Items Tagged With Agriculture

 

This week, from Dec 4^th – 6^th in St. Louis, Acres U.S.A. is hosting their annual conference for commercial scale sustainable and organic agriculture. This year’s conference has a great line-up of presenters including Key Note Speakers, Gary Paul Nabhan of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University, Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm, and Roger Newman Turner a well-regarded practitioner of naturopathy, osteopathy, and acupuncture.

 

The conference presentation line-up speaks to holistic nature of sustainable agriculture in that the presenter’s specialties range from botany, to animal behavior research, soil research, biodynamic farm management, veterinary medicine, community supported agriculture, law, naturopathy, and traditional foods. 

 Here is a sampling of presentations we found intriguing:

 Cows, Cancer & Consciousness

Jerry Brunetti

 

Opportunities in Rare & Minor Breeds 

Kelly Klober

 

The False Promise of Traceability in Our Food Supply 

 Judith McGeary

 

Growing Foods That Make a Difference 

 Dr. Arden Andersen

 

Organic Agriculture Can Feed the World 

 Andre Leu

 

Minerals for the Tumor-Suppressing Genes 

 Dr. Richard Olree

 

“Cows Eat Seed Heads, Pigs Eat Acorns” 

 Joel Salatin

 

Making the Soil Food Web Work on Your Farm 

Michael Martin Meléndrez

 

Stray Currents, a Primer for Livestock Producers

Dr. Paul Dettloff

 

Growing Foods That Make a Difference 

 Dr. Arden Andersen

 

More Carbon! Twenty Years of Improving Soils on Large Family Farms

Dean Craine

 

There are also 3 pre-conference full-day intensive workshops going on right now, one of which is a perfect for anyone looking to start or improve a sustainable ranching operation. The two day intensive is given by Jerry Brunetti, “Keynotes of Animal Health: A Whole Farm Approach to Achieving Health, Productivity and Nutritional Quality.”  

Eco-suppliers will also be there to “display the latest agricultural technology that yields results without offending nature.”

 Acres USA uses the prefix “eco”, supporting the double meaning of economically and ecologically sustainable: Eco-suppliers, eco-agriculture, eco-farming.  Eco is the word here.

 This annual conference was first held in 1975, a few years after the first publication of the magazine, Acres USA, which is now the oldest and largest publication for commercial scale sustainable agriculture.   Founded in Kansas City, Missouri by Charles Walters, the magazine allows readers to “reap the harvest of courageous innovators who sidestepped the Ag Establishment for decades.”   Over the years the magazine has provided an important forum in our nation for the development and dissemination of information on  sustainable agriculture practices, instigating what we could consider to be true Grass-fed Change on farms across the country. 

 

Agricultural policy is not an easy subject to undertake but Michael Pollan was able to eloquently tackle it in his new article Farmer in Chief making a compelling case for us all to reevaluate how we grow, consume and purchase our food.  There are three major points that he brings up that are possibly the biggest issues we face as a nation: health care, energy independence and climate change.   He argues "we need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine." I say right on! Grass-fed farming is about turning sunlight into food, and in the process it can heal the earth, our bodies and our rural economies.

What then is preventing us from grass-fed change? It really comes down to our agricultural policy, specifically our subsidies that make grains, and corn particularly artificially inexpensive.

Growing food in America accounts for 19 percent of our oil consumption and most of our CO2 pollution.  Farm subsidies have perverted how we produce food; it has made corn artificially inexpensive, even though their tolls on our bodies and soil have been astronomically expensive.  Farm subsidies, and corn by default, has infiltrated every aspect of our agricultural process, because we pay agribusiness to grow it cheaply, we can feed it to our cows, pigs and change its chemical composition and put into fruit juice and baked goods. It is time to revaluate our corn subsidies, because there are great implications to being so dependent on fossil fuels that are not only environmental, they are also strategic and patriotic. Why should we be giving foreigners our hard earned money when there is a better way to grow our food?

It really comes down to our agricultural policy, we have for years stressed a system that benefits "efficiency" over inefficiency, by paying large farms to grow grains at massive quantities. So few Americans really understand agricultural policy, or care to see its implications on our daily lives it is our subsidies that are making fossil fuel hungry farming efficient not the system itself.  A good friend of mine grew up on a wheat farm in northern North Dakota, this girl drove a combine as a kid (so cool!), their farm was a small family-run operation of about 1100 acres and they received little to no subsidies from the federal government however the larger agribusiness like ADM did.  Throughout her teens she saw family-run wheat farms buckle under economic pressures while larger agriculture corporations flourish, expand and consolidate. This is story of the past 50 years, consolidation and yet it is in our agricultural sector that this consolidation has been the most obscene, where we have massive feedlots feeding cows corn, and pig farms so industrial they pollute whole communities, that you and I, the citizens of America, can have the most impact.  It is impossible to buy our TV's from local producers but it is possible to buy our meat and vegetables from farmer's who are opting out of our agricultural industrial process.  Change is a foot and there is so much to be gained; it is time to get our politicians to listen.

 

 

The debates will end tonight, so we are holding a Grass-fed Meet-up tomorrow night a the BAR(N) in Brooklyn to discuss the most important topics not addressed at the debates: Food and Farming. If you are in the New York Area, we hope to see you there.  If you are not in the New York area, Start a Local Chapter, ask your friends to join, and hold your own grass-fed meet up.  We want to hear what you have to say.  

Montana Ave. in Dillon

There was a lot of talk about Main Street last night at the debate. My Policy Advisor, Ulla Kjarval, asked in her blog entry, "Are they going to talk about food or farming?" They did not.

I came into this presidential race because I was tired of politicians remaining silent about food and farming. Consider what was addressed last night, time and time again: oil, the suffering economy, and the idea that oil independence is the answer to boosting the economy on Main Street.

I believe that boosting the economy on Main Street and reducing our total dependence on oil can be done simultaneously by changing the way we produce and distribute food. It’s very simple. Food production in the U.S. in the last 50 years has become heavily reliant upon oil in all stages of production and distribution. Many of our suffering Main Streets are surrounded by agricultural land, however much of this agricultural land is now owned by multi-national corporations which utilize processes, machinery, and chemicals that rely heavily on oil. Grass-fed ranchers, on the other hand, use minimal chemicals, minimal machinery, and are often able to sell their food directly to their communities. This is true for many independent produce farmers as well. Farmers benefit under this model by receiving a fair price for their products and by achieving a reduced dependence on oil and chemicals, which saves them money. Their surrounding communities (this where Main Street comes in) benefit because the farmer or rancher, and the people they employ, now have more money to spend at local businesses. Local people have greater access to fresh, healthy, locally produced foods, and increased business from the farmer. It is a more reciprocal relationship, with fewer middlemen and less oil used across the board.

This kind of Grass-fed Change is change we can really believe in. Connecting the dots between Main Street and what happens on our Farmland is essential to this debate, and it is essential that we, the people (and cows) of America support practices, legislation, and policy makers who understand the vital nature of this connection.