Sustainable

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

McDonald's is looking for sustainable farmers. Here is the story of one.

Will Harris inherited the northern Georgia farm that his grandfather originally bought. It was profitable until the early 1990's, then it wasn't. That's when the land's productivity sank so low that farms couldn't be profitable anymore, and the little farming community died.

Will's dad started using ammonium nitrate fertilizer on his pasture back in 1946. What he didn't know was that, although the grass seemed to love it, that fertilizer was killing "the microbial life that fed the soil."

His "contained animal feeding operation" (CAFO) supported his family for about twenty years. Then came the dark days and he wound up borrowing $7 million to maintain his industrial farm. At the bottom of the barrel, he changed to a system like Joel Salatin's.

He calls himself a grass farmer now, just like Salatin does. His farm has grown from 700 cows in 1995 to 100,000 different animals - all on the same land. It seems like a miracle. They support their family and over one hundred employees.