Eating grass, digging in the dirt, exploring their pasture, being social – this is how our pigs express their piggyness. When I watch them out in the fresh air, using their noses to root around, lounging in their wallows, or just hanging out together, I can’t help but smile. It’s one of the biggest differences between how we raise pigs and how pigs are raised in most commercial settings, and it’s obvious.
When you hear the term “free range turkey,” you might picture birds roaming across green pastures, pecking at bugs, soaking in the sunshine, and enjoying a natural turkey life. But as a farmer who raises animals in more traditional, outdoor-based systems, I can tell you that these marketing terms are not always as clear as they seem. I even find them a bit confusing at times.
A few weeks ago, I joined a call with a group of regenerative and direct marketing farmers from across the country. One topic that has been sitting with me ever since is how farmers are starting to use artificial intelligence (AI) in their operations and marketing. The general feeling on the call was clear. Like it or not, the world is changing. If you don’t embrace AI, you risk being left behind.
As regenerative agriculture becomes more popular, the term is starting to lose some of its original meaning. Companies like Walmart, General Mills, and PepsiCo are now using it. What was once a grassroots approach focused on soil health, biodiversity, and community is now becoming part of corporate sustainability language.
Like any business, we pay close attention to what other farms and companies selling regeneratively raised meat directly to consumers are doing, especially their marketing. I’ll admit, some of the offers out there make me uneasy.
Fungi growing out of a cow pie. One of the best things about life on the farm is being able to observe the complexity and beauty of nature - to slow down and observe is truly a blessing. The nutrients, carbon, bacteria and everything else associated with that cow pie provide life and a whole ecosystem for mushrooms, bugs, worms, grass and microbes - and in turn those things will all provide life for something else. The cow, simply by being a cow, provides an ecosystem and a source of life while it exists on our pastures and will eventually go on to provide life for you and me. And even you and I, will eventually go on to provide life for mushrooms, bugs, worms, grass, microbes and many other things. Regardless of whether you believe today's rhetoric about carbon, the idea that we need to reduce animal agriculture is short-sighted and misleading, and that cow pies and the fungi growing in them can give you a hint as to why. The "science" states that animal agriculture pollutes and contributes to climate change; however, this assessment (flawed or not) is based on an unnatural system that is obviously out of balance. For many years, "the science" and the large corporations funding it have taken the complexity and beauty of nature out of our food system, replacing them with synthetic inputs and a factory-like efficiency. It has taken the soil, once rich and our source of nutrition, and turned it into a substrate to which we add genetically modified seed and chemicals to grow our food. This is a result of a reductionist approach where food quantity was the goal, while quality and the long-term sustainability of this system were not factored in. All of this is to not to say that farmers themselves are not doing the best they can and have ill intentions, they are merely doing what is asked of them. We have destroyed the soil's microbiome as we watch our health (and our own microbiomes) deteriorate, and are unable, or perhaps unwilling, to connect the dots. Likewise, to address our declining health, we have developed synthetic inputs and a factory-like efficiency to provide temporary fixes. We treat ourselves as we treat our soil - relying on artificial (and highly profitable) inputs, experts and the system to keep it going, all the while becoming more and more unbalanced. “We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them” - Albert Einstein Removing animals with a linear and reductive viewpoint of reducing carbon emissions, isolating different factors, but not considering the whole, isn't going to change anything. It is the same way of thinking that got us here and will perpetuate the problem. We need to return to balance, where we respect and work with nature. If we did not embrace the synthetic, factory-like approach to food production that has brought us here, would we be having these discussions? What if, instead of relying on the same approach that got us here, we had some humility and admitted to ourselves that science is a tool to understand the world around us, not a tool to change it. The fungi and other organisms extracting life from the cow pie, and we and our customers nourishing ourselves from the beef that that cow will eventually provide, are all participating in a natural cycle that mimics nature. Carbon will be "emitted," and carbon will be sequestered, and life will thrive. I would prefer to work with nature than to alter it in the arrogant belief that we can do better.
The discussion around agriculture and climate change has been growing louder in recent years. Farmers have long faced pressure to reduce emissions, but lately, the push has turned into stronger calls for drastic change.
