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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
Rural Communities Wither and Die as Big Ag Captures Community Built Infrastructure
The farm and ranch community needs a new safe, profitable, and monopoly free pathway to the consumer. As poverty and hunger worsen, why are cities still willing to build highways, bridges, schools, libraries, museums, and sports arenas for billionaires, but … Continue reading
A Good Steward A Struggling Farmer Does Not Make
More than twenty years ago I met Brother David Andrews, then the executive director of National Catholic Rural Life organization. I loved the group’s slogan, “Eating is a Moral Act.” One of the several handouts the group produced depicted a … Continue reading
Why Can’t We Do What Our Great Granddads Did?
There is a way to restore competition in the fat cattle market that is both legal and doable. All that needs to happen is to do what they did 100 years ago when the packing cartel of that era was required to divest of their proprietary market system and instead bid for cattle in a public competitive marketplace. Continue reading
Meat Cartel Threatens Food Security
On this day, January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case removing restrictions on corporate campaign contributions, essentially handing the “Temple of Democracy” over to the control of big corporations. Decades of a no-rules economy has … Continue reading
Meat Consumption a Century Ago vs. Today – What if?
Per capita beef consumption was considerably higher in 1900 when thousands of skilled butchers in small shops were cutting beef directly from carcasses without the benefits of modern refrigeration. Continue reading
