Modern Agriculture is Not Your Friend
Well, apparently I have good luck when I complain about not getting enough rain! I wrote that newsletter 3 weeks ago commiserating about our drought and since then we’ve gotten A LOT of rain. The joke around is here is when I write a newsletter about not getting enough snow or rain then we always get a blizzard or thunderstorms within the week. But we really needed the rain… our pastures have rebounded very nicely and are regrowing to where they should be this time of year. The chickens, turkeys, hogs and cattle are all loving the fresh greenery.
I had an interesting phone call this week with a chicken farmer from a southern state… he was raising conventional laying hens in large 10,000 bird chicken barns (for Vital Farms no less… so there’s some greenwashing for ya. Vital Farms definitely presents themselves as “pasture-raised”). We were chatting about the difficulty that this particular farmer was having in getting rid of his “spent hens” (spent hens are laying hens that have aged out of their prime egg laying years. All laying hens will slowly decrease in egg production over their lifespan). As he further explained the problem he had some pretty blunt thoughts about how egg and chicken farmers are treated by the large brands that they sign contracts with. He said that as the growers they’re paid a very low percentage of what that dozen eggs will end up being sold for in the grocery store… on top of that the growers were also responsible for finding a use for the spent hens at the end of their cycle. What stood out to me is how modern agriculture is really built taking advantage of farmers. Most of the money is being captured by middlemen and the farmer is left with pennies. It really is astounding how messed up the modern food system is. This farmer said that if he could get away from working with these large brands he would… It begins to make a lot of sense why we’ve seen the growth of small, local farms in the last decade.
I think there’s an often unthought of positive in buying from local farms. Local farms are operating outside this system that is taking advantage of farmers and labor. When you support a local farm then you’re supporting an entire supply chain of small businesses doing their best to grow food ethically, pay living wages and keep money in a community.
I, for one, am glad that our farm is operating outside of the conventional agriculture system that keeps farmers scrimping pennies so national brands can meet their own profit margin needs. Farming, and any local food production, is such a difficulty undertaking that they deserve to be capturing more of the consumer dollar. Modern agriculture is structured so that will never happen… and that’s the real crime.