Mecca Here I Come

It’s cold and dreary here. The rain has held up the wheat sowing, but there’s still time to get it in. In fact being a bit late gives you an edge when it comes to avoiding pest problems, and the ever threatening April freeze. But that’s not my big news, the big news is that in one week I board a plane for Virgina, to attend a conference on grass fed finishing and marketing. I’m pretty stoked about it, because I’m going to get to tour Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm. I will be in the presence of the libertarian lone wolf of agriculture, and I can’t wait. Plus I haven’t flown in about ten years, so I’ll get to experience all of the wonderful things the TSA has to offer.

Coming to a town hall near me…

So it turns out I may be meeting the Secretary of Agriculture and attending a town hall style meeting which he’s giving this Wednesday, and it begs the question, “What would you ask the Secretary given the chance?”

Because I’m One Lazy Blogger…

… more Salatin!

The fact is, when the government gets between my mouth and my stomach, that’s a pretty intrusive government. The only reason our founding fathers did not give us the right to food freedom, is because they could not have foreseen the day when a neighbor could not get a t-bone steak or a glass of raw milk from a neighbor.

Can alternative farming feed the world (ie the downtrodden poor folk) ?

It can, but you’ll have to buck and take some initiative, as well as some personal responsibility. Oh, and the bureaucrats are going to have to get out of the way, all according to Joel Salatin.

Eating well does not require you to eat organic
tomatoes shipped air freight from Peru in January. You can eat better
by canning, drying, or freezing local seasonal bounty
and enjoying it in the off season. But that means getting busy,
refusing to be a victim, and being responsible. Unfortunately,
these good character qualities are not encouraged in the modern
American welfare class. When I see food stamps used
for TV dinners so that personal money can purchase beer and cigarettes,
I admit to being a bit dubious about the alleged
plight of poor people. And if everyone who didn’t need to be weren’t,
the numbers would be so small that some philanthropy
would solve the genuine problem–just like it used to.

BTW, I’m scheduled to tour Polyface Farms this October. *insert schoolgirl squee here*

Some folk just don’t get it, or Craig Newmark for president….

Excuse my tired fingers, I’m taking a shift break from my annual evening of hand grape crush/watching Firefly DVD’s.

The latest issue of Wired has a great piece on the success of craigslist, and it’s supposed deficiencies, despite being the leading job search site, and the leading real estate site, among others. The author can’t seem to fathom such a free wheeling attitude, as Craig Newmark takes a largely hands off approach to regulating his invention. The belief that “people are generally good” seems to rub supposed enlightened souls the wrong way.

God damn my hands are tired, I can’t do this, besides I have another shift crushing juice from Riesling. I have things to add, maybe in the morning.

Read it.

Grape Harvest

We harvested and crushed our first crop from the Syrah grapes we planted three years ago. You’ll see our vineyard, plus the teaching vineyard where we took the grapes to be crushed. The university pics are the ones with the old church in the background. This is really the wife’s project, so most of the credit goes to her. The grapes are now crushed and fermenting in the basement, filling the house with a lovely sulfur aroma.

Ironic Capitalism

The other day a friend and I had a quick email discussion of the Blake Hurst piece that I pointed out in my last posting. His position was in line with Hurst’s, that organic food is crap, and that modern conventional farming practices are the optimal use of agricultural resources. That has been the steady chorus from most of the commentary I’ve seen on the article, from Reason to radio host Neal Boortz. The irony in that is that modern farming is notably not a libertarian venture. Few other industries rely on, and are effected by government policy as much as commodity agriculture.
This has become more and more evident to me within the last year or more as I have gotten very interested in the trendy foodie movement, most notably grass fed meats. Yeah, Michael Pollan may be a stereotypical Berkley liberal, but underneath the movement he has helped inspire is a libertarian mindset, motivated not so much by philosophy as it is the almighty dollar. The proponents and practitioners of alternative agriculture and grassfed livestock are true capitalists in comparison to their conventional subsidy chasing brethren.
Nowhere has this been more evident than at two seminars I attended recently. Last April I attended the Stockman Grass Farmer’s Grassfed conference in Dallas. The group was a diverse meeting of farmer/ranchers, mostly from the surrounding region. And I mean diverse, represented were Canadians, tweed jacketed Jewish cowboys, and even a heart surgeon. But to a man most of the participants in the discussions were not interested in subsidies or programs. They were a lot more concerned about production, direct marketing, and if they had concerns about government it was regarding any hurdles that would be put in their way by well meaning bureaucrats.
Contrast that to the tone of a small no till farming seminar I attended just last Thursday. At this meeting was a group of conventional farmers interested in adopting chemically intensive no till methods. Now if I had called the people present welfare whores, I doubt I would have made it out with my life. But to hear them talk, government money was the be all and end all of farming. As payment structures switch away from outright production, and towards a more European conservation mentality, it will be no till methods that will be promoted via policy. Twenty dollars an acre for no till, and the promise of more on the way made quite an impression. Couple this with new revenue assurance programs like ACRE, and we’ll insure that production of basic commodities stays strong, no matter what food fads and policy pop up along the way.
This benefits more than farmers, it keeps subsidy money flowing to all of those necessary parts of the chain. Chemical companies, fertilizer sellers, and equipment manufacturers, on one end, and the users of cheap grain on the other end, like ethanol distillers, animal feeders, meat processors, and sweetener manufacturers on the other end. All of those parties need to keep the production going, and they lobby Washington policy makers accordingly.
Admittedly that’s what draws me to alternative agriculture, grassfed and the like is that most of it seems in line with my politics. Because organic and grassfed don’t rely on as many inputs, you can literally create production out of sunshine and rain. Yes, that production may cost more to the end user, but isn’t charging more my right as a producer? Conventional ag folks will tell you that they’re ‘feeding the world!’ as if failure to subsidize their over production of commodities will leave the world to starve. Does that sound like an extortion racket to anyone else? I wonder what Mr. Hurst would say, if I accused him of holding starving children hostage in order to justify his lifestyle?
In the interests of full disclosure, I’m still a pretty conventional farmer, growing wheat and cattle for the commodity market. I’m looking to use no till to free up my time for more lucrative, read capitalist, ventures. But as my wife and I look more and more into direct marketing, I find myself veering away from a mindest that talks a good capitalist game, but still has it’s hand out at the end of the day.

The Omnivore’s Delusion?

There’s a fantastic piece over at The American from a Missouri corn farmer regarding foodie types like Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, etc. Mr. Hurst makes some good points, and of course uses the tired ‘feed the world’ argument. My job is not to feed the world, it is to turn rain and sunshine into wealth. I do notice that while ripping on Pollan and the Omnivore’s Dilemma, he doesn’t once mention highly profitable, low input, and zero pollution farmer Joel Salatin, nor does he talk much about subsidies. I would love to see Hurst and Salatin go at it. Heck, I’d pay money to see it.

The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals

Hat tip to Reason

Mini Rant, FWIW

Out of the blue, but the topic of organic vs conventional food came up at one of my online hangouts, and I put so much typing into a post that I figured it would be a waste not to add some easy content over here. It all ties in with my recent revelations that despite all of agriculture’s supposed laissez faire capitalism, it is conventional ag, not organic and direct marketers that really tow the statist line. Some will no doubt see where I openly plagiarized elements of Omnivore’s Dilemma.

The problem with conventional/chemical agriculture is not that the food isn’t any good. The problem with conventional/chemical agriculture is that it’s unprofitable. Farmers spend most of their time and money chasing ever more expensive inputs. Commodity agriculture demands monoculture, and monoculture walks hand in hand with inputs, and inputs really mean oil. Oil in chemicals, oil in fertilizer, oil in fuel, fuel for tractors, fuel for transporting commodities. Once you’ve traded your independence to the price of oil the word sustainable doesn’t so much mean ecology as it does business.

Back in the old days, farmers had many different crops that complimented each other, broke up the cycles of pest and disease. Iowa farmers would only raise corn every two years or so, because corn was a ‘taker’. So they’d run livestock, or plow down manure crops, and then use corn to harvest some of those nutrients. They’d save their corn back, using some of it to plant their crop next year. Farmers were self sufficient, their only real input was time, all that diversity meant that they had plenty of opportunities to feed themselves. For those that wanted the lifestyle, that wasn’t asking much.

But then a funny thing happened, WW2 ended, and left large ammonium nitrate explosive manufacturers without a market. What to do? First the US government considered air dropping the nitrogen over pine forests, as a boon to lumber companies. Then they got the bright idea to sell it to farmers. Suddenly farmers could plant corn every year! And so they did. What to do with all that corn? Well, you could feed to livestock. And so they did. Thus began vertically integrated livestock production. No longer would pigs and chickens be grown on farms as part of a diversified operation, they could be grown start to finish indoors. In fact the farmer wouldn’t even need to own them, the Tysons of the world could just outsource the raising of their animals to farmers. Assuming of course that the farmers went into debt building hundred thousand dollar buildings, a debt that now shackled them to corporate whims. A similar thing happened to beef. No longer would cattle be finished on grass, like the Argentineans still do, now they would be used to get rid of cheap surplus. That’s what a feedlot is, a dumping ground for corn.

Even then it wasn’t enough. So they came up with HFCS, and ten million other uses for government subsidized, over produced corn. Corn which is really just oil.

But this led to problems back on the farm. The monoculture led to pests, disease and weeds in the commodity crops. So seed companies came up with chemical resistant varieties, varieties that killed bugs, etc. Seed companies had to recoup their costs though, so you couldn’t keep your seed back, which added another input. Why not rotate again? Well you might not qualify for subsidies! Soon farmers really aren’t growing food as much as they are providing big companies with cheap industrial inputs. Not too mention keeping all their input suppliers in business. These two parties do not want to break the monoculture, their livelihood is built on it, so they come up with new laws that make it tougher for farmers to sell direct. They make claims that raw milk will kill you, or that a small farm is more dangerous than an industrialized slaughterhouse. They pat the farmer on the back, “But you’re feeding the world!”

So here we are. Commercial agriculture is a defacto government entity, kept in place by subsidies and regulations, in order to keep the little guy toiling for fascist interests. See, an organic farmer creates his own fertilizer, and doesn’t participate in most government schemes, if he direct markets he doesn’t need Tyson, Wal Mart, or even Whole Foods. But don’t worry; the well meaning state is looking to get them on the take as well, shackling once independent producers to their whims.

No doubt I could’ve added more on subsidies, (that’s another post, coming soon, I promise) ethanol, and upcoming regulations that will hinder entrepreneurship.

Ranching In Swimtrunks

The venture into rotational grazing required some aquatic ranching today. I didn’t realize that the pond I had turned them out along was shallow enough that the cows could stroll right through it. Given that the little one was taught cameras last night, she was brought along to document.

Look, no tan lines!