The farmer can, and probably will, be taken out of the equation when his utility is gone. We have been left in the equation (food chain) because we provide land, labor, and other inputs at a lower cost than the big boys in the chain (big AG, food processing, food service companies) can provide for...
A couple of years ago, I was asked to speak at the Old Boulderado Hotel in Boulder, Colorado. It is a historical building that has been well kept up since its heyday in the early 1900's.
We get a fair amount of complaints because we are often “out of stock” on items in our online store. It pisses customers off, and we hate that.
We industrialized, centralized, and commoditized agriculture [food production].
I was raised in the heart of the Bible belt, but I was not raised in the Church. On Sundays, we tended to cattle, just like we did the other six days.
I don't ever remember my father attending a Church service. My attendance was limited to the occasional Sunday mornings, when I happened to have...
In the 75 years after the end of World War II, we have lived under the assumption that whatever was good for us would be good for our planet. The unintended, unnoticed, and unpleasant consequences of that idea have now become clear and costly. This idea has proved to be a dismal failure.
I was an industrial cattle rancher for 20 years. My upbringing prepared me to operate my farm in an industrialized, commoditized way. My education taught me a reductive, linear farming method.
We recently had a young person visit us on the farm who was eager to learn about what we do. She admitted up front that she had never spent any time on a farm.
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