My dad just got back from a cross-country trip with several of his friends. The trip took them out west, all the way to Albaqerque, New Mexico on their motorcycles. He just got back on Tuesday so I called him to find out if he had a good time and to hear about some of the things he did and saw.
He talked about the Grand Canyon, staying in small Mom and Pop type places, and eating only at local restaurants, no chains. It sounded like dad and his friends really tried to soak up the culture everywhere they went.
One of the first things he mentioned was the farmland. He mentioned riding through Texas where he saw cows on top of cows on top of cows. Dad sounded quite disgusted as he talked about huge cattle farms (feedlots) where cows were so close together, all they could do is eat. And what were they eating? Corn, of course. Dad even mentioned going through state after state of nothing but corn. He recounted to me his thoughts of thinking that there was no way we could never eat that much corn.
He also mentioned that the feedlot smelled absolutely horrible.
Need a visual?
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Dad also mentioned riding through Kansas and seeing pastured cows. He described them as healthy-looking.
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Which visual do you prefer?
Dad’s group of friends stopped one night and had steak for dinner. One of his friends looked down at his steak and said, “I hope this cow came from Kansas.”
I should have prefaced this by saying that up until this point, I haven’t talked to my dad about my priority to buy grass fed beef. I haven’t told him about Michael Pollan‘s books I have read, and I know he hasn’t read them either. But after reading these books, I felt completely validated by what my dad had witnessed on his trip out west. All the conclusions he came to after seeing the mid west are specifically addressed in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food and many of the questions he had are also raised by Pollan.
I should also mention that my dad is no stranger to agriculture. He bought our land, where the house I grew up was built, from my great uncle who had a small cattle farm. Cattle fields surrounded all three sides of the house and bordered the street in front of our house. Every summer my dad helped my Uncle Frank cut his fields, meaning they cut the tall grass into hay. The cows were grass fed in the summer and then hay-fed (dried grass) in the winter. There were times in the winter when the hay ran out and the cows were fed grain, but this was only for short periods of time.
I grew up knowing where beef came from, technically. But I was a little confused in thinking that every piece of beef I ate came from the kind of cows I saw when I looked out my window or sometimes was looked at through my window when one managed to break through the fence. I know we ate my uncle’s beef from time to time, especially after we bought a freezer, but often our beef came from the grocery store.
It took me days to read a book that painted the picture my dad witnessed in some fleeting moments on the highway out west.
I wonder if all of our perspectives would change, if we had the chance to witness where our food comes from. How would that affect our eating choices and how we spend our money?