Actually a transition to manure and compost is a great idea, though it will take time and a shift back to smaller farms. The less we're dependent on policy and corporations for our food, the better.
Do these folks understand that for manure you need animals? not sure how this fits into the "cattle are the root of all climate evil" narrative.
Also, actually, regenerative farming allows animals to graze on natural feed (forage), their manure fertilizes that forage and provides residence for beetles and bugs and worms that the chickens come and eat after the ruminants have been through, and then all that lovely animal manure fertilizes the forage for the next cycle of ruminant feeding. Meanwhile, every time the plants get pruned for by the foraging animals, the plant roots sink deeper into the ground, thereby sequestering more carbon and holding on to more soil.
On the human side, nutrients in animal foods are more bioavailable than those in plants. Native Americans lived for months on pemmican (100% animal) whilst out on long hunts. Maybe we should consider eating more, not less, meat from pastures animals.
Some tribes lived on it almost exclusively year-round. And there's plenty of evidence that some neolithic populations lived entirely on meat.
I have beef cattle, hogs, and chickens on my farm, and you can literally watch the process you describe happen in real time. The chickens begin spreading the manure almost immediately, and if they keep up with volume, they also eradicate the eggs and larvae that finish their development in the manure that, if they matured, would drive the cattle crazy, like face flies. In the process, they enjoy an incredibly high-protein diet unlike any factory chicken with eggs so deep orange they're almost red.
Oh. And the dominant chickens spend nearly the entire day standing on the backs of the hogs (my variety have thick fur) eating every last insect off of their coat. Which is as cute as it is helpful.
But- BUT. Here's the part a lot of people may not want to hear.
We do this because we're a family farm primarily raising everything to be food self-sufficient.
You can do this, and it's efficient, and it's easy, and it's low-cost, but regenerative farming is SLOWER and gets you less meat per acre than feedlots. Growing massive amounts of feed corn and soy elsewhere and stuffing crowded livestock with it gets you volume that traditional methods can't beat.
We can do this, but if it was the only method being used, with our present land utilization there will be less beef, at higher prices. It will be far better, higher-quality beef, and the environmental impact will be much better.
But that fact remains, and the same goes for chicken and pork.
Much of modern agricultural practices- especially the dirty, inhumane ones people largely don't like- exist because they allow us to meet the market demand for cheap, ubiquitous protein. We don't like to accept that this sort of change WILL mean needing to use more land or accept higher-priced food.
So this is a reckoning we will have to have, one way or another.
Small-scale gets you less meat per square acre* but if we were really using our acres for food instead of lawns, I don't think we would need to make such dire contrasts.
*I defer to your greater experience in this area, but it would be interesting to really do a full analysis of the costs of feedlot volume - the feedlots themselves and the megafarms of corn and soy, all the way to new hospitals and their parking lots because so many Americans have chronic disease.
What you're talking about is absolutely correct, but is a MUCH bigger discussion than this.
If you look at all the interlocking systems and the costs they incur (healthcare costs from heart disease from diet, etc.), absolutely, 100%, no dispute.
The problem is that consumer behavior isn't rational and doesn't hinge on understandings of those interlocking systems- and can't be required to do so, and never will be. Markets are rational, but individuals aren't.
If we did your full analysis, I have no doubt that you would be vindicated several times over by the truth. But the healthcare industry is not beholden to the food industry, neither are beholden to educational institutions, or property markets, etc. Simply because this interdependency is true, it doesn't mean the connected parts have ever or will ever act cooperatively.
You're also 100% correct that "if we were really using our acres for food instead of lawns" (which is, btw, precisely what our farm is- we converted 7 acres of lawn) we would have more food. 99% of Americans will not and probably cannot do this. The big-government solution is already being mobilized- take away our lawns, move us into capsules, and mandate where food is grown. We don't want that either.
This all returns to my original statement: we have become accustomed to certain market conditions, and the industry has evolved to maintain that demand. It's really a miracle- all other factors disregarded- how America has engineered the widespread availability of cheap, ubiquitous food, that our poor people are obese instead of starving.
We can change, but it WILL change our lifestyle no matter which way it goes. There probably isn't a way to create exactly the same food conditions we currently enjoy through regenerative means. The philosophical question is what sort of food conditions we WANT going forward.
I don’t doubt your knowledge in this area, but do wonder how much less meat there would be if all or most of the corn and soy fields were converted back to the grasslands they once were. Wild animals also graze along side domesticated animals and are a good source too since there aren’t enough predators to keep prey populations in check.
Maybe. It depends entirely on the breed of goat and their land use, which you'll have to research. Of course, if you're willing to supplement their diet to make up whatever shortfall your amount of land has, it's no problem.
Goat manure is excellent fertilizer but it won't really help the chickens- it's in small pellets and doesn't have the abundant impact on insects that cow and pig shit do. The chickens will need to have enough grass to forage in (competing with the goats) and be a variety that's bred for free range (again, unless you're willing to partly or completely supplement their feed).
So, with some considerations, it can absolutely be done. I recommend the book "Polyface Micro" by Joel Salatin. It's specifically about challenges like this.
TPTB are aiming to prevent anyone from owning animals for food by using the pcr scam to prove dangerous disease. It’s already illegal to keep chickens outside in Europe. Where in the USA will any family farm be safe from big brother?
Heritage breeds are very good at this (it's what they were for), which is why they're being rediscovered by small-scale farmers. If our pastures were slightly larger (our cows are on 10 acres), we could raise them with no food supplementation whatsoever. For our hogs and chickens, this is already true. But this is NOT true of commercial breeds, that have been bred and cultivated to survive on a factory diet. A pink factory pig would not get enough energy to reach market weight on forage alone, or if they did, it would take much longer than the normal market turnaround.
Aside from the problem of slowing down a large demand for beef, we here in mid Michigan have several medium small cattle lots with good prices if you can goin with others on a full beef. What we do not have enough of is small processing plants. There are only two local butchers I know of here and they are backed up for 6 months with orders.
We do however, have plenty of venison on the hoof….
Here in Oregon we have Roosevelt Elk weighing in at roughly 1000 pounds. License and tags cost around $100 per hunter. One year we had 4 family member tags to fill and did. That year we butchered all four on our kitchen counters in 4 days and filled the freezers for our 4 families. I have been butchering in my home for close to 50 years. It's not at pretty cut and packaging as the professionals but tastes just as good and saves several hundred dollars doing it ourselves. Elk meat is one of the leanest and best tasting wild meat out there. Where I live in the elk are constantly grazing in the cow pastures. The farmers get free tags and we do know a couple of farmers if we cannot find the elk in the mountains. Hunting, fishing, clamming, crabbing, and vegetable gardening have been in my life forever. I am blessed! :)
that sounds delicious. Ive lived in the northern NJ NY state area most of my life and Im preparing to leave for wilder places. Im thinking of Missouri or south dakota. Oregons state politics is just too crazy for me. Its a shame b/c im sure where you live and out in the eastern part of the state its very different
And note I said "custom slaughter CUTS." That's very different from buying a whole or half beef.
I sell my cattle to people who use custom slaughter facilities, but we have a shortage of small processors here. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who raises his own cattle (and is the sponsor of the PRIME Act), says the same is true there. You yourself may not perceive the issue (do you raise cattle?), or perhaps in your locality it isn't a problem, but I'm betting it's more widespread than you're aware of.
Lisa, I was thinking the same thing! I am a WP member as well and hope to attend the October conference. I had never even heard of this organization until last fall. I don't agree with everything they say - yet - but much of it has been an eye-opener. Their podcasts are excellent. Useful information...and positive and uplifting as well (though not funny like Jeff!) https://holistichilda.com/podcast
I attended one of their local conferences at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms to learn more about ag practices. Highly recommend a visit if you are ever in the area. https://www.polyfacefarms.com/
Hilda and Sally were both speakers at the farm. Del Bigtree was also there. I would go insane without my online community, but nothing beats meeting everyone in person. It was wonderful.
Lucky you! The speakers at the Weston A. Price foundation conference this October don’t seem as exciting as the ones that they had last year (Del Bigtree and Bobby Kennedy Jr.), but it sounds like it’ll still be a great time.
Oh dear! I never got the memo I was suppose to be curbing meat consumption. Try telling that to my "meat & potatoes" man. He is not going to be happy and he is not going to comply. In truth, we raise our own steer each year and we hunt deer and elk. Meat is on the table 6 out of 7 dinners. The freezers are full and the pasture is green and well fertilized. I wish everyone had the option to live in rural America.
Nah, I'm a Gentile. :) I was raised Methodist, converted to Catholicism at 17 and then moved to non-denominational at age 27 where I still am. There is a long story about a spirit filled priest in there! Hubby and I helped found a plain old Bible church here 40 years ago which is still going strong. The days we do not have meat is usually because I am too tired to cook so we have soup and sandwiches, pizza, something simple. Toast is good! I still cannot cook for 2 after cooking for 6 for 20+ years.
thank you for pointing out the greater bioavailability of animal proteins, which is a reason why we should not get rid of animal protein and force everyone to go vegetarian/vegan or eat plastic meat (lookin' at you, Bill Gates).
I’m sure there are many additional farms doing this. When we first wanted pastured meat, I think we just searched “grass fed beef,” or something like that.
I’m older and allegedly wiser now. The consumer culture has destroyed us. Why do we need a new car every 3 years. Why do we need more than 1 TV. Why do I need all the fancy technology toys. Why do I need “convenience food”.
Well, I need convenience food because I’m working my ass off to pay for all the other garbage.
At the end of the day, I think the Amish have gotten it right. Local community that supports one another and is self-sufficient. That’s how we’re meant to be as a species. It’s what we should’ve been taught growing up.
I would also love to see the return of repair shops for things like TVs. Mine is relatively new and was being thrown out by someone who didn’t know how to fix it. All it needed was a $0.25 part and a half hour worth of work. $1500 TV cost me a quarter. How much less would end up in landfills if people started fixing things again instead of replacing
It would be interesting if more people followed this. I do. I don't have all the fancy toys and my TV goes back to 2003 and needs a converter box. It's not getting replaced until it stops working. I use things until they wear out. Life is simpler and less expensive this way.
As much as I despise the governing extreme liberal politicians in Oregon living a rural life is who I am therefore will most likely will die here because I am as happy as a clam at high tide 99% of the time! I care little for the cities and feel they only offer job income and a bit of culture if you want or need it. I tried living in the city for a year right out of high school and could not adapt. I live in a rural community with a population of 5k in the city limits, another 5k in the surrounding area and a total population of about 25K in the entire county. We laugh because there are more dairy cows than people. The nearest big city is 75 miles away and on the weekends it seems the whole city comes to my town to escape city life and live rural life for 2 or 3 days. The Pacific is 20 minutes from my home. I drive a 2009 vehicle (hubby 2005) and hate car payments as much as the OR politicians so in my family we drive them till they die. We have a TV upstairs and one downstairs. I detest most fast food mostly because I know what is in it. (side note: A couple of months ago a kid/worker at Burger King told me he would never eat the food there! Yikes.) I'm pretty close to living an Amish type lifestyle except I do like the luxury of electricity. As everything changes so drastically in the world I am thanking the Lord minute by minute for my life and my location. I wish everyone could enjoy a peaceful, rural lifestyle.
I've been buying cars four and five years old and keeping them until they're 18 to 21 years old. Guess I was not in with the three years old/gotta get a new car crowd
Exactly. I would love to see the honey wagons spreading cattle goodness on our fields again. I say this as a nice steak thaws out and bacon is sizzling in the pan. Beef is the most nutrient packed food you can eat. You’d have to turn green before kale 🤮could compare. Or any grain.
While I agree with you, nothing they do is ever about helping the population in any way, so whatever transitioning they attempt to implement will simply increase manufactured scarcity. More states need to have referendums regarding the right to grow food, as this is being slowly but surely restricted. Maine has already done this. Although it seems like a far off goal, smaller more local food production is going to be important very suddenly if the scarcity of energy, fuel and transport keeps going the way it is....
yes, I absolutely agree. Good C&C people, please look into turning your suburban gardens into mini homesteads! you can grow a lot of food on just a quarter acre.
I wish I could grow some of my own food, but I’m one of those with a black thumb. Even with help everything I’ve tried to grow dies. Animals I have much better luck with. Also, look around the area you live in for someone who teaches foraging. You’d be surprised at the number of edibles growing wild. There are 15 varieties in my yard alone.
I can confidently tell you that several rural and agricultural groups like the Grange have been talking excitedly about ME's "Right To Food" amendment and it's on the radar of a lot of activists and politicians in rural areas.
Even areas you would think of as highly ag-friendly have gotten overregulated to the point where a person living in a home down the block from a 20-acre family farm can't have backyard chickens because of "safety."
I actually don't think that it will support fewer humans. Our current way of feeding a lot of people is extractive, and we usually make calculations based on this model. Small scale farming can be regenerative.
Regenerative farming is supportive of humans and wildlife; it allows a lot of production in small areas; it improves soil fertility; it embraces polyculture instead of monoculture; it can sequester carbon and improve water retention in the landscape. What it does not lend itself to is scalability or intense profit.
Your comment is almost exactly what I came to the comments section to post. As I see it there are only two significant sources of manure. The first is from the animals that they say are farting the planet into an oven and the second is from politicians, but anything from them is toxic so you don’t want that near food.
Ah yes, the usual dichotomy of our government. The government is full of bulls and therefore they want to control all the bullshit. Our elected bovines never cease to amaze us.
they are also planning on using human waste as manure. look it up. there are articles that talk about how compost and manure actually yield a lot less produce. they neglect to mention that this has all been done before and didn't work. Id be very worried if they are using human waste on our produce. go local or homegrown. I am starting my own raised veggie beds. I hope I am good farmer.
People poop has been used for fertilizer for centuries
In cities before modern sewer systems existed there was a fairly prosperous industry of going house to house to collect poop, compost it, and sell it to farmers.
I had a sod lawn put down 20 years ago and it was recycled human waste. The theory was it did not contain any seeds as cattle and chicken manure did. I found it disgusting but then again I did have a beautiful lawn and no weeds.
Once any manure- human or otherwise - is fully composted, it's not really waste anymore; it's just compost. Was it the idea that was disgusting or the lawn?
He’s creating cell cultured mothers milk right now. What a convenient moment with parents getting fear ramped up with formula shortages now. Maybe Abbott labs will be producing it? 🤔🤔
I used my own supply but many can’t do that. When I did nurse hardly any mothers did around my age but that has gotten much better. If I was young and had the shots
that's a chilling photo. they need something for those plants, though, besides light - some kind of minerals and whatever else the plants would get from the soil.
The arrogance of this approach - that we can do better than nature (or God, or millions of years of evolution)... it's staggering.
late nineteenth century sailing ships worked rund the Horn to load up on bat guano harvested (ir is that "mined) from islands offshore to Peru and Ecuador. High in natural nitrates, and dense.. but the cost of mining and shipment was fairly high, though far cheaper than buying enough more land to raise enough hoofed protein to supply the demand.
Also, there are few options for gathering and moving the poop. My cows spread it all over the field, so one would have to spend a whole day with a wagon and pitch fork to get a ton of it, which wouldn’t fertilizer half an acre of corn.
Same for the chickens, except you can’t gather that with a pitchfork. You’ll need your fingers and good eyes.
If they want to get their manure from confinement operations, there aren’t many feedlots left and the chicken litter from houses is already drawing almost as much as concentrated commercial fertilizer and it’s all spoken for. You’ll have to bid up the price even more if you can get it at all.
And corn, which they need for their ethanol boondoggle, is a super high nitrogen user, requiring enormous amounts of fertilizer.
So the btu’s it’s going to take to gather and truck the poop from the feedlots is more than the corn can produce, even with the poop. Looks like a job for Uncle Sammy. No one else would be stupid or incompetent enough to do it.
My dad milked. The cows came into the loafing shed and pooped there plus the milking parlor. Thats where he got the a lot of ready manure for our small farm. That was a long time ago. Im sure dad still additionally fertilized the corn and bean crops
Yes, even grass based dairies get enough poop in the barn to spread their fields and gardens, but since they clean the barns twice a day, that would be a lot in trucking to get it to Iowa for the corn farms.
And fat chance you could get the farmer to part with it when he’s got it right there ready for the hay fields.
I love organic fertilizer and use chicken litter as much as possible, but only a government bureaucrat works think you can spread it on 5,000 acres of corn practically.
T'would be loverly, but even more so would be J&J, Moderna, Pfier, after being tagged for billions of award money in compenstion for the deaths and debilitaioin wreaked upon the naifs that took the pokes.
Does anyone know if the vaccine court established under the 1986 act would be considered an administrative court? If that court is declared unconstitutional, even in just 3 states, then we would have vaccine injury plaintiffs in the jury court system and everything would blow open. It would take a few years, like Monsanto, but essentially the entire vaccine program would be ended.
Not with liability immunity we won't. As long as 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 "feature" of the 1986 act remains in place, the jury court system will never see a vaccine injury plaintiff.
Even if that stays (and sadly you're almost certainly right that it would), if a real court actually saw the case before an actual jury (or even bench trial), I would think that would at least _help_ with getting fair decisions.
It is implicitly illegal. A pox on everybody's house who made that happen. Can you imagine if auto manufacturers had liability immunity? Would people stand for that? Would they stand for that in the context of not only can you not sue the maker of the car for injury or death, but 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙪𝙮 𝙞𝙩 regardless?
I think it’s more likely that the US cabal, in partner with the European cabal are fighting Russia. The NWO encompasses the entire West. Think WEF, tech oligarchs, Gates, bought-and-paid-for American legislators , etc. But primarily the WEF/Davos crowd. Russia has its faults but it does provide a temporary bulwark against these nefarious creeps.
As a farm wife I can tell you that when natural fertilizer is used the city people that have moved to the country freak out because it stinks or a little bit has spilled on the road and then the cops are called and then the state Department of Environmental Quality gets involved! People are idiots! They think food comes from the grocery store!
My Mom's family used to call that, "Grandma's vacation smell." --- For any younger people here, because Grandma's farm would smell like that when you went there on vacation in the Spring and/or Summer.
It’s so interesting that the Experts would model a tabletop exercise after a new form of a disease never before known to spread between humans. Or at least not enough between humans to matter. I mean, why bother taking the time to model based on a disease that’s not even a concern in the first place? It just doesn’t make sense.
I’m sure they haven’t done any gene editing or tinkering with this one though, not like they did with the ol’ common cold one. Nobody would EVER do a thing like that.
Actually a transition to manure and compost is a great idea, though it will take time and a shift back to smaller farms. The less we're dependent on policy and corporations for our food, the better.
Do these folks understand that for manure you need animals? not sure how this fits into the "cattle are the root of all climate evil" narrative.
“For manure you need animals.”
😂😂😂😂😂
Love it.
Also, actually, regenerative farming allows animals to graze on natural feed (forage), their manure fertilizes that forage and provides residence for beetles and bugs and worms that the chickens come and eat after the ruminants have been through, and then all that lovely animal manure fertilizes the forage for the next cycle of ruminant feeding. Meanwhile, every time the plants get pruned for by the foraging animals, the plant roots sink deeper into the ground, thereby sequestering more carbon and holding on to more soil.
On the human side, nutrients in animal foods are more bioavailable than those in plants. Native Americans lived for months on pemmican (100% animal) whilst out on long hunts. Maybe we should consider eating more, not less, meat from pastures animals.
Some tribes lived on it almost exclusively year-round. And there's plenty of evidence that some neolithic populations lived entirely on meat.
I have beef cattle, hogs, and chickens on my farm, and you can literally watch the process you describe happen in real time. The chickens begin spreading the manure almost immediately, and if they keep up with volume, they also eradicate the eggs and larvae that finish their development in the manure that, if they matured, would drive the cattle crazy, like face flies. In the process, they enjoy an incredibly high-protein diet unlike any factory chicken with eggs so deep orange they're almost red.
Oh. And the dominant chickens spend nearly the entire day standing on the backs of the hogs (my variety have thick fur) eating every last insect off of their coat. Which is as cute as it is helpful.
The natural way of farming-still the best!
But- BUT. Here's the part a lot of people may not want to hear.
We do this because we're a family farm primarily raising everything to be food self-sufficient.
You can do this, and it's efficient, and it's easy, and it's low-cost, but regenerative farming is SLOWER and gets you less meat per acre than feedlots. Growing massive amounts of feed corn and soy elsewhere and stuffing crowded livestock with it gets you volume that traditional methods can't beat.
We can do this, but if it was the only method being used, with our present land utilization there will be less beef, at higher prices. It will be far better, higher-quality beef, and the environmental impact will be much better.
But that fact remains, and the same goes for chicken and pork.
Much of modern agricultural practices- especially the dirty, inhumane ones people largely don't like- exist because they allow us to meet the market demand for cheap, ubiquitous protein. We don't like to accept that this sort of change WILL mean needing to use more land or accept higher-priced food.
So this is a reckoning we will have to have, one way or another.
Small-scale gets you less meat per square acre* but if we were really using our acres for food instead of lawns, I don't think we would need to make such dire contrasts.
*I defer to your greater experience in this area, but it would be interesting to really do a full analysis of the costs of feedlot volume - the feedlots themselves and the megafarms of corn and soy, all the way to new hospitals and their parking lots because so many Americans have chronic disease.
What you're talking about is absolutely correct, but is a MUCH bigger discussion than this.
If you look at all the interlocking systems and the costs they incur (healthcare costs from heart disease from diet, etc.), absolutely, 100%, no dispute.
The problem is that consumer behavior isn't rational and doesn't hinge on understandings of those interlocking systems- and can't be required to do so, and never will be. Markets are rational, but individuals aren't.
If we did your full analysis, I have no doubt that you would be vindicated several times over by the truth. But the healthcare industry is not beholden to the food industry, neither are beholden to educational institutions, or property markets, etc. Simply because this interdependency is true, it doesn't mean the connected parts have ever or will ever act cooperatively.
You're also 100% correct that "if we were really using our acres for food instead of lawns" (which is, btw, precisely what our farm is- we converted 7 acres of lawn) we would have more food. 99% of Americans will not and probably cannot do this. The big-government solution is already being mobilized- take away our lawns, move us into capsules, and mandate where food is grown. We don't want that either.
This all returns to my original statement: we have become accustomed to certain market conditions, and the industry has evolved to maintain that demand. It's really a miracle- all other factors disregarded- how America has engineered the widespread availability of cheap, ubiquitous food, that our poor people are obese instead of starving.
We can change, but it WILL change our lifestyle no matter which way it goes. There probably isn't a way to create exactly the same food conditions we currently enjoy through regenerative means. The philosophical question is what sort of food conditions we WANT going forward.
I don’t doubt your knowledge in this area, but do wonder how much less meat there would be if all or most of the corn and soy fields were converted back to the grasslands they once were. Wild animals also graze along side domesticated animals and are a good source too since there aren’t enough predators to keep prey populations in check.
A lot of those inputs into modern farming are calorie deficient. In other words there's more calories of input than there is calories in output.
This 'farm' (it's quite small) has better output than modern agriculture;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10uIpeeLJ80
Would the process work with goats used for milk (alleric to cows milk) and smaller amount of land?
The process = regenerative farming?
Maybe. It depends entirely on the breed of goat and their land use, which you'll have to research. Of course, if you're willing to supplement their diet to make up whatever shortfall your amount of land has, it's no problem.
Goat manure is excellent fertilizer but it won't really help the chickens- it's in small pellets and doesn't have the abundant impact on insects that cow and pig shit do. The chickens will need to have enough grass to forage in (competing with the goats) and be a variety that's bred for free range (again, unless you're willing to partly or completely supplement their feed).
So, with some considerations, it can absolutely be done. I recommend the book "Polyface Micro" by Joel Salatin. It's specifically about challenges like this.
TPTB are aiming to prevent anyone from owning animals for food by using the pcr scam to prove dangerous disease. It’s already illegal to keep chickens outside in Europe. Where in the USA will any family farm be safe from big brother?
Right to Food legislation.
W ow; as I was reading your first line, I wondered to myself "What was the name of that guy in VA who did this?"
And damned if you didn't provide it a few lines later.
Thank you. I'm familiar with Joel. I'll get his book.
I love this picture in my mind!
Just about all of my meat (pork and beef) comes from a local farmer whose animals forage and are completely grass fed. It's delicious!
Heritage breeds are very good at this (it's what they were for), which is why they're being rediscovered by small-scale farmers. If our pastures were slightly larger (our cows are on 10 acres), we could raise them with no food supplementation whatsoever. For our hogs and chickens, this is already true. But this is NOT true of commercial breeds, that have been bred and cultivated to survive on a factory diet. A pink factory pig would not get enough energy to reach market weight on forage alone, or if they did, it would take much longer than the normal market turnaround.
Aside from the problem of slowing down a large demand for beef, we here in mid Michigan have several medium small cattle lots with good prices if you can goin with others on a full beef. What we do not have enough of is small processing plants. There are only two local butchers I know of here and they are backed up for 6 months with orders.
We do however, have plenty of venison on the hoof….
Here in Oregon we have Roosevelt Elk weighing in at roughly 1000 pounds. License and tags cost around $100 per hunter. One year we had 4 family member tags to fill and did. That year we butchered all four on our kitchen counters in 4 days and filled the freezers for our 4 families. I have been butchering in my home for close to 50 years. It's not at pretty cut and packaging as the professionals but tastes just as good and saves several hundred dollars doing it ourselves. Elk meat is one of the leanest and best tasting wild meat out there. Where I live in the elk are constantly grazing in the cow pastures. The farmers get free tags and we do know a couple of farmers if we cannot find the elk in the mountains. Hunting, fishing, clamming, crabbing, and vegetable gardening have been in my life forever. I am blessed! :)
that sounds delicious. Ive lived in the northern NJ NY state area most of my life and Im preparing to leave for wilder places. Im thinking of Missouri or south dakota. Oregons state politics is just too crazy for me. Its a shame b/c im sure where you live and out in the eastern part of the state its very different
I told my kids that Idaho, Montana, or Wyoming (in that order) would be my only other options if I have to flee.
This is the problem everywhere, not enough small processors and too many regulations about selling custom-slaughter cuts.
Not "everywhere." In Oregon, the slaughtering and processing is all done locally, right on the small farm. Purchasing is directly with the farmer.
Hmm, "all" done locally, on farm, may not be correct for all of Oregon, according to this, which sounds remarkably like most other states, since most of the laws about meat processing are federal. https://extension.oregonstate.edu/animals-livestock/poultry-rabbits/meat-poultry-processing-regulations-oregon-short-guide
And note I said "custom slaughter CUTS." That's very different from buying a whole or half beef.
I sell my cattle to people who use custom slaughter facilities, but we have a shortage of small processors here. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who raises his own cattle (and is the sponsor of the PRIME Act), says the same is true there. You yourself may not perceive the issue (do you raise cattle?), or perhaps in your locality it isn't a problem, but I'm betting it's more widespread than you're aware of.
YESSS!! this is beautifuul 💕 C&Cers who understand regenerative farming
I’ve learned a lot from the regenerative farm w from which we buy a lot of our chicken, pork, and some beef.
Seems like a good place to put in a plug for the Weston A. Price Foundation. I would love to meet you all at their October conference.
Lisa, I was thinking the same thing! I am a WP member as well and hope to attend the October conference. I had never even heard of this organization until last fall. I don't agree with everything they say - yet - but much of it has been an eye-opener. Their podcasts are excellent. Useful information...and positive and uplifting as well (though not funny like Jeff!) https://holistichilda.com/podcast
I attended one of their local conferences at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms to learn more about ag practices. Highly recommend a visit if you are ever in the area. https://www.polyfacefarms.com/
I have read several of Salatin’s books and have always wanted to visit both his and Sally Fallon’s farms. Oh, and I listen to Hilda too. ❤️
Hilda and Sally were both speakers at the farm. Del Bigtree was also there. I would go insane without my online community, but nothing beats meeting everyone in person. It was wonderful.
Lucky you! The speakers at the Weston A. Price foundation conference this October don’t seem as exciting as the ones that they had last year (Del Bigtree and Bobby Kennedy Jr.), but it sounds like it’ll still be a great time.
Oh dear! I never got the memo I was suppose to be curbing meat consumption. Try telling that to my "meat & potatoes" man. He is not going to be happy and he is not going to comply. In truth, we raise our own steer each year and we hunt deer and elk. Meat is on the table 6 out of 7 dinners. The freezers are full and the pasture is green and well fertilized. I wish everyone had the option to live in rural America.
WHAT? You only eat meat 6 days a week?
(Kidding - you might be a Trad Catholic like us - Fridays are a BEAR for me!)
Nah, I'm a Gentile. :) I was raised Methodist, converted to Catholicism at 17 and then moved to non-denominational at age 27 where I still am. There is a long story about a spirit filled priest in there! Hubby and I helped found a plain old Bible church here 40 years ago which is still going strong. The days we do not have meat is usually because I am too tired to cook so we have soup and sandwiches, pizza, something simple. Toast is good! I still cannot cook for 2 after cooking for 6 for 20+ years.
thank you for pointing out the greater bioavailability of animal proteins, which is a reason why we should not get rid of animal protein and force everyone to go vegetarian/vegan or eat plastic meat (lookin' at you, Bill Gates).
Exactly - well stated!
Finding the meat from pastured animals is the problem. Factory farms, you know.
We order from a farm that delivers.
US Wellness Meats is one source.
Seven Sons farm is another.
I’m sure there are many additional farms doing this. When we first wanted pastured meat, I think we just searched “grass fed beef,” or something like that.
Visit local Farmer's Markets, ask the vendors about who runs pastured animals.
Try https://www.farmmatch.com/
I’m older and allegedly wiser now. The consumer culture has destroyed us. Why do we need a new car every 3 years. Why do we need more than 1 TV. Why do I need all the fancy technology toys. Why do I need “convenience food”.
Well, I need convenience food because I’m working my ass off to pay for all the other garbage.
At the end of the day, I think the Amish have gotten it right. Local community that supports one another and is self-sufficient. That’s how we’re meant to be as a species. It’s what we should’ve been taught growing up.
Gah, I sound like a Luddite 😂.
I would also love to see the return of repair shops for things like TVs. Mine is relatively new and was being thrown out by someone who didn’t know how to fix it. All it needed was a $0.25 part and a half hour worth of work. $1500 TV cost me a quarter. How much less would end up in landfills if people started fixing things again instead of replacing
It would be interesting if more people followed this. I do. I don't have all the fancy toys and my TV goes back to 2003 and needs a converter box. It's not getting replaced until it stops working. I use things until they wear out. Life is simpler and less expensive this way.
As much as I despise the governing extreme liberal politicians in Oregon living a rural life is who I am therefore will most likely will die here because I am as happy as a clam at high tide 99% of the time! I care little for the cities and feel they only offer job income and a bit of culture if you want or need it. I tried living in the city for a year right out of high school and could not adapt. I live in a rural community with a population of 5k in the city limits, another 5k in the surrounding area and a total population of about 25K in the entire county. We laugh because there are more dairy cows than people. The nearest big city is 75 miles away and on the weekends it seems the whole city comes to my town to escape city life and live rural life for 2 or 3 days. The Pacific is 20 minutes from my home. I drive a 2009 vehicle (hubby 2005) and hate car payments as much as the OR politicians so in my family we drive them till they die. We have a TV upstairs and one downstairs. I detest most fast food mostly because I know what is in it. (side note: A couple of months ago a kid/worker at Burger King told me he would never eat the food there! Yikes.) I'm pretty close to living an Amish type lifestyle except I do like the luxury of electricity. As everything changes so drastically in the world I am thanking the Lord minute by minute for my life and my location. I wish everyone could enjoy a peaceful, rural lifestyle.
I've been buying cars four and five years old and keeping them until they're 18 to 21 years old. Guess I was not in with the three years old/gotta get a new car crowd
Exactly. I would love to see the honey wagons spreading cattle goodness on our fields again. I say this as a nice steak thaws out and bacon is sizzling in the pan. Beef is the most nutrient packed food you can eat. You’d have to turn green before kale 🤮could compare. Or any grain.
While I agree with you, nothing they do is ever about helping the population in any way, so whatever transitioning they attempt to implement will simply increase manufactured scarcity. More states need to have referendums regarding the right to grow food, as this is being slowly but surely restricted. Maine has already done this. Although it seems like a far off goal, smaller more local food production is going to be important very suddenly if the scarcity of energy, fuel and transport keeps going the way it is....
yes, I absolutely agree. Good C&C people, please look into turning your suburban gardens into mini homesteads! you can grow a lot of food on just a quarter acre.
Covid has made a lot of people start growing their own tomatoes, beans, peppers, potatoes, etc
I wish I could grow some of my own food, but I’m one of those with a black thumb. Even with help everything I’ve tried to grow dies. Animals I have much better luck with. Also, look around the area you live in for someone who teaches foraging. You’d be surprised at the number of edibles growing wild. There are 15 varieties in my yard alone.
E.g. = Dandelions!
Grandpa made dandelion wine. I got my first taste when I was about 10 and remember I liked it. I don't think I have tasted it since then.
That seems to be one of the few positive results from the Lockdowns - many more people started gardening.
I can confidently tell you that several rural and agricultural groups like the Grange have been talking excitedly about ME's "Right To Food" amendment and it's on the radar of a lot of activists and politicians in rural areas.
Even areas you would think of as highly ag-friendly have gotten overregulated to the point where a person living in a home down the block from a 20-acre family farm can't have backyard chickens because of "safety."
Chickens attract rats, rats carry disease, right?
Once WHO obtains our sovereignty it’s game over for any farm, cuz helth.
Decentralized, smaller scale farms with less corporate inputs would lead to a healthier, more resilient environment and food supply, I agree.
I also believe Jeff has a point that this type of farming will support less humans than todays industrial agriculture.
I actually don't think that it will support fewer humans. Our current way of feeding a lot of people is extractive, and we usually make calculations based on this model. Small scale farming can be regenerative.
Regenerative farming is supportive of humans and wildlife; it allows a lot of production in small areas; it improves soil fertility; it embraces polyculture instead of monoculture; it can sequester carbon and improve water retention in the landscape. What it does not lend itself to is scalability or intense profit.
Well, with the help of our present world government leaders, there will be less population to supply for... 😖
ugh - the way we're going, this is true :(
Less only under current regulations. Grow food, not lawns.
Your comment is almost exactly what I came to the comments section to post. As I see it there are only two significant sources of manure. The first is from the animals that they say are farting the planet into an oven and the second is from politicians, but anything from them is toxic so you don’t want that near food.
Ah yes, the usual dichotomy of our government. The government is full of bulls and therefore they want to control all the bullshit. Our elected bovines never cease to amaze us.
Ever heard of cow tipping? LOL! We could think of something similar for politicians just for fun. :)
they are also planning on using human waste as manure. look it up. there are articles that talk about how compost and manure actually yield a lot less produce. they neglect to mention that this has all been done before and didn't work. Id be very worried if they are using human waste on our produce. go local or homegrown. I am starting my own raised veggie beds. I hope I am good farmer.
People poop has been used for fertilizer for centuries
In cities before modern sewer systems existed there was a fairly prosperous industry of going house to house to collect poop, compost it, and sell it to farmers.
That old joke about the grass growing best over the septic tank has a lot of truth
I can attest to that. The field where the septic tank disperses is lush and green!
I had a sod lawn put down 20 years ago and it was recycled human waste. The theory was it did not contain any seeds as cattle and chicken manure did. I found it disgusting but then again I did have a beautiful lawn and no weeds.
Once any manure- human or otherwise - is fully composted, it's not really waste anymore; it's just compost. Was it the idea that was disgusting or the lawn?
Humanure - properly composted - is actually far less problematic than sewage. Raw waste, though, would be a real issue.
What articles? (I'm genuinely curious...)
Good luck on your gardens!
Humanure is incredibly effective when properly seasoned. Seriously, it's like Jack and the Beanstalk.
But now it’s full of spikes. :-((
gah... I hadn't even thought of that. Waste water is cleaned up for drinking water, but the spikes?....
Spikes and other drugs 😢
Maybe Gates will make a genetically modified cow that produces green almost-manure and his almost meat-meat.
He’s creating cell cultured mothers milk right now. What a convenient moment with parents getting fear ramped up with formula shortages now. Maybe Abbott labs will be producing it? 🤔🤔
You birthing person milk 🤣
I used my own supply but many can’t do that. When I did nurse hardly any mothers did around my age but that has gotten much better. If I was young and had the shots
I sure wouldn’t breast feed. Yikes.
I am so worried for my niece who was forced to be vaxxed to keep job is now breastfeeding her newborn. 🙏🏼🙏🏼
I know. My only daughter and her family are jabbed. I have tried to warn her about the boosters but she won’t talk to me about any of this. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
he will be producing Soylent green
Soylent Green is people. --- Wouldn't surprise me if Gates of Hell got into that.
Lol my bad!!! I thought it was the food. What a dumb ass I remember hearing about it and they gave wafers didn’t they?
It's a classic sci-fi movie. Charlton Heston did a great job in it. It's worth your time to watch if you never have.
Lol I’m old enough to remember it, but can’t remember if I saw it. But now the list of it.
"produces green almost-manure and his almost meat-meat". They are the same thing, aren't they?
The WEF and US Government have already figured out how to manage without manure and farmland. Vertical farming:
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2018/08/14/vertical-farming-future
that's a chilling photo. they need something for those plants, though, besides light - some kind of minerals and whatever else the plants would get from the soil.
The arrogance of this approach - that we can do better than nature (or God, or millions of years of evolution)... it's staggering.
These folks are always in a state of "Stage One Thinking". I think that's a characterization from Thomas Sowell.
late nineteenth century sailing ships worked rund the Horn to load up on bat guano harvested (ir is that "mined) from islands offshore to Peru and Ecuador. High in natural nitrates, and dense.. but the cost of mining and shipment was fairly high, though far cheaper than buying enough more land to raise enough hoofed protein to supply the demand.
The problem isn't all cattle, only the factory farmed ones.
No, I don’t believe they understand that.
Also, there are few options for gathering and moving the poop. My cows spread it all over the field, so one would have to spend a whole day with a wagon and pitch fork to get a ton of it, which wouldn’t fertilizer half an acre of corn.
Same for the chickens, except you can’t gather that with a pitchfork. You’ll need your fingers and good eyes.
If they want to get their manure from confinement operations, there aren’t many feedlots left and the chicken litter from houses is already drawing almost as much as concentrated commercial fertilizer and it’s all spoken for. You’ll have to bid up the price even more if you can get it at all.
And corn, which they need for their ethanol boondoggle, is a super high nitrogen user, requiring enormous amounts of fertilizer.
So the btu’s it’s going to take to gather and truck the poop from the feedlots is more than the corn can produce, even with the poop. Looks like a job for Uncle Sammy. No one else would be stupid or incompetent enough to do it.
My dad milked. The cows came into the loafing shed and pooped there plus the milking parlor. Thats where he got the a lot of ready manure for our small farm. That was a long time ago. Im sure dad still additionally fertilized the corn and bean crops
Yes, even grass based dairies get enough poop in the barn to spread their fields and gardens, but since they clean the barns twice a day, that would be a lot in trucking to get it to Iowa for the corn farms.
And fat chance you could get the farmer to part with it when he’s got it right there ready for the hay fields.
I love organic fertilizer and use chicken litter as much as possible, but only a government bureaucrat works think you can spread it on 5,000 acres of corn practically.
Could always dredge the Galapagos.
Monsanto going into bankruptcy would be nice.
T'would be loverly, but even more so would be J&J, Moderna, Pfier, after being tagged for billions of award money in compenstion for the deaths and debilitaioin wreaked upon the naifs that took the pokes.
Does anyone know if the vaccine court established under the 1986 act would be considered an administrative court? If that court is declared unconstitutional, even in just 3 states, then we would have vaccine injury plaintiffs in the jury court system and everything would blow open. It would take a few years, like Monsanto, but essentially the entire vaccine program would be ended.
Good question. The other court that came to mind was the FISA court.
Not with liability immunity we won't. As long as 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 "feature" of the 1986 act remains in place, the jury court system will never see a vaccine injury plaintiff.
Unless you can prove fraud on part of manufacturer, which it sure looks like we can.
I hope you're right, Mary, re proving the fraud. From your lips to God's ears.
Even if that stays (and sadly you're almost certainly right that it would), if a real court actually saw the case before an actual jury (or even bench trial), I would think that would at least _help_ with getting fair decisions.
It is implicitly illegal. A pox on everybody's house who made that happen. Can you imagine if auto manufacturers had liability immunity? Would people stand for that? Would they stand for that in the context of not only can you not sue the maker of the car for injury or death, but 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙪𝙮 𝙞𝙩 regardless?
There will never be a fertilizer shortage as long as Biden is in charge
Too bad we can't "compost" it. 🤨
Toxic sludge will never compost.
Europe will fight Russia with every last dollar they can extract from the American Taxpayer.
I think it’s more likely that the US cabal, in partner with the European cabal are fighting Russia. The NWO encompasses the entire West. Think WEF, tech oligarchs, Gates, bought-and-paid-for American legislators , etc. But primarily the WEF/Davos crowd. Russia has its faults but it does provide a temporary bulwark against these nefarious creeps.
As a farm wife I can tell you that when natural fertilizer is used the city people that have moved to the country freak out because it stinks or a little bit has spilled on the road and then the cops are called and then the state Department of Environmental Quality gets involved! People are idiots! They think food comes from the grocery store!
My Mom's family used to call that, "Grandma's vacation smell." --- For any younger people here, because Grandma's farm would smell like that when you went there on vacation in the Spring and/or Summer.
I'll take the great natural smell any day over synthetic fertilizer! Don't even get me started on chemical weed killer stench!
It’s so interesting that the Experts would model a tabletop exercise after a new form of a disease never before known to spread between humans. Or at least not enough between humans to matter. I mean, why bother taking the time to model based on a disease that’s not even a concern in the first place? It just doesn’t make sense.
I’m sure they haven’t done any gene editing or tinkering with this one though, not like they did with the ol’ common cold one. Nobody would EVER do a thing like that.
There are no coincidences