Is Industrial Agriculture Necessary? One Farmer Says No

By Anthony Todd in Food on Jul 6, 2012 4:00PM

As soon as we started watching the latest Sky Full of Bacon, we realized that Mike Gebert must have gotten into the same frustrating conversations that we encounter all the time: organic farming is nice and all, but there are starving people in the world! Billions of them! And to feed them, we need pesticides and ammonia and genetically modified seeds, not all this hippy crap. But, while we just raved a lot, Gebert went out and found a farmer who is using "Biological Farming" to produce more food than the average industrial farm.

"It's easy to have a formula, and lock everybody in a box and feed them all the same and milkers come in and its factory farming," explained agronomist, dairy farmer and biological farming advocate Gary Zimmer. But it turns out that cows raised organically live twice as long, cost less to keep alive, and actually produce more milk at a lower overall cost to the farmer. This isn't cruelty-free, warm and fuzzy boutique agriculture; this is a real business, which is trying to set an example for other farmers trapped in the conventional ag system. Plus, they make great cheese.

You'll have to watch the video for the whole story. Kudos to Gebert for another great entry.