Great Article!

Please take the time to go read this article - it really sums up a lot of what goes through my mind when it comes to the commonly held viewpoint of "modern" agriculture....only much more articulately than I could phrase it!

http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-omnivore2019s-delusion-against-the-agri-intellectuals/?searchterm=blake%20hurst

Rights?

Recently I was flipping through a farm magazine, "Successful Farming" from May-June 2009, and I found an ad put out by Pfizer Animal Health. It had an eye-catching picture: a hog building with a large picture of a pig on the front and side. The caption said, "This is not a pig."

So, I read the small print in the paragraph at the bottom, and within that paragraph was this sentence:

"To us, Individual Pig Care means ensuring every pig has the proper feed, water, environment and health interventions to be free of pain, disease, discomfort and injury."

Okay. I believe every animal must be cared for properly, which includes feed, water, environment, and health interventions. I fully agree with that.

But what REALLY gets to me is the last half of that sentence:

free of pain,

disease,

discomfort

and injury.

Lately you hear animal rights folks using these words and declaring them as a right that animals must be given. Sounds good, doesn't it?? The trouble is, that is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to achieve!! I don't even know a single human being who has even one day that does not include the things on that list. Pain, disease, discomfort, injury. It happens to all living things, even people, and I see absolutely no reason why some think animals should somehow be exempt from that.

For me, I firmly believe that God created people to be above animals and in dominion over them. As such, we have a strong responsibility to treat our animals well and with respect. The trouble I have is when you try to grant animals rights that even humans do not have, and will not have until Heaven.

It really bothers me when I see people mistreating animals: starving them, beating them, neglecting them. But it also really frustrates me that there are folks who take farmers in agriculture and distort the way they are raising their livestock and attempt to describe that as mistreatment - that is just ridiculous. Give the animals proper feed, water, environment, and health interventions (no successful livestock farmer ignores these things!) and save the outcry for the animals who truly are being abused, or for children or other human beings who are experiencing pain, discomfort, disease, and injury.

Many people die daily from lack of clean water to drink, diseases such as malaria, children born to drug addicted or HIV positive mothers, genocide, human trafficking - all these things are going on. Yet, all some people seem to be able to think about are the (poor?!?) farm animals who have constant access to clean, cool water, feed that is formulated specifically to their life-stage, high-tech ventilation. Perhaps they live inside a barn, in conditions that a human would not want to live in....but people and animals are drastically different, and have different needs in housing.

It strikes me as funny that one could object to an animal living it's life in a so-called "factory farm" building, not having to fight or struggle for food or water, then be hauled on a livestock trailer close to the other animals it has lived with before for comfort as well as help them keep their feet - they lean on each other while riding on the trailer. What is the difference, really, from a human living in a NYC apartment, getting on the crowded subway to go to work in an office building?

It just bothers me that there is such a disconnect from the "rights" some want to claim for animals, and reality of what is actually within the realm of possibility in this imperfect world. I just would like to see a stronger desire to improve human well-being, and quit trying to create some kind of "ideal" world.

Introduction

It's high time I begun this blog, and started writing posts for it. After all, it is a big part of why I began blogging in the first place!

At the 2008 Indiana Farm Bureau Young Farmer conference last January, one of the speakers talked about how farmers can best stand up for their right to farm the land, raise livestock, and feed America. These rights are being challenged more and more by a variety of groups, and agriculture is at risk.

One of the ways was to get into the "blogosphere" by posting comments and blogging about the things we do on our farms and getting onto the animal rights and environmentalists blogs and leaving challenging (yet polite) comments to try to educate others about what we really do and why it is the right thing to do.

So, this is my hope for this blog:

• Talk about our farm operation and why we do the things the way we do them


• Explain why it's morally acceptable to eat meat and raise livestock


• Share information that may help others who also farm or who are interested in learning more about it

Specific things we raise that may be discussed on this web log:

• Charolais/Angus Beef - We have a 60 cow/calf operation, and finish the calves born as well as buying and finishing feeder calves




• Meat Goats - We have a small herd of boer cross meat goats, with about 10 mature does.




• Livestock Guardian Dogs - To protect our investment in the goats, we have a Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog. LGD's are bred to protect small livestock from predators (coyotes, birds of prey, etc.)




• Rotational/Management Intensive Grazing - A good way to increase pastureland productivity




• Corn




• Soybeans




• Hay - Both for sale off the farm and to feed our animals




• Wheat/Straw - Most of this is raised to bed down our animals




• Corn Silage - Chopped by our neighbor, used to feed our cattle and goats in the winter months




• Vegetable Garden - My family's personal garden, we grow sweet corn, potatoes, onions, green beans, strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, garlic....and are always interested in trying new things. Most of this produce is stored for our family's use by freezing and home-canning. We also eat a lot of it as it's picked!