A Day in the Country, and the Regular Reminders of Living on the Edge
Sunday, October 14, 2007 at 11:28PM 
I wanted to relax yesterday, get out into the crisp sunny air, be with the peak fall foliage of New Hampshire and Vermont. And I did, but somehow, the tenor of the last week—small farms facing hardship and regulatory pressures—seemed to intrude, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
On the not-so-subtle, I received a letter from Maryellen, of the two women who run the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program I joined this past summer in New Hampshire (and whose produce I enjoyed immensely).
“This turbulent mix of season-ending feelings holds extra challenges for me this year,” she wrote. “While I love this garden and a part of me will always be there, the last few years raise immense questions of agricultural economies of scale and financial viability. Making it financially as a farmer is challenging on its own; but trying to buy land to build a home, and have children, with one spouse farming, appears to border on the impossible. Critical assessment of my farm operation leads me to conclude that I either need to scale up the garden’s size dramatically by finding four to twelve additional acres within a ten-minute drive, or we need to move to a new farming situation where there is more financial remuneration (so we can save to buy farmland and have a family). Over the next three months, my husband and I will be examining our options and deciding whether or not we can afford to continue farming and living in (this) area.”
While she promises the CSA will continue in any event with her partner, her letter simply underscored to me the marginal existence many sustainable operations experience, made ever more risky by the regulators who are ready to pounce should you show signs of breaking out of the mold and actually building a growing business.
Next, I went by the Norwich (VT) Farmers Market, which I hadn’t been to in more than a month. An apple grower was there with fresh cider. Was it unpasteurized, I asked. “Absolutely,” he said. “Let me have a half gallon,” I answered.
I told him about the problems in nearby New York state (from my previous post), and he told me Vermont still retains the exemption New York once had, allowing direct sales by farmers to consumers. Sales of unpasteurized cider to wholesalers and retailers are out.
From the look in his eye, I could sense unease, as he assessed the narrowing options in his business.
A farmer I buy grass-fed beef from was there as well. I purchased a few things, and inquired about where she has her cattle slaughtered. At a USDA-inspected slaughterhouse in northern Vermont, she told me. Was she satisfied with it? Yes, she said. It’s clean, and she knows she receives her own meat after it’s aged. “But they aren’t all like that, I know,” she added. And in her response I sensed the uncertainty that comes with being dependent on a single reliable supplier to perform a key function for your business.
All of which made it not so difficult to imagine a scenario like that described by AnnaMarie and a few others, where whole food is purchased quietly, secretively, via a black market. An unpleasant situation in so many ways, except for one: the government wouldn’t get its bite of taxes.
Reader Comments (6)
"Black market' is such a dark, seedy, term. Since much of this underground food system is milk, I think that "White market" would be a more appropriate reference.
Most consumers realize that the safety of their meat has a lot to do with the processing facility the farmer uses. What is little known is that the slaughter house also has a large effect upon the taste and tenderness of the meat. One example, several studies have shown that if freshly killed animals are held at room temperature for several hours before chilling, the resulting meat is much more tender without compromising safety. How many abbatiors owners are willing to fight the inspectors to do that?
As a quesstimate, the processing of beef can account for 25% of the eating quality, while 25 % can be attributed to the genetics of the steer, 25% the food he ate (in grassfed, the type of grass makes a huge difference in flavor) and 25% to management (the maturity of the grass, stress due to heat, flies, moving, etc.) The percentages are different in pork and lamb, with processing being less and genetics more.
As the consumer is at the mercy of the farmer, so the meat farmer is at the mercy of the processor. As your post mentions, most of us meat farmers have limited or no choice in which slaughter house to use. The farther we have to travel with our animals to an abbatoir, the more travel stress on the animals with its negative effect on eating quality.
Not only do us small farmers worry about the government regulating us out of our livelihood, we also have to worry about them regulating the small processors out of business. Without them we would be forced into the commodity market; and because we are small we cannot survive there.
For example, here in Missouri, we process chickens at the only facility in a four state area, a state inspected abbatoir in the southern part of the state. But they don't get enough business from Missouri to stay viable. Farmers from Arkansas and Oklahoma want to process there chickens at this plant but the government will not allow them to sell the processed chickens anywhere but Missouri, which is not their market. So they asked for federal inspection which would allow the processed birds to cross the state line. The regulators said no, it was too small an enterprise and not worth their time. The upshot is that the chicken plant will close forcing our farm out of the pastured broiler market.
Ken Conrad
I'm sure that any restaurant that stores meat in that manner, these days, would be cited by the public health inspector in a heartbeat!
I think that it's fitting, buying food on the black (or as Edward suggested, white) market, and no taxes are paid to support the USDA in their short-sighted mission.
I know that information from wikipedia can be questionable. I admit to ignorance in regards to bovine feeding/care. I am sure as a child, I had "grass fed" beef, but it was so long ago, I cannot remember what it tasted like. I did buy some pastured pork from Bledsloe pork out of Woodland,CA. It had a stronger flavor, not bad, just stronger (It did NOT taste like sawdust. If I order some leaf lard, I'll render dad some lard for cooking and maybe make some sausage... When I was living in Tampa,FL a few years ago, the store mis-priced a standing rib roast (It was about 11 lbs and they priced it at $1.87 total...) I had to look up on line how to prepare it, and I remember one site I read, said to let it sit in the fridge for a few days. It was so yummy. I do understand that the meat should age so that it develops flavor. I know that what the steer eats makes a difference on the meat flavor, like cows and milk. Now...scraping off mold...come to think of it, years ago, when you bought a Smithfield Ham you scraped and soaked it, and it was the best ham ever!
I find myself eating less meat, the more I read about what goes into the animals, the more nauseated I become. Will the way we obtain food revert back to the way it was 100-150 years ago? Your own garden plots, and trading or buying from local farms for beef,pork, fowl, eggs, etc?