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Factory Farming
- Thread starter InChrist
- Start date
Ellen Brown
Well-Known Member
It is how Monsanto and others got to be so abusive. In their arrogance the ruined the taste and perhaps value of all sorts of farm products.
Shad
Veteran Member
Farmers switched to cheaper seeds decades ago willingly. They switch to a profit based farming style instead of a subsistence style willingly.. Also farmers are subsided by government. Switch plans or get out of the business.
Ellen Brown
Well-Known Member
It's on YouTube $2.99
I think it's on neNetfl as well.
Ellen Brown
Well-Known Member
I was raised on raw milk and food off the farm. We did not have the money to spray.
As an adult living in suberbia, our children ate the same as much as possible.
As an adult living in suberbia, our children ate the same as much as possible.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
My father bought a Grade B dairy farm on purpose when Grade B was all but dead. That no one has ever heard of Grade B milk tends to underscore this. It was terrible farmland. About a quarter of a section as most farms were, but irregular since it was on a lake, and had a couple of creeks. And hills. And woods. Overall not a very desirable farm. But a heck of a place to raise boys while working in the city. When he sold it years later it was not sold as a farm, but rather as a retreat, with a lake and woods, and hills, and cross country ski trails throughout the property. It sold for more than the surrounding dairy farms, which of course were all Grade A at the time.
We took advantage of a government program here and there too. Land was planted properly so it qualified as being part of the soil bank program:
Soil Bank Program - Wikipedia
One has to know how to work the system.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
With our every increasing population old fashioned farms do not produce enough. And they never were very economical. That being said we started with a small garden on our farm. It grew ever year until we earned extra spending money as kids by taking the excess to farmers' markets. Towards the end we would only occasionally have to buy some vegetables in the spring.
Ellen Brown
Well-Known Member
There are lots of Organic Farms in Western Oregon. I do not know what the large seed farmers in Central and Eastern Oregon do.
Ellen Brown
Well-Known Member
I'm Lactose intolerant. I wonder what I do about that?
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Kefir? Right now I have a one quart strawberry and one quart mango kefir from Trader Joe's. Very naturally low in lactose:
The plain has some serious pucker power.
EDIT: An independent source that agrees with me:
https://www.webmd.com/allergies/news/20030530/kefir-helps-lactose-intolerance
Megafarming corporations know how to work and abuse that system.
Ellen Brown
Well-Known Member
Kefir? Right now I have a one quart strawberry and one quart mango kefir from Trader Joe's. Very naturally low in lactose:
The plain has some serious pucker power.
EDIT: An independent source that agrees with me:
https://www.webmd.com/allergies/news/20030530/kefir-helps-lactose-intolerance
That looks quite good. I'll try some then. Thank you.
Jumi
Well-Known Member
Up here where I live lots of people are replacing cow milk and lactose with oat milk. Even people who like milk started using it for coffee since it's better. Not a vegan thing here.
Jumi
Well-Known Member
In my country smaller farms with their own butchers and so on are making somewhat of a comeback. People got tired of mistreatment of pigs and cows so they'll pay some extra to get their meat, and of course some people argue the quality is better.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
There were instances in the past where the government paid Farmers not to plant crops.
Then all of a sudden all these GMO mega Farms started popping up all over the place.
Talk about cornering the market .
I was raised on a small dairy farm with a field of arrible land. Most of the field was used to grow grain to help feed the cows.
Several companies investigated the farm but it turned out to be no interest to the big business farming conglomerates. Being by a village, alongside a river, quite uneven and stony so not good for big farm machinery, it was "uneconomical". Those stones turned out to be a roman town which was the clincher, no big business wants an important archaeological site on their land.
Bang went my dads dream of grabbing the money and running ;-)
He began to realise he was fortunate not to be bought out. But over time as more and more of the surrounding "big business" forced down milk prices to meet supermarket demand it made things hard for him.
Even though he held on it became uneconomical. Today my father still has the farm and field but only a dozen cattle to supply local demand. He bottles his own milk and undercuts supermarket shelf prices which are a lot higher than supermarkets pay for the milk.
The field he uses to grow various crops for use in the home or sell at the farmers market.
It suits his retirement.
Several companies investigated the farm but it turned out to be no interest to the big business farming conglomerates. Being by a village, alongside a river, quite uneven and stony so not good for big farm machinery, it was "uneconomical". Those stones turned out to be a roman town which was the clincher, no big business wants an important archaeological site on their land.
Bang went my dads dream of grabbing the money and running ;-)
He began to realise he was fortunate not to be bought out. But over time as more and more of the surrounding "big business" forced down milk prices to meet supermarket demand it made things hard for him.
Even though he held on it became uneconomical. Today my father still has the farm and field but only a dozen cattle to supply local demand. He bottles his own milk and undercuts supermarket shelf prices which are a lot higher than supermarkets pay for the milk.
The field he uses to grow various crops for use in the home or sell at the farmers market.
It suits his retirement.
sooda
Veteran Member
It was inevitable after WW2.. The GIs didn't go back to small farms and coal mines.. they went to school on the GI bill and bought little tract houses with kitchen windows looking into the back yard.
Most of the boys who enlisted immediately after Pearl Harbor needed eye glasses, dental work and remedial reading.
It just wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
There are many factors behind the consolidation of land ownership into the hands of few. Some others to consider?
Increased use of technology on farms and ever-increasing pressures to produce high yields means investing in the equipment needed is at a steep cost. It's the main reason I haven't looked into starting up a farm. The loan I would need to take out to even get started would be monstrous between the cost of the land and all the increasingly pricy precision agricultural equipment. If you are not born into it, you have very little chance of starting something up. There are some programs around the country that aim to help new generation farmers get their foothold, though, and hopefully we will see more of that in the future.
Then there's dumpster fire's trade war. This has hit my state very hard, because most of what we grow here are crops hit by the trade war. What this means is that the remaining independent farmers cannot afford to keep going, and then they have to sell out to - you guessed it - big industry. I haven't seen figures yet on how bad it has been in my state and how many more people have been kicked off their land due to misguided trade policies, but there's little doubt in my mind that it's happened. If not this year, than in the years following as the markets have closed and tanked, leaving farmers with fewer options to borrow against to weather the idiotic storm.
I'm hoping this means more people in my state wake up to what a fool dumpster fire is and not vote for that monster next election.
Increased use of technology on farms and ever-increasing pressures to produce high yields means investing in the equipment needed is at a steep cost. It's the main reason I haven't looked into starting up a farm. The loan I would need to take out to even get started would be monstrous between the cost of the land and all the increasingly pricy precision agricultural equipment. If you are not born into it, you have very little chance of starting something up. There are some programs around the country that aim to help new generation farmers get their foothold, though, and hopefully we will see more of that in the future.
Then there's dumpster fire's trade war. This has hit my state very hard, because most of what we grow here are crops hit by the trade war. What this means is that the remaining independent farmers cannot afford to keep going, and then they have to sell out to - you guessed it - big industry. I haven't seen figures yet on how bad it has been in my state and how many more people have been kicked off their land due to misguided trade policies, but there's little doubt in my mind that it's happened. If not this year, than in the years following as the markets have closed and tanked, leaving farmers with fewer options to borrow against to weather the idiotic storm.
I'm hoping this means more people in my state wake up to what a fool dumpster fire is and not vote for that monster next election.