Goat Cheese and Workers Rights

So I know I'm way behind on my blogs, but I promise I'm working on it. On Tuesday after Asheville we had a lecture and discussion with Dr. Washburn and Dr. Poor on confined operating systems and what the positives and negatives were associated with those types of systems versus the pasture raised beef systems. In our group we decided that some positives were efficiency (cost and time) and regulations (it was not so easy to convince some group members that standardizing everything was a beneficial thing and I see their point). The negatives obviously outweigh the positives, but it is not so easy to just drop everything and change the system. I think a lot of pro-sustainable agriculture people forget how intricate the system already in place is and Dr. Poor made a very good point when he said that there needed to be a group of people that just studied the system and all its intricacies. After the discussion, we went to Holly Grove, a goat farm outside of Goldsboro. We got a tour of the goat dairy and learned some of their practices and how they are different from traditional dairies. They use the milk solely for making cheese, which I bought some of at the store. It was very interesting to learn how their goat farm started. Before they had the goats, the family had swine and they decided to add some beef cattle to the farm. To feed the cattle, they grew their own hay but they had too much surplus so they brought in the goats to eat the surplus and the rest is history. I wish we could have seen their swine operation (they contract with Murphy Brown) because that could have been the tail of two farms...

Wednesday we went to an organization called FLOC (Farm Labor Organizing Committee) and learned about their work with the Hispanic farm labor community and their push for workers rights. They are a pretty busy organization that has looked past just boycotting companies like Campbell Soup, and instead threatening their biggest sponsor (usually a bank) who ultimately is more effecting at making Campbells pay attention. They've made a lot of progress and now they are working for the rights of the Tobacco farms who are contracting terrible illnesses from the amount of nicotine they are exposed to working in the fields. They are working on boycotting another bank and I've never been more happy to be involved with a local State bank :) We also went on a walk through Cliffs of the Neuse and learned about the symbolic importance of the region to the Native American cultures thanks to Dream weaver. He gave us a warming though which was a bit frightening. He told us we needed to prepare for a time when the food industry would fail us and we would rely on our own gardens to feed us. Normally when people say that I think they are a bot extreme, but something about the way he said it, made it seem like there was something he knew about that we didn't. Great day never the less, despite the heat (105 degrees!)