After the first class we headed to the Whistle Stop Cafe, a building made from petrified wood and ordered lunch. 

Headed back to Decatur for three straight 45 minute class periods. We showed scenes from different parts of the documentary to keep things fresh. One thing we talked about is how conventional chicken farmers will usually get about 8 cents on the dollar for every dollar spent at the grocery store. The integrator drops off baby chicks, then they go to a truck to the chicken barn, then to slaughter, to package, to distribution, the to the grocery store.

And the parent company takes care of the marketing and distribution. The farmer is a smaller part of a larger process. The farmer takes out the loan for the chicken houses, and gets a good deal of the risk, too. The system works well for farmers with a large number of houses who are able to be in chickens during a period of continued economic stability.

If there's only one or two family members involved, and the farmer doesn't want to deal with the extra work of slaughter, transport and marketing then it works out sometimes. When it doesn't work, is if the parent company goes into hard times or bankrupt and suddenly you are cut off from chickens, and are still stuck paying the loan.

At many farms around America, farmers are beginning to sell directly to customers. This works well if you have a number of people interested working on farm. It can create many full-time paying jobs if you are able to develop a market for your product. Because you are doing all the raising, slaughtering, transport and marketing you've got a lot more work, however, there's the potential to make more money because you get the entire dollar spent by the person buying the food. Often farmers are introverted, and may need an outgoing partner who is able to establish the farm name in local farmers markets, restaurants, and communities.

We said goodbyes and thankyous and headed to the airport to drop off Susan.