It's been brought to my attention that my "page" for "Ranch Thoughts" was empty. I've now been coerced into putting something, anything, here.
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January 2009
Somebody Please Explain the Egg Dilemma!
Adam Smith once said that no complaint was more common than that of a scarcity of money. He may have been right, but a close second has got to be that of a scarcity of eggs. Pastured eggs, anyway. As purveyors of grassfed beef, we were familiar with the resounding reception that pastured products could generate, especially in a well-informed audience. But it was nothing compared to eggs...
We recently branched hesitantly into the pastured egg business, sensing an unmet demand. One-hundred and twenty layers and three farmers’ markets later, we’re frankly a little stunned. It’s the first time in our direct marketing experience that we’ve seen the desperation, nay madness, of scarcity.
When I back our carefully emblazoned beef trailer into its market slot, I must studiously avoid the glowering ranks of egg buyers trying to catch my eye in the mirror. Some have been waiting for almost an hour. Others, less reserved, come right up to the window, tapping on the glass.
“Two dozen please.”
“Please, ma’am, you know our rule, only one dozen per household.”
“Oh, okay, the other dozen is for my... neighbor.”
What do you say to that?
At five dollars a dozen, you’d think we’d have stifled the more blatant runs on our limited supply. But for better or worse, price appears to be low on people’s list of egg-purchasing criterion.
“So these are totally cage-free?”
“They eat only natural stuff, right?”
“Are the chickens happy?”
I’ve taken to hiring help just to sell eggs so I can set up my regular beef booth. Kind of like throwing a steak to a Doberman, it buys you a few minutes. Now I smirk under my hat while the help fields the inevitable grousing.
“But how come she got two dozen? I saw her walk away from the truck with two dozen!!”
There’s a lesson here I guess. It’s certainly heartwarming to see a positive response to your product, but it also reveals a lurking human response to shortages that gives one pause. At some point, people forego civility to ensure they “get theirs.” Most of the rest of the world is familiar with this, but it’s something foreign to pampered Americans.
Our day-ranging pastured egg program was supposed to be a relatively straightforward way to pay the salary of the ranch hand, and it’s certainly well on its way. We’re working through the usual kinks (predators, pasture-shortages, peace-brokering among hens), but we never expected insatiable demand to be one of them.
Eggs are an interesting venture. Maybe I betray a bias, but I can’t help but jealously wish we had the same kind of response to our beef (though my wife reminds me that eggs are the ‘gateway drug’ for farmers’ market newbies - they’re cheap, discretely packaged, and easy to prepare). But as I haul our egg-mobile around WAY after sundown, and try to avoid camera-toting neighbors hoping to get a shot of the “chicken wrangler,” I can’t help but wonder if five dollars ain’t enough...
At the end of the day, I certainly can’t complain. General craving for rich, wholesome, local food may be the glimmer of hope for family-scale agriculture. If people will scramble (heh) for $5 a dozen pastured eggs, it says something about the future of this grassfed business. As local producers get more efficient by combining old traditions and modern techniques, and the inevitable competition forces us to become more price-conscious, perhaps we’ll someday put a dent in the incredible demand for pastured proteins. It can’t come soon enough for me...
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October 2008
FDR’s New Deal is Today’s Raw Deal
Despite generalized finger pointing, today’s credit implosion is not really the result of CEO excesses or even of poorly managed risk on Wall Street. It is instead the predictable result of misguided depression-era government intervention seventy years ago. Franklin Roosevelt’s politically lucrative “bailout” of the US economy included the creation in 1938 of a socialized housing system hinging on the quasi-governmental enterprise Fannie Mae and later, Freddie Mac. Today’s catastrophe is the long awaited dropping of FDR’s other shoe, and it is today’s taxpayer that gets to pay the price for a New Deal somewhat rank with age.
As we contemplate the largest nationalization of an economic sector in American history, it would be well for us to ask how we got here. Fundamentally, this crisis is about the housing market. But why is this? Many will say that individual recklessness led hundreds of thousands in over their heads, buying more house than they could reasonably afford. To be sure, the market had its share of careless speculators (as it always does) but it would be naïve to claim that this was the fount of all our problems. Rather than chalk our troubles up to a case of collective self-indulgence, we need to ask why it was that so many of us embarked on this one-way path to bad debt. The fact is, what seems in current hindsight to have been rampant speculation made good financial sense five years ago. Extraordinarily low mortgage rates and a steadily growing economy made the housing market an attractive place to be.
And why was it so attractive? It now seems clear that the market was caught in the heady embrace of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who were artificially lowering rates on home loans by bundling and selling huge mortgage-backed securities without adequately assessing their true market value. As in any subsidized industry backed by taxpayer largesse, standard business accounting came second to effective congressional lobbying.
Government dabbling in the housing sector was an economic time bomb waiting to go off. The ticking could be heard years ago, as analysts warned that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s exemption from SEC oversight and access to a US treasury credit line made the credit system inherently unstable. Worse, the government’s attempt to dress the two in private business suits by allowing public stock-holding and standard corporate profits put every incentive in the wrong place. The ticking could be heard, but we were all too flush to hear. The toppling of the housing market has started a chain reaction that jeopardizes our entire economy.
Make no mistake, the government program designed to ensure “affordable housing” has now risked not only people’s homes, but their livelihoods and life savings as well. As we muddle our way out of this mess, it’s important that we understand where the true blame lies if we hope to avoid such a thing again. While it is fashionable and amusing to point the finger of blame at “excessive” compensation packages and greedy “golden paratroopers” we must remember where the root of the problem first took hold. The worst-of-both-worlds Rooseveltian philosophy of large government “solutions” in which risk is socialized and profit privatized is one we need leave firmly behind.
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Letter to The Economist:
Sir—
While I appreciate your coverage of the crisis in wildfire management in the American West, I am compelled to point out a significant error in your piece “Hot and Hotter,” (22 July, 08).
You report that wildland fires are getting larger, hotter, and more destructive. This is of course true, but you err in fingering animal grazing as a smoking gun. Claiming that sheep and cattle reduce the grass cover needed to sustain “low-intensity fires” (vital for preventing larger-scale conflagrations) is a sorely misinformed position.
The relationship between grazing ungulates and grasslands (forest or otherwise) is an vitally symbiotic one. Hoofed mammals clear older grass growth, allowing new perennial shoots exposure to light. Their herding impact breaks the soil’s cap, allowing rainwater penetration rather than runoff. They digest volumes of dry fodder and excrete nutrient-rich mulch. If in any doubt as to the critical link grazing animals play in the health of the energy, water, and mineral cycles, simply ask yourself how many of their activities you are forced to mimic in maintaining a basic backyard lawn!
It is precisely the lack of grazing that leads to the catastrophic fires of today. Federal regulations tightly restricting grazing have wrought deleterious effects. We now find ourselves inheritors of rank, overgrown forests dominated by dense sapling undergrowth. A healthy grassland understory, properly grazed and managed, acts as a buffering competitor to young tree overabundance and scrub brush fuels. Open forests with healthy grassland carpets are the key to reducing wildfire infernos. Grazing is key to healthy grasslands.
This is becoming increasingly understood in forestry management circles but the sort of “common wisdom” which you espouse still holds a strong hand in policy development.
As smoking guns go, the “grazing makes fires” one has more than missed its mark.