When Salatin Came to Town

On March 3, Joel Salatin came to M State and gave two speeches: one in the afternoon, and one in the evening. I had the honor of picking him up at the airport the night before with my friend Tony; it was a truly exciting experience.

Tony and I had to pick Joel up at the airport in Fargo. We got there early and sat down at a cafe. We both had a hankering to get something -- coffee or soda or a snack -- but we didn't because we were nervous about what Joel Salatin might think if he saw us with our disposable cups filled with a food product grown by conventional agriculture and shipped half-way around the world.

I had drawn a sign for Joel with little farm animals so he would recognize us as his ride. We recognized Joel right away, although we were a bit surprised to see him in a suit instead of overalls and a straw hat. It seemed this was Joel-the-professional-speaker, not Joel-the-farmer.

Soon enough we discovered that despite the fancy clothes, Joel was the Joel we knew from the books and movies: smooth-talking, full of energy, and passionate about sustainable agriculture. We tried not to pester him with too many questions in the car (although there was so much we wanted to ask him) and play it cool. But the conversation inevitably drifted from small talk to sustainable farming, and soon I found myself inquiring about his method of killing rabbits.

That evening, we joined Joel for dinner downtown Fergus Falls and drove him back to his hotel afterwards. The following morning, we got to pick him up and take him to M State. We were Joel's un-official chauffeurs, and it was wonderful!

Joel spent the morning with our class answering our questions, and then we had a potluck lunch. All of us had been so nervous making food for Joel Salatin, but we needn't have been: he was a grateful guest and praised our food.

That afternoon, M State had a decent crowd in Legacy Hall ready to listen to Joel speak. Joel did a fantastic job both inspiring and provoking the audience; at one point he said he would like to abolish the USDA, but he admitted that was never going to happen and suggested that we should just abolish all subsidies instead. At the end of his speech, he got a standing ovation from everyone but the farmers who receive big subsidies.

Thursday evening, Joel gave a different speech outlining the six key components of a local food system. Once again, some people were upset -- a few walked out. But most of the audience was enthralled.

One of the best parts of the experience was getting to introduce Joel Salatin before both of his speeches. Yes, indeed -- I got to introduce Joel Salatin! I remembered the introduction given to Wes Jackson at the Prairie Festival; his introducer said he felt like a math teacher introducing Sir Isaac Newton. Now I really felt where he was coming from. Here I was, a city girl with less than one year of experience in the SFP program, and I was introducing THE Joel Salatin!

I can't do justice to his speeches by summarizing them here. Instead, I will wait until they are posted on youtube and post a link. Let me just say that if you have never heard of Joel Salatin, you should look him up. Better yet, read one of his books. I'd suggest starting with "Holy Cows and Hog Heaven." Or you may want to wait for his new book coming out this fall, "Folks, This Ain't Normal."

Community and Local Food

This week my Sustainable Food Production class is once again doing a local food challenge. Our professor made it easier, since it is winter: we just have to eat 3 mostly-local meals this week.

The first time I did the local food challenge -- back in the early fall -- it was very difficult for me. This time, even though there is snow on the ground, it has been a breeze. Why? Because now I have a community.

On Friday, I was invited over to dinner at Mark Boen's house; Mark is the owner of Bluebird Gardens, a local CSA. His wife cooked a delicious turkey dinner using the turkey that I "helped" slaughter on Monday. (By "helped," I mean mostly watched.) Along with the turkey, we had Bluebird Garden potatoes, corn, and deviled eggs.

Last night, I was invited over to dinner at my professors' house (Tom Prieve and Sue Wika) at Paradox Farm. We eat pork chops from Kent Solberg's farm, Seven Pines, along with carrots from Bluebird Gardens and potatoes from Paradox Farm.

Today my breakfast consisted of eggs from Seven Pines and sauerkraut that I made last fall with my class using produce from Bluebird Gardens.

Instead of struggling to find one farm to source my local food, I now have several I had patronize. My meals this weekend have been a mix of food grown by farmers who I know very well: Mark Boen, Sue Wika, Tom Prieve, and Kent Solberg.

This afternoon, I am heading over to Seven Pines to help with milking the cows. I'm sure I will be treated to another mostly local meal at the Solberg residence, and I hope to take home some of their milk so I can make my own yogurt.

The lesson for me has been that a robust local food system must be build on a robust community. We cannot do it alone.

Tony's Article to his Co-Op

Folks, this isn't normal

We are living in a unique period in history – a blip of time that is considerably different from any other the human race has experienced. In less than 100 years, our nation went from food sovereignty to food slavery, thanks in large part to cheap energy.

As a result, we now are dependent on an oil-based food system – a system that is completely unsustainable. Caring for the land has been thrown out the window. The soil is being mined of its minerals. While oil based fertilizers, herbicide and pesticides are being applied with bigger and bigger equipment using more and more fuel. Commodity crops are engineered into every type of food humans can think of, then, travels an average of 1500 miles before being purchased and sometimes simply thrown away.

Our current food production system rewards quantity not quality. The USDA defines success in agriculture in terms of production increases, ignoring the destruction of the family farm, the local food system, rural economies, and natural resources. This is a broken system that is being propped up with government subsidies and defended with our food consumption patterns.

What are we to do? Although there is no silver bullet answer, there is one clear path to change: growing a local foods economy. Choosing to vote with your food dollars is probably the strongest vote we have in regaining control of our food system.

Why local instead of organic?

Simple put, as the sustainable farming guru Joel Salatin has said, “you can't regulate integrity.”

The organic model is a great way to ensure your food is grown without chemicals. But growing organic food on a massive, industrial scale to provide consumers in Minnesota with oranges and bananas in January is an expensive, wasteful process. The production and distribution of organic food – especially when it is out of season – is often bathed in more oil than conventionally-grown food.

Local is the key to saving everything one may feel is being lost with today’s political, economic and social climates. The more locally focused one becomes the more clear it is that local food, local labor, local spending, and local friends are all ways to revitalize our economy, health, and community.

When you can say “I know my farmer” you do not need organic certifications. Customers can visit the farm and see first-hand how the food they eat is grown. Then they can determine for themselves whether the farmer's methods of growing food are in line with their values, rather than trusting bureaucrats, certifying agencies, and government inspectors hundreds or thousands of miles away to make this determination.

Organic regulation is just a poor substitute for first-hand knowledge of and personal connections to your food source. Trusting your farmer, rather than government regulations, is the real key to a transparent, sustainable food system.

How can Grassroots help?

Grassroots can play an important role in building a more robust, sustainable local food system that keeps dollars and knowledge circulating within our community.

First, Grassroots co-op can help re-configure our thought-process about food by purchasing more local food and providing an outlet for that abundance at the end of the season. I have walked through the community gardens and seen letters from residents of Anoka to the gardeners asking permission to save the fruits that hang there and to often rot on the stem. If the gardeners had an avenue to sell there abundance to the co-op, we could salvage that bounty and reduce the waste of those precious food resources.

Second, Grassroots could help by educating people on how eat seasonally, cook with fresh local ingredients, and preserve food stores for the winter.

What next?

Join me in opting out of the industrial model of food production fueled by the politics of growth, waste, and fossil fuels. Let's work together to transition to a more self-reliant, sustainable, local food economy that builds community, integrity, and health.

We don't have to be perfect, but we have to start moving in a more sustainable direction. Plant a garden, join a CSA, forage fruits before they rot on the stem, preserve the harvest, get to know a farmer, or just try to eat what's in season more often. Start wherever you can, but do something. Together, we can help bring our food production back into balance before we no longer have a choice.

It really is up to you. With your food dollar in hand, will you step up to the plate?

Just Do Something

Today I helped a friend of mine by editing an article he wrote for his co-op newsletter. The article was about the importance of supporting and growing the local foods movement.

One of the points it made was that each of us needs to do something, even if it's small, to work towards this goal. We have the power to vote with our food dollars every day, and how we vote helps determine the direction our food system will move.

My friend, Tony, did something. He took the initiative to write an article for his co-0p newsletter extolling the benefits of a local food system and outlining steps to get there. I suppose I did something, too -- I edited the letter. But Tony took the most important step by going to the effort of getting the word out to his community.

More of us need that kind of gumption.

Humility among Pigs

Yesterday, I went with my friend, Andy, to an Amish family farm to help them butcher some pigs. We arrived just after the pigs had been cleanly shot, in time to see the first pig being hoisted up off the ground by its feet while the second pig was being skinned on the ground.

I had never seen a slaughtered animal in person before, and it wasn't as bad as I had imagined. I didn't feel an outpouring of sympathy for the pigs, mainly because I knew they had enjoyed a good life and a quick, painless death on the farm rather than in a factory. The worst part was the smell -- a mixture of blood and pig scent that rose up in clouds of steam through the winter air. It was 22 below that morning, the Amish men said. A bit cold, but a nice day for butchering.

We did most of the skinning and disemboweling outside. One pig was quartered, another was halved. We then carried the parts inside for further disassembly.

I quickly got into a grove trimming off the layers of fat and removing meat from the bones. The fat looked like butter and it was incredibly soft. There was a lot of it, too; we filled up at least three, large stainless steel bowls.

I skinned one of the heads, removing the snout and ears. I had to ask for help with the eyes; they were held in their tight, and I was too squeamish to use my fingers to pry them out.

The heads went into a stew pot and would be used to make head cheese. The rest of the pigs were divided up between two Amish families, minus the four pork chops they sent home with me as a gift.

Throughout the process, I learned their is a fine art to skinning and butchering animals. The Amish were very skilled and made quick, elegant work of the animal sections they had. Andy and I were a bit clumsier, to say the least. But we learned as the day went on and, I hope, got a little better.

Even with six of us, it took us all day to cut up two pigs and a frozen deer. We didn't get to the sausage-making or preservation activities, although the entrails were washed out, scrubbed and made ready to be used as casings. The work gave me a new appreciation for hunters, butchers, and yeoman farmers who raise, slaughter, butcher and cook their own animals. These folks know where their dinner came from and are intimately familiar with the whole farm-to-table process.

Most city folks eat in ignorance and denial, not knowing -- and not wanting to know -- just how that pork chop came to be on their plate.

M State Professor Profile | Prieve and Wika

Dr. Tom Prieve, a veterinarian, and Dr. Sue Wika, a sociologist, are exemplary teachers, collaborators and farmers who respectively head the Equine Science and Sustainable Food Production programs at M State in Fergus Falls. They live on Paradox Farm where they raise performance Quarter horses, goats, chickens, turkeys, and geese.

Dr. Prieve and Dr. Wika work well as a team both on their farm and at M State. Dr. Prieve brings a background in science and holistic veterinary medicine (he provides chiropractic and acupuncture treatments at Lake Region Veterinary Center). Dr. Wika brings her own experience with livestock as well as expertise in community-building and education. They each teach courses in the Equine Science and Sustainable Food Production programs, balancing for students scientific, social, and cultural perspectives on animal husbandry, agriculture, and ecology.

Their primary goal for Paradox Farm is to steward the native oak savannah and establish more perennial crops. As a first step, they introduced dairy goats to help with brush clearing. A local market for goat products encouraged Wika and Prieve to expand their herd and breed meat goat genetics into their dairy stock.

More recently, Wika and Prieve started custom-grazing cattle and expanding their perennial crops by planting a wide variety of fruit and nut trees.

Leveraging their knowledge of agroforestry and grass-based permaculture, Wika and Prieve are growing an edible forest to yield heirloom apples, cherries, apricots, plums, pears, Korean pine nuts, hazelnuts and other high-quality human foods. The tree crops also offer the potential for biofuel production and provide energy-dense animal feed, which could support pastured pigs and sheep in the future.

Dr. Wika started the Sustainable Food Production at M State to address “the social part of regenerative agriculture” – kindling excitement about farming and strengthening people's connection to nature.

Wika and Prieve emphasize both in the classroom and on the farm that observation and adaptability are key to sustainability and success. “We want to observe what the land is telling us, what the animals are telling us, and have that inform our planning.”

Future of Food

This week I watched The Future of Food documentary, which traces the rise of corporate control over our food supply, the disintegration and disenfranchisement of family farms, and the excessive efforts to keep the general public uninformed – or misinformed – about the story behind food.

Genetic engineering is the main example through which corporate control of food is examined. This “gene revolution” started in the mid-1990s and was endorsed by US Supreme Court, who declared in a watershed case that corporations not only have a right to patent genes, but that they also “own” any living thing that contains the patented genetic material.

Paradoxically, at the same time genetically modified foods were deemed unique enough to be patented, they were also declared “substantially equivalent” to foods created by selective breeding, placing them in the category of “generally recognized as safe” foods and exempting them from labeling requirements.

According the film, 80-90% of Americans want genetically engineered food to be labeled. Yet US government policies on genetically modified foods do not reflect the will of the people. The “Right to Know” act, drafted years ago, still has not been voted on by Congress. More disturbingly, neither the US Congress nor the US citizenry ever had the opportunity to vote on the issue of patenting life.

The film outlines how corporate control over food has been concentrated further by the consolidation of the pesticide and fertilizer companies with seed companies and the introduction of a terminator gene. Industrial farmers have little choice but to buy sterile seed every year from Monsanto or other large corporations along with the pesticides they more than coincidentally manufacture to be used with those seeds. Over time, the pesticides become less effective, and therefore more chemicals – or stronger chemicals – must be purchased from these corporations. The pesticides and fertilizers are doing damage to the environment and polluting water resources, but the farmers must continue to use them or risk losing their crops. The corporations thus benefit doubly from selling seed that can’t be saved and the chemical applications necessary for the seeds to grow.

Any farmer who wants to opt-out and grow his own seed is still at the mercy of Monsanto, since Monsanto can “take samples” from farms and claim that their patented genes were present in the crops. The law currently holds the farmer responsible for any unintentional or unknown contamination of his crops by patented genes. If the patented genes have penetrated the crops, no matter how they got there, it is the farmer’s responsibility to pay Monsanto.

Undeniably, it is very difficult to “fence out” genetically modified life forms. Life is designed to propagate itself and doesn’t easily “stay put.” Once genetically engineered strains are allowed outside the lab, they are impossible to control. Especially in our increasing interconnected global economy, genetically-modified organisms easily can contaminate and crowd out heirloom varieties, threatening biodiversity world-wide as well as people’s control over their food supply.

The good news is that the food industry is economically dependent on steady patronage from customers. And as awareness of the downsides of industrial food is spreading, so are sustainable farms. People now have more options for buying local food direct from farmers in lieu of industrially-produced products. This gives them power to “opt out” of the industrial food system and destabilize it with changed spending patterns. The catch is that a substantial number of individuals must band together in altering their food-buying habits for consumer power to have any material effect on the food system as a whole.

In the meantime, multi-national corporations have lots of money to throw at impression management. The film touched on just a couple of examples of how large corporations like Monsanto are manipulating people’s opinions and consumption patterns. For example, seed and chemical corporations are promoting their work as the key to ending global hunger. Advancing genetically engineered crops, they claim, is the only way to feed the world's growing population. The intimation is that resistance to genetically engineered crops is tantamount to condemning innocent people to death.

This rationalization of the value of genetically engineered food is just a duplicitous myth that prays on human emotion. As the film points out, people are not starving because there is not enough food. People are starving because they don’t have access to food. Globalized commodity crops have decimated small-scale, diversified subsistence farms. People who used to be able to grow their own food now have to get a job to purchase food – food which often is imported from the United States. Around the world, food choice and food sovereignty are being systemically assaulted in the supposed interest of “feeding the world.”

To combat this, all of us who are committed to advancing sustainable agriculture have to get just as skilled in impression management as the corporations. Our advantage is that we have a genuinely cogent, compelling story to tell with real facts, faces, and images to back it up.

Back to Basics Conference

Today I went to a day-long conference organized by Happy Dancing Turtle called "Back to Basics for the Next 7 Generations." It was held in Pine River, MN -- about a two and a half hour drive from my home in Fergus Falls. It was well worth the trip.

Winona LaDuke was the featured keynote speaker. She gave approximately the same talk she gave to my Sociology of Agriculture class last week, but it was much more dramatic and touching the second time around. She emphasized the importance of food sovereignty -- the right to grow one's own food in a sustainable, ecologically and socially responsible way. She also underscored the value of "plugging the leaks" in our economy and resource usage, by reducing waste, keeping money local (i.e. patronizing local businesses), and decreasing our reliance on "job growth" by increasing our abilities to meet our own needs on a local, community level. Finally, she reminded us that a nation's GDP has no correlation to its citizens' happiness or well-being. "What can be measured doesn't count, and what counts can't be measured."

I attended sessions on how to make hooked rugs, how to grow mushrooms, how to raise animals for food, and how to leverage the medicinal value of herbs. All were fabulous, but the one that was most significant for me today was the session on raising animals for food.

I have been struggling with trying to decide what type of farm enterprises I'd like to have -- once I've graduated from the program and gained a little experience. We're supposed to be writing a business plan in my Farm Management class, and when writing a business plan, it's helpful to have particular products in mind. Well, deciding what to produce on a farm is not easy! I've been researching everything from cashmere goats to meat rabbits to wine to cider to grass-fed beef to bees and berries. It gets overwhelming. There are so many options!

The session on raising animals for food was very helpful in helping me refine my vision. I learned that chickens and turkeys tend to die easily, and that ducks are much easier to raise. I learned that yaks drink much less water than cattle, need less space, and tend to have good personalities. I also learned that rabbits are the most efficient converters of vegetation to meat. But the main value of the session was that the obvious finally started to sink in: don't raise animals you don't like, and don't grow food you don't like, regardless of the potential for economic profit.

I had been considering pastured broilers, because the demand for chicken is very high and the profit margin is decent. But I don't like broilers -- either as animals on a farm or as food on my plate. So scratch that.

What I always thought I would never want to do -- grow vegetables -- is now looking like a really good option. I like to eat vegetables, and growing them would reduce my produce bill. Also, I could use ducks to weed and add fertility, and I could raise some Angora rabbits on grass and unmarketable produce. Add some Shiitake mushrooms on oak logs, and it turns into a pretty viable operation for me.

So I have my first realistic vision: a veggie farm with ducks, rabbits, and mushrooms. Now if I could just have Cashmere goats as draft animals to do the tillage...

Grazing Cattle

Today in my grass-based livestock class, we learned how to calculate the size of paddocks for specific herds. We also watched videos of cattle in different grazing situations.

I realized just how much I've learned this year when I could identify Jerseys and Holsteins in the herd. These are common, easily-identifiable breeds to be sure -- no farmer would be impressed that I could identify them. But for a city girl who one year ago didn't know what a heifer was, I think it's an accomplishment.

It's amazing to me how much knowledge I've gained in the Sustainable Food Production program -- knowledge that many rural folks take for granted and that most city dwellers don't know exists.

For example, figuring out how to feed cattle (in a grass-based system) is tremendously complex. If they are being rotationally grazed, you have to factor in the weight of the cattle, their nutritional requirements ("dry cows" don't have as many needs as lactating cows), the forage species on your pastures, and the state of growth of your pasture's species.

A herd of 25 stocker calves, we figured out, might need about 2/3 of an acre of pasture per day in June, while in August, they might need two times that amount of space, depending on how tall the grass is.

In addition, before you can "re-graze" a paddock, you have to allow for adequate rest. How long of a rest period is needed? Well, that depends on the species you have, the time of year, the weather, the health of your soil, etc.

Calculating how much pasture a herd of cattle need (and where to put up the temporary fences) reminded me of math problems on the GRE and SAT. (Good math skills are critical for a grass-based livestock farmer!) I can't imagine doing these types of calculations every day, not knowing what the variables will be tomorrow or next week.

Take-home lesson: managing a herd of cattle on pasture is far more difficult than most people can imagine. Now I understand why the farmers we've visited said it takes about 3-5 years to learn how to graze successfully!