Mike Callicrate | No-Bull Food News

The essential next step in building healthy, resilient, community-scaled food systems

Growers, craftsmen, skilled workers, and food makers deserve a fair share of the consumer food dollar. The people who do the real work of growing and making good food are a cost to be reduced in today’s top-down controlled, extractive, and exploitive food system. We need a better economic model, one that delivers real and healthy food while prioritizing the well-being of farmers, ranchers, workers, and rural communities – shifting income from the takers back to the makers.

Consumers have never paid more for food, and never before has so little of the food dollar gone to those who do the work – the people who grow, process, prepare and serve our food.

Local/regional food systems, main streets, rural communities, and independently owned and operated businesses have been essentially wiped out with the growth of below-cost predatory supply lines feeding distribution through franchises, chains, big-box and dollar stores. Americans are being left with fewer food choices, with less and less access to healthy food, while the wealth-creating base, rural America, is being gutted by resource mining global agribusiness and food corporations.

Independent farmers and ranchers are the course of least resistance for extracting dollars by those at the top of the highly financialized and demanding business sector, thus receiving a bankrupting record low fourteen-cent share of the consumer food dollar. Captive lawmakers and regulators serve the interests of big corporations over farmers and ranchers. Instead of ensuring markets are competitive, allowing producers to make a living from the market, family farms continue to go out of business with costly subsidies filling the income gap, benefiting mostly the biggest most industrial farms.

Let farmers and ranchers focus on farming and ranching.

While providing around 85% of the capital investment required to feed us, doing most of the work, and taking nearly all the risk, farmers and ranchers shouldn’t be expected to be in the meat and food business to survive. There’s enough to do, especially if we expect better stewardship and animal husbandry from the few remaining people on the land.

Over twenty years ago, livestock producers like White Oak Pastures, Gunthorp Farms, and Callicrate Cattle Co., unwilling to adopt industrial methods of production and witnessing the growing problem of fair market access, built on-farm slaughter to bypass the predatory meatpacker cartel that was forcing thousands of farmers, farmer-feeders, and ranchers out of business.

Today, big food is stealing the niches of the most ideal producers like White Oak, Gunthorp, and Callicrate, with no real change in actual practices, just simple misleading and deceptive label changes. With the wholesale market lost to fake corporate brands and the retail market many times more difficult to access, another option to connect more directly with discriminating consumers is needed. Maker-owned marketplaces could be the answer for producers adopting regenerative practices and makers trying to retain more value from the unique specialty products demanded by their customers. With the right policies, programs, and incentives, the model could be easily replicable, keeping the wealth of agriculture where it belongs – in the communities of growers, makers, and workers.

The ultimate in efficiency and humane treatment is to slaughter animals where they’re raised and transport only the edible carcass to the population center. Forming beneficial partnerships between producers and makers would give eaters the good and healthy food they’re looking for while allowing farmers to farm, ranchers to ranch, and butchers to cut meat, all doing what they love and are good at.

Farmers, ranchers, and independent businesses are similarly situated.

Independent businesses, the makers and craftsmen that turn farm and ranch production into food — such as butchers, bakers, creameries, cheese makers, breweries, distilleries, coffee roasters, etc. — are also being driven out of business as powerful middlemen search the globe for the cheapest of everything to resell in the most profitable markets. Additionally, family-owned businesses, unable to own their real estate, are often caught in abusive lease arrangements and are denied the opportunity for wealth building and financial security.

What if collectives of independent food-related makers, dedicated to supporting local/regional food systems, could co-locate in population centers as owners of the real estate?

Located in safe, trusted, and transparent consumer-friendly marketplaces, makers could profitably practice their craftsmanship, providing the highest quality, healthiest products that are accessible and affordable for eaters. Sales would multiply with the synergy of similarly-minded businesses while supporting and growing local agriculture. Merchant/maker owners could truly differentiate their products, selling both wholesale and retail directly to the public, at a safe distance from the abusive big food cartel, perhaps in areas of cities needing repurposing and new life.

Businesses would earn equity in their real estate investment, replacing the current extractive rent-collecting model with opportunities for building generational wealth and knowledge.

What we support prospers, what we feed grows

Americans have long valued home ownership as a way of building generational wealth and stability. Concentrated wealth, from Wall Street to private equity, has turned the American home ownership dream into a landlord/tenant nightmare. The same is true for independent businesses. After years of work and investment, independent businesses are often left with nothing at the end or termination of a lease. Business owners, their families, workers, and communities all lose out to these aggressive rent collectors.

New pathways from farm to table must be designed for the health of people, animals, and the planet. Accessible and affordable financing for building sustainable and resilient food processing and distribution infrastructure should be a priority. Decades of destructive and polluting agricultural practices and the mining of our precious natural resources have left rural places more and more unlivable. With the growing interest in healthier, more sustainable and regenerative forms of agriculture, there seems to be little concern or attention paid to ways to financially sustain it for the long haul.

John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Applied Economics, rightly informs us that regenerative agriculture, which focuses on giving back and healing the land, cannot be sustained without a livable farm income. We need fair, open, and competitive markets like we had fifty years ago. Competition isn’t possible without competitors in today’s nearly monopolized food system. Food represents the most critical public need, like roads, electric grids, and clean water systems. Critical needs, especially food, should never be controlled by the few at the expense of the many.

Although the pandemic exposed the fragility and exploitive nature of the current system, little is actually being done to build successful alternatives. So far, the power of big food and developer interests over local, state, and national governments have blocked progress in achieving real food security.

America is now a net food importing nation, unable to feed itself. We are literally at the mercy of a handful of foreign-owned and domestic multinational corporations for our daily bread. For the enormous task of building the new infrastructure necessary for feeding all of us (including the poor), Dr. Ikerd recommends we adopt a public investment model – Community Food Utilities.

The maker-owned community marketplace holds the possibility of bringing life back to urban areas, becoming a center for food and culture, better feeding people, makers, and producers, and doing so without the permission of Wall Street, foreign corporations, private equity, or captured politicians.

Impacts of the Maker-Owned Market:

1. Food security
2. Year-round market for family farm and ranch agriculture
3. Conserve and protect valuable resources – Soil, water, etc.
4. Synergy of co-locating businesses of similar values
5. Build generational knowledge, wealth, and economic security
6. Mortgage vs. rent – Protection against one-sided lease arrangements and aggressive rent collectors
7. Build rural and urban economies
8. Transparency
9. Benefits to human health
10. Improved animal welfare – Animal husbandry vs. animal science
11. Environmental benefits – Stewardship vs. Industrial extraction and pollution
12. Reduced food waste
13. Community gathering place – Provide social interaction, human connection around food, art, music, events
14. Year-round home for farmer’ market and small food-related vendor
15. Education – Incubator for new businesses
16. Regional food-hub connector

Notes:
See: https://nobull.mikecallicrate.com/2024/01/26/harvesting-change-making-a-local-meat-market/

https://nobull.mikecallicrate.com/2022/09/10/better-meat-requires-building-connections-with-new-food-partners/

Alan Lewis – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsWNdOY7lYA&t=16s

William Heffernan on the need for alternative food systems: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2UQsw_qdy8s

Real Organic agrees we need an alternative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eisCE4SPFsQ&t=15s

Book: Lost Supper https://news.mikecallicrate.com/opinion-to-find-the-future-of-food-we-need-to-look-to-the-past/

Food Inc. 2 – It takes more than our forks to change the food system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToWTxhYkrKk

Poisoned – The shift to boxed beef made meat less safe, eliminating the natural pathogen control of dry aging: https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/poisoned-the-dirty-truth-about-your-food-release-date-news

Barons – We must build a pathway to eaters separate and safe from market predators: https://www.austinfrerick.com/

Wendell Berry Sierra Club Books, 1996

Since its publication by Sierra Club Books in 1977, The Unsettling of America has been recognized as a

classic of American letters. In it, Wendell Berry argues that good farming is a cultural development and spiritual discipline. Today’s agribusiness, however, takes farming out of its cultural context and away from families. As a result, we as a nation are more estranged from the land–from the intimate knowledge, love, and care of it.

Sadly, as Berry notes in his Afterword to this third edition, his arguments and observations are more relevant than ever. We continue to suffer loss of community, the devaluation of human work, and the destruction of nature under an economic system dedicated to the mechanistic pursuit of products and profits. Although “this book has not had the happy fate of being proved wrong,” Berry writes, there are good people working “to make something comely and enduring of our life on this earth.” Wendell Berry is one of those people, writing and working, as ever, with passion, eloquence, and conviction.

Trinity Vandenacre met Mike at the Rendezvous City Beef Roundup last summer where Trinity was one of the beef competition judges. Mike presented, “Cows Can Save the World” for the first time. The updated version, most recently presented to the Beartooth Stock Association, follows:

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_01

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_02

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_03

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_04

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_05

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_06

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_07

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_08

Slide 9 NEW NEW NEW

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_09

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_10

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_11

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_12

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_13

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_14

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_15

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_16

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_17

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_18

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_19

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_20

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_21

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_22

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_23

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_24

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_25

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_26

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_27

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_28

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_29

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_30

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_31

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_32

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_33

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_34

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_35

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_36

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_37

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_38

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_39

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_40

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_41

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_42

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_43

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_44

Cows can save the world Beartooth January 2024_Page_45

Click on arrows on right and left edges of image to advance slides

Full presentation: https://nobull.mikecallicrate.com/2024/01/15/cowboys-can-save-the-world/

Callicrate note: Several years ago, in a conversation with John, we discussed the use of a new term describing what I thought was a better kind of agriculture.  Since “sustainable” had been stolen by big corporate ag, I suggested the word “regenerative” better described the kind of agriculture I wanted to practice. In an obvious effort to protect the meaning of an an important term, John asked, “Is it sustainable?”

After some thought, I realized the answer was no. Until we address the abusive market power of big corporations, family farmers and ranchers will be denied their fair share of the consumer dollar, and thereby the income required to be good stewards and husbandmen.

John Ikerd is perhaps the most insightful, thoughtful, and historically wise person I know regarding agriculture and food systems. John describes a transformational shift back to family farm agriculture is not only possible, but necessary. I agree!

By John Ikerd

The Harvard Business School defines transformational changes as “changes that are typically much grander in scope than incremental, adaptive changes. Very often, transformational change refers to a dramatic evolution of some basic structure of the business itself—its strategy, culture, organization, physical structure, supply chain, or processes.” I have lived and worked through a period of transformational change in American agriculture.

From my perspective, two factors are largely responsible for this transformation in American agriculture. The first was the new agricultural technologies that emerged following World War II. Tractors had begun to replace horses in some areas in the 1930s but didn’t do so in many areas until factories started turning out affordable farm tractors rather than the Jeeps and tanks needed during the war. We bought the first tractor for our farm when I was in high school.

“Affordable commercial fertilizers and pesticides, also byproducts of World War II, allowed farmers to abandon the crop rotations or integrated crop and livestock systems they had relied on to manage pests and maintain productivity.”

The number of tractors on farms in the U.S. tripled between 1940 and 1960, and the number of workhorses and mules dropped from 15 million to fewer than 5 million. Farmers specialized and expanded their operations to justify their investments in tractors and specialized farm equipment. Affordable commercial fertilizers and pesticides, also byproducts of World War II, allowed farmers to abandon the crop rotations or integrated crop and livestock systems they had relied on to manage pests and maintain productivity.

The new mechanical and chemical technologies not only allowed each farmer to produce more but also allowed farmers in total to produce more. The resulting surpluses in agricultural production depressed commodity prices to unprofitable levels, forcing reluctant farmers to adopt new cost-cutting technologies to survive. Farmers needed their own hay balers, grain combine harvesters, or field forage choppers to remain competitive. They also needed more land to justify these added investments. Agricultural economists called this the technology treadmill.

“Farmers no longer needed their neighbors to help them farm, but they needed their neighbors’ farms.”

Farmers no longer needed their neighbors to help them farm, but they needed their neighbors’ farms. The farmers who didn’t get big enough fast enough didn’t survive. They sold out or were forced out of farming—they fell off the treadmill. Many farmers in our community either fell off or never got on the technology treadmill; they moved elsewhere.

“Rather than addressing the out-migration of farmers as a problem, the policymakers saw it as an opportunity to transform agriculture.”

The second cause of the agricultural transformation was a fundamental change in U.S. farm policy. Rather than addressing the out-migration of farmers as a problem, the policymakers saw it as an opportunity to transform agriculture. In 1962, the Committee for Economic Development (CED), a prestigious business/academic think tank, assembled a subcommittee to address “the problem of agriculture.” The resulting report noted the rapid outmigration of farmers beginning in the 1930s, but concluded, “Nevertheless, the movement of people from agriculture has not been fast enough to take full advantage of the opportunities that improving farm technologies and increasing capital created for raising the living standards for the American people, including of course, farmers”

“The CED saw economic security for farmers as an impediment to the efficient use of resources.”

U.S. farm policies during the 1940s and 1950s had continued the commitments of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938—the first farm bill. The stated purpose of the act was to provide economic security, or parity incomes, for family farmers as a means of “preserving, maintaining, and rebuilding the farm and ranch land resources in the national public interest.” The CED saw economic security for farmers as an impediment to the efficient use of resources. They proposed an “adaptive approach” that “utilizes positive government action to facilitate and promote movement of labor and capital where they will be most productive and will earn the most income”—meaning out of agriculture.

The CED report provided a blueprint for transformational changes in agricultural policies during the Nixon Administration with Earl Butz as secretary of agriculture during the 1970s. The new policies forced farmers to either “get big or get out.” Every farm bill since then has continued to incentivize and support the specialization, mechanization, and consolidation of farming into large industrial agricultural operations.

“As agricultural economists, our research and extension programs were designed to help farmers turn their farms into agribusinesses.”

By the time I received my Ph.D. in agricultural economics in 1970, I had been thoroughly indoctrinated into this new vision for the future of farming. While the universities claimed the technologies they developed and promoted could benefit all farmers, this was true only if farmers were willing to specialize, mechanize, and expand their farming operations. As agricultural economists, our research and extension programs were designed to help farmers turn their farms into agribusinesses.

“The farm policies of the 1980s were an experiment to see if large, specialized farms could survive without government assistance. They couldn’t.”

The changes in farm policy were necessary to continue the process of industrializing American agriculture. Large, specialized farming operations may be economically efficient, but they are also risky and vulnerable to economic collapse—as evidenced during the farm financial crisis of the 1980s and the COVID-19 crisis that started in 2020. The farm policies of the 1980s were an experiment to see if large, specialized farms could survive without government assistance. They couldn’t.

Government price supports, deficiency payments, subsidized crop and crop revenue insurance, guaranteed loans, and disaster payments are all means by which taxpayers have absorbed the risks of industrial agriculture. Without these government programs, the industrialization of agriculture likely would have slowed, and possibly reversed, during the 1970s and 1980s.

“… the keys to hastening another transformational change in American agriculture—from industrial to sustainable.”

I will close this perspective on agriculture column with what I feel are the keys to hastening another transformational change in American agriculture—from industrial to sustainable. First, the previous transformation was completed essentially in 50 years—between the early 1950s and the late 1990s. Few if anyone involved with agriculture in the 1950s could have imagined the large-scale, specialized, mechanized, corporately controlled farming operations of the 1990s. The changes before and after this period were incremental, rather than transformational. Agriculture by 2075 could be dramatically different from anything that seems remotely possible today.

“… our understanding and knowledge of sustainable alternatives to industrial agriculture today are far more advanced than our knowledge of industrial agriculture in the 1950s.”

Second, our understanding and knowledge of sustainable alternatives to industrial agriculture today are far more advanced than our knowledge of industrial agriculture in the 1950s. Many of the environmental and social costs of industrial agriculture were a result of people doing things without knowing the consequences of what they were doing. Farmers today have access to research on soil health, cover crops, crop rotations, and integrated crop and livestock systems of the pre-industrial era as well as the formal and experiential research of academics and organic and sustainable farmers over the past 50 years and even earlier.

“Perhaps what is needed is another prestigious think tank, like the CED, that understands the need for policies to support a post-industrial agriculture—an ecologically sound, socially responsible, economically viable agriculture.”

Third, with the technical knowledge in place, a transformational change in farm policies could trigger a transformation in agriculture similar to that of the 1970s. Perhaps what is needed is another prestigious think tank, like the CED, that understands the need for policies to support a post-industrial agriculture—an ecologically sound, socially responsible, economically viable agriculture. This think tank could make the ecological and social case that we have too few farmers, rather than too many, and propose farm policies that support more farmers who are committed to taking care of the land for the long-run benefit of society as well as themselves.

Finally, a return to vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws could transform the balance of economic and political power, including the power to transform farm policy. The U.S. was faced with a similar situation of concentrated economic and political power in the early 1900s. Monopolies of the time, such as Andrew Carnegie’s U.S. Steel Company and John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company were powerful politically and well economically. Five U.S. beef-packing companies controlled up to 75% of the market.

“… corporate control of markets was reversed by a progressive populist movement that demanded fundamental change. It can and must happen again.”

The trend toward corporate control of markets was reversed by a progressive populist movement that demanded fundamental change. It can and must happen again. My perspectives on this and other aspects of the agri-food system will be the focus of my next column. Ultimately, agri-food sustainability is not an option; it is a necessity.

A longer, more detailed version of this post with references is available at the JAFSCD link below.

https://www.foodsystemsjournal.org/index.php/fsj/article/view/1220

After more than 50 years of concentration, consolidation, hyper-industrialization, and a pandemic, the producers, workers, animals, and consumers have all suffered from the loss of competition and demise of local/regional food infrastructure.  Land-grant and business school economists teaching “Big is better – It’s a business, not a way of life,” have facilitated the gutting of rural America with an increasing wealth transfer from the land and the people who do the work, to the financial sector.

Mike Callicrate with Ranch Foods Direct slaughters animals at Callicrate Cattle Company where they’re raised and processes the carcasses into wholesale and retail cuts in Colorado Springs.

Getting put in the Box

When I started feeding cattle in the mid 1970s, there were twenty-some small to regional meatpackers buying cattle in my area and selling carcasses to grocery stores with fresh meat counters and butcher shops. Meat cutters, breaking the carcasses down into retail cuts in front of customers, were highly skilled and well-paid, with wages high enough to drive new pickups and live in homes they would own when the mortgage was paid. By the mid 1980s, the small meatpackers and skilled butchers, from slaughter to retail, were mostly gone, along with my pathway to a fair cattle market. What happened?

Think of boxed-beef, the “Box,” as a tool, a tool of extraction, like a mafia bag man standing between the rancher and the consumer demanding a larger and larger share of the wealth created from the land. Few knew at the time IBP (Iowa Beef Processors) implemented their boxed-beef program in the late 1960s how much the “Box” would change an industry – and not for the better.

Cow-calf producers are the largest and most important sector in our cattle and beef industries, but as widely dispersed and independent operators, are no match for the concentrated market power of the food cartel: big meatpacking, big food retail, and big food service companies. Cattlemen are literally left with a few scraps after the cartel extracts their double digit returns. Despite the fact the rancher invests the most, and stands the most risk in producing our food, they’re often left eating their equity, without enough income to feed themselves or support their families.

The “Box” is the primary tool today’s meat cartel uses to mine even greater amounts of wealth from our farms and ranches than the robber baron meatpackers of the early 1900s. Turning grass into beef is the cows greatest gift, so why are we allowing the beef cartel to continue driving our ranchers and farmer feeders out of business, reducing our ability to feed ourselves, replacing our producers with low quality beef imports, while removing more soil building, climate healing cows and other ruminate animals from the landscape?

Click on image to expand

How we were put in the box …

In 1970, the New York meat trade rejected IBP’s new innovation in boxed beef in favor of their long established and successful carcass trade. The meat cutters union, protecting the interests of their skilled and well-paid butchers, also said no to boxed-beef, leaving IBP with millions in unpaid invoices, and in deep financial trouble. In the panic, the solution became clear – bribery.

The deal put IBP in command of the beef world. With the Mafia partnership and the eastern meat trade in hand, IBP became the biggest beef packer in in the world, and soon aligned with the other two biggest beef packers, Cargill and Monfort (later became ConAgra, now JBS) to manage the market in their favor and hyper industrialize the supply chain. In violation of every provision of Section 202 of the Packers and Stockyards Act, the three predators, like a T-Rex and two Raptors, proceeded to consume essentially all of the smaller owner-operated, more efficient, and lower cost carcass plants. With antitrust cops and trial court judges in the pocket, or looking the other way, the cartel drove four-firm concentration to 85% and competition to near zero. With retail consolidation tracking the same as meatpacking, the cow-calf producer, the course of least resistance, has paid the bill with a drastically shrunken share of the consumer beef dollar.

“But on this day, Moe Steinman, as a front for the Mafia, would achieve what no one else had achieved, even in the days of Al Capone or Lucky Luciano. Moe Steinman, who had risen from the gutter only by his lack of scruples, would tighten his fist around one of the biggest corporations in the country, a corporation that dominated a major national industry. It was an industry that almost every American depended on almost every day. It was an industry – unlike trucking – that was clothed with all the garments of Wall Street respectability.”

The markets worked prior to IBP’s boxed-beef deal with the Meat Mafia:

Buy your beef from a carcass butcher and make sure it hangs for at least 7 days.

Getting out of the box is the key to restoring widespread economic prosperity, improving food system resilience, food safety, food security, and meat quality.

See: Vicious Circles – Big meat packers continue to suck the blood out of cattle industry

Deskilling on the Disassembly Line: Technological Change and Its Consequences in Beef-Packing Since the 1960s

Food System Success or Failure? It’s time to decide

The Secret at 1400 Independence Avenue

How We Got Here … The food security crisis in America

What could 300 million dollars do? Part II