Down the hill and around two curves, the road I am on leads home

A little bit about me, I am a farmer and I produce food.  I am the 5^th generation to make their living off a little 65 acre strip of land lying at the foot of Tally Mountain with wonderful bottom land along Walkers Creek.  My Great Grandfather as well as my Grandfather grew cotton and corn and bartered for a living.  My father ran a dairy farm here, where I learned that the comfort and care of the dairy cows came before my own, but by taking care of our cows (resources) they in turn took care of us.  Upon graduation from college with a degree in management I worked in various management positions first in the clothing industry,  and then moving into the rubber compounding industry, all the time the farm was growing and selling beef cattle under a lease agreement.  In 2009, like so many other Americans, my position as Quality Manager was eliminated.  Faced with graying hair and significant hearing loss and little hope of finding employment in this area, a depressed cattle industry it quickly became apparent that I was not going to be able to pay the taxes on the farm nor the many other expenses that go along with owning land.  At that time I was offered the opportunity to build poultry houses and grow poultry under a contract agreement with an integrator which I accepted.  I don’t often talk about the poultry houses because of all the negativity that goes along with them.  However I will say that in the short time the chickens are here of the farm they are well taken care of with plenty of fresh water, food, and ventilation in the houses. They are monitored both by computers and myself daily.   They have plenty of space to grow and rest, it is a chicken’s tendency to huddle together and I have to take steps, using migration fences, to keep them evenly spread throughout the building.  Basically I say that suppliers (farmers) will bring to market the demands of the consumer.  As a people we all want bargains and that drives producers (farmers) to make monoculture type decisions.  I also grow and sell hay to the cattle and horse industry and for the past three years I have attempted to care for honeybees.  It seems my ability to sell the honey far out strips my ability to produce it and that is where you come into the picture with your posts and sharing your knowledge. 

I am an American farmer, with all the warts we have as an industry In a world with seven billion people and one out of every six going to bed hungry and almost four hundred million facing starvation we have to continue to be at our best.  And I believe that given commonsense direction from sources such as yourself we will make the changes necessary to secure this environment for generations to come and we can still help feed the world. 

“Plant more flowers, use fewer pesticides and leave some areas in a natural state,” Rusty Burlew