[a farmer is talking in front of an angry crowd, pitchforks and all] I use the worst pesticides on my crops, raise animals in cramped conditions, take their babies away for slaughter, and have little respect for the environment
[the same farmer is talking in front of a now happy crowd, hearts and all] I'm a small local independent farmer though
Propaganda.
Note that the issues the US had in the fall with Avian influenza are compounded not by local farmers, but by massive corporate factory farms that optimize output at the expense of everything else.
Canada functionally escaped the issue because the farms here are smaller and more family-based, and so with healthier birds and cows in smaller localized populations made it much easier to maintain.
Yeah that's so fricking obvious to anyone who knows any farmers. But we live in a society m
I mean, I can't speak for everyone of course but a couple of the local farms near me are open to the public as kind of a tourist-y attraction. They have petting zoos and hay rides in the fall and sell a lot of their own products (honey and honeycomb, produce of course, baked goods, apple cider, etc). And everyone is welcome to see the animals grazing on real green plants, in open fields.
With other farms I can talk to their employees at the local market, I can find news articles about them, or I can even drive by and look then up myself.
Are they perfect? Of course not. But... What are you asking people to do? Should we all just give up and go to the local Wal-Mart for all our produce? Or are you naive enough to think everyone should be growing their own Victory gardens?
Or are you naive enough to think everyone should be growing their own Victory gardens?
Yes.
Eh. If you're shopping local strictly for health benefits, you're doing it wrong. Reduced transportation costs still has an important environmental effect, the money helps the local economy, and there are just so damn many fresh products that can't be obtained any other way(fresh milk and un-bleached, un-washed Eggs, for starters).
Eggs with chicken poop all over them are not a good thing healthwise. I'm all for the clean eggs from my local market.
Okay so, aside from the fact that, as another person pointed out, you can wash the eggs, that ‘poop and stuff’ includes a sort of exterior membrane that keeps the eggs fresh even when left out of the fridge.
Commercial washing removes that membrane, which is why those store-bought eggs go bad faster.
You know you can just wash the eggs, right?
And wash your fingers… it really isn’t an issue with unwashed eggs plus they have the benefit of not needing to be refrigerated.
I've really enjoyed getting local unwashed eggs and them getting to be room temperature. Really helps the baked goods, since I never remember to leave my fridge eggs out long enough.
And don't forget to disinfect them to get rid of the salmonella, too. I'd rather just buy clean eggs.
How are you going to disinfect the inside of the egg?
By cooking it to an appropriate temperature?
If you cook them to an appropriate temperature what do you think will happen to the outside? I don’t know were you live, but here in Europe you won’t find washed eggs and we wash our hands with soap and water after touching the eggs. It doesn’t matter how clean your eggs are, you need to practice good hygiene in the kitchen anyway.
I live in California in the United States, and I've never heard of washing hands after touching regular supermarket eggs.
After a little googling, why this is so: California state law requires state-registered egg producers, i.e. any commercial size operation, whether they're in-state, or out-of-state, to perform treatment, such as pasteurization and vaccination of laying hens against Salmonella.
"Repacked eggs" i.e. eggs in a typical supermarket egg container must be "clean" which has a specific legal definition which pretty much means washed and, under USDA rules, sanitized.
In Europe, things are obviously different, and may be different in each country/province/city.
This state law only applies to commercial egg producers. Obviously if I were to handle eggs from backyard chickens, I would have to wash and sanitize the eggs and my hands.
TIL!
In EU (Spain) you don't touch eggs in the supermarket, they are in the carton box and you pick the 6 or 10 pack, usually.
You just take 2-3, wash them with a bit of water, fry them, then wash you hands when you finish cooking as you should anyway.
That easy.
Same thing here in Denmark though we refrigerate our eggs for no apparent reason.
This ruins the egg.
Unless you like hard mealy yolks I guess.
It's really the wrong question here in the States, or at least for supermarket eggs here in California.
Vaccinated chickens and pasteurized eggs virtually eliminate salmonella inside the eggs.
We can have our eggs sunny side up.
Why would a small farmer need to optimize their production to the point where they're doing all that?
money
The status quo today is all of the bad stuff that guy said, and also that they're not local.
Two completely different things.
uh, what farmer raises crops and animals?
My family has been doing mixed beef cattle and crops for 5 generations. The land is a bit too tough out there to rely solely on crops, but has some good areas for planting interspersed with hilly areas only really suitable for grazing. Single family mixed farms are still common enough in certain areas, but dwindling, as (often) Chinese mega corps gradually buy up the land and amass what they can. It’s more efficient and there is less concern for stewardship of land that will be passed down to one’s family, so it’s easy for them to be more economically competitive.
huh, i guess there are still a few left. we always grew just enough corn we didn't have to buy feed, but everything else was devoted to the cattle.
Jeremy Clarkson does
this has been very informative
the dumbass city "farmer" that has a 50sqft garden and raises a chicken.
so someone without the scale to produce... anything?
they produce enough bullshit to make internet points lol.
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