The Agrarian's Alcove

The recent turn of events in our world has frightened many people. The economy is plummeting. The rate of unemployment increases daily, and along with these employment concerns, many have been concerned at some point about the supply in our American grocery stores. Our world has been tested time and time again with pandemics causing major pandemonium. Agriculture has withstood the trials of these viruses, and will continue to do so this time around. Farmers will continue to work and provide for the world. So just how does agriculture function during the time of pandemic? We will take a look at this in a series called Ag in the Time of Pandemic. This is the first post of the series- Cutting our Losses. One of the most frustrating things that we have heard about in the agriculture industry throughout this time is the amount of waste that has occurred. Of course, we’ve always been conscious that America produces some of the largest amounts of food waste in the world. You can read about th...

Thanks to the great responses I got from my poll, this week’s post is on none other than lab grown meat! First, we’ll discuss why lab grown meat was even a thought. Then, we’ll discuss a little about how it works. And finally, we’ll discuss what it could mean for our future. Ready to dig in? We all know PETA is against the animal agriculture industry as well as literally any other industry that has anything to do with animals. It isn’t a surprise that they offered a reward for the first person to develop lab grown (sometimes called cultured) meat and market it successfully. This is a project that has been in the making for several years. By 2012 more than 30 research teams worldwide were trying to make it happen. PETA wanted to be able to prevent animal “cruelty” by removing the animal entirely (although...this would require stem cells from animals, and lab tests so I’m not really sure what they were thinking.) Others saw test-tube meat as a means to satisfy the food source for a...

This is the last post in the Savvy Shopper series! This post has taken me awhile to write, mainly because it is hard to find unbiased facts about this specific topic. Today I am going to be discussing food from free range animals. This is a seriously growing trend with all the animal rights activists, and animal welfare . I’m going to start by defining free range, and then I’m going to try something new. I want to compare the cold-hard facts about free range animals to an article written by PETA. Saying PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is like a saying a really bad word to people in my industry. For those who don’t know, PETA really wants everyone to become a vegan. They’ve had several law suits against them, and they make law suits against several individuals and companies every year. PETA believes that animals are being enslaved to humans and don’t want people to own pets. Okay, there’s your background on PETA; with that said I am going to try my very hardest to pr...

Hey everyone! This is a follow up to my previous blog Temple Grandin’s Insight: Animal Welfare . Today I’m going to be sharing what she thought about current issues. These are really important topics and most were brought up during the time that she left at the end of her talks for questions and discussion. Beta-Agonists                                  T   Problems with beta-agonists are generally dosage related                                  T   Beta-agonists should not be used in the heat. o    She doesn’t know why but she says that something funny happens in the heat. More lame cattle come in to packers. Animals start walking on their toes and shifting their weight back and forth from one foot to the other “as if the ground was hot lava.” More dead cattle come in to packers. Before b...

Hey y’all! Sorry I haven’t posted in a while! It’s that time of year: holidays and finals. So, first I want to give a shout out to my out of country readers! I have had a few readers from Ukraine, France, Russia, UK, Canada and Venezuela! Thank you all for your support. This month I would finally like to write about when I met Temple Grandin in October and how much she improved my perspective on certain things. I’m going to break it down into two or three posts, because she gave so much information. I was so blessed to be able to meet her. Let me introduce you to Dr. Grandin… Temple Grandin is a woman who was diagnosed with autism at an early age, in 1950. Luckily her parents were able to encourage her, find people who could help her, and send her to school even though they were told that she should be institutionalized. Dr. Grandin has now written many books, and truly impacted the animal agriculture industry as well as the autism community. I was able to hear her speak ...

Hey everyone! I just would like to preface this by saying that over the next few days I will have the amazing opportunity to meet and interact with Temple Grandin. Dr. Grandin is an amazing influential character in the animal industry. She specializes in animal welfare. If you do not know who she is, please take a second and look her up before reading this blog. Now, onto the important matter here. Hormones are a hot topic in the food animal circles, whether you’re a consumer, producer, retailer, etc. I want to state that I do not want to tell you how to think. I really want to give people the facts and maybe a small part of my opinion. Before we can truly believe something, we must first know the hard facts. Since this post is such a big deal, I will start by stating my opinion so that you know where I stand and can determine what parts of this blog are facts.  I believe that hormones in animal agriculture are safe to humans, increase productivity, and are efficient to the ind...

Lately, on my street, flyers have been taped up advocating vegan-ism. Most people who adopt herbivorous diets (either vegan or vegetarian) do so out of concern for animal welfare. First off,  I believe in animal welfare whole-heartedly.  However, I do not believe in going vegan. Guidelines developed by Temple Grandin were implemented into the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. Temple Grandin does not only talk about methods of slaughter but also other animal handling methods. She has done research on the correlation  between stress on slaughter animals and their meat quality. These studies show that if an animal is in either long term, or short term stress the meat quality will be low. When this happens in cattle, meat is typically very dark, firm and dry. In pigs, it is pale soft and exudative (very watery and almost slimy). If this happens, the meat is not marketable and money is lost in the industry. Animal welfare is not a foreign subject to people of agricult...