Bob Comis operates Stony Brook Farm in Schoharie New York where he and his wife pasture raise heritage breed pigs, lamb, goat and poultry. In his posts, Bob shares his thoughts on farming, regional food systems, and how it all could be better and different.

When I started farming, just a few years ago, I had one goal, to know every single person that I sold every single piece of meat or whole or half animal to, to see them in person, to look into their eyes as meat and money changed hands. I believed, very strongly, that this face to face farming was the proper response to the ills of a century and a half of agricultural industrialization, the last quarter century of which had accelerated to an absolutely dizzying pace.

At first, I loved it. Every person I met was so excited about local agriculture. Most of them could barely contain themselves; they were bubbling over with genuine enthusiasm and sheer delight in the visceral emotionality of making food choices and cultural choices that really mattered. Some would gush about all things local farmish. Some would be thoughtful, pensive even. Some would excitedly jabber about farms, food, flavors, tastes, textures, smells, sounds. Some were shy. Some were absolutely matter of fact, acting as if they had been buying meat directly from a farmer for their entire lives. All seemed sure that we were doing the right thing — We were doing it like Grandma did, and that was good.

And I believed it too. I believed that we were returning to a pre-World War II model of farm and food systems. I believed that before World War II all beef was grassfed (not true). I believed that before World War II food distribution was local (not true). I believed that before World War II farmers farmed sustainably (not true). I believed, therefore, that in order to create a viable local farm and food system all we had to do was return to how Grandma did it before World War II (not true).

So how could I say in a post yesterday that I want to see my pork in Price Chopper (a supermarket)? How could I have strayed so far from the path of localism?

Because I started to read books, old books, primarily on raising pigs on pasture. I was reading old books not because I thought the old books had more wisdom to share necessarily, but simply because after about the mid-1950s to early-1960s the subject of the books shifted from pasture-based pig farming to confinement pig farming. I learned — continue to learn — a lot from these old books, some of them going back as far as 1805. Other than using contemporary technology like electric fences, I have modeled my farm on what I see as the heyday of pasture-based pig farming, the half century from 1900 to the 1950s.

There was more, however, in these books than information on the day to day practice of farming. There was just as much information on marketing, and it was through the information on marketing that my fervent belief that we were doing things as Grandma did was shaken, not merely shaken, but toppled, up-heaved, pounded to dust.

I discovered that the history we were telling ourselves in the local farm and food systems movement was a myth. It was, in fact, a complete fabrication with no historical basis at all. We had simply wiped G. W. Swift clean from history. We had written away Sinclair’s jungle (and his socialism!). In our tale, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia were fed by local, or maybe even regional, farms. In our tale, Grandma, bought local meat from her neighborhood butcher.

My old books say different. My old books say that we wrote away the perfection of Swift’s refrigerated rail car by 1880, making it possible to slaughter hundreds of thousands of cows, millions of pigs, and millions of lambs in Chicago and ship them to the major population centers of the east.  In other words, we wrote out of existence the great stockyards of Chicago where millions upon millions upon millions of animals from the Western range lands were slaughtered after being fattened on mountains and mountains of corn, which has also been wiped clean from our history.

My old books talk about selling not directly to local butchers, local grocers, or to Grandma. They talk about selling at central livestock markets, almost universally, there being here and there an occasional reference to what we would consider local sales. The prices farmers received ebbed and flowed with the supply dropped off for sale at these central markets because before World War II, before 1900 even, farmers were already selling commodities. We can go back even further than that. One of the major exports of the early American colonies to Britain was barrel upon barrel of brined pork.

So, I can say that I want to see my pork in Price Chopper (a supermarket) because behind the veil of the many myths of the local farm and food systems movement is a reality that we need to deal with. The energy and counter cultural impulse to buy local, to buy directly from the farmer, is more than the vast majority of our population can or ever will be able to muster  — heck, it is more than I can muster half the time! Historically, it has never been done this way. We tell ourselves we are going back to the future, but there is no back there. We are attempting something brand new wrapped in a false veil of familiarity. If we insist on such a marketing model, local food will never account for more than a pittance of total sales, 1%, maybe 2%, possibly 3% (which is about where organic is right now).

As I said yesterday, I am not satisfied with 1%. I want 30%. To get to 30% we need to radically change our marketing model. We do not need to sacrifice the integrity of our cultural model. We can and will continue to farm ethically. We can and will continue to be remunerated well enough to make a decent living. We can and will be able to afford to pay our employees living wages. What we cannot do is insist that we farmers look into the eyes of every consumer of local produce.

The reality is that Grandma bought faceless commodity meat from a nameless farmer. That is not a past I want to return to. I want us to build a new, different, and I do think better future.

I think we should take the considerable momentum of our farmers market, CSA, on-farm sales culture and direct it toward the broader population. Let’s convince supermarkets to buy local-regional meat, and sell it under our farm names and tell our farm stories. Let’s at the same time find a way to re-proliferate mom and pop butchers and mom and pop grocers who could do the same. These outlets can be a farmer’s proxy. They will know the farmer. They will tell her story. She can even occasionally visit the store and mingle with customers.

I do not think we should get rid of farmers markets, CSAs, and on-farm sales — I think they are lovely. But I do believe now that this more distant, but not quite faceless, way is the way to the future.

As I said yesterday, however, the way to this way requires a lot of work. We can’t just snap our fingers and go back to doing it how Grandma did, because we now know that we don’t want to do it how Grandma did it. Instead, we are setting out to do something absolutely new, and in order to get there, we have tremendous infrastructures to build.

Let’s get to work.