nobull.mikecallicrate.com"Mike Callicrate | No-Bull Food News | Rancher's Advocate. People's Advocate. Animal's Advocate.

X Stay Informed, Subscribe to My Blog and ListServe Subscribe Mike Callicrate | No-Bull Food News Rancher’s Advocate. People’s Advocate. Animal’s Advocate. Home Blog and ListServe The SOIL Initiative Alliances Recommended Reading About Contact ← Older posts Big Beef – $1.28 Billion Rigged Game Posted on April 29, 2024 by Mike Callicrate Go inside the rigged game of Big Beef and discover many differences between the giant Beef Industry and the local community-based storefront. This video is about Mike Callicrate’s story of deception and bribery as well as his will to build a community-based food system that actually benefits the places where we live. Click to share on Share (Opens in new window) Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) Click to print (Opens in new window) Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Posted in General Advocacy | 2 Comments Maker-Owned Marketplaces Posted on April 16, 2024 by Mike Callicrate The essential next step in building healthy, resilient, community-scaled food systems Growers, craftsmen, skilled workers, and food makers deserve a fair share of the consumer food dollar. The people who do the real work of growing and making good food are a cost to be reduced in today’s top-down controlled, extractive, and exploitive food system. We need a better economic model, one that delivers real and healthy food while prioritizing the well-being of farmers, ranchers, workers, and rural communities – shifting income from the takers back to the makers. Consumers have never paid more for food, and never before has so little of the food dollar gone to those who do the work – the people who grow, process, prepare and serve our food. Local/regional food systems, main streets, rural communities, and independently owned and operated businesses have been essentially wiped out with the growth of below-cost predatory supply lines feeding distribution through franchises, chains, big-box and dollar stores . Americans are being left with fewer food choices, with less and less access to healthy food, while the wealth-creating base, rural America, is being gutted by resource mining global agribusiness and food corporations. Independent farmers and ranchers are the course of least resistance for extracting dollars by those at the top of the highly financialized and demanding business sector, thus receiving a bankrupting record low fourteen-cent share of the consumer food dollar. Captive lawmakers and regulators serve the interests of big corporations over farmers and ranchers. Instead of ensuring markets are competitive, allowing producers to make a living from the market, family farms continue to go out of business with costly subsidies filling the income gap, benefiting mostly the biggest most industrial farms. Let farmers and ranchers focus on farming and ranching. While providing around 85% of the capital investment required to feed us, doing most of the work, and taking nearly all the risk, farmers and ranchers shouldn’t be expected to be in the meat and food business to survive. There’s enough to do, especially if we expect better stewardship and animal husbandry from the few remaining people on the land. Over twenty years ago, livestock producers like White Oak Pastures, Gunthorp Farms, and Callicrate Cattle Co., unwilling to adopt industrial methods of production and witnessing the growing problem of fair market access, built on-farm slaughter to bypass the predatory meatpacker cartel that was forcing thousands of farmers, farmer-feeders, and ranchers out of business. Today, big food is stealing the niches of the most ideal producers like White Oak, Gunthorp, and Callicrate, with no real change in actual practices, just simple misleading and deceptive label changes. With the wholesale market lost to fake corporate brands and the retail market many times more difficult to access, another option to connect more directly with discriminating consumers is needed. Maker-owned marketplaces could be the answer for producers adopting regenerative practices and makers trying to retain more value from the unique specialty products demanded by their customers. With the right policies, programs, and incentives, the model could be easily replicable, keeping the wealth of agriculture where it belongs – in the communities of growers, makers, and workers. The ultimate in efficiency and humane treatment is to slaughter animals where they’re raised and transport only the edible carcass to the population center. Forming beneficial partnerships between producers and makers would give eaters the good and healthy food they’re looking for while allowing farmers to farm, ranchers to ranch, and butchers to cut meat, all doing what they love and are good at. Farmers, ranchers, and independent businesses are similarly situated. Independent businesses, the makers and craftsmen that turn farm and ranch production into food — such as butchers, bakers, creameries, cheese makers, breweries, distilleries, coffee roasters, etc. — are also being driven out of business as powerful middlemen search the globe for the cheapest of everything to resell in the most profitable markets. Additionally, family-owned businesses, unable to own their real estate, are often caught in abusive lease arrangements and are denied the opportunity for wealth building and financial security. What if collectives of independent food-related makers, dedicated to supporting local/regional food systems, could co-locate in population centers as owners of the real estate? Located in safe, trusted, and transparent consumer-friendly marketplaces, makers could profitably practice their craftsmanship, providing the highest quality, healthiest products that are accessible and affordable for eaters. Sales would multiply with the synergy of similarly-minded businesses while supporting and growing local agriculture. Merchant/maker owners could truly differentiate their products, selling both wholesale and retail directly to the public, at a safe distance from the abusive big food cartel, perhaps in areas of cities needing repurposing and new life. Businesses would earn equity in their real estate investment, replacing the current extractive rent-collecting model with opportunities for building generational wealth and knowledge. What we support prospers, what we feed grows Americans have long valued home ownership as a way of building generational wealth and stability. Concentrated wealth, from Wall Street to private equity, has turned the American home ownership dream into a landlord/tenant nightmare. The same is true for independent businesses. After years of work and investment, independent businesses are often left with nothing at the end or termination of a lease. Business owners, their families, workers, and communities all lose out to these aggressive rent collectors. New pathways from farm to table must be designed for the health of people, animals, and the planet. Accessible and affordable financing for building sustainable and resilient food processing and distribution infrastructure should be a priority. Decades of destructive and polluting agricultural practices and the mining of our precious natural resources have left rural places more and more unlivable. With the growing interest in healthier, more sustainable and regenerative forms of agriculture, there seems to be little concern or attention paid to ways to financially sustain it for the long haul. John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Applied Economics, rightly informs us that regenerative agriculture, which focuses on giving back and healing the land, cannot be sustained without a livable farm income. We need fair, open, and competitive markets like we had fifty years ago. Competition isn’t possible without competitors in today’s nearly monopolized food system....