Common Sense Agriculture's Blog

From an #agnerd perspective, SXSW was an amazing experience. It was a great opportunity to be able to be on the AgChat Foundation panel with Chris Chinn, Emily Zweber, Zach Hunnicutt and moderated by Marla Schulman. I took a little different approach to SXSW than most folks. Rather than trying to discover new hardware, software, applications or strategies, I went with the purpose of meeting and interacting with people. I have discovered that genuine and caring people are more often than not, associated with unique, beneficial and useful products and programs. Once again, this premise proved true. I would like to share a few of the people I was able to meet and speak with at SXSW and encourage you to look them up and check out what they have to offer and are involved in. Read more…

Following my post titled Size Is Relative, a respected follower of mine, Joya Parsons (@Kubileya), sent me the following tweet. In it she makes some very poignant statements that everyone in agriculture, no matter the size, commodity or production practice, should take to heart.

She begins:

@JeffFowle No one is throwing stones, but the instant backlash when a hashtag for small farms to connect was suggested is pretty telling as to the attitude coming from over #AgChat way.

I recall seeing several tweets a few days ago using the #smallfarm hashtag and thought to myself that it was a neat idea to provide a unique identifier for one of the groups that help make up agriculture. At the time I did not notice any “condescending” remarks being made, by either side. Later that day, however, I noticed a series of tweets with the new hashtag, promoting small farms (which is great), yet they were also speaking ill of those who were not “small.” This is what prompted me to write my original post. However, I had not noticed the reciprocal mudslinging, so I went back through the tweet stream to try to find out what Joya was describing and sure enough, there were some. Read more…

Dawn of a New Agriculture

Recently, I have seen a number of comments referring to amazement at the time a number of farmers and ranchers spend off the home place traveling. I felt compelled to put together my thoughts on the matter, as this related directly to me and how I have decided to invest my time both on and off the ranch.

Farmers and ranchers today are faced with a plethora of decisions to make when it comes to how to invest their time.  For decades, farmers and ranchers spent nearly every waking hour on the farm or ranch, and maybe, every once in a while, would take a day or two off to go to the county fair or a very short vacation. Times have changed. Read more…

Oprah Winfrey

I recorded the Oprah show, Go Vegan For A Week,  that aired last week with Michael Pollan as a guest and the topic being veganism. I finally had a bit of time to watch and digest what had been said. Because society is no longer connected to the food that they eat, shows such as this tend to make me a bit nervous. Call me paranoid, but when a major celebrity, a popular documentarian and an author are giving advice to a million plus people on “healthy” eating, I get skeptical. On issues pertaining to health and diet, consult a doctor and for information on agriculture, talk to a farmer or rancher. There were three primary “nuggets” that I thought were of significant importance, one of which I found myself in partial agreement with Michael Pollan and another with Oprah Winfrey.

First, I was impressed by the inclusion of the video from Lisa Ling’s visit to Cargill. While it may have been “shocking” to those not familiar with the beef industry, it represented how agriculture has changed by blending efficiency, quality and animal welfare. Cargill, as shown in the video, has implemented modern technology, handling methodology and designs by Temple Grandin that reduce stress on animals. What I really appreciated about this video was the fact that a major company was willing to allow cameras to enter one of their facilities to share their part of the agricultural story. Read more…