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[a farmer is talking in front of an angry crowd, pitchforks and all] I use the worst pesticides on my crops, raise animals in cramped conditions, take their babies away for slaughter, and have little respect for the environment
[the same farmer is talking in front of a now happy crowd, hearts and all] I'm a small local independent farmer though
Propaganda.
Note that the issues the US had in the fall with Avian influenza are compounded not by local farmers, but by massive corporate factory farms that optimize output at the expense of everything else.
Canada functionally escaped the issue because the farms here are smaller and more family-based, and so with healthier birds and cows in smaller localized populations made it much easier to maintain.
I'm guessing that most of the larger farms in the US also aren't family owned anymore as investment companies have yaken over lots of them.
Investment companies don't give a shit about anything, less even about animal rights. The only thing that counts is short term profit
Yeah that's so fricking obvious to anyone who knows any farmers. But we live in a society m
I mean, I can't speak for everyone of course but a couple of the local farms near me are open to the public as kind of a tourist-y attraction. They have petting zoos and hay rides in the fall and sell a lot of their own products (honey and honeycomb, produce of course, baked goods, apple cider, etc). And everyone is welcome to see the animals grazing on real green plants, in open fields.
With other farms I can talk to their employees at the local market, I can find news articles about them, or I can even drive by and look then up myself.
Are they perfect? Of course not. But... What are you asking people to do? Should we all just give up and go to the local Wal-Mart for all our produce? Or are you naive enough to think everyone should be growing their own Victory gardens?
Eh. If you're shopping local strictly for health benefits, you're doing it wrong. Reduced transportation costs still has an important environmental effect, the money helps the local economy, and there are just so damn many fresh products that can't be obtained any other way(fresh milk and un-bleached, un-washed Eggs, for starters).
The status quo today is all of the bad stuff that guy said, and also that they're not local.
uh, what farmer raises crops and animals?
My family has been doing mixed beef cattle and crops for 5 generations. The land is a bit too tough out there to rely solely on crops, but has some good areas for planting interspersed with hilly areas only really suitable for grazing. Single family mixed farms are still common enough in certain areas, but dwindling, as (often) Chinese mega corps gradually buy up the land and amass what they can. It’s more efficient and there is less concern for stewardship of land that will be passed down to one’s family, so it’s easy for them to be more economically competitive.
huh, i guess there are still a few left. we always grew just enough corn we didn't have to buy feed, but everything else was devoted to the cattle.
Jeremy Clarkson does
this has been very informative
the dumbass city "farmer" that has a 50sqft garden and raises a chicken.
so someone without the scale to produce... anything?
they produce enough bullshit to make internet points lol.
man i do that just eating my midnight salsa. speaking of which, it's time for my 2:35 salsa.
Why would a small farmer need to optimize their production to the point where they're doing all that?
Farmers buy retail and sell wholesale, so it's not that farfetched.
money
Two completely different things.