Honest Meat

Breaking the Meat Processing Bottleneck: Part One

So you produce a lovely, fleshy animal for slaughter. How does it get from your farm to a diner’s plate?  What are the pieces of infrastructure needed in that journey, along with the costs?  In this three-part story you will learn all the complicated and mundane details (from my perspective & understanding as a former farmer), first beginning with getting the animal off the farm to be harvested.  The second part will cover the butchery of the meat with all it’s options (or lack of them) while the third part will cover some potential solutions in creating a meat processing infrastructure that works for direct market producers, the processors, and for consumers.  While this article is aimed chiefly at meat producers and processors, consumers will get a much better understanding of the complexities and costs of getting better meat on their plate if they read along. I hope you will to.

Farming On the Urban Frontlines: Green Gate Farms, Austin, Texas

With gracious Southern hospitality, the owners of Green Gate Farms let us show up, practically unannounced, and spend five days with them on their peri-urban farm just east of Austin, Texas.  Owners Skip Connett and Erin Flynn, both accomplished writers and incredibly handsome to boot, began their farm later in life, a move of incredible tenacity and passion.  They chose one of the hardest places to farm in the country, with drought, wind, and floods nipping at their crops all the time, but an area that desperately needs more vegetable production to feed a hungry, growing population of urbanites.  Texas grows a lot of cattle, goats, cotton, and rice, but not a lot of diversity of much else (yes, there is some nut production too).  Skip and Erin have built not just a successful organic farm, but they are building a community of informed eaters, skilled gardeners, and even new farmers through all of their educational offerings.  They are also politically active, helping to form a new coalition of growers in Central Texas called Gro-ACT.  Their biggest challenge right now might be finding time to do everything that they do and get a few hours of shut eye too.  Listen for more of the great interview with the two of them...

Download GreenGateFarmsinterview3.19.2011

Photo above one of their farm fields, antique tractor (that works!), and market stand, taken in March 2011 by Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Soul Food Farm and The Little Engine That Could

  
The first time I met Alexis and Erik Koefoed (& their amazing children) I felt like I had known them for years.  They welcomed us onto their farm like we were family.  The minute you arrive you know you are on a chicken farm, not because of razor-wire fences or an overwhelming ammonia stench.  Soul Food Farm is nothing like the big farms that fill grocers with millions of chlorine-soaked chickens and bland eggs.  On the contrary, the Koefoed's birds are roaming around outside and only go in their coops when they feel so inspired.  On just over 50 acres of land in a green valley just beyond the soul-sucking sprawl of Solano County, Alexis and Erik are running themselves skinny to become the preeminent supplier of pasture-raised poultry for the Bay Area of California.  They are like the Little Engine That Could of chicken farming.  Not only did they endure after a devastating fire, then a flood shortly after, they now have a weakened economy and increasing competition to contend with.  Competition is now coming from several outfits that are better capitalized or simply bending the truth about how their birds are raised.  Soul Food Farm, on the other hand, is open to the public just about everyday so you can see for yourself the honesty with which they raise their animals.

Listen to our 45 minute conversation to hear how Alexis got started in farming, some of their challenges of being small farmers, and their plans for the future of their farm.

Download AlexisKoefoed1.24.2011

(You need Quicktime to listen to the interview)

Photo above of Alexis Koefoed standing by her mixed flock of new laying hens that should begin churning out yummy eggs any day now, by Rebecca Thistlethwaite, January 2011. Please ask permission if you would like to use.

A Meaty Read by Simon Fairlie

If you are looking for the textbook on the environmental impacts of meat production and consumption, then look no further than Simon Fairlie’s new book Meat: A Benign Extravagance, just released by Chelsea Green Publishers in the US. As long as you can get past his use of quaint British terms like “ley, smallholder, and hectare”, you will find a trove of information on all of the controversial, hot topics around animal agriculture.

At first the title perplexed me- “benign” means harmless, like a tumor that just sits there and “extravagance” means a luxury you could do without. Is the consumption of meat a harmless luxury?  That is certainly not what usually comes to mind for me- a luxury yes but not exactly benign.  There are impacts of animal production, both good and bad, influenced by how and where they are raised.  Nonetheless, I dug in.

This book is organized as a series of independent, meaty essays. They are not tender or easy to digest, so approach them in chunks.  Thus far I have chewn off an easy little chapter on the history of livestock and civilizations, finally walking away with an understanding of where the whole cattle vs. pigs divide came from.  I read about the land efficiency of meat and dairy production and how it might compare to an equivalent amount of calories, protein, and fat generated from purely plant sources.  One of my favorite statistics shows that the production of vegetable oils (such as soy & canola) uses as much land as a similar kilo of beef, supposedly the most 'inefficient' form of meat to produce. I like this statistic because when I hear the constant drone of meat critics saying that meat is just too expensive to produce (in terms of land), I often wonder how much land and inputs the equivalent amount of vegetable-based fats consume.  In another chapter, Fairlie points out that 'default livestock', which is to say 'animal products and services that arise as the integral co-product of a wider agricultural system', may take little land away from food production at all. Default animals are usually grazed on non-arable (read: no irrigation, too hilly or rocky to till) or fed on food wastes of human societies, which the omnivorous pig and chicken are particularly adept at.  Of all the production systems that Fairlie outlines in this book, the concept of 'default livestock' appears to be the most sustainable path for animal production on this planet. 

At times the chapters gets tedious with statistics, but you can’t say that Fairlie didn’t do his research.  Quite the contrary, this book is the most thoroughly researched treatise I have ever seen on the subject.  Simon does not obscure his biases- he is a small-scale stockman that wants to see animals as part of a sustainable, biologically-based farming system.  Yet he approaches his subject with refreshing openness.  He sees some potential in vegan ‘stock-free’ agriculture (meaning without animals), although fails to talk about where the mechanical power will come from in that system. Without animals for draft power, a vegan farmer becomes highly reliant on petro fueled machinery.  Fairlie spends considerable time comparing chemical agriculture to organic, both with and without domesticated animals in the mix.  There is no definitive ‘perfect' sustainable farming system according to Fairlie but he recognizes the many deficiencies of moving animals away from crops, thus breaking the nutrient cycle and requiring more and more synthetic substitutes of nitrogen and phosphorus.  Everyone talks about Peak Oil, but Peak Phosphorus is about to get much more serious to our way of life much sooner than the oil reserves start to run dry.  It is time we start talking about where it will come from.  Too much of it is wasted in our sewage systems or manure lagoons.

As a former meat producer myself and an ardent environmentalist, I am sometimes challenged to explain the complexities of why I think livestock and meat eating are an integral part of a sustainable agricultural system. Animals are best at harvesting inedible forages, utilizing marginal lands, recycling nutrients and waste, and providing draft power.  In many cases they can provide more nutrient-dense foods in terms of calories, protein, and fat than vegetables, grains, or pulses grown on an equivalent amount of land.  Next time I am challenged to verbalize the compatibility of meat eating and ecological sustainability, I will simply point someone in the direction of this book.  This is an important book for anyone interested in the future of agriculture, family farmers, and rural landscapes, especially those that like to chew on some animal flesh now and again.

P.S. You can buy this book directly off my blog by scrolling down on the right under "Honest Books" and looking for the title. I work with my favorite independent book store, Powell's, to offer you books I think are worth reading.  The tiny commission I receive just helps to offset the monthly cost of the blog hosting. Thanks!

Big Bluff Ranch Part 2: Photos

Pasture-raised laying hens eat fly larvae and break up cow patties. Nature's anti-parisital.

New piglets (some part wild) learning the art of flipping soil.

Sows, gilts, and piglets foraging on the fertile river terraces.

 
Expressing their 'pigness' by plowing the soil. A pig without access to dirt is a sad creature indeed.

  
Food production and wildlife can co-exist. Here's a fresh bear track we found along Red Bank creek.

Multi-species grazing with pigs, sheep, cattle, and seasonal broiler chicken production generate more value per acre, control parasites, and eat the vegetation more evenly.

All photos taken by Rebecca Thistlethwaite, January 2011. Please do not use without asking permission.

Big Bluff Ranch and The Foragers CSA

Tyler Dawley, along with his new bride and his parents, run the sprawling 4,000 acre Big Bluff Ranch in Tehama County, California.  As a third-generation rancher, he has to balance the pressures of keeping with tradition and kicking it as far away as possible. You see, most cattle ranchers, especially those that don't control their markets, loose money on each cow. The traditional way of selling cattle at auction or to a finishing operation provides very little value and can hardly support the cost of the land.  Tyler's family was following the same trajectory until they discovered Holistic Management in the 1990s and decided to manage their land and their markets in a different way. Through a newly created meat CSA called "The Foragers", Tyler is getting the full retail value of his meat and supporting other ethical producers in a remote part of California.

Listen to the full interview when you get a chance. This is the first of many audio interviews we will be conducting with innovative and hard-working family-farmers across the country.

Download Tyler Dawley interview 1:13:10

(You need Quicktime to listen to this interview)

P.S. The picture above is of Tyler (the red beard) instructing a couple admirers on his newish poultry processing set-up, one of the ways he can capture more of the value of his animals while maintaining quality too. His operation falls under the federal and state exemption for on-farm processing of up to 20,000 birds per year without USDA inspection since he markets direct to the end consumer.

Heading Out for Greener Pastures

We did it. In the span of four months we decided to quit farming for a living, find buyers for all of our equipment and animals, sell off a household of stuff, locate the perfect RV via Craigslist, and take off with a few days to spare before Christmas. Four weeks later and Jim's worry line on his forehead has almost disappeared, our hands don't ache anymore, and we have learned to sleep in until almost 7:30am.

So what's the plan now that we are homeless and landless? Since our RV came with giant pirate stickers plastered all over it we decides to just go with that theme: Pirate Farmers. As pirate farmers we can travel the world, pull up anchor whenever we want, steal ideas from the rich and give them to the poor, and seek out the buried treasures. The treasures are the unsung heroes, the innovators and the passionate, the farmers and ranchers tucked into little valleys or mesa tops trying to prove that agriculture can nourish, can heal, and can be an integral part of the economic fabric of a region.  We want to find out what makes these farms tick, what resources, luck, and grit got them started, and how they are working towards a harmonious blend of economic, social, and environmental success. We will lend a hand, provide some resources and ideas, and capture the story of the farm using photography, audio interviews, and writing. Our hope is that we can find some like-minded publisher who will help us turn this adventure into a book, one designed to help aspiring farmers or those searching for a new way of doing things, a sort of toolkit for creating a successful, sustainable farming business. We don't have all the answers, but we know that you do.

In the next few weeks look for a post on each of the farms we have visited thus far: Big Bluff Ranch, Massa Organics, and Soul Food Farm. If you have any ideas for our book or farms/ranches you think we should visit, please send them our way. Also feel free to track down Jim or myself (Rebecca) at the Eco-Farm Conference next week- we would love to meet you in person.

Photo: sunset at Big Bluff Ranch, CA. Taken by Rebecca Thistlethwaite

 

A Kink in the Meat Supply Chain

From the look of restaurant menus across this country, you would think that family-scale meat producers would be doing really well. Seems you can't step foot in a white tablecloth restaurant without seeing some reference to their using "local", "sustainable", or "natural" meats. Yet when I speak with fellow farmers, most seem to be having a heck of a time trying to forge some sort of equitable and predictable relationship with restaurants. More often, it seems to be a one-off relationship, such as when that restaurant is hosting some special event or setting up a booth at a food festival. In that instance they may take the extra steps and pay extra to have local or pasture-based meat, but then revert back to their old standby meat wholesaler the rest of the time. I don't have any scientific evidence of this occuring, just personal anecdotes and the stories of many farmers & ranchers that I know or follow. Here are a couple stories of what I am talking about:

On a farm & wine tour a few years back organized by a well known ocean protection organization, I was working with a well-respected chef to source his pork and beef. My husband was to supply the pork and a nearby cattleman to supply the grassfed beef. After many phone messages and emails, I could never connect to the chef, even after offering to drop everything off for him and relieve him of any extra coordination.  I attended the tour and sat down at lunch with trepidation, wondering where the meat had come from. I was sitting across from the grassfed beef rancher and at the same time we looked at the menu laid down in front of us. There was my husband's name under the pork dish and the name of the rancher sitting across from me listed under the beef dish. But we knew that it was not our meat on the table! Instead of making a big scene, we just looked at each other in disbelief. Later on when I shared this story with my husband, he furiously called up the chef's boss and asked for an apology, which he received. But their shennanigans continued....

A couple years later we provided pork loin roast for this same ocean protection organization, cooked by a well-known catering company. Later on, while attending a conference at this facility, I noticed a large poster about TLC Ranch as being a pork supplier for them, even though we only supplied pork ONCE to this company! So every person who walked by this poster were essentially being tricked into believing that we were a regular pork supplier of this catering company. Who knows where their pork ACTUALLY came from.

We had a lot more chef interest in our pork a few years back, when the economy was a bit better. Now that we finally scaled up in order to better serve the restaurant market, it seems those same chefs are buying cheaper, anonymous pork instead. Where does this leave producers?  Likewise, another key issue in why restaurants aren't supporting their local meat producers more significantly is the disconnect between what they are looking for and what producers want. I can't sell a 50lb box of fresh pork tenderloin every week, but I can sell them a couple whole hogs each month. But restaurants often don't have the space to break down whole animals, the skills, or they don't know how to properly menu all the different cuts of the animal. Considering Americans still eat close to 50% of their meals outside of the home, the restaurant trade needs to make more efforts to buy from local, humane, pasture-based sources of meat if they want to be part of the sustainable food movement. Many chefs may decry the loss of flavor in steaks or the dry, bland nature of modern pork, but are they willing to be part of the solution? If they are not, then time to stop all the B.S. claims about how great their meat is.

Chef's Collaborative has a good publication geared towards chefs and the restaurant trade in moving towards whole animal sustainability. We need much more than this, most importantly, better honesty and transparency in the restaurant trade. No more anonymous meat- it is time to come clean chefs....

Sneak Peak of Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlie

I just started reading this fascinating book after a friend at Chelsea Green Publishing sent me an advanced copy. I guess they thought with a blog called "Honest Meat" I should be able to review a book called "Meat: A Benign Extravagance".  This is now the second book in my collection by a British farmer with Meat in the title- my other favorite one is the River Cottage MEAT book.

This appears to be a dense and thoroughly researched book, not for those looking for a quick read about an endearing tale of a former vegetarium-cum-meat farmer or a city girl who trades in her laptop for a butcher's knife. This book is for those who want to delve deeply into the issues of meat production, climate change, food security and omnivory.  I will write more once I polish off a few chapters.  For now you will have to wait and lick your chops. In the meantime, get yourself signed up at Powell's Books to get the first copies due out in January of next year. 

 

The End of our Farm

It was already too late for my family farm when I threw out that challenge for you all to put your money where you mouth is and support a radical transformation of the food system (So You Say You Want A Food Revolution?).  We decided back in August after a particularly stressful morning discussion on where we might be able to find land to rent that we simply could not do this anymore. After six years of pushing a boulder uphill, trailblazing pastured production before it became so well known, farming without money or family land, in one of the most expensive areas of the country, we are throwing in the farming towel.

There are basically four reasons for ending our farming business:

1. LAND ACCESS: We rent land in North Monterey County, California. Half the land we rent is in an active floodplain and is under water for half the year. The other half of land we rent is a steep, overgrazed, parched hillside with no water to help bring it back to life. For all 48 acres we rent, we pay about 10 times the going rate for pasture. The best grazing lands in this region are locked up by a handful of long-time cattle ranchers, the fertile bottomland locked up by capital-intensive berry farming, so we are left with the dregs. To top off the over-priced land, our leases are too short to build a long-term business, the landlords too inflexible, and ultimately, we are building no equity for all the effort we put into the land. What can you do to help solve the land problem for farmers? Make sure your city and county planners don't pave over any more good farmland in your county and don't let them rezone farmland for things like rural "ranchettes" and other developments that carve up viable farmland. If you or your family own farmland, consider offering a low-priced, long-term lease to a good farmer to help them build their business.

2. MEAT PROCESSING: This topic warrants a much longer post, but basically California has only a handful of USDA-inspected slaughter and butcher facilities. Because there are only a few, it is hard to even get an appointment to bring your animals in (one place we called had a 7 month waiting list!). Also, because these abattoirs don't have much competition, they don't have to provide high-quality customer service to ranchers. They can charge what they want, they can choose not to follow your detailed butchering instructions (for example, put nitrates in the hams that you asked for "nitrate-free", cut all the fat off your pork chops when you asked for 2 inches of fat on them, etc.). These abattoirs charge you by the carcass weight of your animal and then sometime they won't even give you the whole animal back that you paid for, such as taking the head, the organ meats, the feet, etc. So we work our butt off to raise this amazing animal and then the butchers devalue your hard work. Having zero control over our processing is extremely frustrating and costly. To top it off, the rules for ranchers processing their own meat are different than those for small custom butcher shops. They can take their meat products to farmers markets without a USDA-inspection but we cannot (Corralitos Meat Market is an example of this). This is a double standard that most customers are oblivious too.

3. THE ECONOMY & CONSUMERS: We certainly have some amazing customers, some who have been with us since the beginning, others who have loaned us money, and many who put faith in us when purchasing an egg share. We get the occasional compliment like "your eggs changed my life" or "I feel comfortable eating meat again when it is from you". Yet we have other customers who want our products to be cheaper, for us to stop using organic feed, or for us to lower our standards in other ways. There are people who want us to use a soy-free feed, but yet are not willing to pay the added price that a non soy feed will cost (it takes longer to grow out an animal without soy and laying hens produce fewer eggs when not on soy). Many customers, in fact, will choose to get eggs from several states away from a farm they have never seen in order to get a soy-free egg or they will buy bacon or sausage that is sugar-free but happens to come from some nameless farmer in Iowa. Many people prioritize their personal dietary preferences du jour (I say "du jour" because these preferences change often over time) over supporting an actual local farmer or perhaps over humane animal care, environmental sustainability, etc. I encourage you all to look at the bigger picture and think about what values you want to support. Added to this, the bleak economy is encouraging many of our former customers to pinch pennies and discard their values for food that are organic, local, environmentally sustainable, etc. While I understand the need to be budget-minded (we haven't seen a movie in over a year), I don't think people should skimp on the food they put into their bodies and the kind of planet they want to see. If we want local farmers to stay on the landscape, we must support them over the long term. When we shop around, try to save a few pennies, or preference our dietary fads over the realities of local livestock production, we are taking away that vital support that keeps local farmers around.

4. QUALITY OF LIFE: We both used to be avid mountain bikers, backpackers, rock climbers, all around adventure-lovers. Since starting a farm, we have had almost no time to do anything fun. Our daughter's only 'fun' time is when all three of us are washing and packing eggs to music at night. We live next to a highway because that was the only land we could find to rent that also had a house for us to live in. We farm in an area rife with criminal activity and had 300 of our laying hens stolen in the spring, but it is the only place we could find that would rent us land. To top that off, we can't find any good employees that would enable us to work less than 80 hours a week and have some semblance of a life. So unlike the beautiful, joyous life that many romanticize for farmers, we don't have that. We need a better life.

So we are off to live in an RV for the next couple years, volunteer on farms and ranches around the country that we admire and hope to learn from, write a little blog about our adventure, and have some fun too. I hope you all will continue to care deeply about the health of your families, the care of animals that provide you food, and the viability of local, sustainable, family-farms.

 

-Rebecca & Jim

TLC Ranch

Aromas, CA

 

P.S. if you are a farmer or rancher that is somehow successfully balancing environmental, social, and economic sustainability, we would like to volunteer for 2-4 weeks with you. Please let us know if you would like our help!