Farmers Notes

On the Horizon 2009 Dreaming…
I have a dream… hundreds of small, earth-animal-people-friendly family farms popping up all around and serving their communities with super fresh-local-seasonal food, packed with nutrition and void of toxic chemicals, and available close by your neighborhood…. Not much further than your local Wal-Mart. I do not see the answer being Wal-Mart and grocery stores buying from small local farmers, I see the answer being nearby local farms selling directly to the public where consumers can see and know and actually develop a relationship with the families that grow their food.

So why isn’t this possible? The main obstacles stopping entrepreneurs from launching into small farming opportunities is the paradigm that says, “nobody goes into farming anymore!”. Why do they say that? Because the bigger-is-better agribusiness mentality of both the USDA and most government policy has made most (not all, thank goodness) of today’s farms, some of the most toxic, noxious, anti-family-friendly places around. Most poultry farms have huge No Trespassing signs with bio-security warnings. They’re not the place you would want to take your kindergarten field trip.

But I think there is a glimmer of hope for the small family farm. I think people have an inner yearning for food purity. A yearning for basic simple nutrition that is so lacking in our industrial system. People are tired of eating sterilized embalmed dead stuff with a two year shelf-life. The pendulum is beginning to swing the other way. We can see it from the huge organic sections in the grocery stores today. I’m thankful that USDA ORGANIC usually means that vegetables are being grown for the most part without toxic pesticides. But even the ORGANIC label is deteriorating, especially when it comes to eggs and meat. I’m careful to point out the hypocrisy of a USDA ORGANIC label when big agribusiness gets involved and stamps USDA ORGANIC on milk from cows that have been raised in huge confinement feed-lots without one spec of pasture. The pretty picture on the milk carton shows contented cows grazing in a field. Eggs that are stamped Free-Range USDA ORGANIC that are crammed into a big metal building, not one spec of pasture, not one spec of sunshine, not one spec of green grass. The label shows happy hens, a beautiful farm house and red barn, and green rolling pastures. This is, in fact, the lie we tell ourselves about where our food comes from.

When you go to the local small family farm, you can look around and see how the animals are raised. If you have a question, you don’t call the 800 information line, you ask the farmer himself. You see where your food comes from and you can provide direct feedback to the person growing your food! You can see and taste the freshness in your food. The quality and taste is way beyond the USDA ORGANIC stamp. Not to mention you are supporting our local economy, protecting our streams and estuaries from pollutants and chemical run-offs, not ingesting toxic pesticide residues, and encouraging more small farms to pop up across the countryside. And one of the really big ones: It really, really tastes better! Wow, what a concept.

Thank you!

-Scott