I think it may be time to kill the adjectives and get back to the basics such as, human and agriculture. The global population is expected to increase by 2.2 billion by 2050, which means the world’s farmers will have to grow about 70% more food than what is now produced. If we want to keep this food production in the hands of human beings who love the work, and out of labs, we might want to consider tying our bootstraps together. We are such a small circle and yet, I have seen us cut into smaller slices with words like traditional, sustainable, grass-fed, gmo-free, grain-finished, regenerative, generational, organic, natural, commodity, confinement, wizards, witches, new, old, right and wrong. I like to think that it is OK to feel good about your way of being in the world without pitting yourself against another kind of way.
I once spent a Valentines Day, followed by a Birthday, holding up tails and spraying a hose on the vulvas of over 1000 yearling heifers as they got spayed. The romance of it all was overwhelming, as was the smell I packed around on the outside of my rain poncho. What was more interesting was what I learned about spaying heifers and hormone injections that week. I came from my own ranch that was very low input and sold beef into a market that appreciated third party certifications. Before I worked on that ranch, I thought I knew everything I needed to know about things like hormones and antibiotics but I shouldn’t have believed what I thought I knew. I learned more from that outfit who handled their cattle so differently from the way I had ever done before, than I ever had from working with people within my own tighter circle. I have never met anyone who contributes to the production of food who hasn’t taught me something.
For those of us in agriculture, we are feeding the world. We are providing food for people to eat and if that doesn’t tie us all together, nothing better ever will. From my friends who use only horse power to farm organic produce to my peers who run feedlots and hog barns and everyone in between, you deserve to be championed under the same shining crown. If you are a human in agriculture, I want to see you be paid well and treated fairly for the hard work you put in everyday. I am in your corner and I think if we put our pie slices back together, we may be able to flip this food system on its head. 40% of the food in the US is wasted. The vast majority of people who grow, pick and process our food live in poverty and cannot afford to buy adequate healthy food for their own families. In 2021, 33.8 million Americans, including 9.3 million children, lived in food-insecure households, according to the USDA. On average, beef producers make 8 cents on the dollar.
These are the facts that go on behind the scenes of our independent nature. If we took on politics in the same way we took on pie auctions for someone in need, we would be unstoppable. Instead of coining another adjective that will, in a short amount of time, be green washed and obsolete, what if we supported and marketed agriculture? That big beautiful word that puts us all at the same table, inside a big flaky crust called, Home.
