article thumbnail

On the Ground with the Farmers Producing Antibiotic-Free Meat

Modern Farmer

In 2002, Mardesen started selling his pork to Niman Ranch, a network of independent family farmers that raise livestock without antibiotics or added hormones. As the owner of a multi-generational farm, Mardesen has seen industrial agriculture and factory farming take increasing control over meat production in the last few decades.

Cattle 130
article thumbnail

How to Implement a Grass-Fed Program on Your Farm

Farmbrite

Grass-fed beef is also leaner than conventional beef; this means there will be less fat marbling in your steak or burger when cooking with grass-fed meat compared to regular supermarket products from factory farms that raise cattle on corn feedlots. Assess your livestock's grazing potential.

Farming 52
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Opinion: To Find the Future of Food, We Need to Look to the Past

Modern Farmer

Catastrophe loomed everywhere I looked: in the dust bowls on the once-fertile plains of central Turkey, in the vanishing lakes of Mexico City, in the fetid cesspools outside the factory farms of North Carolina, in the disease-ravaged olive trees of Puglia, in the rapid wiping away of diverse food webs in every biome.

Food 139
article thumbnail

As the Number of American Farms and Farmers Declines, Agriculture Secretary Urges Climate Action to Reverse the Trend

Daily Yonder

The farm then creates a second source of income.” In other words, Vilsack argued, climate action could help save the American farm. The problem, the census data suggest, is that American farms, especially big factory farms that generate significant greenhouse gas emissions, are growing in size.

article thumbnail

Is California giving its methane digesters too much credit?

The Counter

California is treating factory farm gas systems at dairy farms like they are devices that suck carbon from the air. Every year, California dairy farms emit hundreds of thousands of tons of the potent greenhouse gas methane, which gets released when livestock operations pool manure in open-air lagoons.

Manure 52
article thumbnail

Understanding the farmer protests 

Sustainable Food Trust

Driven by supermarket price wars, retailers have been relentlessly pushing down the price that they offer to the farmers that supply them, who, when faced with this price pressure, have perceived the only option left to them is further intensification and enlargement of their farming operations and, in the case of livestock, animal numbers.

Food 130
article thumbnail

Alone on the Range

Food Environment and Reporting Network

Share Tweet This Story’s Impact 152 MILLION UNIQUE BROWSERS WORLDWIDE High Country News This article is part of FERN’s series Livestock and Rural Communities /.slide-intro In response to a public-records request, DEQ released only 33 public complaints against livestock operations in North Carolina from January 2008 to April 2018.

Farming 132