Honest Meat

Surf or Turf? Part One

I have always had an intimate connection to the water, from my love of swimming in clean, fresh-water rivers and lakes to my long-term fascination with the intertidal zones of the rocky West coast.  I even wanted to be a marine biologist for a time, intent on understanding the lives of sea cucumbers, gumboot chitons, and anything else strange and squishy found in tidepools (sadly, a high-school teacher talked me out of this career, saying that there were "no jobs" in this field).  I have a tattoo on my back of a salmon, reminding me of my childhood in the Pacific Northwest, standing mouth-wide-open watching the giant adult salmon trying valiantly to propel their bodies over the locks on the Columbia River's numerous dams. I always remember these salmon looking like small dolphins to me because they were longer than I was tall- now you are lucky to see a 24 incher through the fish viewing windows at the dam.

I have friends who fish and sell seafood for a living.  I believe strongly in preserving the way of life of fisherfolk and the culture of the remaining fishing towns and tribes.  What I don't know is whether or not we humans can eat seafood anymore.  Should we instead be paying for these people and communities to perhaps do something else for a living, perhaps doing restoration, monitoring, and scientific studies?

I have a copy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch guide that goes with me everywhere.  I attend the "Cooking for Solutions" gala event every year and hear chefs and fishmongers talking about their line-caught this or wild-version of that.  However, is ANY of this sustainable?  Should we pass up the "surf" and instead eat the "turf"?

Photo by Alexandra Morton via Watershed Watch

I was jarred into thinking about this last night as I was watching an excellent PBS show called Jean-Michel Cousteau Ocean Adventures that focused on Orca whales.  A segment of the show focused on the impacts of fish farms, particularly on wild salmon.  These fish farms are breeding grounds for all kinds of diseases, parasites, and pests, including the sea lice.  In the show they took samples of baby salmon at the mouths of rivers where they emptied into the ocean. Up to 60% of the wild salmon fry had sea lice on them, picked up as they passed by the fish farms that like to locate near river mouths. A fry with sea lice is a dead fish, eventually. They just don't have the defenses to sea lice before they have fully scaled out. To top off this potentially devastating problem, fish farms are now lacing their feed with a drug called "Slice" that somehow keeps the sea lice off the farmed fish.  The effects of this drug on other crustaceans in the ocean (lobster, crabs, etc.) is unknown but could create devastating reverberations in the food chain.  Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg for the problems in our seafood supply.  But if only 40% of the salmon fry don't have sea lice and maybe 5% of them make it to adulthood to reproduce, should we even be eating the so-called "sustainable" wild salmon?  What if everybody who nows eats farmed salmon switched to eating wild salmon- how long would it take to remove every last wild salmon from the ocean?

The ocean needs a break, and I for one am going to be part of that respite.  Sorry to my fisherfolk friends, but our family is abstaining from seafood consumption until science can prove otherwise that things are truly o.k.  So next time I am asked "Surf or Turf?" by my waiter, I shall stick to the "turf".  Next post, I will try to pull together some actual data to see if we could all move to a land-based diet. Thoughts?

What I Learned From Food Inc.

After seeing King Corn, Fast Food Nation, reading Omnivore's Dilemma,  and other popular media on the dysfunctional nature of our food system, I was skeptical that I would learn much from the new movie Food Inc.  Popular media tends to dumb down subjects to the lay person's understanding, and I would hope that I know a bit more than the lay person given my 12 years working in agriculture.  I already knew that our subsidized, overabundant grain production system created the conditions for cheap confinement feeding of livestock.  That confinement feeding of livestock created the conditions for deadly pathogens such as salmonella and E.coli 0157:H7 to multiply and spread rapidly.  I knew that large slaughterhouses break down so many animals at such a fast speed that pathogens can end up in a lot of meat, contributing to a dramatic rise in the size & severity of meat recalls over the last ten years.  These large slaughterhouses treat animals and workers with nearly the same callousness, as though they are merely industrial parts that can be quickly replaced when they wear out.  I knew that the USDA and FDA are completely ineffective in preventing and controlling the spread of human pathogens from meat  and other food processors, which has lead to countless tragic deaths after contamination has already been established.  I knew that the Monsanto corporation seems to be above the law, hiring Pinkerton police to illegally enter without warrants and take samples from farmers fields and to put out of business gentleman like Moe Parr who have been helping farmers save non GMO seed for over 50 years.  I knew that there is no protection from genetic drift, when GMO genes come into your field and contaminate your seed source, making it not only illegal to now save your seeds, but also requiring that you pay royalties to the company who facilitated the contamination in the first place (imagine if an organic farmer had to pay the chemical company royalties when a neighbor's pesticide drifted into their field and coated their crops!)  There are countless other issues that this movie brought up, from the revolving door of corporate boardrooms & political offices, the cheap food conundrum in which healthy foods are expensive and health-degenerating foods are affordable, the industrialization of organics (or you might say the 'Walmartification'), and more.  I knew all of these separate problems were occurring, I had just never seen them all woven together so seamlessly as symptoms of one growing disease.  The most basic source of life, of culture, of humanity's interaction with the earth has been turned into a dehumanizing industrial process.  Food production is now calorie production.  Agriculture is now agricolonialism.  Farmers are now serfs.  

Getting to Win-Win-Win

What happens when over 98% of the population does not farm or do farm labor but yet are completely dependent for their survival on the less than 2% of the population that does?  The first words that pop into my head are riskiness and dependency (& ignorance).  When a global economic system is shaken to the core, I wonder what the reverberations will be.  I hear about and see more and more people, at least in my little corner of the world, trying to plant and grow more of their own food.  That seems to be an excellent strategy to minimize risk and dependency, while increasing the pleasures of the palate with fresh-off-the-plant produce.  Other strategies people are using are supporting their locals farmers through a purchase of their seasonal bounty, usually in the form of a CSA.  While the harvest is never guaranteed, few farms will short their customers produce even when they do have crop losses.  So, shy of the farmer going out of business mid-season or a severe natural catastrophe, CSA customers will receive their share of the bounty.  The shareholders reduce their risk of not having access to good food and the farmer reduced her risk of not having a place to sell that food.  Other folks use barter, trade, and work-exchange to secure their food.  But what about folks that don't live near farmers, don't have time to trade, or enough money to exchange.  How do they ensure a steady supply of fresh, pure, healthy foods?

Pictures Say It All...

All of these gorgeous pictures were taken by Linda Ozaki of Wink Photography at the TLC Ranch spring farm tour on April 25, 2009.  The last photo is our baby back ribs, artfully prepared by Linda's husband, Lorin, who has a Watsonville-based catering business called Rib King.

Good Science or Political Agenda?

Today is Easter and I imagine a lot of people in the Christian world are eating pork today, probably in the form of ham.  So, if you are eating ham or perhaps favor some other form of piggy goodness, which of the above pictures did that pig come from?  The one on the left, where it spent its short five months of life living in crowded pens with slatted floors, where the stench of manure, the heat, and the high-pitched screeching noise is a fact of its miserable life?  Where the tails are cut off and the eye teeth removed so they can't nibble as effectively on each others behinds, since there is nothing else to do to occupy their days.  The pigs are pumped full of antimicrobials (antibiotics and other drugs) in their feed to prevent disease and enhance growth.  The flavor of the pork from these animals is a cross between dry cardboard and texturized vegetable protein.  But hey- at least they are lean, right?  Isn't that what Americans 'need' (but probably don't want)?
Or did your ham come from the picture on the right (one of our first batches of pigs) who started out their life bred for leanness and confinement production, but were brought to our farm as wieners and encountered a completely different way of life.  They were raised for six or seven months to a hearty size of 300-350 pounds live weight.  They were fatty and the meat was marbled, even though they got copious quantities of exercise (which you couldn't tell by the lazy nature of their afternoon dozing in this picture, tired from all the rooting and munching they were doing).  They never got sick, and never got antibiotics.  They were moved frequently to new pastures to keep their parasite loads down, and their livers were the picture of health after slaughter, which is a sign of low parasite pressure.  As one would expect, we get rave reviews for the taste of our pork (just see some of the Local Harvest reviews as proof).  Now tell me, which ham do you prefer?

So along comes a short, preliminary study in the Journal of Foodborne Pathogens & Disease in April, 2008 and a history professor from the prestigious* Texas State University who gets a Op-Ed in the NY Times to proclaim that pigs raised outdoors are a ticking time-bomb, full of potential pathogens waiting to destroy the foodies clamoring to eat it.  First off, as an ecologist and agriculturist, I wonder, what does a history professor from a no-name school in Texas have to say about a scientific study in agriculture?  How does one get an Op-Ed in the NY Times without any expertise? Mmm...I must dig deeper.

Cultivating the Next Crop of Food Producers

I grew up in the suburbs with no intention of becoming a farmer.  I was so far removed from any agricultural roots, with the closest thing to food production in my family being my grandparent's garden patch in Michigan that they carved out each spring after the last frost.  Without going into the long, winding path I rambled to get to farming, my most transformative experiences were on the 5 different farms I apprenticed on.  From a 10 acre organic vegetable and flower farm in Idaho  to eventually running a 200 acre incubator farm in California, and many stops in between, being trained and supervised by some of the most innovative, ecologically-minded farmers and fellow workers built my capacity to do what I do today.

One of the best, long-standing farm and garden apprenticeship programs in the country is housed at the University of California in Santa Cruz.  Perched on a coastal bluff just above the fogline, the UCSC Farm and Garden is an oasis of biodiversity, energetic minds, and enthusiastic educators.  Every year around 40 folks from around the country (& sometime other countries) are challenged and inspired to grow great things from the 6 months of intensive education, training, and hands-on work.  Over 1,200 people have graduated from this program's 41 year history, doing amazing things like starting prison horticultural therapy programs to urban garden training programs to innovative farming businesses to agricultural sciences and policy.  Even though I did not attend this program, I have used the top-notch curriculum generated from the apprenticeship in another adult farming education program I was involved in.  I also am friends and peers with many of the great farmers that this program has helped to generate.  And I also now work for the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems that runs the apprenticeship program, so it has become near and dear to my heart.

This program has big goals and the Grow A Farmer campaign is essential in reaching them.  First and foremost they must raise funds to build new tent cabins on the farm to adequately house the apprentices.  Beyond that they have many other infrastructure needs, would like to keep their amazing staff employed, and would like to offer more scholarships to apprentices with financial needs.  Please go to this link and see what you can do to contribute to the Grow A Farmer campaign.  Beyond just financial donations, they are also looking for more restaurants and businesses to host dinners and other fundraising events.  Consider attending a dinner held in your own region (the list of dinners will be up soon, they say) and raise money by raising your fork (& glass!).  Our own farm, TLC Ranch, will be contributing .25 cents of each dozen eggs we sell at farmers markets during the month of May to this campaign.  Won't you consider your role in helping to train the next crop of ecological farmers and gardeners?

*Picture by Tana Butler, who also did our fantastic new website.  Go Tana!

Alternate Reality

In a few days a new documentary will be stirring up the screens and sensibilities of HBO watchers, curiously named "Death on a Factory Farm".  It is not about farmers committing suicide as they go bankrupt across the country, it is about animal abuse.  Even though I have not seen it, it's premise is based on video footage and testimony by an undercover vegan activist who worked several weeks at a hog factory in Ohio.  Ultimately the case ends up in court due to what are termed "animal welfare violations" in the hog factory, and both the farmer, his son, and an employee are put through an arduous trial.  Part of the problem is that there are no nationwide animal welfare standards for farms or slaughterhouses, other than the fact that animals have to be alive and standing prior to being slaughtered.  But before we start creating a ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL animal welfare standard, let's think about this issue a little deeper.

Truth in Advertising?

Family Farm.  Old Fashioned.  Gathered by hand.  What images do these phrases convey?  A small, quaint little farm complete with 1880s farmhouse, red barn, silo, and a big tree in front yard with a tire swing holding a cute little girl with pigtails?  How about ten 50 ft. by 300 foot long buildings each holding 10-20,000 laying hens pecking around at manure encrusted dirt and each other?  How about dozens of low-wage brown-skinned workers "hand gathering" the eggs?  Honestly (and that is what we are about here), the preponderance of feel-good words on egg cartons has to be some of the most flagrant violations of the concept of truth in advertising (which is only a concept since it is not enforced).  As egg producers ourselves, we get a lot of cartons recycled back to us from other companies (we only use the recycled cartons for CSA sales).  We chuckle whenever we are sorting cartons at the cr*p that is in print on these things. Here is some of the B.S. gleaned from those cartons and the companies websites:

Pork Chops with a side of antibiotic-resistant staph please

photo by Getty Images

There is an unfortunate statistic out there that your average eater just isn't aware of.  Roughly 84% of our meat hogs, 83% of our feedlot-raised beef, and 60% of our broiler chickens (down from 89% in 1995) that we consume in this country receives regular doses of antibiotics.  In fact, over 70% of all the antibiotics administered in the US go to our meat animals and only 30% go for human treatment. Of that 70% given to livestock and poultry, 90% are dosages known as "non-therapeutic" meaning they are not administered due to a specific illness or disease in the animal, they are administered defensively to prevent illness or disease, and to improve growth.  Many of these antibiotics are the same ones given to your children, your mom, or yourself when you get sick, things like fluoroquinolones, cefquinones, oxacillin, penicillin, amoxicillin, tetracycline, erythromycins, and bacitracin.  However, we never administer antibiotics in humans as a preventative tool nor do we give it in low, non-lethal (to the bacteria) doses. Remember what the doctor always says when she writes that prescription?  Use the entire dose, even if the symptoms go away.  That way you will ensure the death to of all of the bacteria instead of allowing a few to survive and develop resistance to the drug.  So while in humans we don't use antibiotics prophylactically nor do we use non-therapeutic dosages why is this practice allowed in animal agriculture?  What are the consequences?

The Meat We Eat: Part Three

My partner and I used to be vegetarians, coincidentally for the same exact amount of time- 12 years.  I began my vegetarianism as a college freshman working in the dining hall of my dormitory, horrified by the ingredients in the chicken nuggets and other 'meat-like' processed foods they offered there.  It didn't help that I was putting on the dreaded 'freshman 15' so I thought cutting meat out of my diet would help for weight control (little did I know that my fake meat and carb-loading ways would actually fatten my up quicker!).  I was getting into the whole hysteria over the destruction of the Amazon, which was being fueled by expanding cattle and soybean production around Brazil.  At the time, I did not even enter my mind that there might be grassfed cattle operations within the same county as my university that were struggling to find buyers of their meat.  I thought, meat was meat was meat and there were no choices, at least at the grocery stores I knew of.

I don't know what drew my partner to vegetarianism in the first place, but he too thought he would avoid meat to improve his health.  However, with his limited cooking skills, he didn't exactly fill the meat void with steamed kale and lentil stew.  He ate more starches, empty carbs, and found his energy lagging throughout the day.  At the time he was even an ultramarathoner, fueling his body with weird energy elixers and gels to keep his body moving.  He now thinks he would have performed even better and won more races had he been gnoshing ham and cheese sandwiches or beef jerky for his 6-8 hour runs.

When we started raising our own animals and killing our own animals, we felt like we could participate in eating them again.  We have a reverence for our animals that people who pick up their identity-less 'meat' products at the grocery store or fast food restaurant will never know.  So what about the morality of killing animals?  Again, I turn to the next installment of The River Cottage Meat Book and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's thoughtful words:

The Meat We Eat: Part Two

The first part of this post I talked about a vegetarian who was consuming meat for the first time.  Our farm sells meat to a lot of converted vegetarians.  While this irks many diehard vegetarians and vegans, they should remember that people make their food choices based on many different factors.  Many choose vegetarianism due to perceived health benefits, desired weight loss, or food allergies.  Some choose this lifestyle due to the negative environmental affects of some forms of animal husbandry.  Still other choose vegetarianism because they are against killing animals, or at least against the poor treatment of the majority of our food animals.  Most of these reasons can be overturned when access to nutrient-dense, ethically-raised, organically-fed, pasture-produced meat, eggs, and dairy products becomes more commonplace.

As I read you the first part of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Meat Book, I will now cover the next section of his "Meat and Right" chapter.

The Meat We Eat: Part One

I was inspired to write this post after an interaction with a customer at yesterday's farmers market.  This customer was coming back to buy more meat and to tell me about his FIRST experience eating meat, some grassfed lamb he purchased from us the week before.  You see, this gentleman was a meat virgin, never having consumed animals flesh (directly) in his life before.  He was happy, ecstatic about his experience, and hungry for more.  Vegetarians and vegans that read my site will be saddened about the falling of one of their brothers.  I, on the other hand, was satisfied knowing the first meat this guy ever ate was from antibiotic-free, pasture-raised lamb that had never consumed grain or spent a day in a feedlot in its life.  I was also happy that this gentleman was going to be consuming an amazing source of Omega-3 fatty acids that instead of coming from over-fished cod or flax grown on the prairies, it came from an animal perfectly suited to the valley and foothill grasslands of California.  I was happy about the countless other nutrients that this guy would now be getting in sufficient quantities- things like iron, vitamin b12, and healthy fats.  I don't question his change-of-heart.  He said he was just waiting all these years for the right source of meat to come along.

This exchange and many others that I have with vegetarians who purchase our eggs or former vegetarians who now heartily consume our meat recalled a passage in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's book called, The River Cottage Meat Book.  Unlike anywhere else I have ever read, Hugh sums up in the most eloquent and personal way the reasoning for omnivory (i.e eating both plant and animals-based foods).  Since his first chapter, titled "Meat and Right" is five pages long, I will only read to you the very beginning for this post:

Help Influence Obama's Pick for Secretary of Agriculture

Although I have not been wild about most of Obama's other picks for Cabinet positions, I am remaining hopeful about his pick to head the Department of Agriculture.  The USDA is a behemoth organization that controls nearly all things food, agriculture, and forest related in this country (with strange exceptions like the FDA oversees eggs and food safety).  Go to Food Democracy Now to add your vote to the tens of thousands that are asking for a progressive leader to head this agency.

These are the sustainable ag leaders that have been thoroughly vetted and are willing to take the job of U.S. Secretary of Agriculture:

1. Gus Schumacher, Former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture.
2. Chuck Hassebrook, Executive Director, Center for Rural Affairs, Lyons, NE.
3. Sarah Vogel, former two-term Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of North Dakota, attorney, Bismarck, ND.
4. Fred Kirschenmann, organic farmer, Distinguished Fellow, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Ames, IA and President, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Pocantico Hills, NY.
5. Mark Ritchie, current Minnesota Secretary of State, former policy analyst in Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture under Governor Rudy Perpich, co-founder of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
6. Neil Hamilton, attorney, Dwight D. Opperman Chair of Law and Professor of Law and Director, Agricultural Law Center, Drake University, Des Moines, IA.

Again, sign the petition today! http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/

Eating High on the Hog Without the Price Tag

O.K. So we have all heard it by now.  We are in a....come, you can say it...re...recess...recession!  The guv'ment is finally admitting that it actually began last year, but we all know it and feel it in various ways.  I guess one of the only redeeming qualities is that the price of oil has fallen, making that expense, at least, a little lighter to carry.

So even though you know and want to buy ethical, sustainable, local, healthy foods all the time for your family, you may be wondering how you can afford it for every meal.  This post is dedicated to giving you some helpful hints on how to eat the best meat while not breaking the bank.

Step One: Expect to eat less meat overall.  By this I mean don't expect to eat prime rib and pork tenderloin 2-3 times a day.  How about including meat in your diet once a day?  Or maybe every other day?

Step Two: For the smaller quantities of meat you still eat, expect to pay more per pound for it.  I know this seems contrary to the purpose of this post, but stay with me here and see how all these steps fit together.

Raising Heritage Turkeys- One Farmers Perspective

We certainly are getting a lot of attention these days.  We are Bourbon Reds, part of a group of turkeys called "Heritage" breeds.  We can still mate naturally, although all of us will be on your dinner table before we get the chance.  We can walk normally, fly sometimes, and run around in a flock like a group of teenage girls at a dance.  We are getting a lot of attention because many people consider the older breeds to be superior in a lot of ways- eating qualities, genetic diversity, ability to forage and thrive without a high-grain diet, etc.  There are even a few persevering farmers out there making a living off of heritage turkeys.  My husband and I are not part of that group.

We (not the turkeys, the farmers) added turkeys to our farm mix in 2005 and 2006.  The first year we raised a flock of broad-breasted white turkeys, the standard commercial variety.  We raised them in bottomless hoop houses that protected them from the elements and predators, while still giving them access to forage for bugs and eat grass.  We would move them 1-2 times a day so they always had access to fresh forage and never spent too much time standing on their manure.  The birds grew briskly and sold out quickly.  Most of the birds dressed out between 15-20lbs.  A few foodies and Slow Foodies suggested we try heritage birds.  In 2006 we raised a flock of 80 Bourbon Reds.  We started them earlier than the broad-breasted turkeys because we knew they needed an additional 3-4 months of growing time to get to decent size.  Instead of raising them in the bottomless pens, we allowed them to day-range and then would close them in at night.  Several of them succumbed to predation because they flew over our electric fence (the broad-breasted birds even when outside of their pens could not fly that high).  The birds that survived grew slowly but surely, still consuming nearly as much organic feed as their large, hybridized brothers and sisters.  And when it came time for these hens and toms to meet their maker, they dressed out on the puny end of the scale, between 8-12lbs.  Our customers who had eagerly signed up to reserve a heritage bird were not only disappointed about the size, but they also complained about the higher price tag and the noticeable lack of breast meat.  So the heritage birds cost 2.5 times the price as chicks,  took twice as long to grow out, ate nearly twice the food, and dressed out at half the size. We had to charge $8/lb. and we still made no profits on these birds.  What was curiously frustrating was that these self-described foodies still wanted the size and body shape of a hybrid bird, along with a small price tag.  Even somebody from a local Slow Food chapter still insists that we should be able to raise heritage turkeys for $4/lb.  Unbelievable words from somebody who has never farmed in his life. 

Many farmers are frustrated by the lack of breeding for commercial production, with heritage turkey breeders perhaps focusing on backyard or hobbyist producers.  Breeding for the commercial turkey producer requires better selection of traits such as faster growth, larger body size, better feed efficiency, more breast meat, and uniformity of growth.  It goes without saying, but to resurrect these heritage breeds it has to be profitable for the farmer.  That means better genetics, more quality breeders, wide-spread information on the most effective production systems, and stronger consumer awareness of the time and money it takes to produce these birds.  Also for those of you who champion heritage turkeys, help convince consumers that dark meat is better than white meat, that smaller birds are o.k.,  and that paying a lot for an animal once a year is reasonable and won't break the bank.

The Real Dirt on Lamb

No, this is not a post about my favorite lamb recipe, although this mint crusted rack of lamb recipe from The Grassfed Gourmet cookbook sure was fabulous.  This is about my growing awareness of the seriously overlooked meat that is lamb.  We have raised a few lamb here and there, not exactly enjoying the experience because their wool insulates them from the shock of our super-charged electric fence, so we constantly caught flack from our neighbors when they escaped.  We found an amazing supplier of grassfed lamb for our farmers' market booth, so we now buy the lamb fully grown and arrange for the slaughter and cut & wrap, but not the production.

I was naively under the impression that most lamb was grassfed, being that it grows fairly quickly (8-10 months) and can thrive on even marginal rangeland.  To my surprise, I found out that over half of American lamb is actually confined and fed grain and hay for the last 2-3 months of their lives.  What about all that fabulous grassfed lamb coming from New Zealand and Australia?  Turns out that our friends down under have had some poor grass years and are turning to grain finishing their lamb as well. It is estimated that approximately 10% of lambs in Australia are completely lot fed, while around 50% or more are now receiving grain finishing or supplementary feeding (According to the Sheep Meat Council of Australia).

Some friends and I conducted an informal taste test of grain finished Australian rack of lamb, purchased at Costco for $10.99/lb. and the grassfed American rack of lamb, which we retail for $21/lb.  The grain finished lamb had a thicker layer of mostly inedible fat, there was more meat on the rack, yet the taste and consistency were quite different.  There were larger pore spaces in the meat, making it actually feel mushy on the tongue.  The grassfed lamb had less fat that was actually soft enough to eat (not gristly) and the meat was dense, rich, and sweet. 

So the California raised grassfed lamb tasted better, but why does it cost so much more?  Some of the reasons include the cost of land in California and the price of irrigating pastures.  The slaughter and cut & wrap charges are much higher than other states as well.  Grassfed lamb has a lower meat to bone ratio and the yield is smaller, making the meat more expensive.  Also good ol fashioned economics mean that a product that is not readily available (California grassfed lamb) will fetch a higher price.  Rather than thinking about the price of the California lamb, let's wonder about the price of the Australian lamb.  How can it possibly be that cheap ($10.99/lb.)???  When you factor in the transportation and all of the middle men involved, what is that Australian producer actually making per pound?  Row crop producers in this country average about .8 cents for every dollar of food they produce.  If that same proportion holds true for the Australian sheep farmer, they make about .88/lb. of lamb.  My math might be wildly off, but I doubt the Aussie producer is making a fair wage for that cheap Costco meat.

Food Fight- My Tentative Review

First let me say that there are not enough films about food, farming, or even social issues in general.  I applaud anyone who can artfully weave these narratives together in a digestible fashion for the average viewer.  Other than little cameos in big-screen movies like Field of Dreams, farming and our food system are mostly absent from popular film, even though we all eat.  I guess producers and directors think the most essential human activity is too basic to cover.  We will have to rely on documentaries with limited screenings to educate our vast nation. 

I was mailed a copy of the new documentary, Food Fight, produced by Chris Taylor and Alan Siegel, to help generate buzz for the screening tomorrow, November 8th at the Mann Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA.  Having already read books like Ominvore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen, The United States of Arugula by David Kamp, and watched other documentaries such as King Corn, I was very familiar with the story.  In a nutshell, Food Fight starts at the supermarket, wondering how and why the food on the shelves of the store got there.  It ends talking about 'our' delicious future and how 'we' each can take personal actions and responsibility to change the food system for the better.  For me, it is the 'our' and the 'we' that I have issue with in this well-produced, pleasant-to-watch film.

The Salad Bowl of Destruction

So here is a picture of an ACTUAL corporate farm in the Salinas Valley that has destroyed between 20-40 acres of wetlands, ponds, and sloughs that border their vegetable fields over the last year.  Why did they do this?  Who is pressuring them to rid their farms of wildlife habitat?  And why are consumers allowing it to happen under the ruse of 'food safety'?

Controlled Animal Impact: Part Two

The grasslands of the world, for all of their variation in species, climates, soil types, and hydrology, all have one thing in common.  They all have evolutionarily adapted to various forms of herbivory (meaning the plants have been consumed in some fashion or another).  Whether it was a butterfly larvae consuming all the leaves on a milkweed plant in preparation for its pupation or a ground squirrel sucking a plant down into its tunnel or a large, intense gathering of elephants eating everything in site before leaving an area for months or years, grassland plants have come to withstand, even thrive by being consumed.  Many grasslands, especially in moister environments, will quickly become shrublands or forestlands if herbivory is removed from a site.  That is the case in many places where cattle grazing has been suspended.  This picture above shows oak trees regenerating and thriving  (but not taking over) with rotational grazing of grassfed steers.

Countless research shows that you cannot paint animal grazing as either good or bad.  It depends on a number of factors, including how the ecosystem has (or has not) adapted to grazing disturbances in the past, the climatic patterns and hydrology of the site, the plant species and communities themselves, and of course, the actual human management of the grazing animals.

Controlled Animal Impact: Part One

I used to manage a 200 acre demonstration farm owned by a non-profit.  As the land manager, I decided to try using goat grazing to clean-up some of the overgrown and fallow areas of the farm.  This was a former crop field that had filled in with mustard, thistles, annual grasses, and poison hemlock.  It did not look nice, appeared to be a fire hazard, and contained a lot of partially buried trash that we wanted to remove.  So I hired our local goat grazing outfit (Sycamore Farms) who brought in roughly 100 Boer goats to tackle some of the ugliest areas.

This is the same area a couple months later after the goats removed the standing dead plant matter, ate the seed heads, and fertilized the poor soils (those pine trees on the right were already dead, you just can't see them in the first photo).  After several successions of goat grazing, and more recently, pig tillage, this area was removed of a truckload of trash, and the weed pressure has dropped significantly.  Hey, who said well managed grazing can't help restore the earth?