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.