Getting what you pay for

Yo bitches, we be famous.

OK, maybe not Gourmet Farmer famous, but the 23 people who listen to Food Fight on radio 3CR in Melbourne have heard our dulcet tones on the radio again.  (Sorry Jonathan, I am sure you have more than 23 listeners.  Really.)  The link to it is here: http://podcast.3cr.org.au/pod/3CRCast-2013-04-30-68243.mp3

So it is time for us to use this amazing position of power for good, not evil.  And here is my contribution…. please stop complaining about the cost of food.

Hear me out.  The average Australian spends $14 a week on fresh fruit and vegetables.  That’s right, $14.  And the supermarkets talk about price inflation in the press while the cost of unprocessed food in Australia is lower now than at any point in the last 30 years.

Some tasty quinces going into making quince jelly!

But more than this, for most people the axiom “you get what you pay for” doesn’t seem to apply to food.  People are happy to apply it to so many other aspects of life but when it comes to food there seems to be the view that cheaper is always better.  And this low price has costs that you are paying, but you just don’t see it on the price tag.

Follow me on this..... just like these goats!

Let’s take a few seconds to follow this idea….

The farmers get squeezed by the large supermarkets pushing cheaper food and the spectre of food price inflation – telling farmers to become “more efficient” while paying them less.  Google Queensland dairy farmers and Lion Group, or Tasmanian potato farmers and McCain, or King Island beef and JBS.  These farmers going out of business put real strain on our economy, as any corporate replacement doesn’t employ the same number of people, nor contribute to our community (unless you are a shareholder).

These farmers, trying to avoid going bust, told to produce more for less, have to use chemicals like 24D and other pesticides that are aerially sprayed, increasing incidences of cancer and lymphoma in their communities, the costs of which we all bear.

They also have to use capital-intensive farming techniques that treat animals like commodities, subjecting them to terrible living conditions in the name of efficiency.  They also have to use antibiotics and steroids to allow the animals to cope with these unnatural intensive systems.  This profligate use of antibiotics lead to more and more resistant strains of bacteria, affecting your family’s health and your tax bill as health costs rise.

Who wouldn't want to pay a bit more to see more pigs kept like this?

If none of the above arguments have swayed you (and if statistics are anything to go by, they haven’t), then try this on for size: the good stuff actually tastes better.  If you don’t care about the conditions a chicken is raised in, try eating a true free range chicken and see how it tastes compared to cage-raised bird.  You will find a whole world of flavour that is well worth paying the extra money for.

And if you think the answer is going vegetarian or vegan, think again.  Every cow that is being milked will have its calf killed this year (why do you think they are producing milk?).  Egg-laying chickens don’t get a nice retirement scratching around the farmyard, they are killed after 3 years and put into meat meal.  Farmed salmon is fed Chilean fish meal made from their rapidly vanishing sardine-run (in a ratio of 5kg of meal to 1kg of farmed fish).  Even fruit and vegetable farmers have to shoot possums and wallabies to protect their crops (I have heard tell of one apple farmer having to kill 150 possums per year).

Some wild caught salmon we smoked - great tasting stuff and no added Chilean fish meal.

The answer is not to eschew all food, but to spend that little bit extra money at the checkout, and a little more of your internet time (over lunchtime perhaps) looking for where your food comes from.  Make contact with a direct marketing farmer (they do exist!) and really get to understand what it takes to produce food ethically and sensibly.

Trust me, when it comes to food, you truly do get what you pay for.

Oh yes, Autumn is here!

Back to school!

Palya folks!  How is it going?

Sorry for the lapse in posting, it has been such a whirlwind month, it has been a little hard to know where to start!

Since we last posted our plans we have had lots of support from our friends, and we have been hard at work trying to expand our knowledge before heading out and buying a farm.  This has entailed talking to lots of people, an appearance on community radio, reading lots of books, plus a stint volunteering on a small-scale farm to get some experience.

The main thing we have learned is that we are almost unique.  Most people buy a place, with all its problems and issues, and then try to figure out how to fix it.  We are trying to find out what we should be looking for, and what pitfalls to avoid, before we buy, as opposed to after.  This is not to say we will be able to avoid the problems, but we are trying to go in with our eyes as open to these as possible.

Eyes open, something like this.

So in this learning process we have learned a little something about permaculture.  When my sister went off to Costa Rica to start her “Permaculture Design Course”, I must confess I thought permaculture was some hippy-dippy word for what is essentially organic farming, with some grey-water recycling and straw bale house building thrown in for the smelly dreadlock crowd.  I have to apologise to her and the dreadlocked, because after doing our homework we have realised that permaculture covers a whole lot more, and doesn’t just apply to the tree-hugger set.  It is a system set up around a good yield/diversity/energy equation, among (many) other things.  For me its essence is lazy farming, building a holistic system to produce the best output for a given input of energy.

Now some perma-heads will disagree with my analysis, but I have only just started this journey, and that is my beginner’s interpretation.

Norman here was born the day before we left our volunteer farm.

So to give other budding treechangers/perma-beginners/suburban escapists a feel for the path that our learning is taking, so far we have read:

- Permaculture 1 by Bill Mollison & David Holmgren – good intro to the concepts, though 30 years old;

- Permaculture 2 by Bill Mollison – good expansion of some concepts, particularly structures;

- The Chook Book (1^st edition) by Jackie French – good no-nonsense book, 2^nd edition looks expanded and even more useful with photos and more illustrations;

- Natural Cattle Care by Pat Coleby – brilliant book, good ideas, and a great help with our first experience dealing with cattle while we were volunteering;

- Going Bush by Edward Mundie – a little disappointing, a couple of vital lessons and some useful tips but too dated to have just been written in 1994, ignores efficient systems;

- The Permaculture Handbook by Peter Bane – just started reading this, American based so not sure how useful it will prove in Tassie, but the principles are there.

I have the Permaculture Design Manual by David Holmgren to read, and Cor is halfway through Backyard Self-sufficiency by Jackie French, whose informal writing style is a joy to read.

At the moment we are at my sister’s place before starting a 3-day course this weekend at Milkwood Permaculture up near Sydney.  The course is called “You Can Farm” by Joel Salatin and should give us an opportunity to ask some practical questions of someone who is working daily with the principles that interest us.  Joel has appeared on shows like 'Food Inc' and in the bestselling book, Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Then we are heading to Tasmania on 25^th February, to do some more volunteering on farms via the WWoOF system as we begin to look for a place to buy.  A word of warning on WWoOFing - it appears to have become less about the "willing" workers on "organic farms" and more of a way for backpackers to see Australia on the cheap.  Not that there is anything wrong with this, but be prepared to find yourself in hostel-style-accommodation renovating the owner's house if you don't do your homework.

We will be crossing on the ferry with our new dual cab Ranger “Chuck” and a friend we met diving in Micronesia for a bit of road trip fun in Tassie before starting to work.  Not looking forward to the crossing – apparently it can be a bit bouncy!

If you are interested in hearing more about our motivations and what we want to achieve, check out the podcast of our radio interview here: http://podcast.3cr.org.au/pod/3CRCast-2013-01-29-61152.mp3.  We aim to do a regular bit with Jonathan on this program to keep folks updated on our progress.  Our goal with this will be to show people that if even a couple of putzes like us can make a go of a big change in their lives, then they can too!

Thanks going out to Jonathan and Jane, Barbara, Fleur, Anna and Dave, and of course my sister Elisa and her family for putting up with us whenever we are in northern Victoria.

Stay tuned!