Our Food System Is Broken

As I write this we are a couple months into the COVID-19 pandemic in this country.

Along with fears about the actual virus itself, this entire situation has brought to light many of the weaknesses in our centralized industrial food system and has many people concerned about food shortages - especially meat, eggs, and dairy.

Over time, our food system has been structured to produce cheap, efficient food. To do this, the supply chains have ended up being essentially monopolies that control the entire process. 85% of the beef in our country is processed, distributed, owned by 4 major companies. 85%!

This means when any part of their huge system goes down, it disrupts the entire supply chain from the farm to the grocery store and everywhere in between. Right now the beef packers are paying farmers below the break even cost for their animals, while still importing cheap beef raised overseas, and significantly raising prices for consumers at the grocery store.

We are seeing shortages on grocery store shelves because of COVID-19 outbreaks in these huge processing plants. It’s not from people hoarding meat, it’s not because there isn’t enough meat.

This backlog is causing empty grocery store shelves, and farmers having to destroy fully grown animals that could be feeding people. Those pictures of piles of dead hogs and the stories about how they are “humanely” euthanizing entire barns of hogs and chickens by shutting off the ventilation system and letting them suffocate and overheat to death? Sorry to be gruesome, but that’s not fake news. That’s really happening.

USDA is now working on creating protocols for farmers to destroy ready to process beef steers “humanely”, while the packers are still importing cheap beef from overseas.

There’s been an outcry to just donate the meat or wait until there’s processing space instead of destroying animals. Because our food system has consolidated so much in the name of cheap meat and efficiency, it’s put a lot of our local butchers out of business. They just don’t exist anymore to process these animals. It’s also not an option to for farms to hold the animals longer until the backlog gets caught up. They’ll be too large for the facilities to handle, plus there will be a backlog of baby pigs being euthanized because there’s nowhere for them to go.

Our food system is a mess. While I don’t pretend to have all the answers to this complicated issue, I do know without a doubt that fixing this needs to involve decentralizing meat production, bringing back local and regional systems, creating opportunities for more small to mid-scale processors, and if not stopping the import of meat from overseas completely at least labeling it so as consumers we can make the decision for ourselves what we want to eat.

One positive in all of this is there’s been a huge surge in buying locally raised meat, eggs and dairy lately, which is amazing! Our farm sold through inventory that would have lasted us months in just weeks. We are getting nearly constant messages from families and local businesses who are struggling to source their meat from their usual channels. We love that we get to serve our community this way. We are truly living our purpose! Small farms all over the country are stepping up to the challenge of keeping our communities fed and I’ve never been more proud to be part of this group.

One conversation we along with many of our other farming friends are having right now is - how much do we invest in scaling up moving forward? Will customers stick with us even when things go back to “normal” and there’s convenient cheap meat on the grocery store shelves? Will this system ever go back to “normal”? There are so many unknowns.

Thankfully we are in a position to scale up chicken and turkey production fairly quickly, but beef and pork take longer. Finished grass-fed beef steers take 2+ years to finish, pastured hogs take 6+ months, turkeys a little over 3 months, but thankfully chickens only take 6 weeks!

Even though I know it’s alarming to see shelves bare, we and other local farms are doing our best to step up and feed our communities. We have the capacity, it just takes time to create the needed infrastructure and raise the animals.

The one thing we want to ask of you is that even if you can’t source 100% of your families meat, eggs or milk from local farms, please support them as much as possible. I know it’s cliche, but where we spend our dollars now shapes the food system of our future.

When dollars flow through local farms, they support local processors and businesses. This leads to expansion and more local processors being created to keep up with demand, which opens up more opportunities for farmers like us to raise and process more animals.

By diverting dollars away from the industrial food system we keep dollars local and reinvested in our communities.

Part of our struggle in this moment to scale beef or pork production quickly is that we can’t get processing slots. Our usual processor who can typically get as many animals as we need in with a month or two notice is booked out 6+ months. I had to make processing appointments for pigs that aren’t even born yet to make sure the spots were there when we needed them.

We aren’t sure what to expect in the next year and beyond, but we are here to serve you as best we can.

Thank you for supporting our farm and other local farms like us! I can see change happening and I’m looking forward to the positive things that will come out of the pandemic tragedy. I hope one of them is more food security, a stronger local food system, and stronger communities.

~ Dana