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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
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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.
- 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 Categories
Food Policy & Law
E. Coli Confessions Part I
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. moreTags
- advanced meat recovery
- antibiotics
- beef checkoff
- Big Food
- BPI
- Callicrate
- Callicrate Beef
- Callicrate Cattle Co.
- Cargill
- Chipotle
- Colorado Springs
- COOL
- Dudley Butler
- e. coli
- Eric Schlosser
- fast food nation
- food Inc.
- Foodopoly
- GIPSA
- HSUS
- IBP
- Industrial Agriculture
- JBS
- McDonald's
- meat packers
- Mike Callicrate
- Monsanto
- NCBA
- OCM
- Organization for Competitive Markets
- pink slime
- R-CALF
- Ranch Foods Direct
- Rick Hughes
- Smithfield
- Sodexo
- steroids
- Sysco
- Tom Vilsack
- Tyson
- U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance
- USDA
- Vandana Shiva
- Walmart
- zilmax
National News Supplement
Author Archives: Mike Callicrate
Dornblaser on the role of government, September, 1922
Is It Not Said “Ye Shall Know the Truth, the Truth Shall Set You Free” O.F. Dornblaser (Uncle Dorn) of Iowa discusses the problem of government from a co-operative standpoint. Government should be for all, not the few. The best … Continue reading
WHAT TO MAKE OF THE UNION: Oklahoma Farmer Who Deals Some Hard Blows
Now we have an organization that will liberate forty million slaves if we will take it and use it for that purpose. Some farmers don’t like the term “slave,” and if I could find a more suitable term I would … Continue reading
Cattle market crash: saving American family farms
By Candace Barnette Posted: Tue 4:53 PM, Nov 29, 2016 Updated: Tue 7:23 PM, Nov 29, 2016 KEMPER CO., Miss. (WTOK) – It’s a crisis for the American family farmer. “Rural America is slowly dying,” local cattleman Fred Stokes says. … Continue reading
Over 100 Mississippi Farmers and Ranchers Gather to Reclaim a Fair Food System
published November 16, 2016 on OCM Cattle Producers Mad as Hell and Not Gonna Take It Anymore BAY SPRINGS, MS – Yesterday evening, over 100 farmers and ranchers gathered in Bay Springs, Mississippi to say “enough is enough.” With this … Continue reading