We finished editing the portrait of Tyler Palmer and headed out to the farm where Matthew made hash browns, and Karen scrambled eggs with onions, cilantro and bacon. They're a good team in the kitchen, telling stories, laughing.
We said goodbyes and thankyous and headed South to Cinncinnati where we set up camp in the McDonald library at Xavier. There was a large buzzing fluorescent light that took some time to adjust too. Andy edited Matthew's portrait, and e-mails were sent, phone calls made as we prepare for Minnesota, and for our theatrical release in NYC in about a month.
Andy's parents, Debbie and Bob joined us about a half-hour before the screening, a brief moment to talk about what we've been up to, what we've got ahead, and that Andy's starting to look like the Amish, as the beard grows. Matthew joined the panel again, and hopefully picks up a couple new members to the CSA.
We filled the 45 seats in the library classroom, most people being farmers and from the surrounding community, with a handful of students. We ate some thai noodles Ann brought, and then everyone introduced themselves, and why they'd come out. The reasons were good to listen to, and various, from health, to awareness, to getting the word out about a CSA or a farm, to finding a job.
After, we had a brief conversation, which dealt largely with the economic winners and losers of our current system of agriculture. Farmers like Johnny Glosson, has to take out massive upfront loans for chicken houses, and then spends decades paying those barns off. And just when they are paid off, the technology has leapfrogged ahead, and then the farmer has to take out a new loan to retrofit the houses, or buy new ones, putting the farmer back on a treadmill of debt.
The large integrators, the Tyson, Pilgrim's Pride, Smithfield, are receiving massive government subsidies for the corn and soy production that gets fed to the animals. So these companies are the winners in a system where individual farmers assume most of the financial risk, and then major costs, like feed, our subsidized and insured with all of our taxpayer dollars.
It's time for a system that pays farmers fairly for the work they do each day to feed all of us.
We headed out as soon as the conversation concluded, heading North and West towards Minneapolis, getting past Chicago in the early morning hours so as to avoid the weekday morning congestion of motorized vehicles.
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