A Restorative Approach to Family Farm Agriculture and Prosperous Rural Communities - Rural Life Day, December 2, 2013

A Restorative Approach
To Family Farm Agriculture
and Prosperous Rural Communities

Rural Life Day
December, 2013

By Mike Callicrate
1

“Agriculture is a business, not a way of life!”
Teaching of land-grant institutions from
around forty years ago to present

"What we support prospers, what we feed grows." - MikeCallicrate.com

2

"Let us not forget that the cultivation of
the earth is the most important labor of
man. When tillage begins, other arts will
follow. The farmers, therefore, are the
founders of civilization."
-- Daniel Webster

Rural Life Day - December 2008

It was an interesting
experiment, and for
a short time
provided hope for
mankind, until
the government was taken over by
corporate interests.

Rural Life Day - December 2008

“Greed is Good!”
In serving our share holders interests:
We sent your good jobs overseas to cheaper labor markets
while increasing our executives compensation
We shuttered your vital manufacturing industries and
outsourced the production to other countries
We merged, consolidated and concentrated entire sectors
of your economy, eliminating competition and reducing
your choices

Our national chains preyed upon your communities and
boarded up your main streets
We are mining your soils and polluting the environment
Our profits are our highest priority - - more important
than the well-being of our workers or food animals
We have nearly eliminated your family farmers and
ranchers in favor of a more “efficient” global farming and
food system
You are now consuming our factory food, causing
unprecedented degenerative diseases and increased
health care costs
Thanks for your investment and support, we are now in
full control and are too big to fail.

The National Security issue
no one is talking about!
Photograph from the book, Great Ranches of the West ©2007 Jim Keen, All Rights Reserved
Read a sample chapter and order the book at www.greatranchesofthewest.com – 800-363-5336

7

Farm share of the consumer retail beef dollar
A picture of abusive market power
70.0%
65.0%

1950

1975

60.0%
55.0%
2012
1995 1996

50.0%

1997

1999

2000

1998
2006

45.0%

2013

2009

40.0%
2002

35.0%
1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

*All Fresh Choice Beef – USDA-ERS Data

There is money in the food business…

Grocery Manufactures Association

From Walmart to Cargill, the
Masters of the Food Universe Convene!

9

N7100C – Cargill
N199HF – Hormel Foods
N97SJ – J.M. Smucker
N1897S – J.M. Smucker
N135FT – Albertson’s
N46E – Hunt
N604CL – Hershey
N654CM – Crossmark Corp.
N457H – Bank of America
N606RP – Nestle Purina Pet Care Co.
N102CX – Clorox
N545CS – Wells Fargo
N604MU – Dean Mfg. Group

10

Meanwhile, back on the farm…

Trucks in St. Francis, KS
Sept. 6, 2009

Old Calnon place, So. of St. Francis

Winter day on Webster St.


11

St. Francis, Kansas - May 2013

12

Enrollment in St. Francis schools is 50% of thirty years ago.
"What we support prospers, what we feed
grows." - MikeCallicrate.com

13

Tapeworm Economics - Selling things from somewhere else
and taking the money away everyday.

America: Becoming a Land Without Farmers
Evaggelos Vallianatos, September 10, 2012

“The plutocratic remaking of America has a parallel in
the countryside. In rural America less than 3 percent
of farmers make more than 63 percent of the money,
including government subsidies.
“The results of this emerging feudal economy are
everywhere. Large areas of the United States are
becoming impoverished farm towns with abandoned
farmhouses and deserted land. More and more of the
countryside has been devoted to massive factory
farms and plantations.”

15

“You should be suing
Walmart [instead of
IBP], they are the
problem. They tell us
what they will pay and
we have no choice but
to pay you less.”
- John Tyson, 2002


16

Emptiness: A picture of big meat packer
retaliation – Why cattle feeders won’t speak out
against meat packer abuses…

Callicrate Cattle Co. January, 1999
Callicrate Cattle Co., 1999

17

Average return on equity before tax (ROE)
Retail grocery: ROE = 21% (last 6 years)
Meat packing: ROE = 17% (last 6 years)

All Farming & ranching: ROE = NEGATIVE 0.54%
(last 13 years)
Packers--for those with sales > $500k - Before tax ROE, 2002-2009: 17.38% - source: http://www.bizminer.com/industries/Meatpacking-plants-2011/
Retail grocery--food marketing institute book - http://www.fmi.org - 2003-2009 average: before tax ROE = 20.75%
Cattle--for the farm typology "cattle" meaning primarily cattle operations in USDA/ERS annual surveys http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/ARMS/


18

The U.S. is now a net food importer on a value basis
The largest firms in beef, pork, and poultry are now foreign owned:

Beef – Brazilian owned
Pork – Chinese owned
Poultry – Brazilian owned

It’s The National Security
issue no one is talking about!

20

Barry Lynn's Cornered is...
"A manifesto for our time."
--Thomas Frank, Wall Street Journal

22

Small Colorado

Potential Customer

Cedar River Farms
Small Colorado


23

Family of Zombie Brands
Cedar River Farms Our natural approach to raising
purebred, specially fed cattle improves the flavor,
tenderness and consistency of our Cedar River
Farms brand. We manage the feeding of a single
breed of cattle from birth to produce beef that is
superior in terms of tenderness and overall
palatability.

Eric Schlosser, author of the best seller Fast
Food Nation, has an apt description of the
industry.

Over the last twenty years, about half a
million ranchers sold off their cattle and quit
the business. Many of the nation’s remaining
eight hundred thousand ranchers are fairing
poorly. They’re taking second jobs. They’re
selling cattle at break-even prices or at a loss.
The ranchers who are faring the worst run
three to four hundred head of cattle, manage
the ranch themselves, and live solely off the
proceeds… Ranchers currently face a host of
economic problems: rising land prices,
stagnant beef prices, oversupplies of cattle,
increased shipments of live cattle from Canada
and Mexico, development pressures.


25

“Future farm policy should focus on access to fair
and open markets that benefit farmers, workers,
consumers and the marketplace. At every point in
the food chain, there are a handful of companies
squeezing profits out of farmers, wages out of
workers and choices out of eaters. A more vibrant
marketplace with more choices for farmers and
consumers is essential, but it cannot happen
without breaking up the agribusiness cartels.”
- Food and Water Watch, November, 2012 - The Economic Cost of Food Monopolies

Animal Husbandry has been replaced
with Animal Science

27


29

Performance Enhancing Drugs
…but what about food,
kids, and animals?

When we lose our markets,
we lose our freedom!

Obama’s Game of Chicken
The untold story of how the administration tried to stand up to big
agricultural companies on behalf of independent farmers, and lost.

31

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures
from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men
who will deal likewise with their fellow men."
- St. Francis of Assisi, Roman Catholic friar, founder of the Franciscans Order


32

Hog factories are dreadful prison-like places for
pigs and workers, and environmental disasters.

33

“Despite the intervening
century, with it’s dizzying
array of technological
advances and dramatic social
reforms, meat and poultry
processing early in the
twenty-first century is
regrettably reminiscent of
what Sinclair (The Jungle
1906) described early in the
twentieth.”


34

Family farmers care
FOR their livestock

Richard and David Nameth, Greenhorn Acres, Fowler, CO

Patrick Hamilton, Venetucci Farm,
Colorado Springs, CO


35

"Well-designed polyculture systems,
incorporating not just grains but vegetables
and animals, can produce more food per acre
than conventional monocultures, and food of
a much higher nutritional value," Pollan
wrote.
"But this kind of farming is complicated and
needs many more hands on the land to make
it work.”

We domesticated farm animals,
we owe them good care.

“I raise hogs. I don’t produce pork.”
- Joe Maxwell, Missouri family hog farmer

37

Their grazing helps our dehydrating
planet retain moisture in the earth,
contributing to global water supplies.
- Vandana Shiva

Bred heifers at Callicrate Cattle Co.
38

“Our cow dung is worth more
than your Wall Street stocks.”
-Vandana Shiva speaking to Hillary Clinton in India

Farmland equal to the size of India and China combined
has been abandoned since WWII due to the loss of soil.
- David Montgomery, author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
Jacek Popiel’s garden in
Colorado Springs, fertilized
with Callicrate Cattle manure

39

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the
source and destination of all. It is the healer
and restorer and resurrector, by which disease
passes into health, age into youth, death into
life. Without proper care for it we can have no
community, because without proper care for it
we can have no life.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture


40

THE SOLUTION
Eaters

BIG FOOD

Farmers and Ranchers

41


42

Locally sourced protein tops 2014 trend forecast
Next year, restaurants will be all about local sourcing,
environmental sustainability, and nutrition, according to predictions
released by the National Restaurant Association.
The number one trend predicted in the survey is locally sourced
meat and seafood, while environmental sustainability came in
third, children's nutrition came in in seventh place, and
farm/estate-branded items barely made it into the top ten.
Environmental sustainability was also the most popular choice for
the hottest menu trend 10 years from now, followed by local
sourcing, health and nutrition, children's nutrition, and gluten-free
cuisine.
43


44

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by
convincing its opponents and making them
see the light, but rather because its
opponents eventually die, and a new
generation grows up that is familiar with the
idea from the beginning.”
- Mac Planck, Nobel Prize winning physicist


46

Renewable Harvest’s Original Prototype
Fall 2012 at Flying B Bar Ranch

MoblieMeatProcessing.com

Callicrate Cattle Co. Mobile Meat Processing Unit
September 2013


Movable Kill Box
Live Weight Scale

240 volt box


Prewash and Bleed
Area


Movable kill box with scale and
portable cattle handling corral

Portable knock box for
hogs, lambs, and goats


Jib Hoist swings animal into unit
and lands on skinning cradle
Hide is pulled as carcass
is landed on rail


Carcass Wt. Scale

Carcasses must be at or under
44 degrees in 24 hours

AntiBacterial
Spray


60 ft. semi-trailer (retrofitted from an IBP Tram Trailer used for hauling half
carcasses from small independent plants into IBP’s box plants)

480 volt Electric
Carrier cooling unit
Mechanical and
storage area

Hide door
Gut door

High intensity lighting
throughout unit

Area for quartering, final trim, and inspection
Seal for transport truck or trailer docking


Refrigerated trailer transports carcasses
from mobile unit to cut plant

56

Slaughtering animals where they are raised means:
- More humane treatment
- Less stress means better quality meat
- 37% less weight transported to market
- Slaughter waste becomes valuable soil nutrients
- Increased rural employment
57

Carcasses from mobile unit are hung for
dry aging or cut into primals and boxed.

58

Your local family farm pantry is filled with…

Greenhorn Acres

Got a farmer? We’ll GROW your food!

•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Love
Good health
Great taste
Family meals
Community
Good stewardship
Good husbandry

“Eating local means more for the local economy. A dollar spent
locally generates twice as much income for the local economy.
When businesses are not owned locally, money leaves the
community at every transaction.”
- Marcy Nameth, Arkansas Valley Organic Growers

61

Proposed Colorado Springs Public Market - Creating
a new community space for eaters, growers, family
farmers and ranchers and local businesses,
separate and safe from BIG FOOD and Wall Street.


63

A Restorative Approach to Family Farm Agriculture and Prosperous Rural Communities - Rural Life Day, December 2, 2013

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to A Restorative Approach to Family Farm Agriculture and Prosperous Rural Communities - Rural Life Day, December 2, 2013

Similar to A Restorative Approach to Family Farm Agriculture and Prosperous Rural Communities - Rural Life Day, December 2, 2013 (16)

More from Ranch Foods Direct

More from Ranch Foods Direct (9)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

A Restorative Approach to Family Farm Agriculture and Prosperous Rural Communities - Rural Life Day, December 2, 2013