The Food Chain

Susana Monso, Author, Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death

Every person thinks about where we all will eventually go, but no person knows for certain where we will go.  This leads some people to think about the animals for which we have taken dominion, and wonder:

What do animals think about dying?

Up and down the food chain, it is eat and be eaten.  This elemental fact gives rise among people to thanatology, which is the study of death. 

Today we begin our Food Chain discussion with some concluding thoughts about thanatology from Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death, by Susana Monso. 

“Scientists have been trying for a long time to find a characteristic that will definitively separate us from the other species.  So far, all candidates have failed.  Neither the use of tools, nor culture, morality, or rationality are exclusive to human beings.  Nor is a concept of death.  We’re not a unique species.  We’re just another animal.  And as such, we’re bodies that work until a certain point, but end up irreparably broken.  Perhaps if we come to terms with the fact that we’re animals we may also reconcile with our own mortality.”

But before we can come to terms with the fact that we are just another animal, we must first find a way to step outside of our anthropocentric way of seeing life and death.  And so we ask: 

What do animals think about dying?

 

Connect:  www.metrofarm.com

 

Lacy J Dalton, President, Let Em Run Foundation & Internationally acclaimed Country and Western Music Recording Star

(Wild Horse Management, Policies and Procedures)

83,000 horses and burros roam wild and free throughout the empty spaces of the great American West.   Though some very serious voices say they should not be allowed to run free, other serious voices say, “Let em run!”   And so we ask: 

Should we let wild horses run free?

Out here in the great American West, there is still a lot of wide open spaces. But as Aristotle once said, “Nature abhors a vacuum,” and so did the horses and burros that moved right in to those wide open spaces.

Horses and burros were brought to the West by Spanish Conquistadors, from which they made their escape into the void, where they became wild and free.

Over the course of time, the animals that preyed on wild horses and domestic livestock were, for the most, wiped out, leaving the horses to roam freer than ever before.    

Today an estimated 83,000 wild horses and burros roam free in what’s left of wide open spaces of the American West.  But they are not really free.  In 1971 Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, and now the wild and free are wards of the state.

The Bureau of Land Management is required by this law to manage wild horse and burro populations so as to maintain a healthy balance with the environment.  It is in the management of these populations of wild horses and burros that we find our story. 

And who better to tell that story, then Country Western Music recording star, Lacy J Dalton

Connect:  www.metrofarm.com

 

Jennifer Leidolf, CDFA Direct Marketing Program Supervisor &Joshua W. Bingham, Public Information Officer II, Division of Inspection Services

(Farmers Market Certification, Governance and Marketing)

When it comes to which farms get the most help from the government, the answer is most always the biggest farms.  This leads us to ask:

Can there be a government program that helps small farms more than big farms?

Our federal government hands out a lot of money to farmers.  How much is a lot?  In 2021 it was about $14.5 billion. 

Which farms get the government money?  Data from USDA’s Economic Research tells us…

About 75% of large farms with gross incomes of over $350,000 get an average of $66,000 per year; about 31% of intermediate farms with gross incomes of less than $350,000 get an average $12,800; and 29% of small farms received an average of $8,300.

From this thumbnail sketch is easy to see that the more money a farm makes, the more help it gets from the government.  And conversely, the less money a farm makes, the less help it gets from the government.  This observation led us to seek out a government program that helps small farms more than big farms.

We found such a program, in California, and its called the California Certified Farmers market program.  

Connect: www.metrofarm.com

Cindy Campos, Weston A. Price Foundation, and Andrew Renard and Michelle Carter, Kitchen Table Cultures

(Traditional Nourishing Food, Bone broth, Bone broth recipes)

All ancient cultures included bones in their diets.  The ancients ate bones because they tasted good and strengthened their own bones.  Then along came modern times and broken bones!  And so we pause to ask:

Should we look to ancient diets to strengthen weak bodies?

Like many, I often started my day with a hot cup of strong coffee.  The heat warmed me up and the caffeine jerked me awake.  Good morning world!

This morning coffee habit began in high school, and continued without interruption until a few years ago, when I was introduced to bone broth by the folks at the Weston A. Price Foundation.

The Foundation caught my attention by boldly standing atop a soapbox in the public square and stating the dietary heresy, “Fat is good!”  This statement directly contradicted the dominant dietary truth of the time, as put forth by the American Heart Association, that “Fat is bad!”

The Foundation furthered their dietary heresy by also claiming that modern foods are nutritionally “poor,” while the foods of traditional diets were “rich.”  And furthermore, one of the things that made traditional foods rich was that all traditional diets included that which modern diets exclude – bones.

And so today I prefer to start my day with a hot cup of rich bone broth.  The heat warms me up and the nutrition awakens my body.  Then, after the bone broth has set up my day, I go for that cup of coffee.

What I have found in bone broth, and the other foods of nourishing traditions, leads me to ask:

Should we look to ancient dietary staple of bone broth to strengthen our breaking bones?

Connect: www.metrofarm.com

 

 

Carey Gillam, Author, The Monsanto Papers & Research Director, U.S. Right to Know  

(GMOs, WTO, Glyphosate, International Food trade)

 

After standing firm on its plan to ban genetically modified corn from Germany, and the attendant pesticides from China, Mexico capitulated to the demands of  the United States and cancelled its plan to ban.  That leads us to ask:

Why did Mexico stand-down from its GMO maize stand-off?

A while back I participated in a panel discussion at the U.S. Farmer and Rancher Alliance International Biotech conference in Chicago.  The subject was genetically modified crops. 

If memory servces, the panel included the presidents of the National Corn Growers Association, National Pork Producers Council, American Soybean Association and others.   The audience consisted of the biotech industry professionals who re-engineer the genetic intelligence of crops to make them more compliant to the needs of farmers and ranchers.

In my concluding remarks, I gestured to the biotech professionals in the audience and said, “The technology you have developed to re-engineer crops is truly miraculous.  You have made it possible for one farmer to grow a thousand acres of crops without weeds or insects!  That truly is a miracle! Your technology has made you rich, and made the farmers and ranchers of America happy.  However, one day the people who eat your food are going to wake up and say:  “Hey!  What’s in this technology for us, other than food that is infused with insecticides and drenched in herbicides? 

“When that day comes, you are going to need to provide the people who eat your food with an answer.  What will your answer be?”

That day appears to have arrived.  But to my knowledge, no answer has been given, other than, “Shut up and eat the cheap food.”  That leads us to the recent capitulation of Mexico on its Maize stand-off with the United States, Germany and China.  And so we ask:     

Why did Mexico stand-down from its GMO maize stand-off?

Connect:  www.metrofarm.com

 

Emily Bonder, Apiarist & Educator, Santa Cruz Bee Company

(metropolitan bee keeping, apiarists, honey bees)

They say bees are responsible for one-third of every bite of food we eat.  Given how much we love to eat, and how much we love to hear the buzzing of bees, we simply must ask:

How does one keep bees in the city?

We all know how important honeybees are to the productivity of natural and man-made food chains. 

And so, when we look about the garden and see fewer and fewer bees every year, we get to wondering what we will do for food should all the bees disappear.

Of course, there would still be some pollinators buzzing or crawling about, but would they be sufficient to feed all us very hungry people? 

Having hosted a number of feature stories about bees on the Food Chain Radio Podcast, I have become attentive to their numbers as they buzz about the garden.  And though I have not taken a formal census, I do believe there are fewer and fewer bees in the garden.

The wife and I recently decided there is one way to allay fears about bees disappearing, and that is to become metropolitan beekeepers.  Today we take the first step in that direction by asking:

How does one keep bees in the city?

Connect:  www.metrofarm.com

 

 

Austin Frerick, Author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry

(Food industry consolidation, Driscoll's Berries,  

Across the landscape of American agriculture, one can see where there were many, there are now few.  What we see leads us to ask:

Is it better to have a few big farms or many small farms?

The Food Chain Radio Show & Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Austin Frerick, Author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, for a conversation about the consolidation of the nation’s food chain into the hands of a few.

Topics include how the share-cropping of the antebellum South has been adopted by industrial agriculture; how share-cropping has been used to control production and market share; and whether big successful businesses, like the Driscoll’s berry company, are “robber barons.” 

Connect:  www.metrofarm.com

Radio Host:  www.santacruzvoice.com

 

 

Maisie Ganzler, Chief Strategy and Brand Officer Bon Appetit Management Company & Author, You Can’t Market Manure at Lunchtime  

(Food marketing, advertising and public relations)

He who has a thing to sell, and goes and whispers in a well, is not so apt to get the dollars, as she who climbs a tree and hollers!    And so we ask:

How does one win the minds and dollars of those who eat food?

Much of our food now comes from far, far away, where it was grown, processed and packaged with mysterious technologies by complete strangers.  Therefore when it comes to knowing what we should buy to eat, and what we should not buy, we city people are pretty much babes-in-the-woods. 

As babes-in-the-woods, we need a mother to tell us what in all those colorful plastic bags that line the grocers’ shelves, we should buy and eat, or not buy and eat.  Trouble is, everyone wants to be our mother, and so we babes-in-the-woods are continually assaulted with messages that say “Buy this!… at this… “No, this is better than that, so buy this!” …

With all those voices out there telling us what to eat, who should we babes-in-the-woods trust to be our mother?  And so today we pause to ask: 

How does one win the minds and dollars of those who eat food?