Organic Meat Hard to Find

  • Organic steak is hard to find, partly because so few slaughterhouses are certified organic. (Photo by David Benbennick, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Organic farmers would love to have you dig into more of their pork, chicken and beef. It’s not just because they’re proud about how they raise their animals – it’s because certified organic meat fetches high prices. But organic meat is harder to find than you’d expect, and it’s partly because there are few organically-certified slaughterhouses.
Shawn Allee found a farming community that came up with a solution:

Transcript

Organic farmers would love to have you dig into more of their pork, chicken and beef.

It’s not just because they’re proud about how they raise their animals – it’s because certified organic meat fetches high prices.

But organic meat is harder to find than you’d expect, and it’s partly because there are few organically-certified slaughterhouses.

Shawn Allee found a farming community that came up with a solution:

Dennis and Emily Wettstein turned their Illinois farm organic a while ago, mostly because conventional farming wasn’t practical for them.

“All the money seemed to go to pay for the fertilizers and the chemicals. And then I was more or less allergic to the chemicals. And so we were interested in getting away from that, especially if we were going to raise a family out here.”

The Wettsteins didn’t just raise grain organically – they kept chemicals and hormones out of their cattle.

“We started raising meat for ourselves and our families. Then, pretty soon, just word of mouth, friends and neighbors wanted meat.”

And, they found people who’d pay top dollar for their meat.

“We sell at the Oak Park farmers market.”

That’s just west of Chicago.

“Right. The Oak Park market managers, they are working on all the farmers to go towards organic.”

And that worked for the Wettsteins – they had USDA certified organic chicken.

“There’s one other meat vendor there – it’s not organic. So, we have no competition. We feel that, with that label on there, we can set our price to where we can make a profit.”

But Emily Wettstein says that term – organic – gave them trouble when it came to beef and other meat.

“We were getting a little bit pressured from other people, ‘Well, you can’t call your item organic. You don’t have a processing facility with the term of certified organic.'”

Here was the problem: For meat to get labeled USDA certified organic, it’s gotta be certified from the farm to the slaughterhouse.

The Wettsteins had someone to process organic chicken, but they were out of luck with pigs and cows.

There was no certified slaughterhouse for beef or pork in Illinois.

So, the Wettsteins and some relatives prodded meat lockers to get certified.
There was one taker.

“I’m inside a meat locker that’s about a fifteen minute drive from the Wettstein farm. It’s owned by Scott Bittner, and I’m here to understand what organic certification means for his business. How do I put this, there’s a headless, hoofless, skinless cow hanging from your ceiling. Where are we exactly?”

We’re on the kill floor. We had seventeen, eighteen cattle today. Seven of those were organic.

So, walk me through how you have to treat that organic cow differently.

It’s the first thing we did this morning – that’s one thing. Other than that, it’s segregating it in the cooler from the non-organic product and then processing it at a later time, which, again, you have to do first thing in the morning.

So, the basic idea is segregation?

Yeah, it is. The whole way through. Exactly.

Bittner’s simplifying things, but not much.

He has to clean or swap equipment between batches of organic and conventional meat.

There are rules on the kinds of chemicals he can use. And he hires a certification company to monitor his paper work.

Bittner says overall, it’s easy, and he’s surprised more slaughterhouses haven’t done it.

“Here we’re doing all our fabricating – grinding sausage, ground beef. Cutting some chops, ribs.”

“How does it feel to be the only guy who can process an organic side of beef?”

“I want to keep it quiet – I don’t want too many people to get started doing what I’m doing because it’s nice. I get two or three customers every year that I didn’t have before. When you go to bed at night and think about this economy being the way it is, every little bit helps.”

Bittner says farmers drive animals up to four hours to slaughter their animals here.

He says he’s proud of his work but can’t take too much credit; he knows he’s got a local organic slaughtering monopoly going.

That might change some day, but for now it’s reason enough to keep his knives sharp.

For the Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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‘Beefalo’ vs. Buffalo

  • Some American bison are contaminated with cow genes. The genes are left over from the early days of cross-breeding. (Photo by Paul Frederickson, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

In iconic images of the Great Plains, you always see the land dotted with bison. Those bison helped make the prairies what they were. But the bison that you see on prairie preserves today are not exactly the same as the ones that once roamed the plains. The Environment Report’s Charity Nebbe has more:

Transcript

We have a handful of ranchers to thank for the fact that we have any bison today. At one point there were only about a thousand and now there are half a million. Bob Hamilton is the Director of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma. He says the ranchers who saved the bison also put them at risk.

“Part of their motivation was also to see if they could cross breed bison with domestic livestock to see if they could produce a hardier winter resistant ‘beefalo’.”

The beefalo were not hardy and the ranchers abandoned their project, but the cattle genes remain. Bob Hamilton’s herd consists of 2,700 bison. Thanks to genetic testing, Hamilton has been able to weed out all of the bison carrying the most damaging kind of cattle DNA. But, there is some genetic material he just can’t get rid of. Chances are, there will always be a little bit of beef in the buffalo.

For the Environment Report I’m Charity Nebbe.

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Electricity From Factory Farms

  • Methane is one of the worst greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. (Photo by Bill Tarpenning, courtesy of the USDA)

Lots of people who live near big livestock farms complain
about the stench of manure. One of the by-products of all
that manure is methane gas – which can be used to create
electricity. More states are starting to offer tax breaks to
factory farms to make energy from their waste.
Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Lots of people who live near big livestock farms complain
about the stench of manure. One of the by-products of all
that manure is methane gas – which can be used to create
electricity. More states are starting to offer tax breaks to
factory farms to make energy from their waste.
Julie Grant reports:

Several states around the nation are offering tax breaks to
encourage factory farms to capture the methane from their
cow manure – and to convert it into usable electricity.
Methane is one of the worst greenhouse gases contributing
to global warming.

You might think environmental groups would support the
idea. But Ed Hopkins of the Sierra Club says taxpayers
should not subsidize manure-to-energy projects.

“We see factory farms as a business. And like any business,
they should pay the costs for their pollution control
equipment – not the public.”

Hopkins says taxpayer money for manure to energy projects
will only encourage more factory farming and the other
pollution problems associated with those big operations.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Prop 2 to Give Animals More Leg Room

  • By 2015, Proposition 2 in California forces farms to make sure the animals are given enough room to move around. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

Voters in California are drawing
a line in the sand when it comes to the
factory farming of animals. They overwhelmingly
approved a ballot measure to ensure that
hens, calves and pigs are treated more
humanely. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Voters in California are drawing
a line in the sand when it comes to the
factory farming of animals. They overwhelmingly
approved a ballot measure to ensure that
hens, calves and pigs are treated more
humanely. Julie Grant reports:

Right now, in most states, calves raised for veal, pregnant
pigs, and hens that lay eggs are caged so tight they can
barely move.

By 2015, Proposition 2 in California forces farms to make
sure the animals are given enough room to move around.

Michael Markarian is a vice president with the U.S. Humane
Society, which spent millions to get the issue approved.

“You cram these animals into cages barely larger than their
bodies. They’re practically immobilized their entire lives. I
mean, what could be more basic than giving an animal some
freedom of movement?”

Opponents of the issue say this will cost farmers and
consumers. We’ll see more imports from countries that don’t
have these kinds of laws.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Can Cow Hormones Help the Environment?

  • One environmentalist is arguing that hormones in cows may actually be better for the environment (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

The cow hormone known as rBST or rBGH
has taken a beating in the environmental community.
Injecting the hormone into cows makes them produce
more milk. But some people are afraid the hormone
can find its way from the cow, to the cow’s milk,
and into our bodies. The government insists that’s
not the case. Shawn Allee says one researcher
wants to change the debate about rBST – and convince
environmentalists to support the hormone:

Transcript

The cow hormone known as rBST or rBGH
has taken a beating in the environmental community.
Injecting the hormone into cows makes them produce
more milk. But some people are afraid the hormone
can find its way from the cow, to the cow’s milk,
and into our bodies. The government insists that’s
not the case. Shawn Allee says one researcher
wants to change the debate about rBST – and convince
environmentalists to support the hormone:

Before I introduce you to the researcher who supports rbst or rbgh, I want
you to understand what she’s up against.

It’s well-meaning people like Steve Parkes.

Parkes co-owns New Leaf natural food store in Chicago. He decides what’s
on the shelves.

“A lot goes into making that decision. First and foremost, is it something
I would eat myself?”

And as for milk produced with rbgh, Parkes won’t sell it.

“People have been drinking milk for thousands of years from animals
that didn’t have have rgbh in them, so, I think I’m a little more
comfortable drinking milk from a cow that didn’t have rgbh than I am
from something that is a very, very new technology.”

A lot of people distrust rbgh, and that’s changed the milk market.
For example, some retailers like Starbucks won’t buy milk from dairies that
use it. More and more dairies are asking farmers to pledge not to use the
hormone.

The trend has frustrated researcher Judith Capper.

“People aren’t questioning the science basis of it.”

Capper is with Cornell University. She argues environmentalists and
consumers should take another look at the hormone, and see it as part of the
solution to global warming.

Capper recently co-wrote a study that began with a simple observation – in a
few decades, there will be many more Americans.

“The US population will have gone up from about 300 million people to
377 million people and we wanted to look at the environment impact of
producing enough milk to feed all those people.”

That scares Capper – because producing milk can make the global warming
problem worse.

That’s because feeding cows, and the cows themselves, lead to more
greenhouse gas emissions.

“Okay, there are six major inputs and outputs in terms of carbon.”

I won’t go through six, but here are a few.

First, there’s the feed that cows eat. Tractors have to plant grain. That burns
fossil fuels. Greenhouse gasses. Then feed is trucked to the dairy farm.
More greenhouse gasses. More cows, more greenhouse gasses.

So, you want as much milk as possible from each cow.

“If you give rbst to a cow, it will produce an extra ten pounds per day,
that’s quite an increase.”

And then there’s the other greenhouse gasses. From, um, the ugly end of the
cow equation.

The manure puts off other potent greenhouse gasses. And Cows belch
methane. Cows that use rbst poop and belch, spare the atmosphere even
more carbon.

All this leads Capper to a startling conclusion.

She says if farmers gave a million cows the hormone –

“Using rbst would be like taking about 400,000 cars off the road, or
planting three hundred million trees. Those are really big numbers.”

Judith Capper says she expects scientists will challenge her research – and
she welcomes a good debate about rbgh and rbst.

She says that’s better than this vague idea that the hormone might somehow
be bad without understanding the whole story.

“Choose organic, choose rbst-free, whatever, but base it on facts and
science, not on consumer perceptions that may not be factually correct.”

But, Capper’s got her work cut out for her.

Government statistics show consumer fear about rbgh has made farmers cut
the percentage of cows injected with the hormone.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Honey, I Shrunk the Cow

  • Today’s cattle are much bigger than they were back in the 1920s. They’ve been bred to big and beefy. But, it turns out, you can actually produce more meat with the smaller cattle. (Photo by Keith Weller, courtesy of the USDA)

Because of feed and energy prices,
some cattle farmers are scaling back.
They’re not reducing the size of their
herd. They’re reducing the size of their
cows. Kinna Ohman reports:

Transcript

Because of feed and energy prices,
some cattle farmers are scaling back.
They’re not reducing the size of their
herd. They’re reducing the size of their
cows. Kinna Ohman reports:

Today’s cattle are much bigger than they were back in the 1920s. They’ve been bred to
big and beefy. But, it turns out, you can actually produce more meat with the smaller
cattle.

Richard Gradwohl has been breeding miniature cattle for more than forty years. He
says with today’s larger beef cattle on five acres, you can produce 2400 pounds of
meat. He can raise as much as 7000 pounds of beef on that same five acres.

“It’s surprising to me how many large cattle breeders call me almost every day
because they’re interested in reducing the size of their animals to achieve more
feed efficiency.”

Gradwohl thinks the emphasis on breeding large cattle might be reversing.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

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Farmers Take Cues From Their Cows

  • The Getz’s think their cows can help make decisions on their farm. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

Family farming is in trouble. The country has lost thousands

of small family-owned farms over the last twenty years. Some researchers

say that’s because the agricultural industry and government policy favor

corporate farms. That makes it difficult for smaller farms to survive.

So some small farmers are trying a different way of farming. Kinna Ohman reports that it can all start with a little ingenuity:

Transcript

Family farming is in trouble. The country has lost thousands

of small family-owned farms over the last twenty years. Some researchers

say that’s because the agricultural industry and government policy favor

corporate farms. That makes it difficult for smaller farms to survive.

So some small farmers are trying a different way of farming. Kinna Ohman reports that it can all start with a little ingenuity:

(sounds of farm)

Steve and Karen Getz run a dairy farm in central Vermont.

They’re the type of people who think outside of the box. Not only do they let their cows
out on pasture (and that’s rare among dairy farmers) they also let their cows be part of the
decision making on the farm. They think their cows have some pretty good ideas.

It all started on a hot summer day a couple of years ago. The Getz’s noticed after the
morning milking, their cows didn’t want to go out to pasture. Instead, the cows stood at
the gate that led into a large indoor shelter they call a ‘pack’.

The Getz’s built this ‘pack’ for the winter – so their cows could get out of the harsh
winds. They didn’t know why their cows would want to use it in the summer, but Steve
Getz says they gave it a try.

“And what we did was to open the gate to see what would happen. And what we
found was they’d come in and sleep in the pack in the blazing hot heat. And it
started to cool down in the afternoon. They went back out and grazed all night
long.”

Steve Getz says there’s been no loss of milk production. And all this makes a lot of
sense. But he says they never read about this in any book or farm magazine.

So Steve and Karen Getz thought they’d see if their cows had any more good ideas.

And the cows did.

Karen Getz says they were told their cows needed to give birth in an area separated from
the herd. So they built a fence around a corner area of their indoor shelter. But soon they
saw their cows didn’t like this – they wanted to be with the herd. So Karen Getz says
they let that happen too.

“She can go off into a corner somewhere and calve and have enough space. And
then she feels comfortable because she can get up and eat with the herd, she can be
nursing the calf. But she’s not separated. That’s less stress for the cow. You know,
we let them choose.”

It’s this kind of creativity that could help small farming come back to rural communities.

That’s what Martha Pickard thinks. She’s a grazing specialist.

She says many farmers only know the industrial model used by large farms. So when
they see families like the Getz’s grazing their cows, saving lots of money on feed, and
letting the cows make decisions on their own, it gives them other options.

“It’s such a huge deal to change your style of management. It’s like you getting up
in the morning and having a different job. So it takes a certain personality type,
someone who’s willing to think outside of the box, someone who’s willing to have
their neighbors stop by and say, ‘why are you doing it that way?’ It’s tough because
they’re usually on their own.”

Martha Pickard wants those small farmers to realize they’re not alone. And to know
there are others who are also rejecting the industrial way of farming.

Darrell Emmick, who’s with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, says he’s seen
progress.

Even though there’s been a net loss of small dairy farms in his region,
Emmick’s also watched farms with alternative grass based systems survive. He says
that’s hopeful.

“Twenty-five years ago, we’d pretty much gotten away from this. But today,
farmers putting cows on pasture. Finally, we have that on the radar screen. And if
I have a success story to share, that’d be it.”

Those small family farmers have realized the conventional wisdom pushed by the
agricultural industry might hurt more than help them. And people like Pickard and
Emmick want to help those farmers to learn from each other. They hope it means more
farms will survive being taken-over by corporate farming.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

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A New Approach to Dairy Farming

  • At Hawthorne Valley Farm, calves are raised with their mothers - unlike other dairy farms (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

Some cutting edge farmers are stepping
away from concentrating on only production of
meat and milk on their farms. They’re starting
to focus on ways to give their animals healthy,
long lives. And they’re finding more benefits
than they ever imagined. Kinna Ohman reports:

Transcript

Some cutting edge farmers are stepping
away from concentrating on only production of
meat and milk on their farms. They’re starting
to focus on ways to give their animals healthy,
long lives. And they’re finding more benefits
than they ever imagined. Kinna Ohman reports:

The idea of dairy cows grazing out in a pasture is rare – even though advertisers use this
scene all the time to sell us cheese and milk.

The reality is, most dairy cows spend their lives inside big sheds. They’re pushed to produce a lot of milk. And
they often die a premature death.

(cows mooing)

So there’s something relaxing about a farm like Hawthorne Valley. Maybe it’s just
knowing places like these still exist.

The farm’s surrounded by the rolling hills of New York’s Hudson Valley. There’s a big
red barn. Cows graze out in green pastures. And this year? You’ll even see some little
calves hanging out with their mothers.

Steffen Schneider’s grinning because of those little calves. He’s the dairy farm manager
at Hawthorne Valley. He’s standing at a pasture fence. And he can’t take his eyes off the scene
in front of him.

“It’s a great sight to see a little herd of calves galloping like little kids right through
the herd and the mother looking, being very proud of their ones. This mother right
here we’re looking at Patricia, she has her eye exactly on her own baby there,
Pepper, he’s one of those guys lying right there. Yeah, it’s wonderful.”

Schneider started letting his cows bring up their calves around a year ago. But that’s
really rare in the dairy industry.

At most farms, they take calves away from their mothers within a day of being born.
That’s because farmers want to keep their cows in milk production. They don’t want to waste that
milk on the calves. That push for high milk production does take a toll on dairy cows.

Kent Anderson’s a veterinarian who works on these types of farms. He says he
understand the business needs of farmers. But he says its difficult seeing cows pushed so
hard.

“But one thing that distresses me a bit is that a normal bovine should have five, ten,
twelve, productive years. But as agriculture changes, the average dairy cow makes it
two and a half lactations, which means, she’s not even 5 years old, and she’s gone.”

Many farmers think that’s the best way to run their dairy farms.

But Steffen Schneider says he wants to balance business with the natural needs of his
animals. And letting his cows raise their calves is just one more step. He says the cows
are less stressed. And they’re seeing some great changes in the calves.

“Within a few weeks, it was amazing to watch how healthy those calves were, how
quickly they grew. They were like different animals than we were used to seeing in
our pens. And so much more awake in their senses, so much stronger limbs. Just
much more vibrant animals.”

Schneider wonders how these improvements will help the calves as they become adults.
And even how it could help the quality of their milk. But more than anything else, he just
seems amazed it took him twenty five years to take this step.

“It’s really crazy that through just greed we don’t just expose those calves to their
mothers. And think we need every single last drop of milk – forgetting the only
reason the milk even comes in is because the cow gives birth. I’m really very happy
I finally, we finally, did it.”

Only a small group of dairy farmers are letting their cows bring up their young. But they hope to show other farmers and consumers there is a way to combine business with a more natural life for their animals.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

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Big Plans for Big Livestock Farm

  • Bion's proposed project would consist of 84,000 beef cattle (Photo by Bill Tarpenning, courtesy of the USDA)

Corporations are taking a new approach to farming. They’re combining ethanol production with feeding animals. The corporations need land, water, and a willing community. They turn to economically depressed rural communities and promise jobs. But some researchers think these rural communities could end up with more problems than benefits. Kinna Ohman reports:

Transcript

Corporations are taking a new approach to farming. They’re combining ethanol production with feeding animals. The corporations need land, water, and a willing community. They turn to economically depressed rural communities and promise jobs.But some researchers think these rural communities could end up with more problems than benefits. Kinna Ohman reports:

Bion Environmental Technologies is just like a lot of big businesses trying to capitalize on the ethanol trend.

Over the past year, people from Bion have been working with local officials in St. Lawrence County, a rural area of northern New York. Bion plans to build their first project there. It’ll be a huge indoor feedlot for eighty four thousand beef cattle and a large corn ethanol plant.

They have everything accounted for – they’ll ship cattle and corn in from the Midwest. They’ll use distiller’s grain from the ethanol plant to help feed the cattle. And they’ll even use manure from the cattle to power the ethanol plant.

Jeff Kappell is a manager with Bion. He says this kind of scale and integration is the future of agriculture. And he thinks it’ll be great for the community,

“Establishing a brand and establishing the ability, the knowledge in a consumer marketplace that there is value associated with activity in St. Lawrence County is a tide that can rise all boats. So we see this as symbiotic.”

But not everyone agrees. They wonder how much water the project will need. And they wonder about pollution from all those cattle.

Shane Rogers knows a lot about pollution from factory farms. He’s a professor of environmental engineering at Clarkson University in St. Lawrence County. He tests for certain pollutants in the water and soil around factory farms. Rogers often finds antibiotic resistant E-Coli and other pathogens. He says that type of discharge can happen every day – even at the best run facilities.

”And these are from operations with good practices. Or what we would call good practice because they’re following nutrient management plans. Because they’re treating their manures the way they’re supposed to be before applying them to land. Because they’re collecting and doing things the way they’re supposed to be. But they still can contribute pathogens to the environment and those pathogens still affect us.”

Rogers says factory farms don’t need to remove these pollutants. But people at Bion say their system will remove a lot of them.

James Morris is one of their engineers. He says they’re motivated to keep environmental impacts low,

“A facility of this sort wants to have the minimum possible environmental liability. Because that lowers the risk and raises the probability of profits. And we’re in the business to make money.

But researchers are still unconvinced. And some think there are better ways to provide meat and dairy products for the country.

Doug Gurian-Sherman’s with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He’s the lead author of a new report critical of large factory farms. He says small and medium sized farms can provide what people need without the risks to those in rural communities.

“When you spread these animals out, and you have smaller operations you have benefits to rural communities in terms of not as many problems with the pathogens, or the odors or the nutrient problems. What we’re talking about are sophisticated, smart alternatives that work with nature rather than against it.”

But Bion insists their large integrated project will work. And they expect to receive millions in taxpayer subsidies to help make it work. It’s unclear what the costs will be to the community. In the meantime, the trend continues. Bion plans to build at least five more of these projects throughout the country.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

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Bigger Not Always Better

  • The Hill's cows getting a sip of water while waiting for milking (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

In many areas of the country, small farms
are now the exception, not the norm. Farming,
especially with livestock, can mean thousands and
thousands of animals, and often distant, corporate
ownership. Even the smallest farms are pressured
to get bigger. So when a family decides to make
their farm smaller, they’re rebels. Kinna Ohman
reports:

Transcript

In many areas of the country, small farms
are now the exception, not the norm. Farming,
especially with livestock, can mean thousands and
thousands of animals, and often distant, corporate
ownership. Even the smallest farms are pressured
to get bigger. So when a family decides to make
their farm smaller, they’re rebels. Kinna Ohman
reports:

It’s five o’clock in the evening on the Hill’s dairy farm. Ray Hill just finished cleaning
out the milking equipment and is moving into the barn.

(sound of milking equipment and door)

Cows look around curiously, and afternoon light streams through the windows. Hill
moves comfortably among these cows, calling each of them by name, and cleans their
udders for milking.

(Ray describing the process)

Ray Hill and his wife Stephanie are full time farmers. They milk ten cows, twice a day.
They sell raw milk and yogurt directly from their farm. But getting to this point hasn’t
been easy. To survive, they’ve had to step away from the conventional approach to dairy
farming.

When the Hills got into farming eight years ago, they listened to the advice of farm
experts. They had more than forty cows, a tractor, and were selling their farm’s milk to the
regional processors.

But within a couple of years, they were deep in debt. Hill says the experts told him to get
more cows. He says he couldn’t see how that would help.

“Financially it just didn’t work. There wasn’t money to hire help. I had a couple of
kids and my wife and we were all running ragged and it just wasn’t fun. And there
were many days where I threatened to sell every cow in the barn.”

It’s common for farm experts and even bankers to push family farmers like the Hills to
‘get big or get out.’ Darrell Emmick’s with the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
He says he’s seen regions lose more than fifty percent of their dairy farms when using
this conventional standard.

“Getting bigger or get out really didn’t help a lot of the farmers. They got bigger
and they still went out of business.”

For a farm to get bigger, farmers confine hundreds or even thousands of dairy cows inside
large barns. That means farmers spend a lot of money and time bringing food to their
animals and hauling manure away.

Darrell Emmick says that model of agriculture started
in the 1940s when fuel was pretty cheap. But these days, it makes good economic sense
for farmers to go back to letting their milk cows out of the big barns to eat grass.

“Nothing can harvest a ton of feed any cheaper than the cow or the sheep or the
horse can by itself. Bringing food to animals is something I think we’re going to see a lot
less of, especially here and now with fuel prices going over four dollars a gallon.”

The Hill’s have made that switch on their farm. Ray Hill says his cows are healthier. He
believes their milk is better quality, too. And he’s excited about providing healthy
food for his community. Ray Hill says he wants their farm to be a place where people
come to buy quality food, and definately let him know if they have concerns.

“I want to have control over how I take care of my animals. I want to have control
over how I process or don’t process my milk. I want to have control over the price,
the quality. If there’s a quality issue, it’s up to me to take care of it, not say ‘let me
call so and so.’ I don’t think you can find anyone who’d that would tell you I’d
rather talk to a corporate person than the person who produced my food.”

But bucking against the system is not easy. There are days when no one comes to their
farm to buy their milk or yogurt. The Hills know they’re taking a risk. But they feel, at
least they’re not at the mercy of the industry, the banks and the whims of the market.

And for now, that’s worth it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

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