Mike Callicrate in a recent discussion regarding Sodexo at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Screening of American Meat, a pro-farmer documentary about chicken, cattle & hog production in America on Monday, February 25, 2013.
01:28 “I would think at an institution of higher learning we would be smarter than to hire Sodexo, you’ve got to get em’ out … we did it at Colorado College.” – Mike Callicrate
02:30 “If you start a petition to change something here you may not see the fruition of that petition that you started but it will change things down the line.” – Graham Merwiether
Comment:
True Story. I will only add that we have turned ALL the savings back into the D11 Food & Nutrition Services program in the form of better quality food for our students and improved wages for our employees. We are not sitting on a half-million dollars annually. We still scrape for every penny and work very, very hard to break-even each year. We are serving more meals and better quality food than before we parted ways with Sodexo. AND last year we put $750,000 back into the local economy through our purchases of locally grown food. ~ Rick Hughes, Director of Food & Nutrition Services
The Ram brand declares 2013 the Year of the Farmer
In Ram’s newest brand commercial, we dedicate 2013 to celebrating the American farmer. Share the video, and join the Ram brand throughout the year as we celebrate the people, the food and the lifestyle that keep America growing.
WELCOME TO THE YEAR OF THE FARMER.
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What Happened Grandpa?
Standing before the rickety abandoned farmstead the young man asked, “What happened Grandpa?” Well son, the same thing happened to me and Grandma that happened to my grandparents in Ireland. We were driven from our land and home by low prices.
Like others on the land, we worked hard to produce the food to feed the nation, trusting that our works would have its reward and that we could live out our hopes and dreams. We know now that the markets didn’t work for us, they only worked for those who bought our grain and livestock. The big grain and meat packing companies were making record profits while we were going bankrupt.
Son, I remember when we were losing this farm. Grandma and I felt like we had failed. We felt so alone. We thought it was something we had done wrong.
Grandma had two jobs in town and I had one. No matter how hard we worked, it just wasn’t enough. We were convinced we had failed not only as farmers, but we worried we had also failed our ancestors and our children, including your father and even you.
The government, our universities, and our own producer organizations kept telling us we had to become more efficient and that we had to continue to lower our costs. They told us, if we were struggling, it was our fault, not theirs. They told us we were just bad managers. They said low prices were a cycle and things would get better. Despite what we were told, we knew then and we know now that we really were efficient and low cost producers.
Son, as I look back on it, I can’t blame Grandma for what she did. I was suffering, too. I only wish she was still with me today. Looking back, maybe I was better able to fight the depression big corporate and government economics put on us. I worked outside, closer to God’s daily miracles. But you know, son, there is something about working on the land, caring for livestock, the feel and smell of the soil, the caring for God’s blessings and creations that brings you closer to the understanding of what is really important in America. People like us will farm for very little income. We will fight the droughts and the blizzards. We love our country and what we do so much.
You see son, when it’s money and power that you think you need, you can never get enough. People are what really matter. Respecting the wonderful human spirit in all of us is what is most important. Doing unto others as we would have others do unto us, and investing today in our children’s futures by caring for God’s gift to us, the land, is what Grandma and I believed.
Most of us, so fortunate as to grow up on our farms and ranches, know this. We know that the land provides for everyone. We know how to help create the wealth that drives our nation’s economy. For these reasons, I worry about our nation on the long road towards losing its farmers and ranchers, and with that, our connection to the land.
Still, there are people fighting for farmers and ranchers. I know it is too late for many of us, but it is still probably the most important fight there is. After all, it’s about economic freedom allowing people all around the world to feed themselves and to care for the land, so the land can continue to provide wealth for all people, not just a few big corporations. It’s about people everywhere sharing in the prosperity, not just creating prosperity for a few.
A few years ago Grandma and I attended a meeting at the livestock auction. A man told us it was the market power of big corporations that was the cause of our low prices, not oversupply like everyone else was saying. He said, “You are making too little because those who buy your farm commodities are taking too much of the consumer dollar.” He instilled hope in that crowd that night. He was so determined to do something about the problem. We thought maybe there was a chance for us to survive.
I was so proud of Grandma when she fought her way through the crowd to tell him to keep up the good work. But then I was so embarrassed when she told him that he should tell everyone that he spoke to, to not be too proud to accept welfare. She said, “We wouldn’t be here tonight if we hadn’t taken food stamps.”
Grandma seemed to do better for awhile after that meeting, but then the taxes were due, and we missed another mortgage payment. We lost too many calves in the spring blizzard. When we couldn’t pay our doctor bills she seemed to just give up. I pray that she is with God. I believe she is, I feel her spirit helping me through each day.
Son, all things considered, I think there is still hope. I believe people are beginning to understand the importance of what our family and others have done so well for generations. Thankfully, today we are beginning to hear God’s message crying out from the pulpit, answering prayers to help his people of the land. I believe we are making progress. Maybe with God’s help, farmers and ranchers will be given the opportunity to do what we love for ourselves and our country.
Grandpa, “I’ve heard all you have said. I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about it long and hard, and, if you don’t mind, I think I want to be a farmer!”
By Mike Callicrate | September 19, 2003
Presented to the Catholic Bishops gathering in Washington, DC.
…but, should they be used to produce the meat we eat?
Feedlots fatten cattle using a grain-based diet until the animals are just under two years old or weigh around twelve hundred pounds. Feedlots increase rates of gain by the use of pelletized natural and synthetic sex hormones that are implanted in the ear skin of cattle. According to Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, professor emeritus of environment and occupational medicine at the University of Chicago School of Public health, the hormones used in beef production are associated with an increased risk of reproductive and childhood cancer. He says that “residues of these hormones in meat are up to twentyfold higher than normal” and “still higher residues result from the not uncommon illegal practice of implantation directly into muscle.” Unfortunately, the USDA does not monitor the meat for hormone residues. Page 157, Foodopoly
“I started taking anabolic steroids in 1969 and never stopped. It was addicting, mentally addicting. Now I’m sick, and I’m scared. Ninety percent of the athletes I know are on the stuff. We’re not born to be 300 lb (140 kg) or jump 30 ft (9.1 m). But all the time I was taking steroids, I knew they were making me play better. I became very violent on the field and off it. I did things only crazy people do. Once a guy sideswiped my car and I beat the hell out of him. Now look at me. My hair’s gone, I wobble when I walk and have to hold on to someone for support, and I have trouble remembering things. My last wish? That no one else ever dies this way.” Lyle Alzado was one of the first major US sports figures to admit to using anabolic steroids. Alzado died at age forty-three.
Unlike wild animals that are basically free to roam, domesticated animals are limited to a certain space – a pasture (ranch), a feeding pen, a corral. Cattle, sheep, goats, and other domesticated ruminants are a gift to humanity. They convert plants that are inedible for humans to healthy and nutritious food. Showing our appreciation should include not only providing good care to these animals, but also a healthy and nutritious diet that promotes growth, reproduction, and good health.
The semi-arid High Plains region receives 12 to 17 inches of moisture per year on average. Eight inches fell in the NW corner of Kansas in 2012. Virginia received 30.32 inches in 2012. Photo Courtesy of CallicrateCattleCo.com
There are few fenced grass pastures anywhere, if any, that provide adequate nutrition on a year-round basis to grazing animals. The ideology that these animals should survive only on grass ignores their nutritional needs, more or less, depending on climate.
Many books and films talk about the evils of feeding corn. In advising writers like Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan over the years, I have been a primary source of that message. Corn grown below the cost of production, subsidized by taxpayers, using valuable and disappearing water resources, in a chemically dependent, fossil fuel intensive, industrial model of production is wrong. Feeding this corn to livestock at levels in the diet that require antibiotics to keep the animals alive is also wrong. Family farm advocates like Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and Joel Salatin are correct in warning us about the destructive nature of industrial agriculture.
Feeding too much corn to ruminants is only a small part of what is wrong with our monopoly controlled food system that mines our lands, abuses animals, producers and workers, while causing unprecedented degenerative disease.
Applying cattle manure to cropland – “Our cow dung is worth more than your Wall Street stocks” – Vandana Shiva speaking to Hillary Clinton
Michael Pollan describes, in the film Fresh, the importance of combining animal and crop agriculture, where, crops are fed to the animals and manure is spread on the crop land producing healthy animals and fertile soils – combining good animal husbandry with good land stewardship. The key to this beneficial approach to livestock production and farming requires people living on the land and caring for the land and the animals. Unfortunately, as our food system has become more and more corporate controlled and industrialized, and access to markets limited to only a chosen few, farm families have been forced off the land. Less than one percent of our population now feeds us.
In conversation over lunch, Temple Grandin advised, “Cattle love corn.” I responded, “Yes, they do, and men love whiskey, but too much will kill ya.” Temple is right. For centuries grains, grain crop residues, and grain byproducts have been an important part of a healthy diet for grass eating animals. Their ruminate digestive systems especially love distillers grains (barley mash from Bristol Brewing), which contain nutrients favorable to healthy rumen activity, while improving fat quality in the meat. Not only are the animals gaining more weight in receiving essential nutrients not available in the typical grass pasture, but the land is benefitting greatly from the higher nutrient manure.
Loss of fertile top soil is a major problem with the extractive, sort of strip-mining, quick-profit approach of industrial agriculture. Grazing of animals can heal this land. Pastures of low nutrient, poor quality soils, in a closed system, without supplementation, fail to provide an adequate diet for the animal or improve the health of the soil.
A more diversified model of family farm agriculture, where farm families, making a living income, producing grass, crops and livestock in the same place, best serves all of society and our future generations.
Perhaps we should be asking for well-fed livestock?
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“The money and political power of Wall Street has stolen America’s food system, bankrupted our farmers and ranchers, mined our soils, polluted our environment, wasted our precious water, and left us with expensive industrially produced food that makes us sick.” – Occupy Wall Street Food Day, December 2011
Industrial Agriculture and Urban Sprawl – A model of growth that’s made to fail.
Ranching Reboot Episode 4, Mike Callicrate “It’s time for a third revolution against monopolies”
Above: Ranching Reboot – Episode 4 – Mike Callicrate, owner of Ranch Foods Direct, sat down with us to talk about all manner of things from cattle markets, to public food spaces, the Bander, his feedlot and the pathway he built to market.
He shares valuable lessons learned from fighting against the commodity production system and how he’s built his own pathway to the consumer.
We talk about small community slaughter plants and public meat spaces and what that could look like going in to the future. We discuss environmental challenges, the food police and what it means when a Dollar General comes to town.
by John Munsell | Oct 11, 2011
Opinion Editor's Note: This is the first part in a series written by John Munsell of Miles City, MT, who explains how the small meat plant his family owned for 59 years ran afoul of USDA's meat inspection program. The events he writes about began a decade ago, but remain relevant today.
They say that confession is good for the soul. I've been involved in a series of ugly events since my plant in 2002 recalled 270 pounds of ground beef contaminated with E.coli O157:H7 and now want to admit the embarrassing truth for public review.
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