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Originally Posted by elchivito
I agree with you to a certain extent, but the "urban myth" of free range animals is becoming more and more a reality. Take a look at Polyface Farm's operation online. The guy is one example of many. He's hugely successful and has an almost completely sustainable grass based meat business including pork. His hogs do in fact free range a good portion of the year. He rotates his pastures with moveable electric fence. He buys almost no feed or chemicals. His meat brings top dollar and demand is high. Commodity beef, poultry and pork prices are irrelevant to him. He doesn't ship, if people want his products they drive to his farm on scheduled days and pick it up.
I was born on this ranch and have seen it change from cattle and sheep to sheep and dairy goats. When I came home and took it over, it was struggling, still trying to raise beef to be sold at auction and heavily tied to the agribiz paradigm. Our riparian area along the creek had been nearly destroyed by the cattle over the years and was invaded with Bermuda.I've done pretty well with my line of show stock and heritage wool sheep. As to beef, we raise a few and have custom processing done for word of mouth customers. All grass and hay. No corn or concentrate finishing, no antibiotics or hormones. When a steer requires antibiotics, it's given them and when it's well it gets pulled and goes to auction. I do this so I don't have to lie to my customers.
As more and more people become concerned about where their food comes from and how it's grown, the paradigm will gradually change. You can see it coming a hundred miles off. Those hippies in the video will move on to some other hair brained scheme when they get bored, but there are serious farmers gradually making big changes in the way they raise food. Frankly, the mess those hogs are making in that plot looks like more work to get ready for planting than just tilling it yourself.  |
I'm not on high speed so I don't watch videos.
What you're ferring to is organic farming. It's a totaly different game with it's own set of problems. Study after study has been done that shows the quality of the food is no better ( and sometimes worse ) than conventional production.
Live stock is a different game. When we had cattle they were raised in a feed lot if they were going for beef. We had cows on pasture and we raised the calves to market weight. They always got hay along with silage and ground corn. We used soya based concentrate along with mineral and salt blocks. We used no growth hormones ( which are made from natural products BTW ) and if something needed a shot it had to be held back for a certain number of days by law or you were in big trouble.
Most people don't like range fed beef because it's generally tough and has less taste. It's the corn or barley that puts fat into the meat which gives it taste. All that is up to the consumer of course. Most of the cheap cuts that come from Oz are range fed and sold at very low prices because there's next to no cost to produce. This stuff ends up in Mac Donalds and places like that.
Having your own market and customers is one way to make it work. Those customers are willing to pay more so it can be a way to stay alive. Most of the guys around here left that market after they found out that all the extra work wasn't paying because there wasn't enough people to buy their organic produce.
If you live in an area where the land isn't that productive or is difficult to farm, i.e. rocks, washouts, forest,or steep hills that erode esily, then range fed animals is your best option. Where I live you can get 175 BPA corn, 85 wheat, 45 beans, 40 tonnes of sugar beets, 30 tons of tomatoes and other high yielding crops. Organics wouldn't pay as well on any of those crops.