All Natural Food and Family Farming

New York Times columnist Mark Bittman wrote about the role of small holder, sustainable agriculture in feeding a growing world. While I don’t necessarily agree with all that Bittman periodically writes about, including how he seems to broadly class all meat as “bad,” he makes some great points about overcoming world hunger in this piece.

Bittman writes “This isn’t about ‘organic’ versus ‘modern.’ It’s about supporting the system in which small producers make decisions based on their knowledge and experience of their farms in the landscape, as opposed to buying standardized technological fixes “in a bag.”

I agree with this, and in many ways it’s what we practice every day here at the family farm. We’re not perfect at it, but we make good continual progress.

Through this article, however, the author seems to present the “answers” for his readers. His advice includes answers about what food is best for your family and how that food “should be produced.”

Now, you wouldn’t ask a lawyer for medical advice, so why would you listen to a newspaper columnist about farming and what food is best for your family?

The challenge that I would give to the American consumer is to decide for yourself which model is best for feeding you and your family. Don’t let some self-proclaimed “expert” from anywhere tell you what to eat and from where. Get out of the house, connect with your local family farmers, wherever you are in the country, and ask questions about how your food is raised. That includes great beef and pork from pasture-based, grass-fed livestock (which, by the way, is possibly the only way that we can truly reverse desertification across the globe).

For those of you who are interested, take a look at this video from Allen Savory, the founder of Holistic Management. In a recent TED talk, he discussed using cattle to quickly and positively impact climate change.