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August 19, 2024Give A Damn Farming & Ranching
Michael Olson’s Food Chain Radio Show #1369
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Guests:: Will Harris Farmer and Rancher: White Oak Pastures, Bluffton, Georgia Author: Giving a Damn: A Bold Return to Giving a Damn
I spent many of my early summers growing up on the Grandparents’ farm near Belfry, Montana.
The farm was a 360-acre boy wonderland, as it contained most all of the traditional farm animals, an orchard filled with fruit trees, a huge kitchen-garden, pastures for grazing animals, crop lands for growing plants and the Big Red Barn.
Everywhere this boy looked, there was an adventure in living to be had, and food to eat – real, whole food fresh from the soil in which it was raised.
Then, somewhere along the way, farmers and ranchers learned to grow crops with money instead of time. With money borrowed against the equity in their land, they could buy equipment and chemicals that reduced the time required for them to work in the field.
Today the farm that sits where the Grandparents’ farm sat grows government-subsidized sugar beets fence post to fence post. The big red barn is gone, and so are all the people.
As a citified adult, I am always keeping an eye open for that farm of my youth. I hunger for the farm’s adventures in living, and most especially, for its food. Those farms and ranches are not easy to find. Indeed, the great majority of the nation’s farmers and ranchers now grow commodity crops that are processed, wrapped in plastic, and shipped over a thousand miles to where we eat.
In commodity farming and ranching, whoever grows the most for the least wins, and least is what most of us eat in our confined cities.
When I do find that farm of my youth – with real farmers growing real food in real soil –I like to call attention to it, in the hope that attention will engender more farms of my youth. One of the best ways to call attention to something, is to ask questions. And so today I pause ask: Have you ever tasted “Give a Damn” food?
Leave a comment: Have you ever tasted give a damn food?
Michael Olson’s Three Laws of the Food Chain
#1 Agriculture is the foundation upon which we build all our sand castles.
#2 The farther we go from the source of our food, the less control we have over what’s in that food.
#3 Cheap food isn’t! READ MORE
1 Comment
Thank you Michael for still being a Voice. Having somehow kept my farm operating, employing and feeding people for 33 years, finally had to throw in the towel and close my beloved Seabreeze Organic Farm, San Diego, Ca 92130. (info@seabreezed.com). My land was incredibly productive and beautiful with visitors from all over the world.
This is a link to one of many interiews I gave over the years with other growers, customers and the public in general in mind.
Think I did a good job of covering many issues. Thought you might like to listen.
https://beta.prx.org/stories/75177