmy, and I, who run grassroots organizations that inspire meat eaters to eat ethically every day. There were some well-known representatives of animal welfare certification programs: Adele Douglass, founder of Certified Humane; Carrie Balkcom of the American Grassfed Association; and Emily Lancaster of Animal Welfare Approved. On the policy and research end of things, there was Daisy Freund of the ASPCA, and Leah Garces and Rachel Dreskin of Compassion in World Farming USA, and Eric Swafford of the Humane Society of the U.S./Rural Outreach, and Patty Lovera of Food & Water Watch.

Plus there were fabulous farmers (like Will Harris of White Oak Pastures), chefs and butchers (like Rusty Bowers of Pine Street Market), retailers (Whole Foods VP Edmund LaMacchia gave the evening keynote) and consumers (like Kristin Hanson, who runs the wonderful blog Atlanta Ethical Eats).

By the time the pork sliders and collard greens from Farm Burger were served for lunch (you’ll always eat well at a sustainable meat conference!), folks were saying that even though the panel discussions were interesting, just getting to mingle with such an array of agriculturists was super beneficial. And by the time the bluegrass band kicked up after dinner, new friendships had been made.

So even though the conference was small, it was diverse and whole. It was representative of all the good work being done to create a compassionate, sustainable food supply and better lives for farm animals. Call me sentimental, but being with all those folks in one place made me feel encouraged that our movement is gaining strength, crystallizing, and building on all the amazing work that has been done so far.

“We’re in a new era,” Edmund LaMacchia of Whole Foods said in his keynote speech. “We’ve reached the apex of concentrated industrial food production. The fun is just beginning.”

Guest Blog: The Conference Farm Tour to White OakPastures

For a recap about the conference see our previous post                          

The Southeastern Sustainable Livestock Conference: 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: KRISTIN HANSON at

 Atlanta ethical eats

2014 SOUTHEASTERN SUSTAINABLE LIVESTOCK CONFERENCE – WHITE OAK PASTURES FARM TOUR

This weekend was the first annual Southeastern Sustainable Livestock Conference put on by the talented women at Vital Awareness and I had such a blast attending! I chose to purchase the ticket that included a farm tour to White Oak Pastures on Friday and then entrance into the conference on Saturday.  I’ve talked about White Oak Pastures a lot on this blog because they are one of the front runners in the ethical and sustainable eating movement in Georgia.  Will Harris is practically a celebrity and for good reason.  One of the most important factors in this movement is transparency on every level of the food system and White Oak Pastures is an amazing example of total transparency.  This post will summarize my tour!

Our day started pretty early where we all met at the Gwinnett Arena and boarded the bus for Bluffton.  When we arrived, Will Harris was there to greet us along with his two daughters.  We broke into groups and started our tours.  First stop was the poultry abattoir.  I’ve seen plenty of videos with animals being slaughtered and read plenty of articles about the process, but never have I seen it happen in person so I was pretty nervous but knew that I eat this meat, so I need to see for myself how they are treated both while they’re alive AND how they are treated at the very end of their lives.  It needs to be humane from birth to slaughter.  I was shocked by the efficiency of the whole process.  The chickens are stunned, immediately hung upside down and then their carotid artery is slit and they bleed out in about 22 seconds.  Since the chicken was stunned properly,  it did not feel the cut or the bleed out.  White Oak Pastures does not allow photographs of the actual “kill floor” in respect of the animals.
Next, we moved to the red meat abattoir.  I was really nervous about this one because our tour guide told us he’d had grown men faint at the sight of this kill floor.  But again, I knew it was something I needed to see. First, we saw the butchery where employees butcher the meat and package it for sale.  Then, we moved to the kill floor where a cow had just been slaughtered and was beginning to be broken down.  Again, the entire process was very quick.  A bolt is driven into the cow’s brain (link), instantly stunning and killing it with no pain.  It takes all of 150 milliseconds.

One of the women on the tour asked how much waste was created by the butchering and the tour guide smiled and took us outside.  He showed up how they grind up the bones and viscera to create bio fuel that fuels various things on the farm.  The hides are dried and sold to a local company.  The organ meats are sold to consumers.  The amount that goes to waste is incredibly minimal – they are of the belief that it is respectful to use the whole animal, as do I.
Next on the tour was the building where the chicks and bunnies are kept for the first several weeks of their lives before they are sent out into the pasture.  This is for their own safety because they would be too small to defend themselves from predators or from the other animals who might steal their feed.  The building was extremely clean – they clean it everyday.  The chicks had room to move around, their beaks were not clipped and there were plenty of windows to allow in sunlight.

Next, we toured the organic vegetable gardens.  They grow a beautiful variety of fruits and vegetables along with certain herbs and even some weeds that attract bees and other insects that eat the ones that would destroy the crops.  Almost everything is planted and picked by hand with the exception of a few vegetables like potatoes.

Then it was time for lunch – which was at The Pavilion, White Oak Pastures on-farm restaurant.  Talk about farm to table!  Everything they serve is straight from the farm. We had some slices of beef and a choice of two veggies.  I got turnip greens and roasted turnips – everything was delicious.  Will Harris allows employees to eat at the restaurant for $1 a day.
Next was the pasture tour by Will Harris himself.  Our group climbed up onto a trailer pulled by a truck and off we went to tour the entire 2,600 acres of White Oak Pastures.  Seeing the animals out on pasture, eating grass and bugs, living as animals should was unbelievably beautiful.  You can tell these people really care about their animals.  Will described each species they raise (5 red meat species and 5 poultry species) and what they do to care for each one.  He answered every question we had and gave a really comprehensive tour.

    

Last, but not least, we got to see the egg washing room where all the eggs laid are expected for cracks then put through an egg washing machine, weighed and sorted.  Then we were shown the building that will be a hatchery so the chickens will then be born and slaughtered all on the same farm.  Really exciting!

  

All in all, it was an unforgettable day seeing where my food comes and speaking to the farmers who grow and raise it.  You can purchase White Oak Pastures beef from Publix and their beef and chicken from Whole Foods.  You can also order a variety of meats, cuts and offal from their website or sign up for their CSA!
Know your food, know your farmer.

Southeastern Sustainable Livestock Conference: 2014

What have The Epicurean & The Activist been up to lately?  Organizing a livestock conference, that's what!
Not with animals and barn sales….no it was a gathering of folks mainly from the southeast to learn, network and pass on their experience and expertise in the field of sustainable animal agriculture.
We had a stellar list of sponsors:- Animal Welfare Approved, White Oak Pastures, Whole Foods Market, Coyote Creek Organic Feed Mill, Global Speciality Foods Inc, Farm Burger, and organized by yours truly at Vital Awareness; with a star studded list of speakers - including Matthew O'Hayer CEO of Vital Farms, Leah Garces USA Director for Compassion In World Farming, Adele Douglas founder of Certified Humane, Donn Cooper Farmer Coordinator from Georgia Organics, and the list goes on (check out the website for the full list at Southeastern Sustainable Livestock Conference).

So why organize a livestock conference, what was the point of it, or more formally what was its mission? 

“Realizing that the catalyst for change will come from consumer demand, the Vital Awareness team set about organizing the Conference to bring together farmers, processors and consumers (individuals and businesses) to promote sustainably produced meat. The goals of the conference are to assist farmers provide the highest welfare for their livestock, market their meat, and educate consumers about what it takes to produce meat from animals raised under high welfare standards…ultimately creating a permanent platform to expand the market for meat produced through these standards."

The weekend kicked off with a farm tour to White Oak Pastures on friday, which included a tour of the pastures, processing plants, and lunch at the pasture to plate restaurant pavilion.








Conference day was on Saturday with a jam packed day of seminars lead by an exceptional array of speakers from the sustainable agricultural community.  Lunch was provided by Farm Burger, and meat at dinner was pulled pork from Thompson Farms Smokehouse, and beef from White Oak Pastures.

It was an amazing experience for us as organizers and we had wonderful feedback form the attendees…so I think we can mark it up as a success, and gear ourselves up for 2015

There is lots to tell and lots to write about but we are going  to let two of our favourite bloggers give you a full run down on the weekend's events - so stay tuned.

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An Inside Job...

One might think that a vegan has no business working with livestock farmers, for many vegans this is true and would be a repugnant undertaking…BUT this particular vegan wants to change the way agricultural livestock, destined for the food chain, is raised, and as I see it the best way I can do this is to work within the system and not against it.

So how did all of this happen?  In early 2011 I read a book by Jonathan Saffran Foer Eating Animals, which shocked me to the core.  I thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about what goes on behind the closed doors of factory farming, that’s why I gave up eating meat quite a few years ago.  Well, according to Foer’s book it was everything I knew exponentiated.  I was so disturbed by what I read I wanted to tell everyone I met about the ‘horrors’ of factory farming, I wanted to go into the streets waving a banner, distribute pamphlets with graphic photographs in restaurants, and be a general nuisance at fast food chains and the like…but I didn’t…

Instead I ‘became’ a fully-fledged vegan because I didn’t know what else to do, I just knew I couldn’t participate in the meat and dairy industry any longer.  Eventually I realized that just being vegan wasn’t enough, and to get everyone I knew to become a vegan would not only be inadequate but would be impossible: I had to be pro-active. We live in a meat eating culture  - meat has become the staple of the Western diet rather than an adjunct, so I needed to figure out a way to help bring about change to the current system of producing meat.  If I expounded the vegan way to the general public then most people would cover their ears and eyes and refuse to look and listen, or would say “thanks for the information…but no thanks!”  BECAUSE – one: I have shattered their ‘sacred cow’ (pun intended) by telling them that Farmer John and his happy farm with happy cows somewhere in rural America is for the most part a myth, and the story of Farmer John is a lot dirtier…  two, I then inform them that the only way to change the current system of factory farming is to stop eating meat entirely. In this situation preaching veganism is going to be as effective as a lead balloon. What I also realized was that my running away from the meat industry would not change anything, and at some level was tantamount to abandoning farming livestock to the abuses of industrialized meat production.  So I had to confront this head-on: and so VITAL AWARENESS was born: an animal welfare and humane farming advocacy group founded with my ethical omnivore cohort Kate March, its motto - ‘If we are going to eat meat then let’s do it right’.   At VITAL AWARENESS we believe that changing the system is two-fold: firstly, we need to educate consumers about the reality of ‘factory farmed’ meat; secondly, proactively provide a solution by promoting humane livestock agriculture.

This is not an argument about whether it is ethical or not to raise and kill animals for food, neither is an argument about whether or not we are biologically adapted to eat meat – my argument is pure and simple - we just do and that isn’t going to change any time soon.  In point of fact globally we are eating more and more meat each year, due in large part to cultures whose diets were mainly vegetarian now embracing the carnivorous habits of the West.  As an example, with the rise of a new middle class in China the appetite for meat is growing daily, particularly for pork, and factory farms are springing up in many parts of China, and in the USA almost thirty percent of pork produced is exported to China. Now more than ever we need to be looking at how our meat is produced and be a voice for the billions of livestock slaughtered each year for food, and ensure that we are ‘doing it right’.

So that’s why a vegan is working with livestock farmers; we need to give support to those who are doing it right. So this vegan is engaging with the meat eating culture, and through VITAL AWARENESS is educating the public about the unhealthy impact of factory farming, and most importantly promoting humane livestock farmers.  We work with, not against farmers and ranchers; we SUPPORT and PROMOTE the livestock farmers who are raising their animals humanely and sustainably.  It is only through mutual support and respect that we can get the consumers on board so that as a tour de force we can collectively change the face of the food industry.

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