The Hartford Courant reported Saturday on Connecticut’s program to invest in local agriculture, a $2 billion industry 100% focused on local jobs in rural areas. The paper also reprinted on the same day a piece from the Chicago Tribune that reports on the explosive growth and high value-added of the cage free eggs business.
Massachusetts job-creation efforts would do well to focus on the rapidly-growing and lucrative area of organic food and responsible animal farming (cage free eggs, cruelty-free meats). These industries provide local jobs, and funnel resources to areas of the state that often are neglected by urban policy makers.
As the Courant explains, “16 farmers, six agricultural not-for-profit organizations and 11 municipalities received a total of $842,000 in matching grants from the state Department of Agriculture under a program the legislature created last year to boost the viability of farms. The idea is to preserve farmland, increase the number of jobs in agriculture, and protect and expand a crucial sector of the state economy, with its local food output. The state matches as much as 50 percent of farm-related project costs for producers and municipalities, and 60 percent for nonprofits, capped at $50,000. The money comes from a state ‘land protection, affordable housing and historic preservation account’ funded by $30 fees on all documents that record land transactions in the state.
“‘We see these grants as contributing to the sustainability of not only large farms in our state, but also as a means of providing much-needed monetary emphasis on small farms. The small farms are such an important part of the state economy right now,’ said Ron Olsen, program manager for the agriculture department.”
Last I heard, most larger scale so-called ‘free range’ chicken farms (birds raised for eggs and for meat) are really often indoors-raised chickens whose doors are opened once a month, and the chickens, being used to the inside, don’t want to go outside.
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I guess what I’ve been wondering is, is “free range” the same as “cage free” – even if the chickens don’t go outside because the practice of letting them out is rare, are they at least free to wander around inside? The worst of the cruelty (and the reason for all the nasty antibiotics needed) being that regular chickens are raised in tiny cages stacked on top of one another, with their feet becoming atrophied from disuse.
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It always seemed to me, if you’re raising chickens for meat, since you’re eating muscle, a chicken which actually USES its muscles would taste a whole lot better, especially if you don’t have to ply it with antibiotics all the time.
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Hmm, it’s Monday, not sure if any of this makes any sense.
Like “organic” and “natural” and a bunch of other terms that apply to the food we put in our (and our children’s) mouths every day, the “free range” term has lost its meaning. Agribusiness has co-opted the phrases originally coined by small businesses that were trying to provide more healthful or cruelty-free, value-added alternatives.
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It’s my understanding that a giant hen house with a small window at one end now qualifies as “free range.” Forget about opening a door and actually letting the birds scratch for bugs, roost in a tree branch, take a dust bath or sit in the shade.
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There will be no studies that clarify the issues because big agribusiness (and their pals at the USDA) do not want people to know the difference between what they produce and what small, local farms produce.
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The best solution is to take some time to find out where your food is coming from. You can develop a network of trusted shopkeepers, local producers or word-of-mouth sources who have personally looked into the way that local producers raise their animals, or what additives, hormones, pesticides, etc. have been applied to crops.
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You may find that you have to make some compromises – Rawson Brook Farm, a producer of goat cheese in the Berkshires, takes great care of their free-range goats, but (last I checked) it’s not cost-effective for the owner to use organic feed yet. So your purchase supports a local farm and happy goats, but the cheese was generated by standard-issue feed. Most consumers are o.k. with that and the cheese is outstanding!
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If you don’t take some time to find out about the source and methods behind your food, you will pay a premium for a product that may have a bunch of great-sounding adjectives on the package and absolutely no added value inside.