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  • From: "Alderspring" <alderspring AT salmoninternet.com>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] re: good websites
  • Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 13:02:39 -0700

Brigette Leach wrote:
 
Why is it that we find it necessary to criticize other products and practices in order to promote ours? I can sell my product based on it's freshness. I can sell based on the service that we go the extra mile to provide to our customers. I have learned that pointing a finger at what others are doing wrong is risky, and by my business standards, unfair. It just is not necessary to put down any particular type of farming in order to promote your own! Sell by what is "good" about your product. Frankly, having feed cattle for a number of years on a family farm, I take offense at some of the information on your website. The world has changed since 1989 (one bit of info cited)!
***
 
I welcome specific criticisms of the website, and would be glad to change anything that is wrong.  The bottom line, however, is that what differentiates our beef is that they are raised by us personally, that the animals eat only grass and hay, they are never in a feedlot, and the are processed humanely and carefully by a small processor by hand.  The consumer will say "so what" unless they know how most beef in the US is produced.  I think produce may be different, because freshness and locally produced alone does sell, but it won't sell our beef.  If you can think of another way to differentiate our beef, I'm all ears.
 
We have been in the commercial cattle business for about 15 years, and I grew up on a large commercial grain farm that my parents still run.  Because of what I know, I don't eat commercial beef.  I do not believe most of the farmers or ranchers who actually raise the product deliberately try to do anything wrong.  Most of them are operating in good conscience, and most produce a safe product.  Many are simply bound by the economic realities of industrial agriculture (which means that in real prices farmers receive less for their products today than they did 50 years ago, and are forced to support the farm with off-farm employment).  The harm comes after the product leaves the farmgate.  One of the reasons we switched to direct marketing is that every year we would watch the calves we had cared for for about 8 months the best way we could crowded into trucks using hotshots and rods and driven (without food and water) to feedlots in Nebraska where they were crowded in small pens to wallow in their own feces and eat stuff that cattle don't naturally eat.  There can be no way of evaluating this except as WRONG.  Wrong for the animals and wrong for the people who eat them.  Should we not tell anyone?
 
My cousin runs a couple confinement hog houses.  He is in subservience to the vertically integrated hog business that he is a part of.  He doesn't make much money, and bears most of the risk.  The hogs are confined in small spaces their entire lives.  I don't blame my cousin, but I think it is WRONG, not only for the animals, but also for the people who eat them and the people who raise them who work for peanuts (we don't eat pork either...).  Should we ignore this and not point it out to people who have no idea how their pork was raised?
 
We buy our honey locally.  We asked him the other day why his honey was so thick and the stuff we bought in the store thin and pourable.  He said it's because they water down the honey.  The main problem with this is that it dramatically reduces the shelf-life of honey, and increases the risk of salmonella and botulism.  He's concerned about this, because most people do not use honey rapidly in their home, but store it on their shelf for months and use it occasionally.  Once again, food purity and safety for the consumer sacrificed to profit.
 
I could go on and on with examples I know from personal experience.  The bottom line is that agriculture in the US is driven by price and profits, not quality or integrity.  Our (meaning all of us direct-marketers) "opting out" of the commercial system is essentially an indictment of large-scale commercial agriculture.
 
A final comment.  We had some information about unethical business practices on the part of two competitors who sell in a couple of the venues we serve.  We never told anyone, and always treated these competitors with a smile and good words.  We felt in the local scene it was not our job to try to expose these suppliers.  Within a few months, their lack of business integrity imploded on them and they crashed and burned.  In that way, I agree with Brigette that it is bad business and wrong to try to run out local competitors.  I have no problem, however, describing systematic practices that are wrong within the cattle industry.  We don't do this direct marketing stuff for the money--given the amount of time it takes we'd be better off financially if one of us took on more off-farm employment and we continued to send our calves out on a truck!  We do this because it is right.
 
I'm still waiting for recommendations of some good websites!
 
Caryl Elzinga
Alderspring Ranch Grass Fed Beef
 
 



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