Sometimes it seems to us that farming is a bit like the canary in the coal mine, a kind of early warning system.\u00a0 It’s the farmer who first saw the dangers of modern, industrial agriculture.\u00a0 He tried to tell us that\u00a0not only was he being shoved off the land, but that the corporations replacing him were using industrial, mass production practices that were ultimately destructive to the land.\u00a0 But because the\u00a0 immediate result, as far as most consumers could tell, was lower prices, no one paid any attention to the warnings.<\/p>\n
Even when, like the canaries, millions of farmers keeled over and died.<\/p>\n
Only now are\u00a0scientists beginning to worry, and write, about our diminishing water supply\u00a0\u00a0 Few seem to be aware of\u00a0the danger posed by\u00a0the decline of our other major resource:\u00a0 land.\u00a0 Forget oil, folks, what we’re really running out of is top soil.\u00a0 And as FDR said more than 70 years ago, when a country destroys its top soil, it destroys itself.\u00a0 Civilizations have disappeared for just that reason.<\/p>\n
Here at Thistle Hill, our land and water management practices\u00a0have not only resulted in cows so visibly\u00a0healthy it is one of the first thing visitors notice, but in cleaner water, a more efficient use of rainfall, and even the creation of top soil.\u00a0 When we started in the cattle business, the first shift\u00a0we made in our thinking was to realize we were raising grass, not cows.\u00a0 The cows were simply the machine we used to harvest the grass to convert to energy.\u00a0 Wooz likes to say they’re “harvesting the sun?”<\/p>\n
Now we understand that our job is really to grow earthworms, and more accurately, all the trillions of little bugs and microbes beneath the surface which create the top soil.\u00a0 When a traditional farmer sprays his field, he’s not only killing weeds he’s killing the very life of his land.\u00a0 Ironically, most devastating of all is the application of commercial fertilizers.\u00a0 That may make crops grow faster, make the grass\u00a0look\u00a0greener, but year after year it requires more and more chemicals to get the same result.<\/p>\n
The land itself is dead.\u00a0 And with the death of all those little beasties in the ground, we lose much of the nutritional value of the food we eat.\u00a0 We even lose the flavor. \u00a0If you sometimes feel vegetables or meat don’t taste quite as good as when you were younger, you’re right.\u00a0 It doesn’t….it’s dead food from dead soil.<\/p>\n
And, I believe, that’s why in recent years we’ve paid\u00a0 less for our food but a lot more for our health.\u00a0 This giant health industry we’ve created, and can no longer afford, is the result of our national agricultural policies.\u00a0 It is not only the family farmer we’ve destroyed.\u00a0\u00a0 You want to know why we’ve suddenly become a nation of overweight kids, a third of them needing drugs to function?\u00a0 Check the labels on what you’re feeding them.<\/p>\n
Here’s a shopping suggestion:\u00a0 if it has a label on it, don’t buy it!<\/p>\n
Supermarket prices may have been low for the past 50 years, but the bill is now coming due.\u00a0\u00a0The concentration of production in a handful of food giants\u00a0coupled with\u00a0disappearing natural resources is now being reflected at the checkout counter.<\/p>\n
They say our Thanksgiving dinner is going to cost 13% more than a year ago.\u00a0 It’s no wonder that, when they calculate the cost-of-living index, they no longer include food prices.\u00a0 And in most families\u00a0Thanksgiving is the one remaining dinner a year that still features mostly unprocessed foods.\u00a0 There’ve been studies that indicate the actual price of food, consumed every other day of the year\u00a0 from\u00a0 boxes and cans, has increased perhaps 22%.<\/p>\n
To reverse all the forces at work that have brought us here, seems almost impossible.\u00a0 It’s a battle every mother will have to fight at her own table.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they’re too busy.<\/p>\n
Next:\u00a0 what are the Chinese up to?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometimes it seems to us that farming is a bit like the canary in the coal mine, a kind of early warning system.\u00a0 It’s the farmer who first saw the dangers of modern, industrial agriculture.\u00a0 He tried to tell us that\u00a0not only was he being shoved off the land, but that the corporations replacing him were using industrial, mass production practices that were ultimately destructive to the land.\u00a0 But because the\u00a0 immediate result, as far as most consumers could tell, was lower prices, no one paid any attention to the warnings. Even when, like the canaries, millions of farmers keeled over and died. Only now are\u00a0scientists beginning to worry, and write, about our diminishing water supply\u00a0\u00a0 Few seem to be aware of\u00a0the danger posed by\u00a0the decline of our other major resource:\u00a0 land.\u00a0 Forget oil, folks, what we’re really running out of is top soil.\u00a0 And as FDR said more than 70 years ago, when a country destroys its top soil, it destroys itself.\u00a0 Civilizations have disappeared for just that reason. Here at Thistle Hill, our land and water management practices\u00a0have not only resulted in cows so visibly\u00a0healthy it is one of the first thing visitors notice, but in cleaner water, a more efficient use of rainfall, and even the creation of top soil.\u00a0 When we started in the cattle business, the first shift\u00a0we made in our thinking was to realize we were raising grass, not cows.\u00a0 The cows were simply the machine we used to harvest the grass to convert to energy.\u00a0 Wooz likes to say they’re “harvesting the sun?” Now we understand that our job is really to grow earthworms, and more accurately, all the trillions of little bugs and microbes beneath the surface which create the top soil.\u00a0 When a traditional farmer sprays his field, he’s not only killing weeds he’s killing the very life of his land.\u00a0 Ironically, most devastating of all is the application of commercial fertilizers.\u00a0 That may make crops grow faster, make the grass\u00a0look\u00a0greener, but year after year it requires more and more chemicals to get the same result. The land itself is dead.\u00a0 And with the death of all those little beasties in the ground, we lose much of the nutritional value of the food we eat.\u00a0 We even lose the flavor. \u00a0If you sometimes feel vegetables or meat don’t taste quite as good as when you were younger, you’re right.\u00a0 It doesn’t….it’s dead food from dead soil. And, I believe, that’s why in recent years we’ve paid\u00a0 less for our food but a lot more for our health.\u00a0 This giant health industry we’ve created, and can no longer afford, is the result of our national agricultural policies.\u00a0 It is not only the family farmer we’ve destroyed.\u00a0\u00a0 You want to know why we’ve suddenly become a nation of overweight kids, a third of them needing drugs to function?\u00a0 Check the labels on what you’re feeding them. Here’s a shopping suggestion:\u00a0 if it has a label on it, don’t buy it! Supermarket prices may have been low for the past 50 years, but the bill is now coming due.\u00a0\u00a0The concentration of production in a handful of food giants\u00a0coupled with\u00a0disappearing natural resources is now being reflected at the checkout counter. They say our Thanksgiving dinner is going to cost 13% more than a year ago.\u00a0 It’s no wonder that, when they calculate the cost-of-living index, they no longer include food prices.\u00a0 And in most families\u00a0Thanksgiving is the one remaining dinner a year that still features mostly unprocessed foods.\u00a0 There’ve been studies that indicate the actual price of food, consumed every other day of the year\u00a0 from\u00a0 boxes and cans, has increased perhaps 22%. To reverse all the forces at work that have brought us here, seems almost impossible.\u00a0 It’s a battle every mother will have to fight at her own table.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they’re too busy. Next:\u00a0 what are the Chinese up to? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10],"tags":[126],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-david","category-pasture","tag-david"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}