Tag: big food

Advocates Take to Social Media to #BreakUpBigAg

OCM Staff

Between Monday, June 10th and Friday, June 14th the Organization for Competitive Markets led a social media campaign called #BreakUpBigAg to support the Agribusiness Merger Moratorium Act. Organizations and individual advocates published their pictures along with statements in support of the moratorium on Facebook and Twitter. In their pictures, participants were holding posters with facts about consolidation in our farm and food systems. These facts included: “1950s: farmers received 50% of the food dollar. Today: farmers receive 14.8% of Read More …

America Returns to the Jungle

Mike Callicrate

A safe and secure food supply is essential to a free society The United States was always able to feed itself. Except for a few non-essentials like coffee, tea and bananas, we were self-sufficient. The British government, along with their corporate partner, the East India Company, saw unlimited potential to extract wealth through the American colonies. Our Founding Fathers, willing to fight for our freedom and sovereignty, risked their lives and the lives of many citizens, to save Read More …

Local Food Efforts Undermined by Pretenders, Predators and Corrupt Cops

Mike Callicrate

In today’s unhealthy, unfair and broken corporate controlled industrial food system, more and more people want to know where their food comes from and how it’s produced. The biggest food companies on the planet are well aware of this fact and the shift towards local. Farm to table and the new local food movement is being hijacked by Big Food. The world’s biggest food companies, including meat packers, processors and food distributors are carefully strategizing and planning on Read More …

The Politics & Economics of Food – A presentation at Lamar Community College March 2014

Mike Callicrate

click to enlarge I studied Animal Science at Lamar Community College in 1972 and 1973 prior to completing my Animal Science degree at Colorado State University. A lot has changed in agriculture as Land Grant institutions have taught students that agriculture is a business, not a way of life, steering us well off the path of a sustainable food system. Hopefully we can see a shift back from the destructive industrial model to an agriculture that includes good Read More …

Our Way or the Highway

Richard Oswald

No one knows why James Hunter left his family for a two year gold prospecting tour in them thar hills. All we really know is a remote branch of the family tree once broke loose from his Missouri roots for the California Gold Rush. Maybe James wanted respite from routine … or plain old adventure. Or maybe he had gold fever. He found gold, probably not the bonanza he wanted, but when James returned there was just enough Read More …

MILK AND HONEY

Richard Oswald

Industrial agriculture erases the identity of our food, filtering its origins as cleanly as removing bee pollen from honey. Just mix, blend, inject it with a brand – and it’s ready for a shelf near you. Who made your food? In these changing times that’s becoming an important question. Maybe it’s something we should all ask more often as industrial food becomes rule over exception. But what makes food industrial? With so many working families and no one Read More …

It’s Still Called Stealing

Mike Callicrate

Grade and yield buying used to be called “Grade and Steal” by most cattlemen. Today, it’s called Value-Based Marketing by the big packers and their cheerleaders, like Certified Angus Beef’s (CAB) Miranda Reiman. In her March 4th article, “Value-based cattle marketing dominates”, Reiman attempts to mentally condition Angus breeders and other cattlemen to accept their fate in Big Food’s supply chain where performance enhancing drugs, added flavorings, Pink Slime, various pre-digestion methods, and meat recalls, do more to Read More …

From Berkeley to Boston: Coming Together Around Freedom, Fairness and Food

Mike Callicrate

By Mike Callicrate & Fred Stokes Eating is one thing we all have in common. And, to millions of us, what we eat, how it’s produced, and where it comes from is important. OCM has worked for the last fourteen years to restore competition in the agricultural marketplace. We believe family farmers and ranchers make the best stewards of our land and livestock, and are the most reliable and trustworthy sources of high quality, healthy and safe food. Read More …