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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.
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- This Cattleman's Got A Beef
Photo: Sean Cayton - 2003People producing good food from happy animals, while improving the environment, shouldn’t have to fear the government.
Photo above featured in a 2003 article: This cattleman's got a beef, Mike Callicrate and Ranch Foods Direct take on the big meat packersby Kathryn Eastburn
Author Archives: Mike Callicrate
Story of the Steer and a Theft of Epic Proportions
The following tells the story of a steer, and also a story of the meatpacker/retailer cartel that captured the largest sector of our food system, while touting efficiencies and economies of scale. Since the early 1980’s when the big-four meatpackers … Continue reading
Iowa Beef Processors Wasn’t Big Enough to Compete
Mini-Big meatpacking plants have no chance of success without breaking up the conglomerates. And even then, are smaller versions of the inefficient big plants that depend on below-cost-of-production cattle, reduced animal welfare, worker exploitation, and environmental degradation, a good idea? … Continue reading
Montana Farmers Union Annual Meeting – Building a Resilient Food System
What could 300 million dollars do? Part II
Part 1 of “What could 300 million dollars do?”can be found at this link: CLICK HERE Please explain: “Instead, that same 300 million dollars could be used to build hundreds of smaller cooperative and owner-operated local/regional plants capable of processing … Continue reading
What could 300 million dollars do?
November 1, 2021 Estimated costs for building one large 1,500 head-per-day industrial beef slaughter facility is around 300 million dollars. This is for a plant that would likely fail, as it would be dependent on existing big retailers and food … Continue reading
