Factory Farming in the U.S.

This entire article is fascinating on many levels, so I recommend reading the entire thing.

But, this passage just blew my mind ....

In 1969, according to a study by a group of CDC researchers led by Jeremy Sobel, the nation’s eggs were produced by 470,832 layer-hen farms with an average of 632 hens per farm. By 1992, the number of farms had dropped by 85 percent, while the average number of hens per farm increased by 470 percent, to nearly 3,000 hens per flock. Today, according to the American Egg Board, approximately sixty-three companies—each with flocks of one million hens or more—produce roughly 86 percent of the nation’s eggs. Seventeen of these companies, says the American Egg Board, have flocks of five million hens or more.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/januaryfebruary_2016/features/lettuce_pray059158.php

That is a mind-boggling transformation, and nearly the same thing has happened to every aspect of our entire food chain.

95% of Americans at the time of the revolution had a connection to a working farm. Even our founding fathers mostly had connections despite their profession to farms. In my lifetime, I have seen small family farms where the family worked 200 acres and made a living to where I have friends where three people actively farm with modern equipment five thousand acres. I have another friend whose family using like kind exchanges in the last forty years have gone from six hundred acres to 2000 acres and a stand alone self contained pig operation which basically does not need human interaction but once a week where monitoring equipment feeds and removes the pig's waste. Every August we would travel to a farm starting thirty five years ago where another friend could not vacation or leave his pigs for half a day as he raised hogs which was a 24/7 operation. There were some years he barely had a profit and lived on about thirty thousand a year. Two years ago he had gotten rid of his hogs and was farming over 900 acres making close to 400k a year and getting a 40k government subsidy each year.

The illusion of that family farm, like the illusion of those ranchers trying to steal our land out west is that the 1% discovered agricultural land in America and the farm lobby playing the illusion of the family farm through subsidies has emptied our treasury as the extracting industries try to use the image of a rancher to do the same with our precious reserve of American owned land out west. It is so easy to fool Americans as to the real deal. Just put a cowboy hat on and steal America and destroy paradise to put in a parking lot.

The family farm lost its affordability and the food industry keeps the family farmer employed now.

While I'm not in favor of GMOs, I do support/expect a standard for food being raised for mass consumption. Even with the standards, we see outbreaks of bacterial disease.

No one is exempt from raising food for their own family or growing to share small crops at farmers markets.

The industrialization of America took over the "family farm" and provided a way for food to mass feed.

It's where we are and where will continue to go with the excellent technologies coming out of our great universities.

My aunt and uncle owned a very small farm in Trussville just outside Birmingham. They raised eggs and chickens and both worked full time jobs. My Uncle drove a chicken truck which for those who are not that old was a flatbed truck where wooden cages were stacked which contained chickens in the cages. He would travel all around the small farms around Birmingham collecting chickens to take to the slaughter house in downtown Birmingham. When I was four through six my aunt and uncle would take me on the route, collect the chickens from all these small farms, and then inside the slaughter house. I never will forget after a tornado how we went from farm to farm and I saw thousands of dead chickens scattered about the countryside. It was a way of life as I collected eggs in the morning and they took eggs to the market. The bottom line is that people worked long and hard hours. Now my friends sit in 400k farm equipment with air conditioners and Fm radio as GPS equipment literally drives the tractor. My aunt and uncle got Nothing in the way of subsidy from the government. They were never poor. They were hardworking middle class folks who were producing food at a very inefficient scale. When it was time to wash the car, they would drive to this flat crossing at a local creek and all the neighbors would bring their cars where they would drive into the creek on Sunday afternoons which had a shallow rock bottom and with a bucket, laundry soap, sponges, and brushes clean up cars in a social and happy environment. We have come a long way.

Never buy on consume anything made by Tyson, ever.

boards of FL wrote:Never buy on consume anything made by Tyson, ever.

That's my take.

I know Sanderson is a big company in the South with chicken farms. Driving through Mississippi recently I saw farm after farm with Sanderson signs.