Mike Callicrate | No-Bull Food News

Regenerative producers working to heal the extensive damages of industrial agriculture, while restoring health to the land, people, and communities, should be earning a living income and should be experiencing a high quality of life.

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See comments from Dr. Heffernan (Slide 24) on the need for new food system alternatives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T3gRtgd9a0

The Summit was two days of highly impactful presentations, well worth your time. Both days are available here: (108) The Profitable Regeneration Summit (October 2025) – YouTube

My presentation is on day one at 3 hours and 55 minutes.

Rural communities have been ravaged by Wall Street and global corporations. The communities that once fed us are unable to feed themselves. Safeway stores in Lamar and La Junta, Colorado are closing, leaving empty store fronts and food deserts behind. What is the solution? How do we reverse the flow of people out of rural America? How do we stop the resource extraction – the strip mining of rural America?

Click on the arrows in upper left to advance slides.

See comments from Dr. Heffernan (Slide 22) on the need for new food system alternatives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T3gRtgd9a0

For more, visit: https://nobull.mikecallicrate.com/2024/04/16/maker-owned-marketplaces/

Controlling monopoly power and abusive market practices that favor companies like Walmart are essential in rebuilding community food systems: Listen to Food Deserts

In 2000, IBP president and CEO, Robert Peterson said, “Those who fight consolidation in the food industry will not be able to compete in world commerce.” A year later IBP sold to Tyson, a transnational conglomerate.

Showing preference to certain cattle feeders who provided market depressing captive supplies disadvantaged smaller independent cattle feeders and provided market leader IBP with a weapon of market destruction – The Formula

In 1996, Dr. Heffernan warned Bob Peterson, IBP wasn’t big enough to compete with transnational conglomerates. Jumping forward to today, Peterson’s “big is better” model has failed to feed U.S. consumers on a reliable basis, while eliminating over half our cattle producers, reducing our nation’s cow herd to 1950’s levels and forcing us to be dependent on imports to eat.

Any attempts to rebuild a more efficient, and healthier local/regional meat processing alternative has been crushed by the big meatpackers, big food retailers, and big food service, with help from a captured USDA.

The following images show how much we’ve lost in moving from a fair and competitive decentralized meat industry to a handful of global firms extracting maximum profits:

As Walmart, our nation’s biggest food retailer, continues to build their own beef supply chain, like they did in the dairy sector, Tyson loses their biggest beef customer. Consider the possibility of who might have the financial power to buy IBP when Tyson has had enough? Would newly funded JBS be a buyer?

We can’t build the alternative local/regional food system model Dr. Heffernan discussed fast enough.

“… turning a criminal actor loose on American investors.” – Mike Callicrate

JBS, the Brazilian meat-packing giant known for bribery and corruption scandals, just went public. The company was previously denied access to U.S. markets — until they donated millions to Trump’s inaugural fund. Now, small farms across the country are sounding the alarms.

More Perfect Union is an Emmy-winning, nonprofit newsroom whose mission is to build power for working people. Here’s what that means: We report on the real struggles and challenges of the working class from a working-class perspective. We attempt to connect those problems to potential solutions. We report on the abuses and wrongdoing of corporate power. And we seek to hold accountable the ultra-rich who have too much power over America’s political and economic systems.

When Callicrate Cattle Company was blacklisted by the big meat packers, we shifted to selling meat instead of livestock. The alternative market approach goes around the current concentrated and corrupt food system, giving consumers a better food option.

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