Michael Olson hosts Will Harris, Farmer, Rancher and Author of Giving a Damn: A Bold Return to Giving A Damn for a conversation about giving a damn farming and ranching.

Topics include why conventional farming and ranching were industrialized into commodity agriculture; why some farmers and ranchers are returning to conventional agriculture; and what it means to be “give a damn” farmers and ranchers.

I spent many of my early summers growing up on the Grandparents’ farm near Belfry, Montana.

The farm was a 360-acre boy wonderland, as it contained most all of the traditional farm animals, an orchard filled with fruit trees, a huge kitchen-garden, pastures for grazing animals, crop lands for growing plants and the Big Red Barn.

Everywhere this boy looked, there was an adventure in living to be had, and food to eat ­– real, whole food fresh from the soil in which it was raised.

Then, somewhere along the way, farmers and ranchers learned to grow crops with money instead of time. With money borrowed against the equity in their land, they could buy equipment and chemicals that reduced the time required for them to work in the field.

Today the farm that sits where the Grandparents’ farm sat grows government-subsidized sugar beets fence post to fence post. The big red barn is gone, and so are all the people.

As a citified adult, I am always keeping an eye open for that farm of my youth. I hunger for the farm’s adventures in living, and most especially, for its food. Those farms and ranches are not easy to find. Indeed, the great majority of the nation’s farmers and ranchers now grow commodity crops that are processed, wrapped in plastic, and shipped over a thousand miles to where we eat.

In commodity farming and ranching, whoever grows the most for the least wins, and least is what most of us eat in the confined animal feeding operations we call “the city.”

When I do find that farm of my youth – with real farmers growing real food in real soil –I like to call attention to it, in the hope that attention will engender more farms of my youth. One of the best ways to call attention to something, is to ask questions. And so today I pause ask:

Have you ever tasted “Giving a Damn” food?

Contact: www.metrofarm.com

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