How much do you really know about the food you eat? If you don’t get your information from the folks that produce the food, it may not be much as you think.
I just got back from a 3-day tour of farms across Kansas, sponsored by the Kansas Farm Bureau and Kansas Soybean. (Like always, the opinions that follow are mine alone.)
By and large, low carbers pay a lot of attention to their food. Many are concerned about issues like pesticides and antibiotics and GMOs. We’ve become accustomed to questioning conventional sources of information because sometimes, personal experience told us different. So I am right there with you, always encouraging people to make their own, informed decisions about food.
I will tell you upfront, though: I didn’t set foot on the tour bus with a lot of worries about my food. (I don’t frequent some of the websites y’all do! 😀 ) But I left the tour with even fewer concerns.
The trip was immersive. So much information! I’ve lived in the Midwest amidst farms all my life, but had never formally toured one. Well, now I’ve toured eight! And I got a good, up close and personal look at where some of our food comes from, thanks to the hospitality of Kansas farmers.
The Farms
- Good Pork – Olsburg
- Meier Dairy – Palmer
- Holle Farms – Oberlin
- Innovative Livestock Services – Great Bend
- Sawyer Farm – McPherson
- Ahlerich Farms – Winfield
- Dalebanks Angus – Eureka
- Juniper Hills Farms – Lawrence
What I Saw Touring Kansas Farms
I was impressed. The amount of technology employed to run even a small, family farm was more in keeping with what you’d expect in a hospital than a barn! And the knowledge base these folks had about both the land and animals was staggering.
But what I’ve found sticking with me more than the facts and figures were impressions–a picture of the people producing the food most of us are blessed enough to take for granted.
The farms we visited were often family-oriented, multi-generational operations. One of the first things you’ll hear is how many generations have farmed. Parents spoke of their parents’ and grandparents’ farms, and of their children and grandchildren–decisions constantly being made with the intention of maintaining a legacy, to pass down to future generations. It was prevalent enough that a first generation farmer was remarkable.
“If the kids want to farm…” they’d say. Always “if.” Never an expectation, but just making sure, farm life remained an option.
“Farming gets in your blood,” I heard more than once. “It’s more a lifestyle than a job.”
It would have to be! The demands of farm life are significant, complicated by factors like weather, harvest times, and birthing seasons. I learned produce even tastes different based on the temperature outside when it’s picked! Farmers don’t set their own priorities in many respects: the farm does.
To make a viable living, farming requires substantial investment in technology and equipment; hence significant debt is part of the picture for many if not most. Mix in fluctuating market conditions, high risk of loss and unpredictable prices for yield–and shifting food trends among consumers–and it’s pretty easy to see how modern farming is essentially a form a gambling. This isn’t a “fast buck” occupation in any sense of the word.
So why do it?
The sense I got was that the rewards are much more intrinsic. It’s something people seem to do because they feel called to it, sometimes from an early age.
Watch a farmer light up when they talk about what they do, or eat with a farmer, enjoying the food their own labor has produced–and you’ll feel a quiet, yet still palpable satisfaction.
They are feeding people, you know? Your work cannot be more relevant than feeding people!
After spending time with farmers, you won’t wonder for long, whether or not these folks are concerned about the long-term impact of what they do.
