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Recently: No beef with this beef

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Staff

Jennifer Curtis finds ways for sustainable growers of North Carolina to keep farming and raises chickens in the backyard of her Carrboro home. Photo by Valarie Schwartz.By Valarie Schwartz

Even with 90 pages left to read, this column acknowledges the affect of Michael Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma on yet another previously unconscious grocery shopper.

That I started shopping in health food stores in the early 1980s and have supported farmers’ markets in money and words and have been a longtime Weaver Street Market member did not truly make me aware until my neighborhood book club read the tome that has opened eyes across the nation since its 2006 publication. The book was a winner of the New York Times Book Review’s “One of the 10 Best Books of the Year” award.

Kaity Granda hadn’t read it when she suggested it at the meeting at which we chose books for the coming year, but her BFF (Best Friends Forever) since childhood had told her about it and she knew that the only way she’d find time to read it was if it were on our list. Granda told us the nonfiction book would open our eyes to food-industry practices and inform our food choices.

We voted it in.

Last week, Granda not only hosted the discussion, she invited her friend Jennifer Curtis to join us.

Curtis, 45, works out of her Carrboro home as a consultant to sustainable agriculture and food systems. She manages a project for her current full-time client, the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS.ncsu.edu), a partnership between N.C. State University and N.C. A&T State University.

“We’re trying to get local farmers’ grass-fed beef and pasture-raised pork into local grocery stores and restaurants,” Curtis said. “CEFS is working on an action plan for the state, building local sustainable food systems.”

With the price of gasoline what it is, anything we purchase that has been grown or raised locally lowers gas consumption and of course provides us fresher food. But the local growers Curtis works with are also practitioners of sustainable farming. Besides organically growing a diverse selection of crops, the animals they raise have not endured the stress of factory farms or been forced to eat hormone- and antibiotic-laden feed or genetically engineered corn — they have lived the pastoral idyll, grazing grass in fields they were rotated around and only eating corn during the final weeks to improve the flavor. Beef raised this way provides omega-3 levels that rivals that of salmon (in fact, exceeds levels in grain-fed, i.e., “farm-raised,” salmon).

But beyond what’s on our plates, the mission of CEFS is to keep farmers on the land, providing jobs and shortening the food chain.

“Though North Carolina is the eighth-largest agricultural state — and one of the most diverse — it loses 1,000 farms a year,” Curtis said. Her work includes connecting farmers to chefs and consumers.

Small cattle farms in many states (like Oklahoma and California) have no processors to take their steers and pigs to for slaughtering and butchering (many chickens and turkeys are processed on the farm), but North Carolina has 30 processors, Curtis said. That means we really have a chance to make “slow food” work in our state.

Curtis has already made a difference in our neighborhood. She brokered half a Black Angus steer (raised in Snow Camp) for interested book club members, which will amount to 325 pounds of beef that will be sold at $3.90 per pound (plus a delivery fee to the Siler City processor).

Of course, becoming a vegetarian or vegan would be the most responsible and humanitarian way to live, but until that day this feels like the way to eat meat.

Contact Valarie Schwartz at 923-3746 or valariekays@mac.com

3 thoughts on “Recently: No beef with this beef”

  1. John Kramer says:
    June 26, 2008 at 4:14 pm

    I wonder if she has a one acre lot for her chickens, in accordance with town code-certainly this reporter checked this:

    (b) No person may keep within the town any permissible livestock over four (4) months of age except in accordance with a permit issued pursuant to subsection (c).
    (c) Subject to subsections (d) and (e), no permit may be issued for any livestock unless the applicant for the permit demonstrates that the livestock will be kept on a tract of land that satisfies each of the following conditions:
    (1) The tract shall consist of at least 40,000 square feet of land under single ownership or control.
    (2) There shall be at least 20,000 square feet of land per animal.
    (3) No fence, coral, or other similar enclosure shall be erected within 15 feet of any property line.
    (4) No barn, stable or similar structure used for the keeping of livestock other than rabbits or fowl shall be erected or maintained within 50 feet of any property line or street-right-of-way.
    (5) No barn, cage, pen, or similar structure used for the keeping of rabbits or fowl shall be erected or

  2. John Kramer says:
    June 26, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    Guess it doesn’t matter that she is in violation of town code as regards livestock. Why doesn’t the press check such things before doing a story? Town code requires an acre of land for any livestock, according to Orange County GIS their lot does not meet this standard. Time to shut them down!

  3. Steve says:
    July 2, 2008 at 8:11 am

    Perhaps Ms. Schwartz should read “Omnivore’s Dilemma” so she”l continue reporting factual information and won’t include opinions based on emotion such as the last paragraph from her otherwise excellent article: “Of course, becoming a vegetarian or vegan would be the most responsible and humanitarian way to live, but until that day this feels like the way to eat meat.”

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