Tag: Pasture Raised

Herbivores, and especially livestock have been blamed for ruining the environment. Environmental scientists claim that overgrazing by livestock, namely cows, has resulted in desertification (land turning to desert.) It’s true that mismanaged livestock has caused environmental damage, but this does not mean that livestock itself is to blame.

For decades, the official policy to protect and restore land in national parks and elsewhere was to eliminate livestock. This policy has not been proven to work. Land in national parks is no better than it was before, much of it is worse. Nature doesn’t abandon land, she fills it with animals.

Grasslands developed over millennia with large numbers of herbivores. Huge herds of buffalo, elk, gazelles, zebras, and other even larger herbivores that have gone extinct. These animals lived in tight herds to protect themselves from pack hunting carnivores. A large herd of herbivores would quickly defecate all over the ground and their food, forcing them to move to fresh ground. This prevented them from overgrazing the grass.

What Happens When We Abandon Land?

Grass, once it is fully grown, must decay or be removed before the next year’s growing season. If it’s not, the grass and soil begin to die. If grass cannot decay biologically, it shifts to oxidation. This is the brown grass you see in pasture that’s not been grazed recently. Oxidation can take up to 60 years to complete in drier environments. Meanwhile, this dead grass smothers new growth, leading to a shift toward woody shrubs with bare ground in between.

Bare ground cannot hold water and is easily eroded. In my article, The Conventional Food System is Fragile, I wrote about how erosion has affected cropland. In America, we’ve lost as much as 30% of our topsoil in the last 200 years.[3, 5] That’s the power of erosion.

Fire is another hazard created by abandoning grassland. Dead, dry grass is very susceptible to fire. Just look at california. Not only is fire dangerous to humans and wildlife, it’s dangerous for the environment. French research has shown that a one and a half acre grassland fire releases more carbon dioxide than 3,694 cars per second and more nitrous oxide than about 1,400 cars per second. Biomass burning accounts for 40 percent of C02 production annually.[2]

One of the reasons, that desert stays desert is because the ground cannot hold water. Soil needs organic matter to hold water. It needs plant matter to protect it from the hot sun and it needs organic materials to hold onto water. Without these two things, water runs right off and evaporates within hours after rainfall ends.

Grass Wants to be Cut

When a plant, such as grass, reaches maturity, it stops growing and begins to die off. This is the brown grass you see in many pastures. The life cycle of a grass plant is short, only a couple months. When grass reaches the end of its life, it wants to be pruned off so it can start over. Without that pruning, the leaves are left to decompose on their own.

You might think that animals trampling and eating grass would kill it. But that’s not true. Grasses are specifically designed to lose significant parts of itself, yet thrive afterward. Think of cutting the grass in your lawn. That’s a violent endeavor. You’re taking a fast spinning sharp blade and cutting the top few inches off the plant. Imagine if someone came along and cut your arms off. Would you thrive afterward? No. But grass does. Grass loves to be mowed, weeds do not. This is grass’ competitive advantage.

How Do We Maintain Billions of Acres?

Your first thought might be to use large lawn mowers, also known as brush hogs. It makes sense at first, homeowners use lawnmowers. Why not use them on grasslands? Well, for one, there’s over 12 billion acres of dry rangeland that needs to be cared for. Does anyone really think that mowing 12 billion acres is realistic? Even if we only mowed 1 billion acres, who’s going to pay for it? To put this in context, 1 billion acres would be like mowing every single acre in Alaska, Texas, and California.

Not only would this be expensive in terms of dollars, it would burn up a lot of fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels in the name of carbon sequestration. Sounds like a recipe for success to me. So, i’ll consider that a no for the majority of grasslands.

Our second method to maintain grassland is to burn off the dead vegetation, to make way for new growth. The forest service has used this method to restore land and to prevent wildfires. I’ve already established how polluting a grassland fire is. Not to mention how big a threat it is to wildlife and people’s homes. I’m going to say that burning is not the solution. Just ask any californian if they’d like more grassland to burn.

We Need Livestock to Mow Grass

The third solution would be to use animals. Animals don’t run on fossil fuels and don’t cost money to run, other than management costs. The idea behind abandonment is to let the wildlife return to haw they grazed hundreds of years ago. Unfortunately, we simply do not have the numbers of wildlife required to maintain grasslands. Not only do we have too few animals, but the prairies in north america and other countries has been divided up by human settlement. People live there. That interrupts the natural migration patterns of wildlife.

If we can’t rely on wildlife, then how about livestock? Using electric fence, livestock can be managed in a way that mimics the wild herds that built prairies around the world. Now to make the animal rights people happy, let’s suppose we run these millions of herbivores for the sole purpose of mowing grass, letting them die of old age or predators. Okay, who pays for it? We end up with the same problem we had with mowing.

When you run a herd of livestock without harvesting any of them. They become recreational. Someone has to pay the ranchers to manage these herds. They can’t manage themselves. But, when you allow the ranchers to sell their animals, suddenly this becomes a business that can pay for itself. It’s sustainable. It doesn’t need a check from the government or a non-profit.

Don’t Blame the Cow

One of the hurdles to using cows to maintain grassland is that cows produce methane during digestion. Because of this environmentalist and vegans want cows to be eliminated. This is a problem that can be overcome with proper management. Methane production is aggravated when livestock eat poor quality grass.[4] This happens with continuous grazing where the pasture quality declines over time.

Yes, it’s true that cows produce methane. However, when managed properly, their carbon sequestration more than offsets their methane output.[6] Research at the University of Louisiana has demonstrated that enteric methane emissions can be notably cut when cattle are regularly moved on to fresh pastures.[4]

Cows have also been unfairly blamed for ruining the environment by overgrazing land until it turns to desert. As if cows have a personal vendetta against the climate. This is simply not true. Cows are a tool, they can be used to restore the environment, or misused and end up destroying the environment.

As an example, let’s use a kitchen knife. Knives can be very useful. They can turn a pile of vegetables and meat into a delicious stew. But that very same knife can also be used to murder someone. That’s not the knife’s fault. No one blames the knife for a stabbing.

In the same way, no one should blame the cow for harming the environment. The ones to blame are the ranchers who leave them to overgraze, and the environmentalists who remove them only to find the land degrades even faster with zero grazing.

Livestock Can Sequester Carbon

“A growing body of research shows that livestock grazing can enhance biodiversity.”

Ecosystems of California – university textbook

Since I’ve established that livestock are the only viable option in maintaining land, let’s talk about how they can also help to fight climate change. To understand this, you should understand a little about how grass grows. Grass goes through roughly three stages as it grows. The first is when it’s small, either a seedling or just been mowed. The second is the growth spurt on the way to maturity, this is when most of the carbon sequestration happens. The third stage is maturity. This is when grass stops growing and will eventually go dormant.

As you probably concluded, we want to keep grass in the growth spurt stage a much as possible. The only way to do that, is to keep mowing it. And the best way to mow it is with livestock.

Data collected from the Michigan State University proves just how beneficial managed grazing can be. The cattle raised in feedlots averaged over three times as much carbon emissions per kilogram as cattle raised in managed grazing.[6] Their carbon sequestration vastly out weighted any slight increase in methane production. In April 2014, Seth Itzkan published a 34 page paper where he concluded that holistic managed grazing could sequester between 25 and 60 tons of carbon per hectare per year.[7]

Effective sequestration isn’t just about growing more plant matter. Carbon sequestration means putting carbon into the soil. This is how the fertile soils of the midwest were formed. Carbon is sequestered in a cooperative process between plants and mycorrhizal fungi in the soil. A protein called glomalin holds the carbon, making up 15% to 20% of the organic matter in the soil.

Livestock is the only farming method to achieve this. When you till soil, the mycorrhizal fungi are injured, reducing carbon sequestration. The UK Soil Association found that plowing up grazing lands in the UK results in 1.6 million tons of carbon releasing into the air every year.[1]

Support Sustainable Farms, Fight Climate Change

One of the most effective ways for you to fight climate change is by changing your eating habits. The UK soil association found that organic farming increases soil carbon levels. And not just a little bit, the average carbon levels were over 20% higher than non-organic farming.[8]

Sustainable farming doesn’t pollute. It doesn’t stink up the neighborhood. It doesn’t truck its food all over the world. Sustainable farmers try to leave the environment better than they found it. They feed their cows grass instead of grain. They grow their crops with little to no tillage. They raise animals outside, a revolutionary idea nowadays.

There’s yet another reason to buy food from a sustainable farm, economics. When you buy grass finished beef instead of feedlot beef, you’re voting with your dollars. Buying from a small sustainable farm means a lot more than buying from a billion dollar food company. While a huge food company will hardly notice your lost purchase, your small farm purchases may mean the difference between that farmer needing a day job and being able to go full-time. That’s why local farmers are so grateful to their customers.

References

www.soilassociation.org/media/4954/policy_soil_carbon_full_review.pdf
www.savory.global/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/climate-change.pdf
Food, Energy, and Society, David Pimentel and Marcia Pimentel, 2007
Defending Beef, Nicolette Hahn Niman, 2014
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, David R. Montgomery, 2012
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2018.02.003
http://planet-tech.com/upsidedrawdown
https://www.soilassociation.org/media/4954/policy_soil_carbon_full_review.pdf

The Conventional Food System is Fragile

January 13, 2019

Paul Chancellor

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The Conventional Food System is Fragile

Posted in Food for Thought

Many people think that growing food the conventional way is the only way to feed the world. After all, that’s what they’ve been told for years. Conventional farming practices have created a system that is fragile because it relies on many outside factors to continue functioning. The failure of any one of these could lead to higher food prices or worse, the failure of millions of acres of crops or widespread death of livestock.

Reliance on Drugs, Pesticides, and Herbicides

When an industrial farm crams thousands of animals into a building, they create an ideal environment for pathogens. The same goes for cropland. When you have thousands of the same plant in a relatively small area, pests that target that plant have a virtually unlimited supply of food.

In confinement animal feeding operations (CAFOs) this requires the use of antibiotics. The overuse of antibiotics has led to antibiotic resistant bacteria. Herbicide resistant weeds are showing up in croplands. Nature abhors a monoculture and is fighting back against these unnatural farming practices. Nowhere in nature will you find only one species of plant or animal. Nature thrives on diversity.

The question is, what happens when we run out of effective antibiotics? At our current trajectory, it’s not a matter of if, but when. Most confinement operations feed antibiotics on a continuous basis. Some of these antibiotics are not even necessary. Some operations feed antibiotics to speed growth. Others to prevent disease. All the while, bacteria are reproducing and mutating.

According to the CDC, overuse and misuse of antibiotics leads to bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics.[4] Once that happens, this bacteria quickly become the dominant bacteria since there is no other competition. It’s unclear how many drug resistant diseases were developed in factory farms. Some undoubtedly came from us. After all, livestock farms are not the only ones abusing antibiotics.

In 2013, the CDC published a report outlining the to 18 drug-resistant threats. Among them were: Clostridium difficile which causes 250,000 infections each year and 15,000 deaths. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) causes over 80,000 infections each year and over 11,000 deaths. Streptococcus pneumoniae is the leading cause of bacterial pneumonia and meningitis in the United States with 1.2 million infections and 7,000 deaths.

The Electricity Cannot Go Out

This is mostly a problem for industrial animal operations. Namely pig and chicken farms. These farms use electricity for ventilation, distributing feed, and monitoring the operation. These buildings need constant ventilation to keep methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and other toxins from building up. If the fans stop running for even a few minutes, the pigs or chickens will start suffocating.[1]

A few years back, a wind storm blew through northern Virginia. Most of the region was out of power for over a week. Many confinement operations lost thousands of pigs and millions of chickens. Meanwhile at polyface farm, a pasture based sustainable farm, most of the animals had no idea the power was out. The only real damage was from the wind storm itself. Many pasture shelters were blown away, leaving the chickens to wonder what happened to their shade. These chickens were quickly herded up in temporary shelters until their individual shelters could be rebuilt. Very few chickens died at polyface, because they did not depend on electricity.

What if the Water Runs Out?

Conventional farming uses a lot of water. You may have heard about the struggle between Los Angeles and the farmers upstream on the Colorado river. Los Angeles claims that the farmers are using too much water leaving them with a water shortage. The farmers claim that they need the water or they’ll go out of business.

High yield corn does not mean that a corn plant produces more corn per plant. What it really means is that you can plant more plants per acre. More plants need more water. Whereas an acre of corn decades ago might have been able to survive on rainwater, a high yield acre of corn needs to be irrigated. Either from groundwater or rivers.

You’ve likely seen the round fields of the Midwest. Many round plots next to each other. You might wonder why they don’t make them square to use all of the land. The reason they are round is that they are using a center pivots to water the crops. A long arm rotates around a center which provides water to sprinklers. Most of these center pivots use groundwater. And they use a lot.

“Corn production in the U.S. erodes soil about 12 times faster than the soil can be reformed, and irrigating corn mines groundwater 25 percent faster than the natural recharge rate of groundwater.”[2]

David Pimentel, professor at Cornell University.

Cropland is Eroding Away

It may not surprise you, but bare ground is very susceptible to erosion. Without dense cover, rain and wind can easily break soil apart and carry it away. Think of grass like clothing. Grass is essentially clothing for soil. You wouldn’t go outside without clothes on, why should the Earth have to go without its clothes?

“Row crops are highly susceptible to erosion because the vegetation does not cover the entire soil surface.”

Food, Energy, and Society by David and Marcia Pimentel[7]

A project conducted by the Land Stewardship Project showed that pasture used for grazing can have up to 80% less erosion than cropland.[8] This is not a small problem. The estimated acreage for the four major crops, corn, soybean, wheat, and cotton is approximately 240 million acres.[10] This type of farming, which leaves its soil exposed for much of the year has caused the United States to lose as much as 30% of its topsoil in the last 200 years.[7, 9] Remember the dust bowl?

The saddest part about this, is that a majority of the corn and soybeans grown in the US are not necessary. Corn ethanol production is hopelessly inefficient. It takes more than a gallon of fossil fuel to make a gallon of ethanol. Feeding grain to cows is another waste. Cows are perfectly capable of living off nothing but grass, yet we burn millions of gallons of fossil fuel every year to grow and transport grain to feed them.

As disappointing as this is, it’s not surprising. After all, there are no subsides to raise cattle and conserve grasslands. All federal farm subsidies go toward grains, which require plowing.

Farmers are Getting Old

As of 2012, the average age of farmers in America is 58 years old.[6] This number has only been going up, and will probably continue to go up. Why? Because getting into conventional farming is expensive. To be a chicken farmer, you have to spend $200,000 to $400,000 up front to build the specialized buildings required by the poultry companies. Hog farmers face a similar situation.

Independence is being wrung out of modern farmers. Open markets have all but been eliminated. A hog farmer who doesn’t have a contract with a pork company will find himself getting even less money for his hogs at auction. Chicken farmers don’t even own their birds, so losing a contract means their expensive buildings sit empty, losing money with every mortgage payment.

Crop farmers have also faced the consequences of the USDA’s “get big, or get out” doctrine. With grain prices lower than the cost to grow the grains, farmers rely on subsidies to survive. Even with subsidies, many farmers still have to take on jobs to pay the bills.

Needless to say, many children of farmers are moving to the city to get higher paying jobs. And their parents aren’t necessarily upset. They would rather their children make a good living than struggle like they do every day.

Industrial Farming Needs Cheap Energy

Energy is cheap. In fact, energy is the cheapest it has ever been in the history of the world. Never before has it been so cheap to ship products across the country or the world.

It’s never been so cheap to farm. Tractors running on cheap fuel have revolutionized farming. An acre was originally defined as the amount of land a farmer with oxen could till in one day. One acre a day. Now a farmer can till many dozens of acres a day. All from the comfort of his climate controlled tractor.

This is only one small part of the whole system. The entire conventional food system relies on cheap energy. It needs cheap fuel to transport components thousands of miles. It needs cheap energy to run the factories. It needs cheap mining and cheap refining to provide cheap fertilizers.

If energy becomes expensive, several things happen. It suddenly becomes very expensive to transport food thousands of miles. Manufacturing of chemical fertilizer becomes expensive. Transportation costs turn cheap grain into not-so-cheap grain. All of this would lead to food prices going up, way up. The more processed a food is, the more cheap energy it needs.

We all know how volatile the price of oil can be. All it takes is a hurricane in Louisiana and the price of oil goes up by nearly $70 a barrel.[11] The more oil we pump out of the ground, the harder it becomes to find new sources. We’ve gone from finding oil literally spewing out of the ground to searching miles offshore in the ocean. Many experts worry that we will eventually run out of oil. If that is true, then say goodbye to cheap energy.

Sustainable Farming is Inherently More Resilient

When the electricity goes out on a pasture based farm, most of the animals wouldn’t even know. They’re all outside, or in shelters that don’t need electricity to operate. The small amount of electricity required to run certain parts of the farm can be supplied by generators until the power comes back on.

While cheap energy benefits sustainable farms like it does industrial farms, they don’t require it. Sustainable farms don’t need massive machines to operate. Many small sustainable farms don’t even have small tractors. With fuel usage so low, even a doubling in the price of oil would not significantly impact a sustainable farm. At Polyface farm, a sustainable farm in Virginia, Joel Salatin estimated that fuel cost only accounted for about 5% of their expenses. They could afford to pay 2 to 3 times as much for fuel and still be okay. Try paying twice as much for gas with a conventional farm.

Pests and disease cannot thrive in a diverse environment. When a chicken pathogen hatches out in chicken manure, it needs to find a chicken to infest. In a confinement farm this is easy. But on a sustainable farm, the chickens are moved everyday to new ground, leaving those newly hatched pathogens behind before they can infest a new host.

Water is another resource that sustainable farms do not need as much of, especially per acre. This is mainly because sustainable farms raise less animals per acre. Proponents of industrial farming would claim that this is less efficient, and that’s true. But is also easier on the environment. Nature is not designed to have thousands or millions of animals living on an acre in perpetuity.

Conventional farming may be facing a lack of new talent, sustainable farming is attracting a lot of folks who want to get out of the cubicle and help the environment. It isn’t even about the money for some, it’s about communing with nature. That’s the beauty of sustainable farming, not only is it good for the environment, it’s good for the farmers as well.

References

Righteous Porkchop, Nicolette Hahn Niman, 2010
news.cornell.edu/stories/2001/08/ethanol-corn-faulted-energy-waster-scientist-says
www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/biggest_threats.html
www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/community/about/antibiotic-resistance-faqs.html
www.tesh.com/story/health-and-well-being-category/life-on-10-a-gallon/cc/6/id/12440
agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Online_Resources/Highlights/Farm_Demographics/#average_age
Food, Energy, and Society, David Pimentel and Marcia Pimentel, 2007
Defending Beef, Nicolette Hahn Niman, 2014
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, David R. Montgomery, 2012
usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/Acre/Acre-06-29-2018.pdf
oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/What-Affects-Oil-Prices.html

Why Pastured Chickens Need Shelters

December 20, 2018

Paul Chancellor

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Why Pastured Chickens Need Shelters

Posted in Food for Thought

Chickens raised on pasture are healthier, happier, and more nutritious. But being out on pasture means they’re exposed to several dangers. We have to protect them from the hot sun and cold rain yet still allow them to get sunshine when they want it.

Chickens, especially meat chickens, are easy and tasty meals for nearly every predator you’ll run into. Raccoons, possums, and foxes are the most common. You’ve heard about the fox in the hen house. But aerial predators like hawks, eagles and owls are also a problem. This is where chicken shelters come in. they offer protection from all of these things while still allowing the chickens to have fresh clean grass every day.

Keep the Predators Away

Chickens are tasty treats for predators. They don’t see well in the dark. When they can’t see, they tend to stay put. This makes them especially easy to catch at night. A Fox or raccoon merely has to grab them and start eating. Many predators are so relaxed that they eat the chickens in the coop and leave what they don’t eat for the us to find the next day.

This situation is bad enough with athletic egg layers. It’s even worse for lethargic meat chickens. Americans have become accustomed to plump cornish-cross meat chicken. These chickens grow very fast, even on the natural feed we use. They don’t need hormones or antibiotics to grow fast, they’re bred to grow fast on their own. This fast growth rate makes them tire easy. It takes a lot of energy to haul around twice as much weight as a normal chicken.

Cornish-Cross’ large size makes them slow. It’s harder to get that much weight to move quickly. They can’t just jump away when a predator grabs them. That makes them sitting ducks, or chickens.

So far the only predators I’ve talked about were ground predators. Chickens also have to deal with aerial predators. Eagles, chicken hawks, and other predatory birds like to swoop down and grab a chicken, then take off with it. Fences will keep out the ground predators, but aerial predators simply fly over. This is why our chicken shelters have roofs. The roof keeps the aerial predators out, but also serve two more important functions.

Shade from the Hot Sun

Meat chickens are raised in the summer, when it’s hot out. They don’t do very well in the winter. It’s cold. Meat chickens don’t have as many feathers as normal chickens. This cold makes them, uncomfortable, grow slower, and not to mention, dealing with frozen water sucks. It’s uncomfortable for both the chickens and for the farmer.

These are just a couple reasons sustainable farmers choose not to raise their chickens in the winter. The only exception are some farms in the south where it doesn’t get so cold in the winter. This means raising them in the summer. In most parts of the country it gets hot during midday. Pastured chickens love sunbathing in the morning when it’s cool out, but once the temperature rises, they go waddling for the shade. Heatstroke is a real problem for livestock, especially meat chickens.

The metal or plastic roof provides a cool barrier against the sun. Farmers make a point to include vents near the bottom to allow airflow. Hot air rises, this pulls cooler air in through the vents, providing a natural cool breeze.

Shelter from the Weather

Being out on pasture means weather. That means rain, cold temperatures, and wind. Frequently at the same time. Rain and wind together are a double whammy to chickens. Meat chickens live on the ground. They’re too big and clumsy to roost. They would also be too heavy. Ten full grown meat chickens would collapse most roost poles.

Being on the ground can be a good thing. Grass can provide a soft warm place for the chickens to snuggle together. Not to mention, it’s clean. Good pasture will absorb lots of water. Even in a steady rain you can look inside the shelter and see nice dry ground. Only when the rain starts pouring do farmers have to bring out the straw to give their chickens a dry place to lay.

Being a pasture based farmer, means worrying about the weather. While you may get to sit inside watching the thunderstorm in comfort. They’re out in the rain stuffing straw under the shelters so their birds can get dry. Wet birds can get sick rather quickly. This is the commitment to humanely raising the best meat in the world.

Keep Them out of Yesterday’s Poop

Moving chickens everyday leaves yesterday’s poop behind. Being in a shelter means they are separated from it. This eliminates most of the disease vectors that chickens suffer from. Many diseases have about a 24 hour incubation period. Poop dropped 24 hours ago contains pathogens looking for a new host. When a farmer move his chickens, those pathogens are left stranded to die in the sunshine. This is how sustainable farmers are able to raise chickens without antibiotics.

Another benefit of moving chickens every day is that it gives the chickens fresh grass and bugs to eat. We’ve all been told we need to eat our greens. Well that goes for chickens too. Chlorophyll is a detoxicant. You’ve probably seen chlorophyll tablets in the health food store. Fresh grass provides vitamins and nutrients to keep pastured chickens healthy. You can’t get any fresher than eating it off the ground.

These nutrients that pastured chickens ingest go into their meat. That is why pasture raised chicken is so much healthier than factory farm chicken. Farmers move their chickens everyday, sometimes twice a day, because the grass gets dirty quickly. You wouldn’t want to eat dirty food, neither do chickens.

Pastured Chickens like their Shelters

Occasionally while moving the chicken shelters, one or two chickens will get out. You might think that they would run off, happy to have their freedom. This doesn’t happen. A newly freed chicken will look around for a moment, then run over to the shelter and begin looking for a way back in. They will circle the shelter looking up and down for a hole to climb through.

Perhaps this sounds crazy. Why would a chicken want back in? Isn’t it happy to be free? Not necessarily. Chickens are social creatures. They live in flocks. When one gets separated it wants to get back to the flock. Meat chickens are not used to being outside the safety of their shelter. It’s scary. Maybe if they got used to it, they would like it. If they survived long enough.

The truth is, pastured chickens like being in their shelters, it’s what they’re used to. They get plenty of fresh air, and as much sunshine as they want, but not too much. Pastured chickens have more than twice the amount of room as factory farm chickens.

As you can see, sustainable farmers are not putting their chickens in chicken shelters to be mean. They’re doing it because they love them. You wouldn’t let your baby crawl around wherever it wants, you keep it safe. That’s what playpens are for. They keep babies safe. Chicken shelters keep Pastured chickens safe and comfortable. They allow us to raise the best chicken possible.

Any Food Label You Can Use, Industry Can Use Better

September 19, 2018

Paul Chancellor

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Any Food Label You Can Use, Industry Can Use Better

Posted in Food for Thought

Organic, natural, grass-fed, pasture-raised, cage-free – these food labels used to mean something. They meant food raised on small local farms. Food raised with care and respect. They meant that the farmer’s goal was improving the environment, not pillaging it.

But nowadays, you can’t be so sure. The food industry has taken these terms and twisted them to make their products appear to be the same quality as those from sustainable local farms. This co option of said terms dilutes their value. What is the average consumer to think? They see natural, cage-free, or grass-fed on a package and assume they’re getting the same quality as what they might get from a farmers market, but much cheaper.

Look! We’re Certified. Aren’t We Great?

Industry has millions of dollars to spend on branding, marketing and pr. They love certifications. Certifications are easy to slap on a label then hide behind it. Certifications also make it easy for lazy consumers to feel like they’re buying a superior product when in reality, it may only be marginally better, if at all.

Certification is no guarantee of quality. Many people buy organic because they think it’s healthier, that it has more nutrients. But that’s not necessarily the case. Organic certification has nothing to do with nutrients. Organic specifies what’s not in the food: GMOs, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc. While eliminating these things is important, it’s only half the battle.

Most organic certified food is raised in the same systems as their conventional counterparts. Organic chickens are still raised in cramped buildings, I’m sorry “free-range barns”, as conventional chickens. Organic produce is raised in the same massive monocultures that you would be hard pressed to tell apart from conventional. That organic yogurt you bought at the store probably came from an industrial dairy. The only real difference required is the lack of antibiotics and that the feed is certified. Organic standards don’t specify that the cows must be on fresh pasture, access to a dirt yard will suffice.

There’s a pizza company in Iceland called Pizza Express, they released a brand called Artisana Range Pizzas. Sound’s artisanal, doesn’t it? That’s the idea, and the scam. Factory made pizza is anything but artisanal.

Many terms used to describe the healthfulness of food are not regulated. Anyone can call their products natural. Any meatpacker can call their beef grass-fed. Consumer Reports surveyed 1,000 adults and found that more people buy natural than organic. “We’ve seen time and again that majority of consumers believe the ‘natural’ label means more than it does,” says Urvashi Rangen, Ph.D.[1]

Everything is Natural

I had a friend who used to tell me this fifteen years ago. And he was right. Everything is natural, everything comes from the earth. That doesn’t make it inherently healthy or dangerous. But it does sell product. While, he used this as an excuse to eat whatever he wanted, food companies use it to whitewash their industrial processed crap. Are Twinkies natural? They could be. Depends on your definition.

Natural has been twisted to make even the most unhealthy food sound healthy. People believe that products labeled as ‘natural’ will contain no antibiotics, GMOs, artificial colors, etc. The fact is, ‘natural’ means nothing. There is no standard definition for the term. No one is regulating how it is used. So companies use it however they like. Hostess cupcakes contain ‘natural flavors’. Natural flavors sound good, don’t they? After all they’re natural. But the reverse is true. Natural flavors can mean a lot of things, one of them is MSG.

More Terms That Don’t Mean What You Think

Vegetarian Fed does not pertain to where the animal was raised, only what they were fed. GMO corn and soybeans are allowed. These animals are typically raised in the same confinement buildings and feedlots as their conventionally raised counterparts.[2] they have to be because Chickens are not Vegetarians.

Cage Free laying hens are taken from small cages and placed in crowded houses.[2] In fact, it’s probably the same house with the cages removed. There’s still thousands of hens, but instead of being stacked in cages, they’re all crammed on one floor. Also there may have a small door in the side that leads to a dirt yard. You know, because natural.

Pasture-raised – It’s true that these animals spend their time on pasture. However, the quality of that pasture is not specified.[2] Most cows on pasture are continuous grazing. Meaning that they stay on the same pastures until there may be no grass left. Or they selectively graze only the types of grass they like, leaving the weeds to take over. This type of grazing can destroy pasture. When grass is constantly eaten back down and cannot regrow, it dies out or grows thin. Properly managed pasture can have up to three times as much grass per square foot as poorly managed pasture.

Pasture-raised does not mean grain-free. Cows raised on said pasture can be fed as much grain per day as a feedlot cow.[2] Since cows prefer the high carbohydrate grain, they may eat very little grass. However, they will eat grass. This helps them tolerate some of the conditions that grain feeding create. So pasture raised is still better than feedlot raised.

No Routine Antibiotic Use – Sounds like they don’t use antibiotics, doesn’t it? Instead it means that the animals are not fed continuous antibiotics in order to stimulate growth or prevent disease. However, they can be given antibiotics if they get sick.[2] And getting sick is rather likely given the conditions they live in.

Local is supposed to mean from a small farm within a few hundred miles. But local can be twisted to mean just about anything.[2] A couple years ago a restaurant near us began buying meat from a local farm. Everything was great for a couple months, then they stopped buying. When the farmer investigated, the restaurant told them that they went back to buying from their distributor. The distributor said that there was a CAFO located about 100 miles away, so the meat was technically local. The restaurant got to continue using the word local to promote themselves, while buying the same cheap meat as any other restaurant. Meanwhile the customers are being duped and the local farmer is one customer closer to not being in business.

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Certifications

Certified Organic, Animal Welfare Approved, Non-GMO. These certifications are only necessary when you don’t know where your food is coming from. Not to mention, certification is no guarantee. The USDA cannot possibly test and check every product labeled organic. No certification agency can watch every farm and food company all the time.

Putting all your trust in third party or government agencies is not a good idea. These entities can be infiltrated by industry to get concessions. Food companies are constantly lobbying to get loopholes and other concessions in the organic standards. The very existence of organic cheese puffs is proof that the organic standards have been diluted.

When you get to know your farmer, you don’t have to rely on third parties who may or may not be overworked. Customer inspection is the best kind of inspection. Let’s take a farm serving 200 households. Perhaps 50 of those customers will want to come see the farm. That’s 50 inspections. Many of them will be short notice or even a surprise. There’s nothing like having customers around to keep you honest.

So next time you’re at the farmer’s market, ask the farmers if you can come out and visit their farm. If they say, “Sure, come on out.” then you can be reasonably sure that they’re doing things right. You don’t even have to go out yourself. As long as you know that other customers are going to the farm, you can rest assured that your farm is customer inspected. No certifications necessary.

References:

A Vegetarian Diet is not Cruelty Free

January 31, 2018

Paul Chancellor

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A Vegetarian Diet is not Cruelty Free

Posted in Food for Thought

Many people have chosen to become vegetarian or vegan because they think that being so will save animal lives. What they fail to understand is that nature is a constant cycle of birth and death. If humans don’t kill a certain animal, something else will. It’s always been this way and we’re not going to change that no matter how many protests have or cute Disney movies we make.

Growing Fruits & Vegetables Requires Killing as many as 100 Animals per Acre

There’s a lot of little critters in one acre of land. There’s mice, rabbits, moles, gophers, birds, deer, and more. If you think suburban sprawl is disruptive to wildlife, then you’ve never been in a cornfield. When a farmer decides to clear cut an acre of forest or till up an acre of pasture, he’s disturbing and displacing the animals that heretofore called that land home. The bigger the farm, the more acres are disturbed.

Most of the fruit and vegetables a vegetarian eats, comes from mega farms. These farms raise the vegetables in giant monocultures, where only one type of plant is grown on tens or hundreds of acres. Everyone is familiar with the sight of a cornfield, where hundreds of acres are planted with nothing but corn as far as the eye can see.

When you think of your everyday vegetables like lettuce, tomatoes, or celery. You think of a nice little garden where tomatoes are growing next to carrots, next to lettuce, next to potatoes, etc. This is not the case. The lettuce you bought at the supermarket was grown next to acres and acres of the exact same lettuce.

When farmers grow crops in monocultures like this. It invites pests. This is why farmers have to use pesticides. When you have a bug or animal that likes squash plants, it will thrive in a field full of squash plants. Deer love vegetables like corn or lettuce, that makes them a pest. Pests must be eliminated.

A farmer growing vegetables has to rid every acre of pests including mice, rabbits, deer, moles, raccoons, the list goes on.[1] These animals are trapped, poisoned, shot, or eliminated by whatever means necessary. All this death is a waste. The animals are disposed of like so much trash, or left out for the vultures to eat. Many herbicides warn to stay out of the field for at least three days. That’s some toxic stuff. But what about the wild animals? They can’t read.

Organic Still has Pests

Organic farms are no exception when it comes to pests. Of course, being organic they don’t spray conventional pesticides. They have their own organic certified biodegradable poisons. These sprays still kill insects indiscriminately. They kill the good bug along with the bad ones. Oops.

Being organic means they do not use conventional poisons. Except for self contained bait traps for pests. Those can contain whatever kind of poison they want as long as no poison comes in contact with any plants or soil. A dead pest is a good pest, right?

I’m sure there are farms who are committed to trapping and relocating pests. However, this is more expensive and not as effective as killing the animals. They may come back. And even if they don’t, now they’re just someone else’s problem. And that person may have no reservations on killing these new pests.

Raising Animals on Pasture doesn’t Require Killing Hundreds of Animals

When a farmer raises animals on pasture, they do not need to dramatically disturb the natural ecosystem. In fact, proper pasture raising is right in line with nature. It follows the example that nature has set out for us.

Pasture based farms are not tilling up the soil. Tilling interrupts the balance of natural bacteria, fungus, and other critters. Critters that are necessary for making the soil fertile. They’re not blocking off hundreds of acres that would normally have mice, rabbits, moles, etc. living on it.

A pasture based farm doesn’t worry about mice, rabbits, or moles disturbing the livestock. They can coexist just fine. All they ask is that the critters don’t get into the feed bins. It’s not unusual to see deer eating grass next to the cows. That’s fine, they’re happy to share. Deer aren’t the enemy when you’re raising meat.

A Vegetarian Earth is not Sustainable.

If everyone on earth stopped eating meat, there would be a huge shift in agriculture. Not all ranch land can be converted to cropland. Arid climates can sustain pasture, but crops require more water. Irrigation is expensive and not sustainable in these climates. The Colorado river is nearly dry, thanks in part to agriculture.

Livestock populations would plummet. With no viable income streams, most ranchers would get out of the business. The only livestock remaining would be in zoos and nature preserves. Organic farming would suffer as a result. The majority of organic fertilizer is manure. Without livestock to produce this manure, the only fertilizer left is going to be expensive or synthetic. But of course, synthetic is not allowed in organic. At least not yet.

The increase in man made fertilizer will lead to even more agricultural run off. We already have a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey Runoff from farms in the Midwest flow into the Mississippi river and dump out into the gulf. This has depleted oxygen and caused algal blooms.[2, 3] This renders the water inhospitable, killing millions of fish.

The marginal increase in cropland would not sustain the developed countries. We would have to import more food to make up for the loss of meat. More food would have to travel further to get to the consumer.

Don’t let the bleeding hearts guilt you into giving up meat. Meat, properly raised, is very humane. Seek out local farms who raise their animals on pasture. Who treat them like the animal they are. Not some cog in a giant industrial machine, able to be manipulated like some raw material. Pasture raised meat is more humane than vegetarianism. Period.

References

www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of-nutrition/twenty-two-reasons-not-to-go-vegetarian
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan, 2016
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110804_deadzone.html

Pasture Raised Eggs

Posted in Food for Thought

Local pasture raised eggs are easily the most popular sustainable food you can buy. They are easy to raise, easy to sell, and easy to see and taste the difference. I’m sure you already know that pasture raised eggs are better than supermarket eggs. But do you know why?

Why are store bought egg yolks a pale yellow? Because 10,000 hens locked in a barn with a small dirt yard have nothing to eat except the same old premixed chicken feed. Even organic chickens who are mandated outdoor access quickly scratch said yards down to dirt. There’s very little nutrition in a dirt yard.

Pasture raised eggs are far more nutritious than supermarket eggs. Pastured eggs have both Omega-3 and Omega-6 in nearly equal proportions. Conversely, supermarket eggs have as much as 19 times as much Omega-6 than Omega-3. These need to be in balance to be healthy. According to Mother Earth News, eggs raised on pasture contain ⅔ more vitamin A, 3 times more vitamin E, 4 to 6 times as much vitamin D, and seven times more beta carotene.^[1]

Pastured eggs are laid by hens out on pasture. They get plenty of exercise out in the sun. They get to eat fresh grass and live bugs every day. This is how chickens are supposed to live. Not forced to walk across a floor layered in weeks old poop to get to their feed and water. Not crammed into small wire cages with up to eight other hens. Not breathing fecal dust which gets into their lungs, causing inflammation and leading to infections.

Industrial Egg Chickens have Osteoporosis

A hundred years ago the average egg laying hen weighed about 6 pounds and laid around 150 eggs a year. Today, industrial egg layers weigh 3 pounds and lay 300+ eggs in a year. That’s twice the production out of half the weight. That may sound like progress, but it’s not healthy. These hens are much more fragile than heritage breeds that you will find on sustainable farms. They need a very exacting feed ration and can’t be allowed to run around much. they need that energy to go into egg production, not exercise.

In order to keep up the the calcium requirements needed to lay an egg every day, the hen’s body sacrifices her bones in order to get the needed calcium.^[3] Egg shells are made of calcium. Being half the size also means less bone mass to pull from. These hens are not laying smaller eggs. Of course not, that would mean less money.

A standard large egg weighs 2 oz. An industrial hen weighs 48 oz. That’s a lot of weight to be dropping every day. Imagine a 150 pound woman having a 6.5 pound baby every day for a year. That’s all you need to imagine, because industrial laying hens don’t usually live longer than a year.

Is it any wonder that industrial eggs lack the vitamins and nutrients that pastured eggs have?

Animals are meant to be outside.

Not locked inside buildings. Small dirt yards are not enough. Genuine pasture raised chickens are moved every week – sometimes more than once a week – to fresh pasture. This is to keep them from eating up everything in sight. Anyone who has raised backyard chickens in a chicken yard know just how quickly chickens can turn a lush green yard into dirt. That’s what happens when chickens don’t move. Just imagine what 10,000 chickens could do to a yard.

When a farmer puts 10,000 hens in a building together, they’ve created a perfect environment for disease. Pathogens don’t like to travel very far. Their lifespan outside a host is short. They need to find another host soon. Lucky for them, there are plenty to be found in a commercial chicken house. It doesn’t help that living inside under constant light suppresses chickens’ immune systems.^[2] To combat the disease problem created by confinement, commercial farms rely on antibiotics and other drugs.

These chicken farmers live in constant fear of an outbreak that could sweep through their flock leaving thousands dead in a matter of days. They take many precautions. Toxic footbaths and showers at every building entrance to kill pathogens. Screens and concrete to keep out mice, flies, or wild birds. No Trespassing signs and gates to keep out the disease carrying public. These actions come from a place of fear. Fear created by a flawed system.

Chickens raised on pasture don’t need drugs. They’re spread out. They have many times more square footage per chicken. This means that pathogens have a harder time finding a new host. Plus, being out on pasture also means sunshine. Sunshine is the worst thing for a pathogen. Sunshine is the great sanitizer. Sustainable farmers aren’t worried about disease constantly. Disease is rare on a sustainable farm. This, as much as anything, should be proof that sustainable farming is a superior model.

How do you know you’re buying truly pasture raised eggs? First, know the farmer who raises them. Some egg sellers claim pasture raised without knowing what it truly means. They think they’re raising chickens in a pasture when in reality the chickens merely have a large yard. Ask the seller for proof. Do they have any pictures? Better yet, go visit the farm. The best inspection is customer inspection.

References

www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/eggs-zl0z0703zswa
Kliger et al, 2000. “Effects of photoperiod and melatonin on lymphocyte activities in male broiler chickens.” Poultry Science 79:18-25.
www.merckvetmanual.com/poultry/nutrition-and-management-poultry/mineral-deficiencies-in-poultry

Quality Counts

Posted in Food for Thought

One of the most common complaints about organic and local pasture raised food is that it costs more. There are several reasons for this. The number one reason is quality. Food from local farms are more nutrient dense pound for pound than food from the supermarket. Industrial agriculture’s main focus is how to grow more and more food cheaper. You cannot have quality when your primary concern is how to make a product cheaper.

When someone buys a Mercedes, they aren’t looking at the price first. They’re looking at the interior, the high-end leather, the real wood veneer. They’re looking at reliability. They want to know that this car will not break down on the side of the road, even years from now. They are willing to pay more for this piece of mind.

When you grow crops in soil that is deficient in nutrients, those crops are going to be deficient in nutrients. Chemical fertilizer contains Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium. There may be a few other minerals thrown in depending on the brand you buy. What they don’t contain is the hundreds or thousands of trace minerals and nutrients present in living healthy soil.

Eating nutrient deficient food is like building a house using rotted wood. Sure you may have gotten a good deal on it. But it’ll cost you later. If you’ve ever built a house, you’ve probably found that certain contractors are always busy. They’re booked up months in advance. These contractors are not the cheapest. In fact, they are usually among the most expensive. That’s because they offer quality. Quality costs money.

Every time your child eats, their body uses that food as building material. Is that building material quality? Or is it the cheap rotted wood that cost half as much? Look at the pizza rolls in your freezer or the sugary cereal in your pantry. Do you seriously believe that this food is healthy? Are you confident that it is providing quality building materials for you child’s growing body?

The difference in nutrient density can be seen most prominently in pasture-raised meat and eggs. Grass-finished beef has up to six times the Omega 3 fatty acids as feedlot beef. This is the one modern diets are lacking. Grass finished beef also has over four times the Vitamin E as feedlot beef. This difference in nutrient density is similar across all the nutrients.

Local pasture raised food may be more expensive, but you get more for your money. I’m sure you’ve seen the commercial for Total cereal. You’d have to eat six bowls of one cereal or ten bowls of another cereal to get the same amount of vitamins as one bowl of Total. The same goes for pasture raised meats and compost-grown vegetables. Much of the food you buy at local farms is two or three times as nutrient dense as their supermarket counterparts.

This problem of nutrient deficiency in supermarket food comes from the industrial mindset. Industrial agriculture focuses on grown more and more of less types of food. There are more than 7,500 known varieties of apples. Yet at any given supermarket you’ll find maybe 10 different varieties.

Over the course of human history, we’ve eaten over 80,000 different plants. More than 3,000 of those we eat consistently. However, our industrial agriculture system now grows only 8 crops to make 75% of the world’s food. Why is that? Because it’s cheaper to grow these 8 plants in giant monocultures using cheap fossil fuels. Economies of scale favor only having to process 8 different foods. These 8 foods are turned into hundreds of different food additives used to make all of the processed crap you find in a supermarket.

My dad used to joke that mexican food is just the same 6 or 7 ingredients rearranged to make each dish. Well, most of what you find in the supermarket is simply different arrangements of the same 8 basic foods.

The US has the highest rates of obesity and obesity-related conditions than any other country. Why? Because we eat more processed food than any other country. If food companies made processed food with nutritionally dense and sustainably grown grains and produce, it would cost twice as much. Ezekial bread costs $4.00 a loaf, not because they’re selling to elites, but because that’s what it costs to source quality ingredients.

The main reason corn syrup is cheaper than sugar is because corn is grown, transported, and processed using cheap fossil fuels. You cannot have quality when your primary concern is how to make a product cheaper.

I’ve seen this quality issue in the essential oil business. Health food stores have been selling cheap essential oils for years. I’ve heard many people say they’ve tried essential oils, and they didn’t work. I then have to explain to them that there’s a big difference between cheap oils and quality oils. There are several reasons for this. Cheap oils are frequently extracted using high heat and solvents to get as much oil as possible. This adulterates the oil, making it less effective and sometimes dangerous.

Some oils are synthesized in a laboratory. Wintergreen oil is a good example. Cheap wintergreen oil comes from a lab, not from the tree. Because of this, cheap wintergreen oil is poisonous. If you ingest it, you will likely die. We’ve been using essential oils from Young Living for over 15 years. These oils cost more because their quality is second to none. Young Living’s wintergreen is genuine oil from the wintergreen tree. It is not poisonous. I know, because I have ingested full capsules of Young Living’s wintergreen and not even gotten sick.

Lavender is another good example. There are several types of lavender plants. Genuine Lavandula Angustifolia can soothe burns and help them heal. Cheap lavender oil from the health food store is frequently made from Lavandin, a lavender hybrid. Lavandin is high in canfor which will make burns worse. A higher standard of excellence makes a difference. Remember, quality counts.

10 Reasons to Eat Local Pasture Raised Meats

December 22, 2016

Paul Chancellor

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10 Reasons to Eat Local Pasture Raised Meats

Posted in Food for Thought

You have a choice. You don’t have to support the industrial farming system anymore. There a plenty of local farms in your state producing pasture raised meat, ethically, while healing the environment instead of destroying it.

1. Pasture Based Farms are More Humane than Factory Farms

Conventional chickens and pigs live their entire life in a crowded building, stressed and desperate for fresh air. Even organic. Factory farms cut Chickens’ beaks off to reduce cannibalism in the crowded stressful environment. The same goes for pigs. A farmer will cut a pigs’ tail off to keep the others from chewing on them.

Even beef is not immune to the influence of the factory farm. Even though most cows spend a good portion of their early lives in the pasture, most are finished out in feedlots where they are forced to stand knee deep in manure. Feedlots feed the cheapest grains available mixed with various wastes from brewhouses, industrial food processors and even waste from slaughter facilities. So much for cows being herbivores.

This is not the case at pasture based farms. All animals live outside in the sunshine and fresh air. There is no need to feed animals antibiotics because they are not forced to live their lives wallowing in their own waste. Their beaks and tails can be left intact with no fear of fighting or cannibalism. This is accomplished by giving the animals plenty of room to move around.

Cows are kept in the pasture right up till the butcher date. As are chickens and pigs. This is where they want to be. All animals love grass, they also love sunshine. They get plenty of both on pasture based farms.

2. Pasture Raised Meats are Healthier than Conventional Meat

Animals were never meant to eat the same thing every day. Chickens are supposed to eat bugs, grass, and whatever it can scavenge. Pigs are meant to root in the dirt. Cows are meant to roam and eat grass. Many different varieties.

All of these things help pasture raised animals to have more nutrients and vitamins in their meat.

Wild animals don’t need antibiotics and synthetic vitamin supplements to survive. Why should livestock?

The only reason antibiotics are necessary is because conventional animals are raised in cramped conditions without moving. When animals are forced to live their life on top of manure that’s been there for days or weeks, can you expect anything other than disease? Confined feeding operations are a perfect breeding ground for all sorts of disease and parasites.

Pasture raised animals can fight off disease just fine on their own. Their immune systems haven’t been torn down by constant antibiotics. Most of the antibiotics given to conventional livestock is given to animals that are not even sick.

All animals, including humans, have natural beneficial bacteria in their gut to help digest food. Antibiotics are designed to destroy all bacteria, including beneficial bacteria. This leads to animals that cannot digest their food properly. They can’t extract as many nutrients from it. Not that there is much to start with in the cheap grains they are fed.

Grass is very high in vitamins and other nutrients. When animals are allowed to graze on pasture, they are acquiring many times more nutrients than a conventional animal who may never see a blade of grass in their life.

Pasture raised eggs are a good example, they have: 1/3 less cholesterol, 2/3 more vitamin A, 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids, 3 times more vitamin E, and over 4 times as much vitamin D as the eggs you find in the supermarket. All because we put them out on a pasture. The chickens do the rest.

Pasture raised Chicken has twice as many omega 3’s, 50% more vitamin A, 20% less fat, and 30% less saturated fat than conventionally raised chickens.

Grass fed beef can have as much as six times the Omega 3 fatty acid and up to four times the vitamin E than feedlot beef. Grass fed beef also has less fat, and the fat it does have is good for you. Unlike the fat from feedlot beef.

3. Pasture Raised Meat Tastes Better

It’s hard to quantify better taste. You just know it when you taste it. When animals are allowed to move and eat foods that are natural for them, they develop deeper, richer-tasting meat. Meat that doesn’t need a bunch of seasonings, marinades, or chemicals to taste good.

Years ago, before I got into pastured poultry. I came up with a recipe for chicken soup that had 11 ingredients. One of which was, chicken broth because store bought chicken doesn’t have enough flavor by itself. The chicken soup I make with pasture raised chicken only needs 5 ingredients, plus whatever vegetables you want.

If for no other reason, do it for your taste buds.

4. You get More Value from Pasture Raised Meat

I’ve had several customers tell me that our chicken doesn’t shrink up in the frying pan like supermarket chicken does. There is a simple reason for this. Exercise. Our animals get exercise. Exercise builds muscle better than hormones. It builds denser muscle. Conventional meat from the grocery store is less dense that pasture raised meat. This spongy meat soaks up more water. This water comes out in the cooking process.

Pasture raised meat therefore loses less water during cooking. You get more of what you paid for. Water displacement test have been done that prove that one pound of pasture raised meat displaces less water than one pound of factory farm meat. But you can do your own test. Simply fry up some pasture raised chicken along with some supermarket chicken. See which one give you more value.

5. You Can See Where Your Food Comes From

Most conventional farms have No Trespassing signs at their gates. Not the case with your local farmer. They welcome your visit. Customers are encouraged to come see how their food is raised.

If a farmer is afraid to let you visit, you should be concerned about what he’s hiding.

Is he afraid to let you see what conditions his animals live in? This is definitely the case for concentrated animal feeding operations. If you saw how these animals were living, you’d never buy one again.

This may also be the case for a few local farms. Some farmers get lazy and don’t give their animals the attention they need. Allowing customers onto the farm is a great incentive to treat your animals with the respect they deserve.

Is he afraid you will make his animals sick? If that’s the case, then his animals are probably not very healthy to start with. Our animals don’t drop dead after a customer comes to visit. You don’t want to buy any animals that need to be quarantined their entire life.

Does he just not want to be bothered? If that’s the case, then he should go back to selling his animals to the feedlots and at the auction for the lowest possible price. If he wants to make a decent profit off his animals then he has to deal with people.

You can only know your meat is clean and healthy if you see where it came from.

6. Pasture Raised Animals Don’t Do Drugs

Pasture raised animals aren’t fed hormones. The farmers don’t mind their animals taking a little longer to mature. The meat tastes better, and the animals stay healthier when they don’t grow too fast.

Pasture raised animals are not fed antibiotics because they don’t need them. They live in a clean environment with fresh air and the sunshine to naturally sterilize everything. They’re not living in yesterday’s poop, where most of the disease lives.

Pasture raised animals are not breeding superbugs like their CAFO counterparts. Bacteria reproduce exponentially. They can form millions of cells in as little as a few hours. That’s a lot of chances for them to form mutations that help them survive the harsh antibiotics that are meant to kill them.

The old weak bacteria are killed off by the antibiotics, leaving only the new stronger bacteria that are immune to the antibiotics. These bacteria continue to thrive and form new mutations that make them even more dangerous. It’s survival of the fittest. And the fittest are the most dangerous.

7. Pasture Raised Meat is Cleaner Meat

Conventional Slaughter is not as Clean as You Think. Most industrial slaughterhouses use mechanical evisceration. During this process 95% of the time the intestines and stomach burst and contaminate the meat. This is considered acceptable because the industry uses chlorine baths and irradiation to sterilize the meat. Never mind that the meat has poop on it, it’s sterile.

Many states allow up to 10% fecal matter in the cooling vat. Not the kind of marinade you had in mind? Don’t forget the chlorine, that’s tasty too.

Pasture raised chicken is butchered by hand. This keeps the intestines intact so the meat stays cleaner. The meat is also carefully rinsed before going into the cooling baths. This keeps the water clean.

Pasture raised poultry is processed in small facilities. They might butcher 600 chickens in a day. Then they clean up. Conventional giant processing facilities operate around the clock and process as many as 140 birds a minute. In five minutes they butcher more chickens that a pastured poultry facility does in a whole day. That many birds create a huge mess. It’s impossible to keep these facilities clean. Hence the chlorine and irradiation.

Beef and pork processors have much the same problem. Beef slaughterhouses process up to 400 beef an hour. Pork slaughterhouses process up to 1000 hogs an hour. These animals are much bigger than a chicken. Most of them are covered in feces, but are not washed prior to slaughtering. The contamination is inevitable. But again, chemicals and irradiation will make everything okay.

Local meat processors slaughter less than 100 beef or hogs in a day. Then they clean up. Most of these processors are too small to butcher more than one day a week. The rest of the week is devoted to cutting those animals up. Plenty of time to keep stuff clean.

8. Pasture Based Farms are Environmentally Friendly

Factory farms have a problem. A manure problem. Raising thousands of animals at a time means lots of manure. To make matters worse, this manure is contaminated with antibiotics, hormones, and other chemicals. It is toxic and has to go through extra processes to dispose of it.

On pastured farms, manure is not a curse, it’s a blessing. Chicken manure is spread thinly across fields by means of daily moves. A similar process is followed with pigs raised in the woods and cows on the pasture. Never is manure allowed to build up to the point of becoming toxic. The only pile of manure you’ll find is the compost pile. Instead of polluting the environment, the manure feeds the pasture.

In addition, buying locally means that your meat and produce are not trucked thousands of miles before getting to you. That’s a lot of pollution saved.

Pasture raised cows, when managed properly, can help sequester carbon from the atmosphere. When a cow eats a stalk of grass, the plant has to restart its growth cycle. You probably learned back in elementary school that plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. They consume much more carbon dioxide when growing. Once a grass plant reaches full growth, it goes dormant. Waiting patiently for an animal to come along and eat it, restarting the process over again, and sequestering more carbon.

9. Buying from Local Farmers Keeps the Money in the Local Economy

When you buy from a multinational company your money flies off to some distant city, never to be seen again. When you buy from a local farmer, it stays in the local economy much longer.

Food in the store has multiple markups on it. First there is the farmer who grew the food, then he sells it, usually on the commodity market, to an aggregator. The aggregator sells the food to a processor who turns it into a product. The processor then sells the product to a wholesaler. The wholesaler sells the product to a store who finally sells it to you.

That’s a lot of different people making money off one product. Most of them don’t live nearby.

When a major chicken company contracts with a farmer to raise their chickens, the farmer ends up making relatively little. It’s not uncommon for a conventional chicken farmer to have a job in the city to help pay the bills.

10. More Farms Means More Jobs

The industrial farming sector is obsessed with efficiency. “Look how many chickens one farmer can raise at a time”. “Look how many pigs we can slaughter in a day.”

The problem with these super efficient models is that no one can catch every problem. When a farmer has 40,000 chickens on their farm, they can’t possibly know how many are sick, how many are dying. They can only count the dead ones they find. The only preventative measures they have are medications.

When you scale down to a local pasture based farm. It is much more labor intensive. But I would consider that a good thing. When a farmer has only 1,000 birds at a time, he can take the time to look at every bird. He can take any sick birds and nurse them back to health.

In this economy, we could use some more jobs. So please, support your local farmer. That’s one more person that can support himself and his family. Isn’t that what we all want?