Food for Thought Newsletter - Issue 012

 

Back from Minnesota!

Hey all! We are back from MN - boy is it good to be home! Funny story though: Thursday I received photos from each of my older kids who were still in Alaska.

 

 

Pix of the first snow - we missed it! However, no one was particularly amused with my return pix

 

 

Sunny and 80 degrees felt amazing, I will admit. We tried to spend every single second we could in the sun while we were gone.

We got to visit an apple orchard while we were there. They had prairie magic apples! (which are our faves up here). Their prairie magic apples were HUGE! It was fun to compare. They also had a couple of apples we might try in the greenhouse, like kinderkrisp and snow sweet. However, as many apples as we tried, we just didn’t find one we love more than prairie magic. That was a fun revelation!

However, while we were in Minnesota, we were privy to an intensely sad situation with the chicken industry. Friends, this is SUPER important to be aware of, even though we don’t live where it is happening. There are many facets to this that are heartbreaking and maddening, but in the midst of this story, there is tons of HOPE.

But first, the heartbreak. I have to say, I almost didn’t include this in this next section in this week’s newsletter because I’m kind of a Pollyanna type of person and I prefer to spread good news and hope, but sometimes we need to read the reality of what is happening so we can fully understand the magnitude of what is going wrong.

 

The Chicken Crisis

This is hard to read.

From KAAL TV in Rochester, MN: - (link to article)

Terry and Dawn are Wisconsin poultry growers that contracted with Pure Prairie Poultry, and currently have about 62,000 chickens owned by Pure Prairie Poultry in their care.

Pure Prairie Poultry owes Terry and Dawn close to $100,000 in missed payments and reimbursements, and now that the plant has shut down, the couple said they don’t know when or if they will get their money back.

The chickens they care for have gone days without food since the closure of the plant.

“We can’t get through the barns anymore because there are too many birds that are just dying” - Terry said.

The farmers said the chickens are so hungry that they have resorted to eating each other.

“You can’t give them feed at this point. They’ll kill each other to get it” - Dawn said.

Dawn and Terry are heartbroken, but said there is nothing they can do because they cannot afford to feed that many birds.

The chickens are supposed to be removed from their barn on Monday, and Dawn and Terry said many will be euthanized.

 

Here’s what happened in a nutshell:

Pure Prairie Poultry is a chicken producer and processor in the lower 48. They are a new company - they started about 2 years ago. They purchased an old facility, got an infusion of cash from the federal government to the tune of nearly $50 million (yes, MILLION) dollars to create a business that would supply chickens to the grocery stores.

With this cash infusion, they got started. They contracted farms to grow our meat birds. Pure Prairie Poultry would supply the chickens, the food, and would take care of processing. The job of the farmer was to raise up the chickens to broiler size, and the farmer would then be paid for their work.

Fast-forward to the end of September when the company filed for bankruptcy. They asked for time to get loans and restructure, which was approved. The issue was, no one was willing to give them more money.

However, they had already given out 1.3 million birds to farmers to grow out for this round.

The farmers suddenly learned that Pure Prairie Poultry was out of money and no more feed was coming. Farmers had anywhere from 30,000 to 90,000 birds in their barns that needed feed and no money to feed them.

This is where I became aware of the story. We were in Minnesota, one of the states involved in the mess, and I had joined a farming group because we wanted to visit a couple of farms in the area while we were there, and I started seeing posts from chicken growers begging people to come get chickens - they weren’t even asking for money - they just didn’t want the chickens to either starve to death or be euthanized.

Can you even imagine how these farmers felt? They had to come to the realization that - First, the chickens in their barn were at risk of starvation unless they spent thousands of dollars on feed in the coming days - AND they weren’t going to get paid for their work!

Fortunately, this story went viral and folks came out in droves and picked up chickens both just for their family and processors even started buying in. Further, the state of Iowa stepped in to help buy feed for the farmers to buy them time to get the chickens sold.

The Chicken Matter and Alaskans

First of all, there are 1.3 million chickens that were supposed to hit the grocery stores that won’t.

In 2023, 168 million chickens were sold in the stores, so this shouldn’t make a huge difference in the short term - but in the long run, this could really add some stress to the industry. Not only did these 1.3 million chickens not make it to the store, but these farmers now don’t have a contract for the next few rounds, so it could add up to tens of millions of chickens that aren’t going to the store.

That could impact the prices and availability dramatically.

But furthermore, we need to be paying attention because this is a huge blip in our food security. A major chicken processor just went out of business. Either a new one will need to start up or existing "big-ag" will have to absorb the need because clearly the tens of millions of chickens these farmers were producing were needed.

We need to be paying attention. And thinking toward self-sufficiency, community-sufficiency, and Alaska-sufficiency. What can we do, as Alaskans, community members, neighbors, and families, to bring just a little more stability to our food system?

There’s so much more to this story that I’d love to share, but my email fellow says I can’t ramble on, so I’ll close with this.

Please be aware of what is happening with our food system, both statewide and nationwide. Again, it’s not time to panic - but it is time to be thinking and take action. It’s time to be watching and preparing - because things are pretty vulnerable right now.

 

Moldy Coffee? - Yum.

 

Yep, apparently it’s a thing. Gene and I are both doing a cleanse and, as it turns out, mold can be a big issue for many people.

When I read that about coffee, I got worried because Gene is willing to give up a lot of things for this cleanse, but I know that I know that I know that I know - coffee will not be one of them. But then I realized - we’ve got it covered!

First, I want to say, this is not a paid ad - we get absolutely NO kick back for this - heck, they don’t even know we’re talking about them!

But…

Boy am I grateful that we only drink coffee from Genesis Coffee Labs. They are the cleanest, freshest, and best tasting coffee we’ve ever found! And they go better than free trade - they KNOW their coffee producers, and they travel to see them and work with them directly!

The coffee is clean, fresh, and mold free. Whew! Gene’s coffee is safe!

And - there is zero bitterness at all whatsoever. I don’t even like coffee typically, but I do love their coffee!

So there you go - one more step to health is to stop drinking coffee with mold - because apparently it’s a thing. The claim is that almost all coffee has some sort of mold. Gross.

OH! And you can find Genesis Coffee at Three Bears. 🙂

 

 

Fancy Some Learnin'?

 

I can’t help but plug the expo this weekend, even though I don’t usually do any advertising in the newsletter.

I’m just TOO EXCITED to not make sure everyone knows about it!

Grab your tickets here:

Get my expo tickets

 

There is only 24 hours left to register!