The Agrarian's Alcove

Last month we celebrated Black History month here at the Alcove, and this month we are celebrating Women’s History in agriculture! So I was thinking about who the most influential women in the ag industry are, and in my opinion Temple Grandin is at the top of the list. You could say I’m biased since I’m an animal science major and she works directly with animal ag, but she’s still my favorite. Anyways, since I’ve already done two posts about Temple Grandin and her work, I figured I needed to focus on some other women. If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you know how I feel about GMOs. If you’re new, read this post. So, you can understand why I’m a huge fan of Alison Van Eenennaam and her assistant’s research on GMOs. Together, these women conducted a study that involved reviewing 29 years of livestock health and productivity data. They studied groups livestock both being fed genetically engineered livestock feed, and being fed regular feed. Their study found that GE feed...

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 ...

Food waste is a major concern all around the world. It comes to play in political topics such as agricultural sustainability, economic matters, environmental concerns and feeding the world. The agriculture industry has its fair share of food waste, but so does every individual I know (at least here in America). I know I am definitely guilty. The problem has become so large that Congresswoman Chellie Pingree wants to propose legislation to help address the problem on our home turf. Pingree says that “40% of food in the U.S. is wasted.” 1 That is a ridiculous amount for such an advanced country to be losing. Pingree also said that there are four levels to our food waste problem: 1)                        restaurant and retail 2)                      institutions (school,assist...

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...