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Jonai Farmstead Salami – crowdfunding is community-supported agriculture!
Note: the following is cross-posted from our farm blog The Hedonist Life Last year 166 wonderful people believed in us enough to support our Pozible campaign to build our own butcher’s shop right here...
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No need for ag-gag laws when there’s radical transparency
The debate is raging once again around animal welfare activists trespassing on private property to obtain footage of conditions in intensive livestock farming. The activists’ stated aim is to expose...
View ArticleMore on Transparency: Canaries in the Mine
I’ve already expressed my opposition to any proposed ag gag laws and related desire for more transparency, so today I’m going to be brief and blunt as I extend it. Intensive livestock farming needs to...
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French Farming: Small is beautiful
Would you rather sleep under a patchwork quilt made by your grandma and her friends or a synthetic bedspread from K-mart? It’s not a tough decision, right? So why do we accept what’s happened to our...
View ArticleOn fair food &‘sustainable intensification’
When we promote ‘fair food’, ‘ethical farming’ or even the more watered-down ‘sustainable farming’, are we ergo suggesting some systems are not fair, ethical, or sustainable? Of course we are. Food...
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Raw Milk in Victoria: A Letter to Minister Jane Garrett
I could write a really long post about Victoria’s current raw milk debate debacle, but I’m going to keep this short and to the point. The facts of the case are that there has been a tragic death of a...
View ArticleHow to respond to vegan abolitionists
At a recent screening of Fair Food – the documentary, where I was to be on a panel after the film, a flyer was distributed at the door accusing me of being unethical for raising and killing animals for...
View ArticleFree-range eggs & sad bacon
Last time you ate out for breakfast, did your menu have free-range eggs, fair trade coffee, and organic milk on it? What about the bacon – was it free range? Probably not. In fact, 70% of pork...
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Don’t eat chicken unless its name was Colin
I often shock people when I say ‘don’t eat chicken unless its name was Colin‘. My rationale is that if all chooks were raised properly on the paddocks, we actually wouldn’t eat very many of them – our...
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Slow Meat 2015
While at Slow Meat in Denver I picked up a copy of The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business. This critical book details the history and current oligarchical state of the meat...
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AFSA forges links with US Food Sovereignty movement – my #epicfairfoodtour
[This was originally posted on the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) blog] I’ve been home five days from my three-week Epic Fair Food Tour of America and my mind has only just stopped...
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The Regulation Diaries (5): ‘Folks, This Ain’t Normal’– the fight for...
I met a beautiful farmer yesterday whose story I’ve been following with dismay for the last couple months. We walked around her paddocks admiring groups of healthy, happy pigs as she described her...
View ArticleCommunity-supported agriculture at Jonai Farms
[This was originally posted over on our farm blog – The Farmer & the Butcher] My interest in community-supported agriculture started in early 2000 as an eater in search of local, organic vegetables...
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Big Pharma, Big Food… who really controls the pig industry?
25 years ago I read Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation and became a vegetarian. 5 years ago we commenced farming free-range pigs and cattle at Jonai Farms. 3 years ago I became a butcher. Last week we...
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Spain: the pleasures and ethics of consumption and production
Travel consumes us, just as we consume the material and philosophical artefacts of the destinations of our desire. We bump onto foreign soil and commence imbibing difference with all senses, some more...
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On jamón, Slow Food, & the aesthetics & ethics of meat
Two years ago we traveled to France and Italy to learn more about how they raise pigs and produce charcuterie and salumi. Disappointed to discover that the pigs are virtually all raised in sheds, we...
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Feeding livestock & weaning farmers off industrial grain
This is a cross post from the Jonai Farms blog: The Farmer & the Butcher, originally entitled ‘Feed: Weaning ourselves off industrial grain‘. I’ve spent the better part of what will soon be...
View ArticleAFSA calls out biased reporting on Victorian planning reforms
[Cross-posted from the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance] Peter Hunt, a Weekly Times reporter, has treated the concerns of Victoria’s pastured livestock farmers over proposed planning reforms with...
View ArticleConnectivity to Collectivity
This is the keynote I prepared for the 14th Australian Permaculture Convergence in Canberra 15-19 April 2018. (Unfortunately I was not able to deliver it myself as I was laid low with the flu, so it...
View ArticleWhy agroecology is the answer to reducing agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions
The following excellent essay is by our current volunteer resident, Grace Jirik, who is currently nearing completion of a Bachelor of Ag Science & International Development. Grace has precisely...
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