Factory Farms

We enjoy living the good life.  Of course, others may not define what we do as living the good life.  It is hard work.  There are numerous animals depending on you each day.  There's always work to be done from weeding the garden, harvesting produce, carrying water, feeding the animals, milking cows and goats, to gathering eggs, butchering, cooking the meat and vegetables that were grown on your land and the list goes on and on.

In an industrial society, most of the things I described above seem so... ancient, archaic, backwards, even. But it wasn't that long ago when most Americans either lived on a farm or were closely associated with one. People knew where their food came from.  People grew a lot of their own food and meals were prepared in the kitchen including wholesome ingredients.  There weren't artificial colors or flavors or additives that you need to be a chemist to pronounce.  But now we've become so civilized.

Fast forward to today and you find that people have left the farm to seek a more sophisticated, genteel existence.  Rather than getting our food from our land, our food comes from the grocery store.  Oh, we still want nostalgia so we like adjectives like "Farm Fresh" or "All natural" to describe our eggs, vegetables and meat, but most of the processed food we eat did not come from a traditional farm, and to be actually associated with a farm?  C'mon.  It's dirty, smelly, noisy, and too much work.

So instead...  Well, the short film below does a great job of explaining why we do what we do.  Click on the cow to start the 3 minute video.  You won't be sorry you watched it.  The animation was done by Moonbot Studios of Shreveport, Louisiana and I think it is a first-class production that is though provoking.

Sometimes I feel like the Scarecrow.  I don't want chemicals, antibiotics, hormones, or medicines in my food.  I don't want my meals coming from genetically modified animals or plants.  I want the farm animals that provided my meal to have lived lives (and died deaths) in which they were treated well.  I want the animals providing my protein to live their lives out on grass and in sunshine, not cooped up indoors sitting in their feces, never seeing the light of day. I want my next meal coming from my land, not a test tube in a laboratory.  I want the satisfaction of laboring outdoors and later, enjoying the fruits of my labors.

At the end of the movie, the Scarecrow has an epiphany.  I can identify with him.  I had the same one and it made me take a step toward trying to reclaim an agrarian mindset for my family and me.  You can do it too!