GrassRoots Pastured Poultry - taste the difference

Ok not a great shot  - but this is a photo I took of some chicken sheds in south GA very recently

The reason for the poor quality of the photo is because the buildings were so long I couldn't zoom, and I didn't dare go nearer as although Ag-gag laws haven't been passed in GA - yet! the power of the chicken 'lords' in GA is immense and who knows...you can't be too careful, especially with a VITAL AWARENESS bumper sticker on my back window touting humane farming. They were the longest I have seen, tucked away in the countryside of Evans Co. GA, and apart from the ugliness of the buildings, appearing innocuous.  The only sound to be heard was the whirring of the huge airconditioning units clearing out the fetid air and cooling down the intense heat generated by the windowless sheds under a southern sun. It was hard to tell just how long they were but I would say definitely quite a bit longer than a football pitch (American or UK) each housing around 30,000 birds.  There were 5 sheds side by side so that equates to 150,000 birds every six weeks, in just one field, in just one tiny area of the southern states - Georgia, the chicken capital of the USA.
We so obsessed as a culture for lots of cheap chicken and bucketfuls of wings that we support this kind of industry that exemplifies the term 'factory farm' in every way, through our demand and our dollars!!
The sad irony of all of this is that I was just making my way back to the highway after leaving GrassRoots pastured poultry farm a few miles down the road - uplifted by what I saw at GrassRoots I was brought down to a big taste of reality round the corner.  Will we ever be rid of this trade in misery? I fear not, we are too entrenched in 'fast chicken' to the tune of 8 billion a year in the USA.  So what we have to do is push, push, push...and push some more to increase the sales for pastured poultry, by making folks aware of what the conditions are like inside these chicken factory sheds, of what happens to the millions of tons of chicken litter produced each year (at the last count 2 million tons of it in Georgia alone), of how the folks living near these areas suffer from ill health and nausea because of the stench and polluted air, and then show them how much tastier and healthier chicken raised on pasture really is. It's unlikely that we will get rid of factory farmed chicken there is too much money, power and politics involved, especially in Georgia - however, I do believe that we can increase the sales for pastured chicken substantially, and nibble away at the industrialized market bit by bit.
Brandon Chonko at Grassroots Farms is completely transparent (not like the windowless sheds round the corner) - the welfare of his chickens is paramount, but not becasue he is soppy and sentimental about them but because he believes that birds raised on pasture with fresh air and sunshine taste better, and make a healthier meat. That is the reason he started raising his own meat chickens, after seeing the cramped unhealthy conditions of factory farms he wanted to provide healthy food for himself and his family. Realizing that he was good at it and that he actually enjoyed it he took the plunge, gave up his day job, moved south and leased thirty acres in Vidalia country.  He doesn't want to be a rich man  - he's in the wrong job for that unless he became a industrialized chicken 'lord' - but he would like to provide for himself, his wife and young family, and not have to worry about the next bill coming in etc.  He wants to always enjoy doing what he does and not just stick at it through sheer determined doggedness. He wants to farm with joy not misery so that his children, when they leave school, will at least consider farming an option and not high-tail out of Vidalia country because all they had experienced from growing up at GrassRoots was hard-work and drudgery, and a father who stuck at it because he was a "stubborn s-o-b" (in Brandon's words).  If times get bad and it starts to wear him into the ground then he will raise chickens for the family pot and go back to his 'day job'.

Laying hens and their very proud rooster at GrassRoots

But I don't think that will happen - on his manageable acreage in south Georgia, Brandon is doing a great job of pasture raising his meat birds, he knows his imitations, he makes use of what's available, works on his initiative, and he doesn't sell himself short on the quality of his chickens.  He has a steady restaurant customer base for his meat poultry and has a sideline of pastured eggs, and for now he is paying the bills.  If the demand increases then he may up his production numbers from his current 1600 birds a month, but he will not compromise his raising methods and sell an inferior bird under a pasture raised label to do so - quality and integrity are his main marketing tools, in fact probably his only marketing tools - so the taste obviously speaks for itself...and you can't say better than that.
- THE ACTIVIST