Some conventional farmers won't eat their own meat or vegetables. What do you think about this?

I understand that.
I doubt owners of McDonalds and other such franchises wish to eat in their establishments.
I am friends with a pilot who never flies internationally with his own company and me myself would prefer to buy electronical equipment from a company that is rival to mine,
I also prefer foreign beer to my own nations P. water.

P.S.you could have added info to the question without requiring people to download a video, and it is indeed permitted here to just get to the point without beating around the bush.

@Sea Turtle I see. Sorry about having to watch the video to get the message.

Did you ever compare the storage life of conventional and organic veggies? Try it sometime.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with organic farming, but I draw no conclusions from that video.

One guy promoting “non-conventional” farming claiming to know the personal habits of “conventional” farmers isn’t convincing evidence of anything. Put it on a pro-homeopathy and anti-vaccine site and the credibility drops even further.

I have a good friend who is a vegetable farmer. He told me in all seriousness, that like the shoemaker who’s kids have no shoes, the farmer never eats the freshest vegetables. They go to the customer. He only eats the stuff that is getting rotten.

@worriedguy I suppose it depends on the farmer. I know farmers who farm so they CAN have the freshest healthiest foods.

@snowberry If you grow the food for yourself, you eat it. If growing food is your livelihood, you sell the good stuff.

This is why I bust my ass planting my own garden.

@worriedguy My grandparents and their kids and their kids’ kids were/are cattle ranchers. They raise their own beef and sell it too. They always eat their own meat, and it’s the best there is. They never purchase beef from the store. So, no, that’s not accurate.

@snowberry They probably don’t use the implants or the antibiotics or finish the beef on feedlots?

Nope. Their beef is finished right there at the ranch. They do it all-raise the babies, wean them, finish them, and last I heard, and they sell the beef on the hoof to the movie companies for celebrities to eat while they make their movies. It’s quite the deal.

@snowberry Is that their total livelihood? Is ranching what truly supports their family or is someone working outside the home, or are they wealthy enough where they really don’t need the cash? I also know a “rancher” who keeps a few head for his own use. Both he and his wife work at the hospital.

Dale, the farmer, will always eat the rotten tomato so he can sell the nice one. He jokes about it. His family farm has been going since 1944 and they need the money.

Wow. The farmer in the video is nothing like the farmers here in western Illinois. My husband’s boss eats the cattle from their ranch. These are grass fed cattle. We get half a cow, sometimes a whole cow, every year from them. They raise longhorns which they sell to ranchers in Texas. The longhorns are mostly used for rodeos, but they keep a few for themselves and their hands because the meat is very tasty.

We also get a hog from a neighboring farm once a year. This farmer eats his hogs. Best bacon I’ve ever eaten.

These farmers are mostly 2nd and 3rd generation farmers. It is their livelihood. My husband and I were joking last night about “poor farmers”. There really isn’t such a thing, at least not around here. The 30 row planter we were watching in action last night probably cost our neighbor at least $100,000. I think that estimate is on the low side too, and that’s just the planter, not the tractor pulling it.

@worriedguy I don’t know anymore. I don’t keep up with the details. I know they raise a lot of beef, but it is not a factory farm by any stretch of the imagination. They are out for quality, not quantity, as the farmer in the video was speaking about.

Last I heard they have a hired hand who lives there. My grandfather started it as a homesteader. One son lived there and started the local electric company, and that was his business. Another son took over the farm and ran it. Grandpa did his part too until he couldn’t anymore due to age. We’re talking about 4 generations now. For at least one family it’s a livelihood, but there are few people who can actually afford to live on one income alone anymore.

Could a good example to your question be:

1. My wife rarely eats her own home cooking. She states that cooking the food and the smells, just turns her off to eating what she has cooked. Is this normal?

2. People who work in restaurants(like Cracker Barrel) have told me they do eat the food they serve at Cracker Barrel. The see and smell it for 8 plus hours a day and that’s a turnoff.

@john65pennington No, I don’t think so, because if you read what I said above, my folks have far higher quality meat that they grow themselves than what they can get at the market. Why buy something inferior when you can use what you already produce for much less and have a higher quality of life?

Too bad you didn’t watch the video or your answer might have been more on topic.

I am all for organic farming- we own land in WA that was used as an organic farm for years, and I am a loyal member of two CSAs.

That said, I agree with the comments that this video really doesn’t tell us anything and doesn’t provide any substantive data. It may be a jumping point for discussion, though.

@crisw It was an interview with someone who gave life experience information. There might be data out there somewhere, but I’m not the one to try to find it.

@snowberry

Personally, I try not to make decisions based on someone’s life experience information, because it’s so biased. As I mentioned, it is good fodder for discussion (as long as we don’t assume that what is said is true), but I would not actually make the conclusion from this video that it’s a common practice for conventional farmers to refuse to eat their product.

To add to the scenarios that others have presented above, another plausible reason for farmers not to eat their product is if it’s not intended for human consumption, or for immediate consumption- the cotton farmer certainly isn’t going to dine on bolls, and the milo farmer may not enjoy birdseed. The pear farmer may be sending all the fruit to market before it’s fully ripe. And so on.

@crisw Alrighty then. By those standards, this should be a website devoted to scientific information and data only. Wow. There wouldn’t be too many members here would there, and what kind of weird place would this be? Isn’t there room to have a discussion without all that nonsense?

And look at the Amish. As I understand it, most of them grow their own food, and don’t go to the grocery and other stores except when it’s necessary. That’s why they have managed as long as they have. They don’t pay other people to do for them what they can do for themselves more cheaply.

@snowberry

I did say above “It may be a jumping point for discussion, though.”

And I don’t think that “scientific information and data” is “nonsense.” What else should we use to make decisions? If I need to make a truly important decision, should I base it on scientific information and data or on someone’s personal anecdote about what he thinks someone else does?

As I mentioned, I support organic and small farming. I think there are some very good reasons why it makes sense- supporting local economies, diversifying diets, better-tasting food, potentially reducing fossil-fuel usage, potentially better for the soil, more healthy for workers who are not exposed to pesticides, etc. I think that, if we want to encourage more people to eat organic, focusing on the verifiable reasons why organic farming can be better than conventional farming is more effective than statements such as “conventional farmers won’t eat their own meat or vegetables” which are not data-based and may not be true.

@crisw It’s nonsense if that’s the only way someone will allow a discussion on a topic. I’ve seen more than a few questions hi-jacked that way on Fluther. And yes, you do have a point.