Tuesday, March 12, 2013

A trip to Taranaki Farm

If you're one of those fools who doesn't believe in global warming (which I'm sure you're not, if you're visiting this blog) then try living and working without air-conditioning over the last couple of weeks. The last few days been particularly exhausting; riding my bike in the heat from one rather warm house to one very warm workplace. I'm not surprised to hear research suggesting that recent increases in heat and humidity have lowered human productivity by 10%!

The long weekend saw Dave and I escaping the blistering heat of Melbourne for a couple of nights in the central highlands, with one very pertinent stop-off along the way - Taranaki Farm. What a bloody inspiring experience that was. If you have any interest in ethical food production (or even if you choose to keep your head in the sand about these things... actually ESPECIALLY you) then I highly recommend a trip to Taranaki Farm for one of their farm tours. For several hours farmer Ben Falloon lead us around his property as he eloquently and liberally shared details of their farming practices. Truly revolutionary, unconventional farming.


Taranaki Farm Tour with farmer Ben Falloon

Ben has drawn a lot of his ideas and techniques from Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in the US (which you might have seen on Food Inc) which I think is fantastic in itself - farmers around the world helping other farmers operate in an ethical and sustainable manner. All we need now is more farmers doing the same thing!


A happy wallower at Taranaki Farm - I swear she was showing off to us: "check out my wallow and how much fun I'm having, it's AWESOME".

There's definitely plenty of valid arguments to suggest that we shouldn't be eating meat at all, but I believe if you give people a choice between unethically farmed meat and no meat at all, the uneducated masses will just choose unethical meat. I believe it's important to bridge the gap between the undiscerning omnivore and the vegetarian; get people consuming less animal products, but ensure whatever they do eat is farmed in an ethical, sustainable and considered manner.

Further reading (and viewing!)

Polyface Farm [4 minute video] - Meet Joel and Daniel Salatin, the father-son team at Polyface farm.  

Halve meat consumption, scientists urge rich world - it's not that hard.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hey Lara... so much I could say about your recent posts as much of it is stuff I'm passionate about too. Rather than babbling on, if you're remotely interested, here is the link to my gardening blog: http://727m2.blogspot.com.au/ where you'll find lots of links in the side bar including a list of noteworthy docos and articles about the environment, food, farming, etc. Two I could recommend off-the-bat are Honey Bee Blues and Natural World: Farm for the future, if you haven't already seen them. Enjoy the journey :) and am off to read more on Taranaki Farm...