Alderspring RanchGrass Fed Beef is: Grown by us on our high mountain ranch in Idaho Grazed on certified organic and transitional pastures Fed only pasture and hay; nothing else, ever Never given chemicals of any kind (no antibiotcs, no hormones, no pesticides) Dry-aged 18-21 days, the old world way Hand carved and packaged

We have grave concerns about the direction and future of American agriculture.  Aided and abetted by government policies and the cry of “free trade,” more and more of your food is being produced in other countries or on large corporate (or sometimes large family-owned) agribusiness farms.  There is little accountability to you, the consumer, in such an agricultural system.  There are also significant ecological and social costs as small, diversified family-operated farms are replaced by large farms managed primarily by hired labor.  Larger farms have little flexibility in caring for land in an intimate way.  Human care is replaced by mechanical equipment.  Love for a place is replaced by maximizing profits.  The dignity of the independent farmer is replaced by the hired-hand mentality of a farm manager, management skills replaced by corporate directives.  As large farms replace small farms, rural communities die, as income generated from the farm is transferred to distant owners in metropolitan areas, rather than circulated through the local business economy (see more extensive discussion below in Peter Rosset’s policy brief).

Since 1981, more than 620,000 productive farms have disappeared, either bought by larger farms or "developed" into ranchettes, subdivisions or strip malls.  This is not the future we envision for Alderspring Ranch.  By opting out of the agricultural system, and buying directly from us, you support a small family farm committed to providing you with healthy and superior food, committed to the improving the ecological health of our land, committed to the kind treatment of all our animals, and committed to our local rural community.

Rodney Leonard of the Community Nutrition Institute of Washington, DC. Wrote in 1988:  Two agricultural systems are emerging. One is a system of small independent farms relying on the management skills of farm owners who produce natural, organic foods that provide arising portion of the American diet. The other is an industrial agriculture system managed by executives of corporations that genetically convert plants and animals into miniature factories producing chemicals, drugs and body parts through biotechnology; farmers will grow and harvest these factories on command of corporate managers. (Read the entire article here HERE.)

We at Alderspring Ranch are committed to being a part of the first system.

ADDITIONAL LINKS AND READING

Idaho Rural Council is committed to preserving the economic well-being of Idaho's family farms and rural communities; to building a more sustainable society which will guarantee positive economic and social choices for present and future generations; to achieving good stewardship of humanity, land, air and water.

National Family Farm Coalition was founded in 1986 to serve as a national link for grassroots organizations working on family farm issues. Our membership currently consists of 33 grassroots farm, resource conservation, and rural advocacy groups from 33 states.  NFFC brings together farmers and others to organize national projects focused on preserving and strengthening family farms. 

American Farmland Trust works to preserve productive farmland and encourages farming practices that promote a healthy environment.  Read their newest study, Strategic Ranchland at risk in the Rocky Mountain West

National Catholic Rural Life Conference "Green Ribbon" Campaign expresses solidarity with family farmers, rural communities and the web of creation. A "Green Ribbon" signifies that it is a time for new growth and renewed action to help farm families and rural communities stay viable. Wearing a green ribbon signifies faith in a thriving future.

Sally Fallon, who wrote a thought-provoking book titled Nourishing Traditions, describes in an essay "How to keep the value... down on the farm where it belongs:" 
One of the main weapons of the global overlords is fast food. Quoting from an excellent article called "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser appearing in Rolling Stone Magazine Nov 26, 1998: "In much the same way that the fast-food industry changed the nation’s retail economy, eliminating small businesses, encouraging the spread of chains and uniformity, fast food has transformed American agriculture. The centralized purchasing decisions of large restaurant chains and their demand for standardized products have given a handful of multinational corporations an unprecedented degree of power over the nation’s food supply.  During the 1980’s, when the virtues of the free market [and free trade] were being proclaimed, giant agribusiness companies-such as Cargill, ConAgra and IBP-gained control of one agricultural market after another. The concentration of power in the food-processing industry has driven down the prices offered to American farmers. In 1980, about thirty-seven cents of every consumer dollar spent on food went to the farmer. Today, only twenty-three cents goes to the farmer-a decline of forty percent. Family farms are now being replaced by gigantic corporate farms with absentee owners. Rural communities are losing their middle class and becoming socially stratified, divided among a small wealthy elite and large numbers of the working poor. The hardy, independent farmers whom Thomas Jefferson considered the bedrock of democracy are truly a vanishing breed. The United States now has more prison inmates than full-time farmers." 

Fortunately, dinosaurs don’t remain forever, they eventually die out and become extinct, and are replaced by lots of small furry mammals-"the small independent farms relying on the management skills of farm owners who produce natural, organic foods that provide a rising portion of the American diet." We want this kind of farmer to replace the giant cold-blooded reptiles, to make money and to prosper, so that the poor guy who was duped into the corporate system, and who finds himself more and more in hock and dependent on the vagaries of commodities prices and trade policy, will see that he would be better off returning to traditional methods of agriculture. It will take more than a handful of organic farmers to revitalize our soil and our economy. And of course, we want this system to survive because the products of the corporate farm are becoming more and more worthless, stripped of nutrients and loaded with toxic chemicals. 

Food First Institute for Food and Development Policy Policy Brief #4. The Multiple Functions and Benefits of Small Farm Agriculture In the Context of Global Trade Negotiations By Peter M. Rosset, Ph.D. September 1999

EXERPT:

I am not alone in speaking to the value of small farms and calling for policy change to take advantage of their potential dynamism. The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Commission on Small Farms released a landmark report in 1998 titled A Time to Act. What the USDA calls the public value of small farms includes:

• Diversity: Small farms embody a diversity of ownership, of cropping systems, of landscapes, of biological organization, culture and traditions. A varied farm structure contributes to biodiversity, a diverse and aesthetically pleasing rural landscape, and open space.
• Environmental benefits: Responsible management of the natural resources of soil, water, and wildlife on the 60 percent of all U.S. farms less than 180 acres in size, produces significant environmental benefits for society. Investment in the viability of these operations will yield dividends in the stewardship of the nation's natural resources.
• Empowerment and community responsibility: Decentralized land ownership produces more equitable economic opportunity for people in rural areas, as well as greater social capital. This can provide a greater sense of personal responsibility and feeling of control over one's life, characteristics that are not as readily available to factory line workers. Land owners who rely on local businesses and services for their needs are more likely to have a stake in the well-being of the community and the well-being of its citizens. In turn, local land owners are more likely to be held accountable for any negative actions that harm the community.
• Places for families: Family farms can be nurturing places for children to grow up and acquire values. The skills of farming are passed from one generation to another under family ownership structures. When farm children do not continue to farm, farming knowledge, skills and experience are lost.
• Personal connection to food: Most consumers have little connection to agriculture and food production. As a consequence, they have little connection with nature, and lack an appreciation for farming as cultivation of the earth for the production of food that sustains us. Through farmers' markets, community supported agriculture, and the direct marketing strategies of small farmers, consumers are beginning to connect with the people growing their food, and with food itself as a product of a farmer's cooperation with nature.
• Economic foundations: In various states and regions of the U.S., small farms are vital to the economy.

The Amish and Mennonite farm communities found in the eastern United States provide a strong contrast to the virtual devastation described by Goldschmidt in corporate farm communities. Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, which is dominated by these small farmers who eschew much modern technology and often even bank credit, is the most productive farm county east of the Mississippi River. It has annual gross sales of agricultural products of $700 million, and receives an additional $250 million from tourists who appreciate the beauty of traditional small farm landscapes (D'Souza and Ikerd, 1996). Ludwig and Anderson (1992) argue that Amish farm communities provide a North American model for what they call "indigenous development," essentially an emphasis on building a strong local economy as the basis for participating in the larger world:

The vision of indigenous development is one of global inter-dependence through the intra-dependence of semiautonomous regions. Instead of placing emphasis on the highest or global level of competitive interaction, it starts at the bottom and places emphasis on the development of strong, independent, semiautonomous regions with unique identities… Many of the Amish communities, separated by self-defined boundaries, are… self-reliant. These [are] interesting examples because their economies are market oriented and highly successful; they do substantial trade with the outside; they are great husbands of the natural environment; and their members find a great deal of meaning and centeredness in their work. While their economies are market based, they are highly diverse and integrated rather than fragmented, cooperative rather than competitive, based on value added rather than on commodity products, and dedicated to reciprocity more than dominance (p.35).

The benefits of small farms extend beyond the economic sphere. Whereas large, industrial-style farms impose a scorched-earth mentality on resource management -- no trees, no wildlife, endless monocultures -- small farmers can be very effective stewards of natural resources and the soil. To begin with, small farmers utilize a broad array of resources and have a vested interest in their sustainability. At the same time, their farming systems are diverse, incorporating and preserving significant functional biodiversity within the farm. By preserving biodiversity, open space and trees, and by reducing land degradation, small farms provide valuable ecosystem services to the larger society.

In the United States, small farmers devote 17% of their area to woodlands, compared to only 5% on large farms. Small farms maintain nearly twice as much of their land in "soil improving uses," including cover crops and green manures (D'Souza and Ikerd, 1996). 

A penalty is paid for this land concentration in terms of productivity, as large farmers turn to monocultures and machines to farm such vast tracts, and in terms of the environment, as these large mechanized monocultures come to depend on agrochemicals. Jobs are lost as machines replace human labor and draft animals. Rural communities die out as farmers and farm workers migrate to cities. Natural resources deteriorate as nobody is left who cares about them. Finally, food security is placed in jeopardy: domestic food production falls in the face of cheap imports; land that was once used to grow food is placed into production of export crops for distant markets; people now depend on money—rather than land—to feed themselves; and fluctuations in employment, wages and world food prices can drive millions into hunger.

This process should be a more or less familiar one to North Americans, who have seen low crop prices and the "get big or get out" mentality of government policy drive four million farmers off the land since World War II (Lappé et al., 1998; Heffernan, 1999). We have paid, and continued to pay, a heavy price of runaway soil erosion from excessive mechanization and "fence row to fence row" planting, of urban problems because our inner cities never did absorb the excess labor expelled from rural America, and of the collapse of rural life.

The major drive to export grain from America's heartland, which began in the 1970s, contributed to a 40 percent increase in soil erosion in the corn and soybean belts. Today about 90 percent of U.S. cropland is losing topsoil faster than it can be replaced (Lappé et al., 1998.) The export boom also contributed to a 25 percent increase in average farm size, which was accompanied by the loss of one third of all American farmers between 1970 and 1992 (U.S. Census of Agriculture, 1992). In Figure 3 we see that the average American farmer has not benefited from the export boom at all. Rather, the profits have accrued to the giant grain cartels (Krebs, 1991).
In a very real sense, then, the U.S. drive to dominate global grain markets has hurt family farmers and damaged rural ecosystems both at home and abroad.

References cited in exerpted portion above.  More complete references available in the complete document at Food First Institute for Food and Development.

D'Souza, Gerard and John Ikerd. 1996. "Small Farms and Sustainable Development: Is Small More Sustainable?" Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics 28(1):73-83.
Durrenberger, E. Paul, and Kendall M. Thu. 1996. " The Expansion of Large-Scale Hog Farming in Iowa: The Applicability of Goldschmidt's Findings Fifty Years Later." Human Organization 55(4):409-415.
Fujimoto, Isao. 1977. "The Communities of the San Joaquin Valley: The Relationship between Scale of Farming, Water Use, and the Quality of Life." Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Family Farms, Rural Development, and Social Studies, Sacramento, CA, October 28, 1977.
Goldschmidt, Walter. 1978. As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social Consequences of Agribusiness. New York: Allenheld, Osmun.
Heffernan, William. 1999. Consolidation in the Food and Agriculture System. Report to the National Farmers Union. Columbia: University of Missouri.
Krebs, A.V. 1991. The Corporate Reapers: The Book of Agribusiness. Washington, DC: Essential Books.
Lappé, Frances Moore, Joseph Collins and Peter Rosset, with Luis Esparza. 1998. World Hunger: Twelve Myths, 2nd Edition. New York: Grove Press.
Ludwig, Dean C., and Robert J. Anderson. 1992. "A Model of Indigenous Revival for U.S. Agriculture." Journal of International Food & Agribusiness Marketing 4(2):23-39.
MacCannell, Dean. "Industrial Agriculture and Rural Community Degradation." Pp. 15-75 in L.E. Swanson (ed), Agriculture and Community Change in the U.S.: The Congressional Research Reports. Boulder: Westview Press.