Monday, December 16, 2013

"Mostly Vegetarian"

The other day, I was talking to a friend about her eating choices. She calls herself "mostly vegetarian" because she only eats meat from animals who she knows were not mistreated. Now, personally, I have a "to each his own" attitude when it comes to other people's choices, so this post is not meant to say that she is wrong for choosing her food the way she does. I am an animal lover, too. I don't think there is any excuse for mistreating animals, so I can totally understand where she is coming from here.

Where my understanding for her choice stopped, is when the topic of grass-fed beef came up. She said, "I would be interested in buying grass-fed beef!" Without knowing or seeing where these cattle were raised or how they were treated throughout their life, she is totally on-board with grass-fed beef. There seems to be a disconnect for some people between how a farmer chooses to feed his/her cattle and his/her treatment of those animals.

"Grass-fed" or "organic" are not synonymous with "well-treated." Can they be? Sure. Can conventionally raised cattle be well-treated, too? Absolutely. I grew up on a cattle farm where our cows were fed grain. Today, I live on a farm that raises grass-fed cows. And do you know what? I have never mistreated any of my cows, on EITHER of those farms. (Really, if you ask me, cows LOVE corn! Those grass-fed animals are really missing out on some yummy food! But, the people want grass-fed, so we give them grass-fed.)

I don't think my friend is the only one who assumes things like this. I think it is a large part of the reason some people choose to buy food based on these labels. If you really want to buy meat from animals that you know were treated well, get to know a farmer and buy your meat directly from them. Better yet, trust that farmers love their animals and ANY meat you choose to buy will fit your criteria. I think it is a noble thing to want to know where your food came from, but choosing labels like "organic" or "natural" or "grass-fed" will NOT guarantee you "happy cow" meat. It simply isn't the same thing.

Friday, November 8, 2013

How DARE this comedian make a joke about FARMERS!

Unless you live under a rock, you have seen the latest video the farming community is upset about. A comedian does a bit about Daylight Savings time and makes some jabs at farmers. If you haven't seen it, watch it here and then try to keep up with all of us a little better next time, OK?


So, are you offended? Most people (from what I have seen) in the farming community sure are! How DARE he make jokes about the people who put food on his table every day!

Personally, I disagree with most of my peers on this one. He is a comedian, people. He literally makes a living out of writing jokes. How many comedians have you heard make fun of different races, religions, stereotypes, old people, young people, men, women... the list goes on. But when one of them makes a joke about farming??? Oh, no you didn't.

Seriously, farm kids aren't raised to be so darned sensitive, lets all just "cowboy up" a little bit here, shall we? Let's take a real good look at what this guy is saying:

Joke #1: "300 million of us set our clocks back 1 hour for, what 6? Is it 6, I'll give ya 7 farmers tops?"
  • How many of you have read, or even used, the statistic that 1% of us are in charge of feeding the entire population? We know less than 2% of the population are farmers. In fact, we use this fact to explain to people why we need to use the best technology available to increase our yields! Let's not get offended when someone else points it out. We pride ourselves on being able to accomplish such a feat.
Joke #2: It's too long to quote, but lets address the bit where a farmer calls the government to request the time change.
  • This is a joke. A reason for the comedian to use a funny voice to make people laugh and at a silly scenario. We all know that everyone used to be a farmer so the time change was a benefit for everyone at the time. And you know what? No one likes getting up for work at 6:30am when it's still dark outside, even if you just have an office job. Lets just take this bit for what it was, a joke.
Joke #3: "Did you know that the idea of the 8 hour work day is also based on farmers? Because it takes them 8 hours of day light to pick cabbages... You don't need 8 hours to do office work, you need 20 minutes. So now we're all in offices for 7 hours and 40 minutes pretending to be busy."
  • See what he did there? He is also picking on non-farmers. People who only really work for 20 minutes a day. Everyone knows farmers work from sun up to sun down. Actually, he is pointing out that farmers work harder than a lot of other professions here, so we can all be friends now, right?
Joke #4: "I want to know why we're accommodating farmers anyway. I  mean, they already have perfect lives if I'm picturing it correctly."
  • Here, he says we are lucky because we get to enjoy the outdoors, he points out the overall good character of people from rural towns, paints the picture of a beautiful sunset glowing on our crops... we all love these things about our farm life, don't we? I don't understand why we are so mad about this.
At the end of the day, can't we all appreciate that he is a comedian and he is just doing his job here? Essentially, he is mad because our lives are so great. And, heck, I think they are! Don't you? I don't think there are many people that would truly question the kind of hard work and dedication it takes to be a farmer. We all take pride in what we do, and that is probably the reason everyone got so worked up about this video. But at the end of the day, we love what we do and there aren't many people who are as lucky as we are to have a job like this. Go ahead, let them be jealous!

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Farmers are people, too.

I was talking with a coworker earlier today about yet another celebrity who has made a statement supporting the humane treatment of pigs on farms, and it perplexes me when celebrities (or people in general) do this. Of course you support the humane treatment of animals, what kind of a person wouldn’t? Do people think farmers have quarterly meetings to come up with terrible ways to treat animals just for the heck of it?

I grew up on a farm, and I am all for animals being treated humanely. As a matter of fact, my personal experiences have shown me that many farmers have a greater respect and understanding of animals than a person who has spent little time with livestock. So I find it odd when people declare their support of the humane treatment of animals, because… so do we.

It is frustrating to me, and I assume to other farmers, when people start attacking you for how you raise your animals when the extent of their research has been watching a story about it on the news. Gestation stalls in pork production are a great example. The media shows you pictures of these and portray it as a negative thing, so you automatically form a negative opinion about them. When people talk to me about it, I ask them, “Did you know that pigs are surprisingly aggressive animals? They have a need to establish a pecking order, and in order to do so, they fight with each other leaving gashes and bite marks all over their opponent.” Of course, they don’t usually know that, nor do I expect them to. After all, the only reason I know that is because I have experience working with pigs and studied them in college.

The methods we use to raise livestock were put in place for a reason, believe it or not. We didn’t just decide that it would be easier to put each pig in their own stall and start implementing it. Extensive research showed us that it created a more ideal living environment for a pregnant sow. Are farmers always right? Of course not, no one is. But we spend a lot of time and money on research and we are always trying to grow, learn, and improve.

So, the next time you think farmers are doing something wrong, just remember that we are people, too. We care. We are doing things the best way we know how with the information and resources we are given, just like anybody else. Maybe, just maybe, there is reason behind our actions.

As always, I am a huge advocate of engaging in farmer-consumer conversations. If you don’t understand why we are doing something, just ask! I bet you will walk away with a better understanding and more trust in the people who grow your food.

Monday, June 24, 2013

Humanity Can Handle E-15


In case you missed it last week, here is the latest video from IL Corn:



This video is the perfect marriage of entertaining and effective. Making E-15 available to consumers at gas stations does not put motorcyclists at a higher risk for misfueling… as long as they can read a label, that is.

But this brings up a far-reaching issue that goes beyond ethanol: accountability. At what point are we all going to take a little responsibility for ourselves? We are living in a world of making $1 million for spilling hot coffee on yourself and suing beer companies for the lack of beautiful women that surround you when you drink their product.

Sooner or later, we are all going to have to be responsible adults who can make a decision based on the information we are given. If we spill hot coffee on ourselves, we put a Band-Aid on it and chalk it up to a bad case of “The Monday’s.” If we pull up to a gas station pump in a car that is not compatible with higher blends of ethanol, we push the button that says “regular unleaded” before fueling.

As consumers, we want choices. We want the option to buy organic or conventionally grown produce at the grocery store. We want the option to buy milk that is 2%, fat free, Vitamin D fortified, or skim. So it is hard for me to understand why people are against making E-15 available at gas stations. It would be an option for those individuals that want it, and the regular unleaded gasoline (which is typically a 10% ethanol blend anyway) is still available to those of you who would prefer that option.

So let’s make E-15 available at all gas stations. “Humanity can handle it.”

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

There is a New Meat-Naming System in Town!

Just in time for grilling season, you will start seeing some changes to how meat at the grocery store is labeled. The USDA has approved this new labeling system (created by NCBA and the National Pork Board) that aims to make meat perusing in the store easier for customers. For the past 40 years or so, meat labels have been anatomically based- describing where that cut is located on the animal’s body. So, for those customers that didn’t grow up on a livestock farm or enroll in a meat science class in college, how does knowing where a cut of meat came from help them know what they are getting or how to cook it?

The new labeling system will identify species, whether the meat is from the chuck, loin, rib or round, the retail cut name, and provide cooking instructions to the buyer. The biggest change is expected to be in pork chop labeling. Thanks to modern pork production methods, trichinosis is no longer a problem so the cooking temperature of pork was lowered in 2011. This means pork chops can be cooked similar to steaks now, so they will be naming different pork loin cuts more similarly to beef steak cuts (i.e. ribeye, sirloin, New York, etc.) Hopefully, this information will be helpful to customers when browsing meat at the grocery store.
 
This article explains in greater detail the changes that we can expect to see on meat labels: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/03/new-meat-cut-names/2049713/
I think this is a good idea based on consumer research done by the National Pork Board and the NCBA Beef Checkoff program. As we learn more and more about what our urban consumers are not understanding and the importance of communicating with all of our customers, it is changes like this that are going to help everyone be on the same page. We should start seeing label changes this summer, so it will be interesting to see everyone’s reaction to it!

Monday, February 4, 2013

Featured Blog

Last week I was given the opportunity to be a feature in the Faces of Agriculture Blog. Here was my story... check out their blog to see more!


If I told you I grew up in a town with a population of 48, you would probably assume that I grew up with that typical “small town girl” story… and you would be correct. Anything you can think of to insert into a small town girl story could probably be applied to my childhood: I learned how to drive a Super M tractor before I learned how to drive a car, I crashed a go-kart or two into my dad’s grain bins, I spent my summers showing cattle, was constantly begging my parents for a horse (which I still haven’t gotten, by the way), and I had decided by age 4 that I was going to be a veterinarian when I grew up!
My brother, Trent, and I checking pigs with dad.

I was raised on a livestock and grain farm in northern Illinois. (No, not all of northern Illinois is Chicago! Population 48, remember?) My dad farmed with his dad and brother, so I was lucky enough to grow up with my dad, uncle, and grandpa at our farm every day. When I was little, we always had pigs out on the pasture at our house. I can remember riding out to the pasture in the truck with my dad to check the piglets, but he always made me stay in the truck (much to my dismay) because sows are very protective.

Me with my 15 year old cow, Wise-Guy.
   
As I got older, our farm shifted from pigs to cattle. I got my first bucket calf when I was 7, and I was in love! I named her Wise-Guy (don’t ask me why, I don’t get it either). To this day, my grandpa tells the story about how sick my Wise-Guy got when she was just a small calf, and how I would lay in her calf hutch and sleep with her because I didn’t want her to be alone. As an experienced livestock farmer, of course my grandpa thought “Great, she is going to get attached to this calf and it’s not going to survive.” Well, she did! In fact, she is the cow that started what is now our herd of over 50 cattle. 15 years later, she is still on pasture at my parent’s farm.

With the help of Wise-Guy, I started showing cattle in 4-H when I was 8 and continued to show calves from our farm until the summer of 2008 when I moved to central Illinois to attend Illinois State University. Moving to college was a huge change for me. Not because it was away from home, family, friends, and grandma’s cookin’… but because these people had no clue about anything agriculture!
As soon people found out I was an agricultural animal science major, the first question was always “Wait, you are from a REAL farm???” I thought to myself “Who are these people and where did they come from!” Where I grew up, everyone I knew was another farm kid. I had never met anyone that hadn’t seen a cow before. I thought I must have met the only people on this earth who had never been to a farm. People would ask me about chocolate milk coming from brown cows, brown eggs being healthier than white, if cow-tipping was a real thing… and all I could do was laugh! Were these people serious?
As I made my way through college and met more people, I realized that this wasn’t an exclusive group of people who had never been exposed to farming. In fact, I began to feel like the weird one because I HAD experienced these things first-hand. I started to realize that people wanted to know about farming, but they didn’t know where to go for the information. They didn’t have access to farming like I did growing up. This was a problem, and it was here that my passion for discussing farming and food production with farmers and urban folks alike.
So I quit laughing when people asked me what I thought were silly questions, because I was their closest connection to farming. If they couldn’t ask me about these things, where did I expect them to go for their answers?
My family in front of the house in Norway that our ancestors left 170 years ago!
 
In 2011, my family had the amazing opportunity to travel to Norway and go to the farm that our ancestors left in 1843. We feel so lucky that we got the experience to stand in the house that they lived in and explore the farm that they left to bring us to where we are today. Farming has been in the family for longer than record books have been around! It is hard to wrap your head around how far we have come but how much has stayed the same, too.

I still have some cattle on pasture at my parent’s farm today, but I hope to move them to my own farm someday, just like all of my ancestors have done. When I have my own farm, I know that I will take with me the important lessons that I learned growing up on our family farm; including the importance of sustainability. Both crop and livestock production are jobs that come with a responsibility to conserve the environment, and that is a responsibility that my family has always taken seriously. Today our farm is more sustainable than ever with the help of new technologies. If that interests you, you can learn more about what we do at our farm’s website: www.sandersonag.com. In 2010, our farm even received an award for Illinois Soil & Water Conservation Family of the year from Orien Samuelson!
My family receiving a conservation award from Orien Samuelson.

One thing I wish people understood about my farm family is that we want to answer your questions! Farming is our livelihood, our history, and our passion. We take pride in what we do. If you have a question about agriculture, why not go straight to the source and ask a farmer?
Me riding Mare; One of the many perks of living in the country!
 
I love what I do, and I think most farmers would say the same thing if you asked them. I feel so blessed to have been raised in “God’s Country” where I learned the importance of hard-work, responsibility, and most recently the importance of sharing what I know with people like you!

If you ever have a food-production related question but don’t know where to start, visit my blog or facebook page and ask me! I will always be happy to answer your questions or get you in contact with someone who can!

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Fructose- Here we go again.


Well, fructose is in the news again. The findings from this latest preliminary research suggest that fructose does not send signals to our brain to tell us that we are full or satiated. I find it interesting that they are reporting this as new information when I remember learning this 2 years ago in my college nutrition class. Is this really new information? Or just the media generating hype because “new and exciting discoveries” will get a larger audience than “we have known this for a while but we decided to tell all of you about it again”? I digress…
Here are my thoughts on sugar in general: We all know we shouldn’t eat the cookie, but we like cookies, so we are going to eat it anyway. Why everyone is so captivated by this research on sugar is beyond me. To explain it in the simplest way possible, sugar breaks down into starch in our body, which is then either burned as energy or stored as fat. If you eat a ton of sugar and don’t burn the energy, it is going to be stored as fat. Since fructose doesn’t tell your brain you are full the way glucose does, when we eat something with fructose in it we tend to eat more.
So, what has fructose in it? HFCS often receives the most blame when it comes to fructose issues, but the truth is that fructose is present at comparable levels in lots of other foods, so we can’t focus on that one sweetener. Table sugar is 50/50 fructose/glucose whereas HFCS is most commonly 55/45 fructose and glucose respectively. Fruit is a healthy choice right? Not if you don’t want to eat any fructose, it is the naturally occurring sugar in fruit. Have you heard of agave nectar? It is a popular sweetener in health food circles; but guess what, it has one of the highest levels of fructose among all sweeteners! The list goes on.
Fructose is in a lot of different things that we all eat, and you know what? That’s OK! It’s just like our parents used to tell us: “Everything in moderation.”  The fact of the matter is that this preliminary research finding isn’t news. If nothing else, it is a reminder to do your research on these things so you can make an informed decision that is right for you. Don’t wait for the news casters to tell you what you should and shouldn’t eat.