As I join the 110 million or so Americans who will watch the San Francisco 49ers take on the Baltimore Ravens this Sunday, we will collectively chomp our way through an incredible 1.23 billion chicken wings, plus millions of burgers, hot dogs and steaks. That’s a staggering amount of meat.
While both Dana Tryde and Eric Michielssen had grandparents that worked the land, their parents chose to leave the family farms. But when the couple first met in 1999, Dana and Eric quickly learned of their similar family legacies and their shared interest in returning to the land. In 2002, they established Clark Valley Farm and Horse Boarding in Los Osos, California, where they ran a diverse organic produce operation and sustainably-managed horse facility. In 2010, they settled at Pozo Organic Farm in the tiny community of Pozo, 25 miles east of San Luis Obispo. In addition to the horses that Dana and Eric brought from the old farm and the row crops, berries, and fruit trees they are growing, the farm is now home to a flock of Animal Welfare Approved laying hens.
We know that most of the world’s hungry live in the developing nations in the South. They are hungry because they cannot afford to buy food or grow it themselves, usually because of poverty, but also due to conflict, poor infrastructure, poor agricultural practices, and the over-exploitation of the environment, among other things. They are also hungry because much of their agricultural production is focused on generating food and livestock feed to supply Western markets. Recent price rises caused by harvest failures, commodity speculation, and the diversion of grain to produce biofuels over recent years have hardly helped matters (see for example Tom Philpott’s excellent blog on the horrendous impact U.S. biofuels policy is having on global food prices – and hunger).