02/20/08 Eat Wild Part 2

Eat Wild Part2. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Have we gone too far? Is our food over processed? Are naturally produced foods better for us and the land? Jo Robinson thinks so. Robinson is a freelance journalist and author who helps maintain the web site, eatwild.com, a place where consumers and farmers can hook up for naturally produced foods. Robinson says the way we used to raise cattle was probably the right way. ROBINSON: We have pushed it to such an extreme in the feedlot industry and these factory farms it's unbelievable. People now will feed anything to their beef cattle. I mean not everybody but there's a real growing trend now especially with the rising cost of corn for people to feed their cattle what's called by-product feed stuff. According to Robinson that can be anything from left over fruits and vegetables to candy and breads still in the wrappers. ROBINSON: The whole bottom line for the factory food system is the lowest cost per gain and really there's a lot of people who don't care how that happens. They'll feed their cattle pizza dough and get 4 pounds of gain a day, twice as much as you'll get in a natural system  save a lot of money and not think twice about it. The benefits of grass fed animals is well documented on the web site and you can easily find farmers in your area that sell direct to consumers. Robinson says the foods look and taste so much better. ROBINSON: It looks so appealing. Eggs are just unbelievably gold in color. The yolks are almost orange sometimes and researchers have found that the more intense color of that yolk, how orange or yellow it is, the more of these healthy carotenoids there are and the one they're most familiar with is beta-carotene. Eatwild.com also has a lot of information for farmers and people who are thinking of getting into the industry on how to raise their animals naturally. ROBINSON: People are trying to do it everywhere. Down in droughtlands and in the southwest where it's this really scrubby grassland. It's very difficult to succeed or maybe up in New England where they have a 6-month cold season  here in the Pacific Northwest we have ideal grass growing conditions and a populace that's more interested in healthy food than in other parts of the country so it's an ideal climate and food environment. If you'd like to find a farmer in your area that sells direct, visit eatwild.com. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.