This comes to us from Sustainable Table and is written by Steve McCarthy from the Prather Ranch Meat Company. 

About 8 years ago is when it all started for me. I began to visit my local farmers market every weekend and, through talking to the farmers, began to understand how they grew things and where. Gradually, I began to wonder about all the rest of the food I ate that I didn’t buy from the market.

Most of the food we eat is conventionally grown. Fertilizers and pesticides are often used. These toxic chemicals allow for higher yield, pest control, out of season growth, greater resistance to disease, greater longevity on the shelf and a generally greater mass. Sure, we can produce a lot of food, but at what cost? It was never something I thought about that much. Like many people in this country, I was very much in the dark. Like Leo, the pig in The Meatrix, my ideas of food production were quite naïve.

With meats, which is the business I am currently in but was not at the time, I wanted to know simply that my "bacon ran around" before it got to me. That is honestly how I talked about it back then. If the animal lived a good life on an open field somewhere with other animals and was well taken care of before it became bacon, I was ok with it. Was that really too much to ask?

I knew nothing about filthy large-scale hog production, but I soon found out. Those early discoveries led me to explore more about sustainable food production. I now have a better understanding of why we, as consumers, should seek out and eat sustainably-raised products instead of conventional.

continue at Sustainable Table

Author Information -  During his spare time Eric writes for and maintains wannaveg.com. For his day job he works for an electronics company in San Diego, CA. Eric has been a vegetarian for about 10 years and believes that going 'green' and reducing meat consumption go hand-in-hand.

Tags: Environment, Food, Sustainable