We won! Now to build the abattoir!

WE WON! We can FINALLY start building an abattoir at Jonai Farms & Meatsmiths!

Winning the battle against the erosion of the Farming Zone

On Tuesday the 5th of March, we received the VCAT orders that uphold Council's decision to grant us a permit. The VCAT ruling affirms our position that abattoirs are intrinsic to livestock farming, and recognises that smallholders are losing access to the large abattoirs at an alarming rate.

Perhaps most importantly, a strong precedent has been set that small-scale abattoirs are an appropriate land use in the Farming Zone, and we Jonai are very hopeful of seeing many more flourish in the years to come!

In her orders, Senior Member Naylor wrote:

In light of the lack of any clear planning policy discouraging an abattoir in the Farming Zone; the ability for a permit to be granted for an abattoir; the small scale nature of this proposed abattoir (rural industry); and, for reasons that I will explain next, the lack of any material to indicate that this small scale rural industry will produce unacceptable amenity impacts, I am persuaded that it is appropriate to grant a permit for the proposed abattoir in the Beacon Paddock part of this site.

The objectors tried to claim that there is nothing inherently agricultural about an abattoir (seriously?!), and that we were trying to pull a swift one and turn our farm into an industrial use. Never mind that most of them are lifestylers on some of the highest quality agricultural land who have removed their land from farming, contributing to astronomical land prices that make it nearly impossible for young farmers to take up farming. In stark contrast, we made the decision over a year ago to open our farm to Tumpinyeri Growers in a rent-free landsharing arrangement so that they can earn a livelihood from market gardening. A great irony was that the lifestylers made this fruitless argument in the same week that I had a PhD article published entitled 'Building the intrinsic infrastructure of agroecology: collectivising to deal with the problem of the state'.

The senior member’s ruling states:

There is nothing in the agricultural or industrial land use policies that discourage an abattoir land use from being located in a Farming Zone. Mr O’Neill & others have submitted this is an industrial land use on farming land with no intrinsic link to agriculture. I am not persuaded of this submission in regard to this proposal. ‘Intrinsic’ is defined in the online Macquarie Dictionary as an adjective meaning ‘belonging to a thing by its very nature’. I agree with Mrs Jonas’ submission that it is inherent in farming that livestock is grown for consumption (amongst other purposes), so the slaughtering of livestock does belong by its very nature to the growing of livestock. Mrs Jonas points out farmers can legitimately slaughter their own livestock for their own consumption on their farms. An abattoir is then a place in which livestock can be slaughtered for a larger cohort of consumers. How large a scale this may be depends upon the characteristics of the particular abattoir. In this proposal, Mrs Jonas is referring to it as a micro abattoir.

484 days elapsed between lodging our development application and VCAT handing down its decision, during which time we witnessed another abattoir (Castle Estate) cease processing beef and lamb, affecting as many as 1000 smallholders according to the Weekly Times, and the red meat abattoir we use has reduced smallholder access yet again.

We could have built the abattoir in those 484 days and be up and running, ensuring the resilience and livelihood of our own and another dozen farms, if there was one simple amendment to the planning scheme to exempt very small abattoirs from requiring a planning permit. I detail the proposed reform below, but first, let us share our immediate plans after our success at VCAT and in consultation with Primesafe, Victoria’s meat industry regulator, who have been very helpful and supportive as we have progressed.

What’s next: a vehicle-based abattoir

Early this week a 40-foot refrigerated container will be delivered for Stuart to commence conversion to a vehicle-based abattoir, which will be a smaller facility than originally planned, but still sufficient for our and several others’ needs. An amendment to the Meat Industry Act in 2021 made vehicle-based abattoirs a legal option for slaughter for commercial sale of the meat, thanks to the lobbying efforts of Provenir, the first licensed mobile abattoir in Victoria. Although we finally won our battle for the planning permit for a fixed facility, which grants us land use permission, a vehicle-based option does not require one, and nor does it require a building permit. This makes the build much more streamlined and affordable than a fixed facility, and a container is something Stuart is skilled to convert himself with minimal need for contractors (the existing boning room and commercial kitchen are containers Stuart converted a decade ago, both of which are considered Rural Industry under the planning scheme and exempt from permit requirements in the Farming Zone).

The decision to shift to a vehicle-based abattoir was strongly influenced by the ever-increasing uncertainty of the security of our current slaughter options, and commences what will be a staged approach. We envision building the fixed facility within the two years we have to activate that planning permit. We are simply worried we are running out of time, and need a facility urgently. In fact, smallholders across Victoria and the rest of the country need these solutions urgently, and we hope ours will serve as a blueprint for others. Below I outline the simple reform that would enable others to build small facilities in the Farming Zone – intrinsic to the future of small-scale livestock farming.

We will, as always, share details of the plans and progress via social media – check out our new Instagram account @meatcollective_jonai if you want to follow along!

We will crank up the fundraising now that we have certainty, but are delighted at the lower cost of a container conversion, so only looking to raise up to $150k instead of over $400k – a much more readily achievable target. To date, we have raised $48,250 and spent $33,345. Unfortunately, some of that spend was wasted on consultants we could have avoided if we had not required a planning permit, with about $11k being useful for either option and $22k not so much. So realistically, we still need to raise around $140k, but will also continue to use monthly surplus from the business to fund it at the speed of our bank balance.

Jump onto the website to support the project and keep up with our progress.

The need for reform is urgent – micro-abattoirs are rural industry

A report by a parliamentary inquiry on animal welfare in the UK has outlined the challenges farmers face without access to local processing facilities and extensive benefits to small-scale farmers, animal welfare, and environmental outcomes from supporting the development of small-scale abattoirs. The issues and benefits are also highly applicable to the Australian context.

The Canadian province of British Columbia also introduced legislation in 2021 to ease the burden on small-scale livestock producers who slaughter small numbers of animals on farm for sale off farm. The legislation allows on-farm slaughter of small numbers of animals for direct sales locally, and custom slaughter of other farmers’ animals with a slightly higher level of scrutiny.

In Victoria, ‘rural industry’ is an acceptable use in the Farming Zone, and is what enabled us to run a boning room for the past decade without a planning permit.  However, the scheme specifically excludes abattoirs and sawmills[1], requiring them to be permitted. The Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance has long proposed a very simple change to the legislation to enable on-farm micro-abattoirs with a low throughput of animals.

Recommendation

Amend the Victorian Planning Provisions to reduce regulatory burden on small-scale abattoirs in the Farming Zone commensurate with the low risk they pose to environment and amenity.

First, include a definition for ‘micro-abattoir’ in the Meat Industry Act, defined as an abattoir processing fewer than 1000 Livestock Units (LSU) per annum, and/or generating less than 200 tonnes of organic waste, processed and retained on farm according to EPA Guidelines.[2]

Second, include micro-abattoirs as a Section 1 use (no permit required) in the Farming Zone under Rural Industry, as distinct from large, industrial abattoirs, and in alignment with EPA Guidelines.

[1] AFSA also supports a concurrent change to enable small-scale sawmills, as the use of small, portable mills (e.g. Lucas mills) for sustainable agroforestry is already quite widespread, and should be allowed without a permit to support diverse business models, as is common on agroecology-oriented farms.

[2] EPA Victoria publication 1588.1 Designing, constructing and operating composting facilities. As the organic surplus yield has been generated and retained on site, a works approval and licensing are not required.

FAQs about the proposed Jonai Meatsmith Collective micro-abattoir

Below is what we have submitted in response to objections to our proposed micro-abattoir at Jonai Farms:

9 March 2023

Re: PLN22/0346 – Development Application for a micro-abattoir at Jonai Farms & Meatsmiths (Dja Dja Wurrung Country, 129 Morgantis Rd Eganstown VIC 3461)

To Hepburn Shire & those who have raised objections:

Farmers globally have seen the closure of local abattoirs over several decades, bringing longer travel times for livestock and farmers, and difficulties finding a facility that meets farmers’ slaughter schedule, let alone values. Many of the large, industrial abattoirs have refused service for small-scale farmers entirely, leaving them with no option except to stop farming.

Here at Jonai Farms, we have experienced the acquisition of both abattoirs we use by multinational corporations in the past couple of years, and decreased access since. JBS, the largest meatpacker in the world, bought the abattoir where we slaughter pigs last year, and almost immediately reduced the days on which we can access slaughter. (This huge global corporation has been involved in a long list of scandals, including serious breaches of animal welfare and work safety. See the Four Corners story we contributed to – The Butchers from Brazil - to learn more about what we are facing.)

In response to diminishing access and increasing risk to our livelihood, we have been actively investigating models for local abattoirs since 2017, and concluded that building a micro-abattoir on our farm to service a small group of local farms is the best solution. Small-scale abattoirs on farms can provide far greater welfare outcomes for animals – shorter or no travel distances/times, less stress, and smaller holding facilities, and positive outcomes are greatest where there is more farmer control and participation in decision making. Unlike their industrial counterparts, small, local abattoirs are embedded in communities – the connection to neighbours and ecosystems are a built-in risk mitigation measure as they are answerable to their communities in a way massive facilities behind locked gates will never be. The viability of a local abattoir is also greatest when there is no lease payable to a landlord, given the very small margins of most abattoirs.

The objective of the Jonai Meatsmith Collective abattoir is to effectively and safely construct and operate a micro-abattoir on our agroecological farm for best practice animal welfare outcomes in a way that addresses climate change and biodiversity loss through avoided greenhouse gas emissions and a circular bioeconomy. The facility will have capacity for no more than 15 farms over the course of a year, who process between one and 14 animals per month. The maximum number of animals on a slaughter day is 30 pigs or 6 cattle. We detail a typical slaughter day below. Slaughter will take place no more than one day per week, as we are primarily a farm, not an abattoir, where slaughter is an ancillary and necessary part of farming livestock. We are fundamentally committed to protecting the environment and amenity of our neighbours, ourselves, and communities downstream – everything we do here has demonstrated that commitment for nearly 12 years.

We understand that for many people the idea of an abattoir – a slaughterhouse – evokes fear and even ‘disgust’ (as one objector wrote). We believe that this is a result of our disconnected food system, where people have grown so accustomed to buying plastic shrink-wrapped meat on polystyrene trays from one of the two supermarkets that control over 70% of retail food sales in Australia that they forget – or prefer not to think about – the fact that animals are raised and killed somewhere so that you can eat meat.

We are most disappointed by the objections advocating for animals to be transported longer distances to industrial zones for slaughter, rather than in the farming zone where they are raised.

Just because the industrial food system is currently the ‘norm’ in Australia doesn’t mean it should be, nor does it have to be. What is normal about raising genetically uniform sheds of pigs and poultry, or feedlots of cattle munching grain, which concentrate effluent and create enormous risks to environment, amenity, and public health?

Industrial intensive livestock systems are creating what evolutionary epidemiologist Rob Wallace calls 'food for flu’ – they are the source of most emergent novel viruses that pass from animals to humans. And those are the animals in the abattoirs we have had no choice but to use since we started farming in 2011 – abattoirs that we are losing access to as outlined above.

Essentially, that industrial system is what objectors are advocating for by objecting to small-scale local facilities. Objecting to small-scale localised food production, processing and distribution supports the current ‘norm’ of intensive industrial livestock production as the ‘standard’, condemning millions of animals to lives of misery and stressful transport on their last day, and undermining the efforts of small-scale livestock farmers embedded in local communities.

Before we address specific objections, let us walk you through what the abattoir here will really look, smell, and sound like. Note firstly that we are in the Farming Zone, in which abattoirs are a Section 2 use as ‘rural industry’; a ‘permitted use’ subject to being granted a permit. Boning rooms, dairy processing, and other forms of rural industry are allowed with no permit. Rural industry and animal sounds are both a normal part of farming, and as farming is an ‘as of right use’ of the Farming Zone, they are protected from lifestyle complaints unless they are deemed excessive by ‘reasonable persons’.

A Typical Day in the Jonai Meatsmith Collective Abattoir

At 7:30am on a Monday, we will walk 10 pigs along our internal farm road from their paddocks to the abattoir yards. One animal at a time is separated from the others using boards, and then slowly walked around a curved chute with solid walls (to prevent animals from seeing unusual light or strange animals, which can cause stress[1]) and a non-slip floor to the knock box (a small crush that holds animals firmly in place, which has a calming effect according to leading animal welfare scientist Temple Grandin).

Once secure, the slaughterperson stuns the pig with a captive bolt gun, which makes a sound that does not carry more than 50 metres (the nearest house is 200 metres away). The pig is rendered unconscious and is rolled to the side into the facility, where it is bled, causing it to die immediately. Dehairing and evisceration are conducted inside the facility before another pig enters the knock box. By 10:30am, all of our pigs are slaughtered and in the chiller.

During the processing of our animals, two farmers have arrived with their pigs, one driving a Mitsubishi Triton and pulling a 10 x 5 foot tandem trailer with eight pigs, and the other a Ford Courier pulling a 6 x 4 single-axle with four pigs. The farmers unload the animals with assistance from the on-site stock manager into separate holding pens with solid walls. They have access to water and are under shelter. Any vocalising is unlikely to be different from that of the normal sound of animals on a farm.

Animals are held for approximately two hours before slaughter so that they settle from the stress of transport. They are then slaughtered one by one in the same manner as our pigs before them.

Processing is finished by 3:30pm, after which we clean the facility. At most, the facility will use 1500L of water in a day. To put this in context, the average household uses 900L per day, and a household of five typically uses about 1500L – the same as the abattoir. The septic system, like thousands of them around here and across Australia, is well equipped to cope with the small volume of wastewater.

The next day, further processing will commence, and a mostly on-farm resident team will break carcasses down into a range of fresh cuts, smallgoods, and charcuterie, just as we have done for nine years. Farmers will collect their packaged meat as they have done for several years to sell through their own CSA memberships and farmers’ markets, supplying around 1000 local and Melbourne households with highest welfare meat from animals raised in healthy agro-ecosystems.

A waste-nothing approach will ensure that there is minimal surplus nutrient, as most by-product will be further processed for human consumption (e.g. blood and offal) or hides or leather. While most bones are delivered to CSA members to make stock at home, any surplus bones, as well as stomachs and their contents, and other surplus yield from processing will be composted in our in-vessel rotating composting drum – affectionately known as Audrey – just as they have been for the past two years. This creates a rich compost for the market gardens of Tumpinyeri Growers farming here with us adjacent to the abattoir, thereby promoting improved water retention, ground cover, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity while supporting young farmers’ access to land. In a time of escalating crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, we are offering a viable and beneficial solution for resilience – a genuine circular economy right here on the farm.

We have made soap from surplus fat for nine years in 15-30L batches, and can assure everyone that there is no offensive smell, such as there might be at a big industrial rendering plant.

The Collective’s energy requirements for electricity and hot water will be managed with renewables to minimise greenhouse gas emissions. Water will be collected from the roof of the facility and stored in a 100,000L tank. A new bore has been drilled to supply water to Tumpinyeri’s acre of commercial garden beds, which provides a backup to rainwater storage in the case of multiple years of drought (we have applied for a licence for up to 4ML per annum).

The Hepburn Shire Community Vision and Council Plan aim for ‘a resilient, sustainable and protected environment,’ ‘a healthy, supported, and empowered community,’ and ‘diverse economy and opportunities.’ The Collective will be a localized, ecologically-sound, and socially-just operation supporting up to 15 local farms, and employing at least five FTE workers across its direct and ancillary activities. It will bring value chain control into the hands of more farmers, providing a more resilient local agricultural sector. It also meets the Shire’s ambitions to be an ecologically-sound and socially-just agri-tourism destination, with flow-on benefits to the other farms with farm gate shops.

Jonai Farms Responses to Objections

Objection: The proposed site is next to waterways feeding Deep Creek Spring

Objection: The safety of our drinking water is at risk from contamination.

We firmly believe that all of us must be good stewards of land and water, and understand how water flows to and from the lands in our care.

Schedule 1 (ESO1) states that: “Hepburn Shire is situated in the Central Highlands at the source of a number of catchments linked to Port Phillip Bay or the Murray River. Protection of the quality of this water has significant local and regional implications, especially where these catchments provide domestic water supply.” Our farm, like all properties in this area, is in a Special Water Supply Catchment, which is why there is an Environmental Significance Overlay (ESO) applied to properties across the central highlands.

As a pastured pig and cattle farm, we already exclude animals from waterways, and have planted vegetated filter strips above dams and on sloped areas where water flows in high rainfall periods. We keep stocking levels in balance with the ecosystem so as not to produce excess nutrient, and have never applied synthetic fertiliser.

As the primary objective of the ESO1 is to protect the quality of local waterways, the relevance to the abattoir is to ensure separation and filtration between the facility and any solid or liquid waste and two seasonal waterways: one that runs directly behind a dam in our pig paddocks and one that commences on Morgantis Road.

We propose to site the abattoir approximately 175m from the seasonal waterway on Morgantis Road (well in excess of the 30m buffer required by Clause 14.02-1S see site plan below). We have started to develop a silvi-agriculture system in the paddocks below the abattoir site already, which will host hundreds of diverse trees and shrubs in rows 25 metres apart (between which Tumpinyeri Growers are setting up their market garden beds). We chose to develop this system as part of our ongoing commitment to revegetating the landscape for health and beauty, increasing the biodiversity richness to improve ecosystem function by welcoming a broader diversity of species from soil fungi to native grasses to small birds, frogs, and micro-bats. The increased vegetation will also serve as an extra layer of filtration between the abattoir and the waterway. There is also an existing shelterbelt of oaks, blackwoods and wattles we planted nearly 10 years ago along Morgantis Road.

The North Central Catchment Management Authority (NCCMA) has reviewed the application and has ‘no objections’.

While we have long demonstrated care for the water catchment area, we note that there are no controls on chemical application in the Special Water Supply Catchment, and it is unknown how much fertiliser, pesticide, herbicide and fungicide runoff enters the water supply. Guidance from the health department simply recommends that farmers ‘prevent stock access’ to waterways, ‘use and manage nutrients wisely’ and ‘optimise agricultural chemical use’ in catchment areas[2]. Our farming practices evidence much higher ambitions than this.

Objection: Effluent from the slaughter process will be pumped to surrounding paddocks.

Effluent from the slaughter process will not be pumped onto surrounding paddocks. The miniscule volume of wastewater (that may contain wash down water, small volumes of blood, stomach contents, manure, or environmentally-sensitive cleaning liquids) will be captured in sub-surface irrigation and a septic tank. According to the land capability assessment by a qualified earth scientist, which scopes the land capability for higher use than planned:

‘The land application areas have been determined for the 9th decile wet year and satisfies the requirements of Environment Protection Regulations 2021 in that the effluent disposal systems cannot have any detrimental impact on the beneficial use of surface waters or groundwater.’

Our Environmental Management Plan (EMP) submitted to Council states:

Lairage [a.k.a. holding yards] has been designed according to Temple Grandin’s world-renowned high animal welfare designs. Effluent is washed into a holding tank, to be collected and spread on paddocks, as per Livestock Disease Control Act 1994, and EPA Publication IWRG641.1 Farm waste management.

Given the small number of animals in the holding pen on a slaughter day, this practice is the equivalent of the manure from animals grazing in a paddock on any given day being spread on a paddock to ensure it doesn’t concentrate in the yards.

Note that many local farms regularly apply fertiliser to their paddocks (in the form of raw chicken manure or synthetic nitrogen) far in excess of the small additional manure the abattoir will create through bringing in 5-20 external animals one day per week to be held for two hours in the yards.

Objection: Animal waste products will be disposed of on the property.

The abattoir will have equipment and space to ensure we can save cattle hides and edible offal for member farms, and to process intestines for sausage casings (as per AS 5011:2001). Blood will also be collected in a hygienic manner for human consumption in accordance with AS 4696:2007. This significantly reduces the volume of liquid and solid surplus nutrient for composting on site. ‘Waste’ management will be in accordance with PrimeSafe standards and relevant environmental regulation and guidance, where all waste is contained, treated and re-used on site.

All surplus nutrient will be combined with locally sourced carbon material (wood chips/sawdust and soiled cardboard). All on-farm composting occurs via in-vessel rotating drum, reaching a minimum of 55C for three days, managed in accordance with EPA guidelines and AS4454-1004. On rare occasions where composting is not suitable, surplus yield (liquid and solid) will be removed, managed, and disposed off-site to an approved rendering plant for further processing. The composted material is stored in IBCs to mature for a minimum of three months before later spreading on pasture and garden beds. Re-use of composted material is subject to soil testing and agronomic advice to ensure nutrient uptake by actively growing plants.

The solid inedible material generated per day of operation for beef is maximum 750kg[3], of which approximately 100 to 200 kg (hides) is removed from the farm for tanning, and approximately 640kg to be managed on farm. All material that is designated for tanning or rendering off-site is stored in covered bins typically until the morning after processing, and for no more than 50 hours; it is then transported directly to the tanning facility in Ballarat or a relevant rendering facility.

The solid inedible material generated per day of operation for pigs is maximum 420kg to be managed on farm.

The material managed on farm can include paunch contents, rumens, condemned tissues, and meat and fat trim. If the capacity of the on-farm surplus yield management system is insufficient to manage the material, the Collective will remove these from the farm to an approved rendering plant.

Objection: Animal transport vehicles will deteriorate an already fragile road and make dust and noise problems worse.

The abattoir is so small it will only operate at its full potential one day per week, and the farm utes who bring between 1 and 10 animals on the single slaughter day per week are small (e.g. the biggest might be a Land Cruiser pulling a 10 x 5 foot tandem trailer). There will be approximately one to three such vehicles on a slaughter day (2-4 times per month depending on the local farmers’ slaughter schedules – many do not slaughter every month).

For comparison, we regularly see much larger trucks travel Morgantis Road to properties north of us, including weekly Woolies delivery trucks and municipal waste collection trucks. Some of the lifestyle blocks on our road have recently had as many as two dozen large dump trucks with tipper trailers driving loaded up and empty down Morgantis Road for landscaping purposes several days in a row.

The facility will in fact eliminate the heavy trucks that have delivered carcasses back from the big abattoirs to our boning room for the past nine years (approximately three per month historically).

Objection: Flies, noise, and offensive odours go hand-in-hand with abattoirs.

First, we remind Council and objectors once again that ‘Abattoir’ is a Section 2 use in the Farming Zone Clause 35.07. That is, abattoirs are considered ‘rural industry’ in the planning provisions, but unlike boning rooms or dairy processing facilities, they require a permit to operate. To address Clause 35.07-6 Decision Guidelines, we have submitted an Environmental Management Plan to demonstrate the ways we will meet our responsibilities.

While abattoirs meet the aims and requirements of the Farming Zone, we know that some abattoirs (and farms) can sometimes produce noise, odours, and flies that may be objectionable or affect the amenity of neighbours. We value an aesthetically and aromatically pleasing farm, and all measures are in place to reduce potential fly breeding grounds (e.g. closed containers for the small amount of waste before it is composted). The tiny number of animals slaughtered with the highest welfare standards mean noise and odour should not be any different to a normal farm with livestock manure and normal life sounds. We want our animals and those of us who live and farm here to have a pleasant place to live.

Objection: The abattoir site is amongst a group of six (6) residential homes.

Sited in the Farming Zone (not a Residential Zone), our own home on the farm is the closest to the proposed site at approximately 50 metres away, and the other closest adjacent homes are 200 and 250m respectively. As we easily meet the separation distances required from dwellings on another property, and are in the Farming Zone, we consider this objection irrelevant.

Objection: Local properties will decrease in value

While we appreciate that property values might be adversely affected by the construction of a large-scale abattoir at the proposed site, this is not what is proposed. Details above clearly demonstrate that the facility will have negligible impact on roads, and none on water quality or neighbours’ amenity. The structure will be attractive and surrounded by market gardens and rows of diverse trees and shrubs. With its biodiversity and economic diversification, our farm is what the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation calls an ‘Agroecology Lighthouse’[4].

Jonai Farms has been featured in a number of beautiful cookbooks, on multiple shows on the ABC (including Landline and Four Corners), on Channel 10’s The Project and Channel 9’s The Living Room, and most recently on Down to Earth with Zac Efron on Netflix. We genuinely believe that we are a farming community showing the way to a liveable and joyful future, who attract more people to the region because they see the greater resilience that systems like ours provide in the face of climate change and more pandemics.

Objection: An abattoir will deter tourists who stay in local short-term accommodation.

While the objectives of the Farming Zone are not to support tourism, Hepburn Shire is a well-known tourist destination. We note that the position of objectors who want more tourists in Eganstown, which means more traffic, is in direct contradiction to concerns about increased traffic.

However, we don’t believe the minimal increased traffic due to the growing number of short-term accommodation options in the area warrants community concern. These tourists have visited our farm gate shop for many years as well, and will continue to do so when we have a new shop next to the abattoir. In fact, our popular range of agri-tourism workshops draw domestic and international tourists to the area, and their need for short-term accommodation is obviously synergistic with those who provide it.

Objection: Expert advice funded by government warns against an abattoir on this type of site.

This is a vexatious objection with no evidence to support it. It was printed on a flyer distributed in our area with an email address provided for residents to make further enquiries. When another local emailed the party, the response was as per the screenshot below:

‘Abattoir’ is a Section 2 use in the Farming Zone Clause 35.07. Not only does the Land Capability Assessment (LCA) cited above clearly demonstrate that the land is suitable for the purpose of a micro-abattoir, which thus also meets the Decision Guidelines, there are many policy frameworks and strategies at all levels of government that support the development as per below:

The Hepburn Planning Policy Framework[5] Clause 14 Natural Resource Management states that ‘Planning should ensure agricultural land is managed sustainably, while acknowledging the economic importance of agricultural production.’

The Hepburn Planning Scheme[6] aims include:

02.03-4, Agricultural land: Emerging rural industries include locally sourced produce, value added food manufacturing and related products and rural tourism 

02.03-7, Rural enterprises: Hepburn Shire is a significant agricultural region and part of Melbourne’s‘ food bowl’. The region’s contribution will become of even greater importance to the State in adapting to a changing climate.

14.01-2S, Sustainable agricultural land use, strategies: Encourage diversification and value-adding of agriculture through effective agricultural production and processing, rural industry and farm-related retailing.

17.01-1S, To strengthen and diversify the economy: Improve access to jobs closer to where people live.

19.01-1S, Support energy infrastructure projects in locations that minimise land use conflicts and that take advantage of existing resources and infrastructure networks. Facilitate energy infrastructure projects that help diversify local economies and improve sustainability and social outcomes.

The Farming Zone Decision Guidelines[7] state:

The need to protect and enhance the biodiversity of the area, including the retention of vegetation and faunal habitat and the need to revegetate land including riparian buffers along waterways, gullies, ridgelines, property boundaries and saline discharge and recharge area.

We plan to plant a diverse range of trees and shrubs in concentric arcs from just beyond the facility to Morgantis Road, creating a silvi-agriculture system for holistically grazing livestock, growing grain, and a market garden. The plantings will create several benefits through increased biodiversity, habitat, shade, fodder, improved soil health, and to beautify the paddock from the perspective of Morgantis Road.

Hepburn Z-NET[8] is a collaborative partnership bringing together community groups, organisations, experts and council to shift the Hepburn Shire to zero-net energy by 2025 and zero-net emissions by 2030. As the only local slaughter facility, the Collective will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions with drastically shorter driving times for several farms, with the important additional benefit of less stress for animals transported shorter distances to slaughter (or in the case of our animals, not transported at all). The facility will be on standalone solar and use waste vegie oil to heat water, creating a further significant reduction in fossil fuel reliance.

The Sustainable Hepburn Strategy[9] advocates themes for ‘beyond zero emissions,’ ‘biodiversity and natural environment,’ ‘low waste,’ and ‘climate resilience,’, all of which the Collective’s development will promote and progress.

Alignment with Victorian Policy

Victoria’s new 10-year Strategy for Agriculture[10] emphasises building resilience including to our changing climate. It is structured around the following [relevant] themes:

Recover from the impacts of drought, bushfires and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and become an engine of growth for the rest of the economy. Including a commitment to: Support farmers with information and tools to build resilience.

Protect and enhance the future of agriculture by ensuring it is well-placed to respond to climate change, pests, weeds, disease and increased resource scarcity. Including a commitment to: Ensure Victorian agriculture is well placed to manage climate risk and continues to be productive and profitable under a changed climate.

The Victorian Animal Welfare Action Plan’s[11] vision is for ‘A Victoria that fosters the caring and respectful treatment of animals.’ It has explicit aims to ensure that ‘the market has confidence in Victoria for ethical and responsible animal production.’ Jonai Farms and our Collective member farms put animal welfare first in all production choices – all livestock are pasture-raised on grass and enjoy the ‘five freedoms of animal welfare’:

• Freedom from hunger and thirst: by ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour.

• Freedom from discomfort: by providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.

• Freedom from pain, injury or disease: by prevention through rapid diagnosis and treatment.

• Freedom to express normal behaviour: by providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal’s own kind.

• Freedom from fear and distress: by ensuring conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering.

The Collective Abattoir will strengthen all farms’ capacity to ensure animals are free from the discomfort of long transport and waiting times at distant abattoirs, and from the fear and distress associated with those activities and environments.

The North Central Victoria Regional Sustainable Agriculture Strategy[12] is a high level strategy that suggests moving towards greater adoption of sustainable agriculture that will require land managers to collectively reconsider current practices. 

The North Central Regional Catchment Strategy[13] priority directions include: ‘Continue to increase the uptake of sustainable agricultural practices through implementation of the Regional Sustainable Agriculture Strategy, Soil Health Action Plan and Land and Water Management Plan for the Loddon Campaspe Irrigation Region (LCIR).’ The Collective not only is proposed to support our own sustainable agricultural practices, but also a dozen other local sustainable farms, and deepen all of our sustainable practices through reduced emissions.

The Recycling Victoria: A new economy[14] policy and action plan for waste and recycling includes the following priorities:

• Invest in priority infrastructure: Victoria will have the right infrastructure to support increased recycling, respond to new bans on waste export and safely manage hazardous waste.

• Provide support for local communities and councils: A new Supporting Victorian Communities and Councils program will support regional growth and community connectivity

• Reducing business waste: A new Circular Economy Business Innovation Centre will help businesses reduce waste and generate more value with fewer resources.

• The Collective’s nose to tail and paddock to paddock approach will minimise potential waste, and recycle nutrients on the farm through the use of the in-vessel composting drum, creating a healthy circular bioeconomy.

Finally, a 2019 report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the UN Committee on World Food Security, Agroecological and other innovative approaches for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition[15], recommends:

• adapting support to encourage local food producers, food enterprises and communities to build recycling systems by supporting the reuse of animal waste, crop residue and food processing waste in forms such as animal feed, compost, biogas and mulch. (p.22)
  
  
  

[1] Grandin, T. 2020. Behavioural Principles of Stockmanship and Abattoir Facility Design, CAB International.

[2] https://www.health.vic.gov.au/water/protecting-water-catchments

[3] Co-products Compendium, MLA, 2009.

[4] https://www.fao.org/agroecology/database/detail/en/c/1457735/

[5] https://www.hepburn.vic.gov.au/files/assets/public/building-amp-planning/documents/c80hepb-panel-report.pdf

[6] https://www.hepburn.vic.gov.au/Planning-building/Strategic-planning/Hepburn-Planning-Scheme

[7] https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/8497/35_07-Farming-Zone-Greyhound-consultation-August-2016.pdf

[8] https://hepburnznet.org.au/

[9] https://participate.hepburn.vic.gov.au/sustainable-hepburn

[10] https://agriculture.vic.gov.au/about/agriculture-strategy

[11] https://agriculture.vic.gov.au/livestock-and-animals/animal-welfare-victoria/animal-welfare/animal-welfare-action-plan

[12] https://www.nccma.vic.gov.au/resources/publications/north-central-victoria-regional-sustainable-agriculture-strategy

[13] https://www.nccma.vic.gov.au/north-central-regional-catchment-strategy

[14] https://www.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-02/Recycling%20Victoria%20A%20new%20economy.pdf

[15] https://www.fao.org/3/ca5602en/ca5602en.pdf

2023 brings Tumpinyeri Growers, Formidable Veg, & an abattoir to Jonai!

Just over 11 years ago, a wide-eyed young family arrived on Dja Dja Wurrung Country - at 129 Morgantis Road Eganstown – ready to save the world while savouring it. Expressed with a bit less hubris, we just really wanted to enjoy a new life raising animals without fear or pain and able to express their natural behaviours on healthy pastures before taking their lives for human sustenance. Stuart was leaving a decade of middle management in automation with the extreme delight of a wage slave set free with land, sheds, and tools to work on a million projects, and I was armed with a bucketload of cultural theory around consumption and food systems, great admin skills, and no idea where the loin was on a pig or cattle carcass. Neither of us had a clue how to build a fence.

We knew how little we knew, but didn’t know what we didn’t know.

What started as a lifelong concern of mine for how animals are treated in industrial food production has become a complex and skin-tingling ability to see and feel webs of existence that eluded us in our city lives. Learning about grasses has taught us more about soils, and soils have taught us about fungi. Learning about microbial soil fauna has helped us think about the flora reliant on them, which has led us back above ground to native bees, beetles, and the birds that feast on them. Milking Clarabel and Wynny led us to the alchemy of transforming milk into cheese with the help of our tiny friends - lactic acid bacteria - where we encountered once again as if for the first time knowledge gained from a decade of annual traditions fermenting salami, and the summer harvests of  garlic, chili, cabbage, and any other vegetable our curious hands can transform into jars of delicious condiments that litter our table and nourish our guts.

Today, we live, farm, feel, and listen on and to Dja Dja Wurrung Country (djandak), and acknowledge the care and custodianship of her First Peoples - Djaara. We pay our deepest respects and thanks for how life here was and continues to be sustained through dhelkunya dja – making good country / making country healthy - and commit our support in returning Country and all her denizens back to health. 

We aim to contribute to Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination through land restitution, paying the rent, and decolonial approaches to agriculture.

Long-time followers of the Jonai journey will know that soon after our foray into farming, we built a boning room and commercial kitchen to realise the full benefit of the value chain here on the farm, and I became a vegetarian-turned-pig-farmer-turned-butcher. Many years on from that milestone, we move into 2023 with a focused gaze and a Gantt chart with a timeline for construction on a Jonai Meatsmith Collective abattoir, the development of an agroforestry system integrated into the design around the abattoir, and renewed commitment to the daily practices of farming and living in harmony with nature.

Long host to and members of a dynamic community on and around the farm, in 2023 we welcome the arrival of more careful custodians of Country as Tumpinyeri Growers move their market garden enterprise here in a landsharing arrangement designed to benefit djandak and all she supports.

Jonai Farms and Tumpinyeri Growers will share land, resources, labour, and community to run our respective enterprises raising pastured pigs and cattle and small-scale market gardening. We value relationships over transactions, and reflect on our relationships with djandak to help guide our relationships with each other, other farmers and suppliers, and the communities we feed.

The agreement includes landsharing for farming and also for living. The principles are based on exchanges of various kinds of value - social, ecological, economic, and cultural - where all parties aim to provide and receive value commensurate with need. We acknowledge the privilege we Jonai have in ‘owning’ title to unceded land, and seek through a landsharing agreement and in our daily practices to break down imbalances in power or fairness in our relations with each other and with djandak.

To say we’re excited about what 2023 holds for us and our community is an understatement. I have long described myself as an active optimist – active in my own optimism – and after enduring the biodiversity summit – COP15 – in Montreal last month I suffered a blow to that optimism in spite of my and many others’ activism there. I returned to the healing embrace of djandak and the nourishing interdependencies I have with her denizens, and I remembered I’m not only an active optimist, I’m a fiercely active optimist ever more committed to growing a world where everyone can experience food sovereignty, where Country and First Peoples are acknowledged and their rights to self-determination are respected and promoted.

As we move into this growing collaboration between djandak, Jonai and Tumpinyeri, we’ll share our efforts and our learning in the spirit of the nascent ‘agroecology lighthouse’ movement, ‘from which agroecological principles and lessons radiate out to the broader rural communities, helping them to build the basis of an agricultural strategy that promotes efficiency, diversity, synergy, and resiliency’ (Nicholls & Altieri 2018).

And remember, agroecology is a science, a set of practices, and crucially, it is also a social movement. Its success as a movement depends on the active collectivisation at farm, landscape, community, and national and global social solidarity movements. Wherever you see your opportunities to contribute to this critical transformation of our food and agriculture systems, we hope you act on them! Every person who joins a grassroots democratically constituted organisation like the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) lends strength in both voice to government and funding for our domestic activities (and you can join for as little as $75 per year!).

Viva 2023! <3

Help us build the Jonai Meatsmith Collective abattoir!

We started talking about the need for small-scale regional abattoirs shortly after we started farming pigs and cattle in 2011, but building a boning room was the immediate priority as we struggled to find regular butchery from the beginning. After commissioning the boning room in January 2014 and the commercial kitchen in July 2015, we forsook industrial grain supplies for the pigs’ feed, shifting entirely to waste stream by the end of 2016. Each of these moves steadily reduced our reliance on commodity supply chains, bringing control of our resource base onto the farm one link at a time.

Our last tie to industrial food systems (aside from diverting their so-called waste from landfill and into the tummies of hungry piggehs) is slaughter. While there are no obvious financial savings to us in building a small facility that can’t lean on economies of scale, the value to us in improved welfare for the animals on their last day is priceless. And of course, like smallholders around the world, we recognize the risk to our entire system should we lose access to the large-scale abattoirs we currently use. This risk is made all the greater by extreme centralisation, which recently got worse with the acquisition of our pig abattoir by the world’s biggest meatpacker JBS, who incidentally were the most affected in the meat industry globally by covid shutdowns.

After years of research on small-scale on-farm and regional abattoirs in the US and Australia, we have settled on a vision to build a micro-abattoir here at Jonai Farms. But unlike building a boning room or kitchen in a quick six-month conversion of a 40-foot refrigerated container, an abattoir is a much bigger undertaking, physically, legislatively, and financially.

We currently butcher with and for seven other farms, and there are several more interested in collaborating if we build an abattoir and bigger boning room and chiller capacity. The existing boning room and commercial kitchen facilities have served us well for the past eight years, but we are at capacity in terms of providing services for others. We are therefore building a new boning room, kitchen and farm gate shop alongside the abattoir to accommodate up to a cap of about 15 farms’ needs.

We are engaged in deeper relationships of reciprocity and mutual aid with these and other farms in collectively solving problems, deepening our knowledge of agroecology, sourcing feed, and sharing occasional labour. The other farmers’ access to our facilities is provided at cost – provision of processing facilities is not how we earn our livelihood, it’s how we ensure more farmers can earn a right livelihood themselves.

We envision the Jonai Meatsmith Collective will be owned and operated by Jonai Farms, but will function as ‘community-supported slaughter’ (CSS) in a similar way to community-supported agriculture (CSA). And like the boning room hire, slaughter will be offered at cost. Farms will sign up as members of the Collective and pay a percentage of their anticipated slaughter fees for the year ahead up front to secure a year of monthly slaughter. While Jonai Farms will employ staff who will coordinate scheduling and manage logistics and communications with members, there will be opportunities for farmers to collectively discuss their needs and negotiate schedules that will accommodate all members fairly and efficiently.

Each year, members will be invited to attend an Annual General Meeting (AGM), where a Profit & Loss (P&L) and Budget will be presented, enabling everyone to democratically set pricing for slaughter to ensure: a viable and resilient meat processing facility, the highest standards of animal welfare, financially sustainable slaughter for members, and fair wages for all staff.

Funding is a critical piece of the puzzle – just as we eschew external inputs at our farm, we are committed to avoiding debt to build infrastructure. Debt avoidance is pivotal to degrowth thinking and doing. The interest we would have to repay – profits to the bank’s shareholders – would seriously undermine our capacity to build and operate a viable abattoir. In addition to our savings, a creative combination of offering some enticing rewards such as Tammi’s upcoming cookbook (!), Speckleline hides, and in person fundraising, with the possibility of some grant money, will be used to raise the funds we need to build the facility, and as you’ll read below, we’ll be accepting donations as well. We've also been supported by the excellent young agrarians, who raised 16 of our surplus pigs, and have butchered and sold the pork independently to kick off our fundraising. The business model will be self-sustaining, and reliant on its not-for-profit approach.

Our current budget estimates are coming in between $400k and $500k. There are a lot of unknowns in an owner-built facility that will be functional and durable, environmentally sustainable with very high animal welfare standards for lairage and stunning, and aesthetically pleasing for workers and visitors alike, using a combination of new and secondhand materials as appropriate to all of these values. There are no ‘out of the box’ solutions for context specific problems, no matter how much industrial society wants you to think there are.

For many years we have been working to build diversity and resilience on the farm – from biodiversity through to diverse skillsets amongst our team. With the abattoir addition, our aim is to enable all of us to be able to work across the system – farming, slaughtering, butchering, and delivering – as well as maintaining a regular spot on the lunch roster. As we’ll be processing for several other farms, there will be plenty of work to go around! Jonai Farms already functions as a farmer incubator, and adding an abattoir will mean the opportunity to teach whole value chain skills to grow a future generation of farmers and farm and food workers. Tammi and lead farmhand Adam are currently nearing completion of their meat inspector training – another piece of the puzzle solved.

The following is our proposed timeline, subject to all the caveats of things beyond our control, such as Council planning timelines, supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Stuart’s and other workers’ availability, other farm demands, funding, and the weather.

Timeline

Oct 2021- Jun 2022

Project planning phase

·      Development of vision and project plan

·      Abattoir design

·      Draft budget

·      Preparation of Development Application

·      Funding model development for capital expenses

·      Business modelling

Apr 2022

Commence fundraising

Jun 2022

Submit Development Application to Council

Nov-Dec 2022

Site preparation & start ordering equipment

Jan 2023

Commence construction

Oct 2023

Commission facility, including license with Primesafe

De-commission and sell existing facilities

As always at Jonai, we remain committed to radical transparency. As we progress this project, we will share our learnings with you for better or worse, and we will make all of our documentation freely available.

We have always shared what we learn, and we will continue to do so, but in the interest of raising the funds for the project, we have decided to accept donations from any who might like and be able to provide a bit of support for our efforts to radically transform the food system from the ground up. Unlike in capitalist society generally, the ability to pay will NOT provide privileged access to the knowledge we are sharing, but rather will ensure that it is shared with everyone.

Imagine if our communities all around Australia and the world pooled our resources in this way to reclaim control of the means of production, and the means of communication, energy, transport – the sky’s the limit!

Viva!

Donate

Abattoir plans, a Jonai fromagerie, and the young agrarians

Forgive me - it has been over a year since my last blog post… but in that time I have written many thousands of words for my PhD and for submissions to government inquiries for the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance… if you aren’t a member of AFSA yet, what’s stopping you?

It's an (almost) overwhelmingly exciting time at Jonai Farms as we approach next steps on the micro-abattoir project, commence planning for an on-farm fromagerie, await the imminent arrival of our first grandchild, and remain immersed in and committed to radically transforming the food system from the ground up!

I’ll write a separate post soon with more detail about the abattoir plans, but for now have a look at the draft design, and you can read this Stock and Land article for a sense of where we’re up to.

The Fromagerie

Last week I enjoyed an intense five-day Fundamentals of Artisanal Cheesemaking workshop with the incomparable Ivan Larcher at The Cheese School in Castlemaine. After milking Clarabel and Wynny for the past 18 months, I'm ready to go from ill-attentive amateur home cheesemaker to serious artisanal cheesemaking with our partner in all things dairy Melanie Brown - an aspiring young goat farmer without a farm. We learned the science and theory of cheese in the depth we needed to move on to the next level, and then some! Ivan is a wealth of knowledge and passion for this craft, and Australia is lucky to have him here, largely thanks to one of Australia's strongest advocates for small-scale cheesemaking Alison Lansley. Stuart is working on the design for the fromagerie while I keep practising the cheesemaking and starting to get my head around another area of food safety regulation.

I realised during the course that soon we will have first hand experience of the production, processing, and distribution challenges and regulatory burden for nearly every aspect of food production - meat, dairy, veg, and soon grains as we increase wheat production this year to achieve a small saleable surplus above our breadmaking needs... which makes me even more committed to increasing the diversity of what we do here! Not only is this an endlessly interesting life of following our curiosity and desire for resilience and autonomy from commodity supply chains, it strengthens my capacity for food sovereignty advocacy with every new link in the chain! Viva!

Read on to see how you can get your hands on some rare & uncommonly delicious Jonai pork raised by the young agrarians just up the road to support the abattoir project, as well as some of our bountiful garlic harvest.

the young agrarians

We have one of our rare offers of some uncommonly delicious pork with a twist - these pigs have been grown by three aspiring young farmers - the young agrarians - just up the road at Mara & Ralf's beautiful property Orto with the aim of raising funds for our micro-abattoir project! 

To order a pork pack, jump onto their website! 

You can also order some of our beautiful purple hard-necked garlic with your pork order - all proceeds from these sales are being saved exclusively for abattoir construction expenses. 

The young agrarians - Adam, Mads, and Cait - have learned so much about farming through this project. They have run the pigs in a mobile system at Orto with waste stream feed from our usual supply, increasing landscape function with carefully timed movements while teaching Mara & Ralf the skills of pig husbandry. They've learned how to set up a website and tell their story on Instagram (go follow them!), and learned that developing a community of eaters for their produce takes time, effort, and good communication skills! And they've also learned a lot about the rich and rewarding complexities of collaborating with other farmers beyond us Jonai - check out more of their story on their website. 

And of course these beautiful young people have done all of this in support of our project to improve local food system resilience and autonomy from commodity supply chains by building a micro-abattoir at Jonai Farms! We are grateful for their support and activism and admire their collective chutzpah to contribute to the food sovereignty movement in many tangible ways. 

So get on it! Get some beautiful Jonai/young agrarians/Orto collaborative pork to help us build a better future for everyone! 

Viva la revolución!

Behind every great ham there's a pig with a story

What have the happy piggehs at Jonai Farms been up to during the pandemic?

After a couple months interruption to our waste-stream feed supply, the piggehs have again been enjoying a diet of spent brewers' grain from Holgate Brewhouse in Woodend, mixed with whey from Azzurri Cheese in Bolinda, and strawberries and organic German bread from a distributor in Melbourne, plus occasional broken eggs from Creswick Open Range just down the road. When they aren't pigging out on treats diverted from landfill, they're frolicking in the long, spring grass with nearly 100% groundcover this year as we reduced the herd size over the past 18 months. We also move them more frequently under the calm, methodical care of Buck, lead farmhand for most of 2020. They enjoy this life on volcanic slopes of unceded lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung, where this year we started to pay the rent, because 'sorry isn't enough'. We pay our respects to their elders past, present, and emerging, and seek to care for this land with grace as the First Nations peoples did for millennia before us. 

Meanwhile, Clarabel the house cow gave birth to dear little Stormborn last week, and spends her days stashing her in the high grass in order to graze in peace, giving us over 15 litres of milk each day. In return we make sure she has access to fresh grass, hay, dairy pellets, and sourdough bread treats, and a roof to shelter under for stormy nights like the one on which Stormborn arrived. 

The big herd of cattle are circling the higher slopes of the volcano with daily moves now managed by young Adam, the newest member of team Jonai, who transitions from intern to farmhand on the first of December. An emerging farmer in his own right with a couple of seasons of market gardening under his belt, Adam has a bright future growing food in ethical and ecologically-sound ways, and we are delighted to be part of his farming journey. 

In the boning room and kitchen, head charcutier Simon keeps many pots on the boil, developing new treats for our CSA members (and us!), like the crunchy perfection of his chicharonnes and the perfection of Simon's Blumen Burgers (based on a technique by Heston Blumenthal), heading out in members' bags for the first time next week. 

The garlic is nearing harvest and looks to be a bumper crop, with Stuart's biofertiliser made from waste whey, molasses, cow manure, bonechar, and rusty nails to give it a boost this year. Next to them the solar greenhouse slowly takes shape as Stuart salvages the next stage of materials to help harness the sun and shelter from wind and frost our dear little tomato and chili seedlings - the first I've had in the ground so early since moving to the central highlands. More red tomatoes than green this year? Whatever will I ferment and pickle? Chilies and garlic, she says. :-D 

Interns have come and gone, and most are now farming nearby on other peoples' land, with the support of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance's (AFSA) Farming on Other People's Land (FOOPL) project. All remain friends we look forward to feasting with again when restrictions allow. 

We very clearly saw and felt the rich rewards of community-supported agriculture (CSA) this year, as our members supported us through the horrors of January, and we supported them through the ensuing pandemic, keeping them fed no matter how far they lived from their hubs. This is what solidarity looks like - we're all richer for it. 

Finally, there's me and my bossy active optimism, rallying the troops, wielding my knife, and now once again my pen as I finalise the research proposal for the PhD in anthropology at UWA I commenced in July. With a focus on farmers raising rare- and heritage-breed livestock, I'll be investigating the ways the movement of agroecological farmers are working to 'stay with the trouble' and decolonise agriculture in Australia, and how to enable this promising movement for a food sovereign future for all. I also accepted the challenge to continue as president of AFSA for my seventh year, to work alongside comrades from across the country and the globe to globalise the struggle, and to globalise hope! 

Viva la via campesina! 
Viva la revolución!

This is what solidarity looks like...

Over the past month we’ve expanded our understanding of community-supported agriculture (CSA) through a traumatic but ultimately uplifting experience that finds us today with 25 cattle back on the ground, money in the bank, food on the table, and good health running through our veins. We have known for some time the beauty and security of a CSA solidarity economy, but the past month’s crisis tested the model and found it flourishing. This is a piece about solidarity and gratitude.

The renewed herd…

After arriving home in January to 15 dead and dying cattle, we swung into action, with immediate amazing support from our beautiful community. When I wrote about that less than three weeks ago, we were hopeful our livelihood would be maintained, albeit with a very lean year ahead. My beloved family had already come forward by that stage to help us pay off the now-dead cattle to help put us on the path to be able to buy new ones, a generous show of support very gratefully received.

And then the cascade of kindnesses became a waterfall.

Our friends Nats & Jono at Brooklands Free Range Farms offered us a soon-to-be-born calf to start rebuilding our herd when weaned. Tears.

Our cattle breeder Ian rang to sort out how he could get us some more cattle on the ground as soon as possible, knowing we only slaughter cattle over two years old, and that out of the eight remaining from the original herd, only three would be over two before mid-year. He also knew that we couldn’t afford to simply replace the cattle immediately (Stuart’s truck engine had to be replaced in November to the tune of $15,000, so this crisis came off the back of existing financial stress…), Ian offered us terms, delaying payments until July 2020 for cattle delivered immediately. And he found eight heifers and cows three years and older that he was happy to move on, and then sold them to us at the price we normally pay him for weaners. We remain floored by this generosity and love for what we’re trying to do at Jonai Farms, and just so grateful it’s hard to express in words.

Long-standing CSA members John, Monica, and Alice offered to switch from monthly payments to up front annual payments immediately (one offering five years up front – we accepted two!), and Alice signed up nearly a workshop full of friends, with others answering the call to book in for this year’s workshops as well.

Another very dear friend Tanya made the incredibly generous move to send some of her hard-earned cash to buy more cattle, and many others also signed up for workshops, while one of my dearest old friends Shelley turned up to help tan the hides we saved from the on-farm slaughter.

Yet another farming comrade Nick of Belvedere Farm offered to host a workshop on his farm as a fundraiser for the Jonai and to spread the good word of degrowth and ethical meat literacy.

Others have shared our workshops with their networks and sent messages of care and support. Many hugs, dozens of shared meals, and lots of collaborative problem solving have been enjoyed, giving us much-needed emotional succor in addition to the financial and logistical aid we’ve received.

Unbelievably, all of this adds up to us already back on our feet at the end of just one very stressful month. We have supply to meet our degrowth numbers we moved to over last year for the entirety of 2020. The relief is palpable at the dinner table, as is the neverending feeling of gratitude reverberating through our hearts and all the way to the tips of our calloused fingers. If we hadn’t been a CSA, this would be a different post. If we hadn’t been fortunate enough to be part of an incredible community like this one, where relationships matter more than transactions, this would be a different post.

I firmly believe that gratitude is the enemy of entitlement. I don’t suffer from wondering what we did to deserve the bad things that happen or believing we’ve ‘earned’ our good fortune where others must suffer. I know that Stuart and I were both born into privileged families, and we have not wasted our privilege – living rich and rewarding lives, while endeavouring to use our privilege to help others.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to contribute more than I take, and this recent crisis could have left us in a very different position were it not for others who are similarly committed to community, to food sovereignty, to friendship, to family, and to a future with sufficiency for all. We aren’t entitled to any of this glorious goodness raining down on us – we’re just incredibly grateful for it. Thank you all so very very much.

Together we’ve got this.

On losing cattle, and gaining faith

‘Dead cow’ was the subject line of an email that started the worst 10 days in the farm’s history.

We were on my parents’ ranch in snowy southern Oregon and looking forward to commencing the long journey home via old friends in Portland when we first heard the cattle had got into some peanuts, with one dead and others unwell. Our guts wrenched, sorry for our farmhand of just three months who was dealing with the issue while we were so far away, and for the beast who died of acute acidosis, a painful, sad end. But it was just the beginning.

‘Ruminal acidosis refers to a series of conditions that reflect a decrease in pH in the rumen of cattle. Rumen lactic acidosis (grain overload, grain poisoning, acute indigestion) develops in sheep and cattle that have ingested large amounts of unaccustomed feeds rich in ruminally fermentable carbohydrates (Crichlow and Chaplin 1985; Nocek 1997).’

By the time we got home four days later, there were 10 dead. Two vets had given the farmhand some conflicting and incomplete advice. One had advised administering 40g of bicarb in a cup or two of water every four to five hours, and another on the phone said, ‘should be more like 4kg’. The team at the farm (which also included our big-hearted former intern Fernando and brand new staffer baptism-by-fire Simon) was administering the lower dose until our return, as well as electrolytes and charcoal.

Some further quick research in a veterinary manual we had bought in Portland was supported by another clinical document online revealed that the animals should have been given more like 1g/kg of animal weight of bicarb, so for example a 400kg beast should have been given 400g of bicarb, though the documents also stated that the chances of recovery were very low in cases as acute as ours. It went on to assert that the best recovery of animals at this stage of acute acidosis is slaughter – something the vets had not suggested at all or we might have at least salvaged the meat of a further half dozen or more animals.

Over the next three days, we lost two more cattle and shot three (leaving us just 8 from the original herd of 23), butchering the beef in the Belvedere and putting the meat away for home consumption so that at least their deaths weren’t a total waste. Friends and comrades arrived to help us get through the workload and to support us emotionally as we grappled with the scale of the disaster. Thank you forever to Penny & Paul, Alex & Kali (& your amazing friends Ned & Lana!), and Ruby for your help, love, and stalwart support over those long days – we quite literally could not have done it without you all! Between you and Leif, we even got the garlic cleaned and bundled so it could make it out on deliveries.

Having landed on a Wednesday, our original schedule would have seen us butcher the 12 pigs taken to the abattoir the day before our return for deliveries Wednesday and Thursday following. The addition of three animals that had to be shot, leading to three extra beef carcasses that had to be butchered, meant that Simon and I, along with help from a variety of others over the days, stood and cut meat for five days straight. On Tuesday as we set out to make sausages, the farmhand resigned.

Wednesday we welcomed yet another wonderful neighbour Mara and her lovely volunteers to the boning room to help us make it through the double slice & pack in a morning, which saw me on the road just after lunch to make the regional deliveries. Thursday I delivered to our metro CSA members, and yesterday I sat down to do the first bit of administrative work I’d had time for since we landed 9 days earlier.

When I wrote to our CSA members to tell them of the crisis and that it would almost certainly mean a reduction in their beef allocation over the coming months, their expressions of solidarity and sympathy brought me to tears again and again. Not only were they happy with our offer to backfill with pork to keep their total kilos the same, many offered to take no beef until we have enough while continuing to pay the full amount. One dear member John who has been with us since nearly the very beginning offered to pay five years up front if that would help us buy more cattle. More tears.

This is what solidarity looks like, people turning up in tangible ways for each other as well as the emotional ways. And the solidarity economy of a CSA saves farmers in cases like this. Any other system would have seen us take a major blow to our income. We still suffered the grief, work, and stress, and now must deal with the major loss of what we paid for the 13 animals we lost, and are focused on how to raise more money to buy more cattle much sooner than we had planned. However, our monthly income will look remarkably the same aside from less farm gate sales with no beef in the fridge – all reserved for our loyal members.

On Thursday, I posted about our disaster on the Jonai Farms Facebook page, and vegans picked it up and launched a relentless attack on us and our integrity, something that I have a pretty thick skin for, but less so just now while feeling so distraught and vulnerable already. Another generous friend jumped in to help delete and block the abusers, but after 24 hours of this I pulled the pin and made the unprecedented move to unpublish the farm’s page.

And then I wept (again).

They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Having survived the past 10 days, I guess that make us Hercules.

We’ve learned a few lessons from this awful awful experience.

For one, we need greater financial resilience. We’re guilty of spending everything on farm projects and travel, diminishing our capacity to absorb a shock like this. We now have a (very ambitious) goal to build our savings up to a year’s income. (This will take awhile, but it’s good to have goals, hey?)

For another, we need a secure area to store feed that might be dangerous for the cattle. While the cattle were actually given access to the paddock where the peanuts had been stored to keep them away from them, another story could have been them breaking into the paddock through the electric wire. We need to ensure what did happen and what could happen can never happen again.

Finally, we re-affirmed something we gratefully already knew. We are fortunate to be part of a community that cares for each other deeply. The expressions of sympathy and love, the offers of help, the boots on the ground, and knives in hands have kept us buoyed in the face of the greatest adversity we’ve faced at Jonai Farms. Thank you all for everything you are and do. We’re still here, and planning to make 2020 another joyful and productive year. Together we’ve got this.

Climate-proofing Jonai Farms - from no-growth to degrowth

When we started farming in 2011, we knew we would be a no-growth model. But we didn’t expect to feel the need to scale down after just eight years… and yet that is where our rapidly changing climate has led us.

We built our model on 12 sows and one boar, increasing to two boars and between 13 and 14 sows to recover from the 2016 fertility crisis. The changeover in the breeding herd and slight increase in their numbers led to an excess of fecundity just as we approached the driest autumn on the farm in 2018, which repeated and worsened in 2019 – leaving us with too many pigs on hungry ground.

Parallel to this we increased our cattle herd by taking on 10 bobby calves from our dairying neighbor, again at a time when the grass simply wasn’t growing and our regenerative efforts were not enough…

Lots of rain a bit too late…

While this has not left us with a farm of bare earth, it has damaged our groundcover more than we believe is responsible care for the land, and if you had asked us a mere two months ago we would have also told you our worries about whether next year there would even be enough water for the stock as dam levels were still receding in April…

Healthy paddock on the left, hammered straight ahead, regenerating ahead & to the right

The drought in our region broke in the first week of May and we’ve recorded 384mm of rain in just two months. Our dams are overflowing and water is cascading down the volcano like lava flows of old. And yet all this rain came too late for much to grow… the grasses have had their thirst quenched, but the opportunity for growth vanished with the first frost shortly before the first rains. While green, they remain recalcitrant to stretch their roots into cold soils or blades into the wintery air.

And so like most farmers in the eastern states of Australia (and many elsewheres), we started discussing our business model and how to climate proof it before it’s too late. We are at least in the fortunate position not to be suffering record grain prices as we don’t buy any commodity grain, but the flip side is that with a slightly bigger herd, the already huge workload of sourcing, collecting, shifting, mixing, and feeding out waste-stream feed has become an even bigger chore for Stuart.

Behind this year’s deliberations have been years-long discussions of plans to shift to more education and less physical labour when we grow too old to keep up the sheer amount of lifting and carrying we both do. However, at not-yet-50 years old, neither of us feels we can’t do the work we currently do. Our continued physical strength coupled with my bloody-minded commitment to demonstrate that viable farming models are possible without major reliance on agri-tourism means we simply aren’t ready to go down that path yet.

So here’s the plan – we will slightly decrease our herd sizes and sell slightly less meat at slightly higher prices, while also adding another two workshops per annum. 

Workshops are a low-impact way to help the farm thrive with a few less non-human animals!

We haven’t raised prices in over three years – a conscious choice as we have reduced many of our direct costs over that period (e.g. $20,000 in grain bills). But effectively what that has meant is that Stuart has worked harder for less pay as it’s his side of the system that took on the extra labour of wholly waste-stream feed.

The only way farmers will be able to keep farming without destroying their land in increasing drought conditions is if people pay slightly more for farmers to grow less. The earlier we prepare for these realities and support farmers in efforts to downsize in keeping with the changed carrying capacity of their land, the better we’ll all manage to adjust.

In practice, this means Jonai Farms is scaling down from 12 sows and two boars to 10 sows and one boar, and instead of processing two beef carcasses per month we will process two per six weeks – spreading the carcasses over three butchery/delivery cycles rather than two. We’ve been letting our CSA member numbers decline in readiness – so from a high of 90 members at the start of 2016 to a stable 85 over the past year and a half, we’re down to 80 members now and we’ll stay here. We’ve already dropped from 14 pigs per month to 12 (from the 2015 high of 16), and that’s where we’ll stay for now.  

We will increase prices by 5% to account for the increased labour of an entirely waste-stream feed system. Members who have paid for the year up front won’t experience the price increase until renewal, those in their first year with us will also have until their second year commences, and longer-term members will have the option to pay more anytime in the next six months – they get to decide.

In addition to the herd reductions, we’re keen to clear the paddocks a bit to reduce the impact of the animals on the ground now and in readiness for making the most of what we hope will be a good spring for growing grass. So in August, we plan to offer 5 and 10kg packs of mixed cuts (or half or whole pig carcasses) to our long waiting list in hopes of removing about 18 pigs while giving a heap of very patient people some uncommonly delicious pork. Once those on the waiting list have placed their orders we’ll open them up to our newsletter subscribers and Facebook followers. (If you’re not on the waiting list, be sure to subscribe to the newsletter or follow us on Facebook to see when the offer comes out!)

The August offering has a side bonus in an extra butchery week for Buck, our current delightful volunteer resident, who is here to learn farming and the art of butchery to compliment her chef skills in hopes of one day running her own paddock to plate enterprise, possibly back on family land in Tennessee.

An abundance of learning opportunities for Buck!

The land wins, eaters win, and team Jonai win in this decision to scale down to a lower risk herd size here on the farm. I would add to our mate and mentor Joel Salatin’s phrase about farming within one’s ‘ecological umbilical’ and say we need to stay within and nourish the womb of our community as well.

We’re not just farming for a living, we’re farming for life.

5 July 2019

Community-supported agriculture and community-supported food sovereignty days!

Last weekend we had our annual CSA members’ day, and I awoke excited to welcome many of our wonderful members up for a day on the farm to relax, spend time with the happy piggehs and cattle, feast on a Jonai community potluck, and share with each other how things are going and how we can all look after each other (and others) even better than we already are.

We’ve been through a lot together, our community and us. Some have been with us since we offered our first CSA shares back in January 2014, and others are quite new. We’ve witnessed plenty of births and some deaths, there have been marriages and divorces, and we’ve fed our community through both illness and good health… it feels a lot like an extended family.

While we’ve fed them, they’ve also nourished us – the support through the fertility crisis of 2016 was profoundly kind and generous and saved us from having to seek off-farm income as production dipped at its lowest to about 60% of normal (for pork – fortunately having cattle maintained some risk buffer, as did having cures available – read the post for more detail). The fertility crisis was followed by a period of such fecundity that I’ve been over-filling bags for most of this year – sharing the rewards of abundance when we have it in recognition of the risks the community have born with us in the hard times.

One of the Teikei Principles (the founding principles of CSA) is ‘to accept all the produce delivered from the producer,’ and others set out expectations around mutual communication and learning. While that is a worthy aim, we have to acknowledge that there are cuts of meat that some people have never cooked and might lack confidence to try.  

If we’re going to radically transform the food system, surely we have to start with radically transforming our relationships, and our commitment to growing everyone’s knowledge and competence of how food is grown. So in that spirit, this year in addition to the farm tour & Big Talks, I decided that for our contribution to the lunch I should showcase more challenging cuts, and hocks were on the menu. I decided to show them the deliciousness of jowls as well, even though they only get them as guanciale or in pâté de tête normally (though that may change now they’ve got a taste of them…).

The jowls were easy, as just a couple months ago I’d asked my mate and excellent chef Sascha for the method he’d used to cook some of our jowls he served me at Messer in Fitzroy. Half a day lightly curing in salt with aromats followed by half a day confit’ing the jowls at 120C in pork fat, after which you press the jowls overnight in the fridge. Next day, slice, fry and serve (in our case with roasted broccoli and a drizzle of the last of my pomegranate molasses made by another dear friend Tash). Sooooo yum!

For the hocks, I used a Dan Hong recipe from Mr Wong’s up in Sydney that was shared with me by our intern Cal – future farmer and an outstanding cook in his own right. The method is quite simple though time consuming like the jowls – a slow braise for about 6 hours at 130C in soy, shiaoxing wine, leek, cinnamon and star anise, after which you pull the meat & skin off the bone and make a rough layer in a baking dish, then press it in the fridge overnight. The next day you slice your terrine into squares and deep fry before serving with a sweet & sour sauce (though I reduced the sugar from 250g to 100g because that would have been way too much sugar in my humble opinion). Served with rice, these hocks were a huge hit with the members, who now see the value of hocks in their bags! J (Fair warning – when Dan says ‘be careful as hot oil will spit’ he is not kidding. Wear protection!)

Once we’d all been well fed (including a range of gorgeous salads and desserts that included not just one but two pavlova – each distinctive enough for this to be a bonus), we settled into some community chat. As a result, we now have a closed Facebook group for our community to share recipes and ask questions about different cuts – taking the pressure off me to be sole support while enabling all of them to further develop their own relationships as well as sharing their wealth of cooking knowledge, which is much greater than I alone can provide anyway. Community is so much better than individuality!

Our final discussion arose from something we discussed last year – how we as a community might be able to support low-income members of the broader community to access meat like ours. While our meat is not particularly expensive amongst the other high quality, pastured meat available in Australia, for those on low incomes it obviously is less accessible. When you must choose between paying the rent and the quality and ethics of the meat you eat, most people (quite rationally, I think) are going to pay the rent. But we don’t believe anyone should have to make that (lack of) choice.

I spend a lot of my non-farming time advocating for food sovereignty – which includes ensuring everyone’s right to nutritious & culturally-appropriate food grown and distributed in ethical and ecologically sound ways – and I do this all over the world. I have railed against injustice my entire life – I am galvanized to action in the face of ill treatment of animals, people, land… and structural poverty is a systemic injustice that I believe food sovereignty can play a big part in addressing. But it’s a long road until all people have adequate and appropriate food access with agency, so the Jonai community have come up with a way to support locals in need.

Call them ‘community supported food sovereignty days’ – thanks to the generosity of our community, we’ll be offering 40% discounts on all meat in the freezer on two dedicated days each month, which brings our meat down to the cost of production (e.g. a $30 bone-in shoulder would cost a mere $18 – and in our system that is a 1.15kg shoulder, which will feed a family of 6 more than adequately – with leftovers). How will we offer this? Each of our 85 members (except those who are themselves financially unable to) will contribute $5 extra each month, providing somewhere around $400/month into the system that is surplus to our needs.  

For the past five years, we have tried to maintain a small amount of meat for sale at the farm gate shop for two reasons: 1) outreach to get more people to come to the farm and see how animals can and should be raised, and 2) as a risk mitigation for the CSA – a meat buffer to ensure there’s always enough to fill the CSA bags. When the freezer gets full every few months, we discount by usually 15% to clear it, a model that has been working to ensure we don’t store meat for more than three months. However, wouldn’t it be even better if we offered that meat heavily discounted each month to ensure full access by all members of the community instead of a cheap deal for those who can afford to pay? We think so! And so do our beautiful, generous members, who agreed to contribute to the risk mitigation in the system and then offer surplus as a community supporting community. Best.

Still wondering whether CSA is for you – as a farmer or an eater? I hope not, but if so, drop the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) an email and we’ll be happy to set you up for a chat with one of our growing number of CSA farming members and point in the direction of more resources to support CSA – the solidarity economy with the capacity to build solidarity not only between farmers and those who eat their produce, but also with the broader community of eaters, hub hosts, suppliers, and more!

Viva la revolución!

The Seven Year Itch...

Seven years ago today we scraped up Morgantis Road in a low-slung Volvo bursting with the high-pitched voices of our gaggle of excited small children and a brand-new shiny green wheelbarrow strapped to the roof.

A decades-long desire to live on the land was at last being realized. I remember the first year of corporeally re-inhabiting the rural life – striding across paddocks, shifting gears to make it over the crest to the next horizon, wearing whatever crazy mixed ensemble I’d wrapped pragmatically around my form that morning on a quick run to town, lucky I remembered to change out of my slippers and into elastic-sided work boots. This was my childhood, renewed and transformed.

Just 15 months earlier we had listened to Joel Salatin speak at the Lake House in Daylesford and I’d turned to my beloved Stuart, slapped him on the leg, and said, ‘that’s it! We’re going to be farmers!’

The first year was a rose-tinted dream, a rural idyll, in which we climbed the volcano for the views instead of to find a short in the fence, and had such poor priorities that the next year would see us scrambling to fence ahead of a quickly growing herd of beautiful Large Black pigs.

Stuart took to the farm like the Mr Project Man he’d always been, with a brand new giant shed we thought would take years to fill but that in fact was full in a sparrow’s heartbeat. His first project was to build us a bedroom from the shipping container that had carried our mountains of lifestuff up to the farm. It was the first of many such container conversions at Jonai!

After waiting a few months for our first tiny herd of five gilts and a boar, the first litter of tiny little black piglets were born to Keen in June 2012, and Big Mama a fortnight later, and we learned a hard lesson about the importance of colostrum for newborns that confirmed what I’d advocated for human babies in my early years of mothering.

Nearing Christmas that year we started to approach local butchers to cut our first pig with all the ignorance of newbies to the meat industry. Lesson One: don’t talk to butchers about anything, but especially not ham, in the weeks before Christmas! We had our first pig slaughtered, and after collecting the carcass, Stuart picked me up from the train station at the end of a week working in the city for the federal government (what was I thinking?!). At about 7pm I commenced butchering my first pig with nothing but a couple of books and youtube on my side. A butcher was born.

After all the local butchers turned us down when we asked about contract butchery for smallholders, we found the wonderful Sal of Salvatore Regional Butchers about half an hour away in Ballan. Sal not only agreed to cut our pigs for us (two per fortnight at that stage), he also was just mad enough to agree to teach me butchery while he did it. By the time he agreed, we’d already decided we would build our own boning room, and that the way to do it was to crowdfund it.

In 2013 we raised $27,500 to build our boning room, and while Stuart built it, I learned pork butchery with Sal. Two pigs a fortnight was all we were doing in those early days, a tough way to learn butchery with so little repetition and two weeks between cutting sessions. And for the life of me I can’t remember why I didn’t do more than one session watching Sal cut our beef… leaving me to work out how to do it. In my first year I had a beautiful elderly local customer bring back a piece of meat to gently say, ‘I think you’ve just cut a bit too far along and got yourself into the round, dear.’  

I ran our first butchery demo workshop during the DMP Harvest Festival out on the back patio, showing some 50 people how to cut up a pig on what was my sixth ever carcass while my helpful father-in-law stood heckling me from the back. I got a quick lesson in catering for large numbers in preparation for that day, and have never done potatoes gratin for 50 since.

While we were crowdfunding the boning room, we also went on ABC Bush Telegraph for a six-month stint following one of our piglets from paddock to plate. With all the naïve wisdom of people who’d been farming five minutes, we agreed to ask the public their views on our management systems, starting with castration. We’d only just begun to think we would start castrating after some unwanted teen pregnancies and a couple of instances of boar taint in the meat, after an initial resistance to the idea as an ‘unnecessary intervention’. The vegan abolitionists castigated us for it, swiftly thickening our skin but also cementing our commitment to radical transparency on the farm.

In January 2014, just over two years after we arrived in Eganstown and one year selling meat, the boning room was licensed by PrimeSafe and we launched our first CSA shares. That year is a blur to me of cutting, new muscles and sore heels, help from friends, making new friends in the good folks who started turning up to volunteer because they just liked the cut of our jib and wanted to contribute to something exciting (I’m looking especially at you, Jass, my first ever meat grrl, then Head Meat Grrl, and forever meat grrl, friend, and comrade in arms), and hours of Fat Freddy’s Drop, Milky Chance, and country AND western music just like my mama. #meatgrrlsmonday for lyf! That’s the year we also became profitable after just two years (instead of the projected five) and we haven’t looked back.

We ran our first Salami Days – teaching people the age-old art of meat, salt, & time. We butchered, seasoned, minced, and stuffed many kilos of salami and hung them in the shed to be enjoyed in a few months’ time. And then PrimeSafe came and destroyed them all. Another hard lesson was learned about the state of food safety regulations in this country, galvanizing me to start garnering stories and evidence for a campaign to change things… by this time I was President of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA), so I not only had the collective to work with, I had a framework to understand clearly what’s at stake, what we’re fighting for, and who we’re up against.

A year on we rounded up another successful crowdfunding campaign and by 2015 I had a commercial kitchen and curing room to play in, thanks to Stuart’s mad skills in converting containers to incredibly useful workspaces. The new space took us from paddock to plate to paddock to paddock, as we utilize every part of the carcasses – heads are paté de tête or guanciale, pork cheeks, and ears are dehydrated for pet treats, as are trotters; and a quarter of the bones become bone broth and three quarters go to the members. After making paté or bone broth, the spent bones go out to Stuart’s retort to be pyrolised into bonechar – a mineral-rich form of activated carbon that does wonders for our tiny commercial garlic crop and the home garden.

As we increased production of more value-added products on the farm, I also stepped up the advocacy with AFSA as we worked towards establishing a Legal Defence Fund to support farmers against the tyranny of rogue regulators, and scale-inappropriate regulation and land use legislation. Speaking truth to power, demanding the same accountability from government that they demand from food producers, AFSA started gaining real ground as representatives of key stakeholders in the food system – small-scale regenerative farmers.

But all this advocacy meant I took my eye off the ball and the farm suffered for it. Stuart was carrying too much of the load on his strapping shoulders, and we sailed into a fertility crisis that would see us lose nearly 40% of our pork production due to small or non-existent litters as our herd aged, the weather heated unseasonably early, and many of the sows simply got a bit too fat. 2016 was a really tough year.

With the generous support of our beautiful CSA members, we scraped through that year. Great disruptions are known to cause innovation, and after careful planning, we renounced all purpose-grown commercial grain from the pigs’ diet by December, cutting nearly $20,000 out of our annual costs. Contrary to industrial ag wisdom, an ecologically-sound improvement to our model was also an excellent financial decision for the farm. Giving up grain grown in monocrops reliant on petrochemical inputs to instead divert hundreds of tonnes of food waste from landfill was a deeply satisfying shift that furthered our efforts to be a truly agroecological farm.

February 2017 was a major milestone for the Jonai, as Joel Salatin, the man who inspired us to farm in the first place, joined us on the farm along with long-time AFSA champion Costa of ABC Gardening fame, for a fundraising event for the brand new AFSA Legal Defence Fund, raising $35,000 on the day and growing awareness of the challenges small-scale farmers are facing in scale-inappropriate and poorly rationalised legislation.

One milestone often drives another, and this one brought a team of volunteers who enthusiastically helped Stuart finish the Belvedere, our magnificent events shed built entirely of secondhand materials, largely windows. A feeling of completeness accompanied the rustic chic of the Belvedere, making workshops such a breeze to run with the long table for lunch waiting prettily while we butcher and craft salami in the middle of the space, but it wasn’t long before there was an itch…

And so Stuart has commenced building a back kitchen and cellar on the back of the Belvedere to make workshops easier to cater and give us a spot for our salami and cheese curing, beer making, and preserve storing… plus a pizza oven is in the works to take centre stage in the Belvedere, and Stuart’s feed shed out back just needs its roof… and of course we’re keen for a bit more short-term accommodation for the flow of beautiful people who grace our patch of dirt through all seasons, and Stuart just registered Wasted Distillers…

And there’s always the entire food and agriculture system to transform to keep me busy. ;-)

Viva la revolución! Viva la via campesina!

Feed: Weaning ourselves off industrial grain

I’ve spent the better part of what will soon be (gasp!) three decades worrying about the ills of industrial animal agriculture, and most of today gathering some of the relevant stats around the amount of feed grown globally to feed livestock in preparation for writing about what we’re trying to achieve in our feeding system at Jonai Farms. Bear with me…

The inconsistencies in data depending on the source have been doing my head in – does the livestock industry contribute 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) or 3%? Which life cycle analysis is accounting properly for all parts of the food chain, and which acknowledges the differences between Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and small-scale pastured animal farming? Is 60% of American corn fed to animals or is it 80%? If 47% of soy produced is fed to animals in the US, how can it be 85% globally?

And then it occurred to me that the numbers don’t matter that much. We simply must stop growing monocultures of grain crops only to process and feed them to animals. Whether it contributes 3% or 18% to greenhouse gases, it’s just bloody unnecessary and entirely a result of industrialised agriculture, which segregates each aspect of production in the most unnatural ways instead of growing food in diverse, integrated, and holistic systems.

Here are some more numbers (sorry not sorry but I spent so much time gathering them): according to the Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) 26% of the earth is used to graze animals, and 33% of the earth’s arable land is dedicated to feed crop cultivation. The FAO also reckons that 50% of all grain produced in the world is fed to livestock, mostly in the wealthy countries of the Global North.

There’s a complicated discussion to be had around the differences between feeding grains to ruminants (such as cattle, sheep, and goats) and non-ruminants (aka monogastrics like pigs, poultry, and people), but that’s for another post. (Fun fact for those who don’t already know this – horses are not ruminants, they’re monogastric herbivores.) In that discussion we could talk about the suitability of a part or whole grain diet for ruminants, and differences in greenhouse gas emissions from different species, but I’ll simply offer this short quote about some of those complexities before moving on:

‘…pork and poultry production currently consume over 75% of cereal and oil-seed based on concentrate that is grown for livestock (Galloway et al., 2007). Therefore, while ruminants consume 69% of animal feed overall, nonruminates consume 72% of all animal feed that is grown on arable land (Galloway et al., 2007). Consequently, while enteric fermentation from nonruminants is not a significant source of GHG, indirect emissions associated with cropland dedicated to nonruminant livestock might be significant.’ Ref.

Like I said, it’s complicated. So this is a slightly long-winded introduction to telling you the story of what we feed our animals at Jonai Farms and why we’ve made the choices we have.

***

From the outset with our pigs and cattle, we wanted to farm agroecologically – ‘working with biodiversity to provide the farming system with ecological resilience and reduce dependence on costly, often harmful, conventional inputs’. One thing that means is that since obtaining our first pigs, we had intentions to salvage or produce enough feed for a complete diet for them without purchasing grain purpose-grown for livestock.

It’s been five years but last week we achieved that goal!

From very early on, our pigs have been fed primarily a diet of spent brewers’ grain (some of which Stuart ensiles with molasses to stabilize it for storage and increase the energy extracted by the brewing process). We drive twice a week to collect a total of around three tonnes of this grain. The cattle are fed any excess, particularly during the height of summer and depths of winter when nutrient value of the feed on the paddocks is lower.

In addition to the spent brewers’ grain, Stuart has managed to salvage so-called waste stream (or in some cases ‘surplus yield’) feed from the dairy, fruit, and vegetable industries, including post-harvest ‘seconds’ of everything from potatoes to strawberries, colostrum-rich cow’s milk during calving season, and supply-chain damaged or unwanted dairy products such as milk and cheese.

Two summers ago a dairy processor delivered an entire container load of milk – in thousands of plastic bottles – when they had an oversupply due to some kind of logistics failure. We contacted every pig farmer we knew and got them to collect as much as they could haul away but were left with enough milk to feed out for many months. In consultation with our vet, we were confident that spoilt milk is not dangerous nor non-nutritive for the pigs – they continued to enjoy it well past the point where we enjoyed feeding it out.

We’ve only made minor inroads into fodder cropping, with some success at growing turnips and brassicas in the mostly rye paddocks we inherited in our attempts to wean ourselves off purpose-grown commercial grain.

We have, however, planted at least one hundred oak trees and a couple dozen other nut and fruit trees to provide fodder in what we hope will eventually be a full-blown agro-sylvo-pastoral system. Trees take a really long time to grow and they’re hard to keep alive through our hot summers, but Stuart does his best to nurse them through the heat.

While the brewers’ grain is a steady supply upon which we can rely and the paddocks provide a proportion of the happy piggehs regular diet (up to 20% depending on the season), the other salvaged feed has been sporadic – not enough to rely on without ensuring we had a nutritious regular feed on hand to supplement the brewers’ grain.

This other ration has always been a pelletised grain we’ve bought from a Victorian feed supplier. The standard ration we were originally offered was a mix of barley, wheat, peas, lupins, bread mix, mill run, soy, post-industrial food waste (such as bread meal and Smarties off the factory floor to increase the energy), essential amino acids (such as methionine, tryptophan and lysine), and vitamins and minerals. We said ‘no, thanks’ and asked for a custom ration that was just barley, wheat, and lupins and paid an extra $50/tonne for the privilege of keeping all the nutrititive and non-nutritive additives and soy out of it.

The pellets formed anywhere from 15-30% of the pigs’ diet for the past five years (depending on their age and stage, e.g. wet sows get more pellets to ensure they’re getting sufficient proteins to support reproduction). It was convenient, very little wastage, and simple to monitor nutrition as the feed company’s nutritionists did all the knowledge work for us. But it never sat well with our principles – we’ve been relying on the very industrialised food system we rail against!

Last week everything changed when we got a call to collect 23 tonnes of water-damaged rice (only about 2 tonnes of which was actually damaged). It wasn’t lost on us that this rice was sent from a country with much higher levels of food insecurity than Australia only to be condemned on food safety standards when the vast majority of the shipment was perfectly palatable, but much better to at least divert it to feed and keep it out of the landfill. We shared the bounty with some other farming mates, and ultimately collected 14 tonnes ourselves, which we unloaded manually one five-kilo bag at a time into our shed.

On the second day of collecting the rice, we were also offered some 14 pallets of milk from the landlord of a distributor who’d gone into (heh) liquidation. Again we shared the love and collected five pallets for ourselves, all of us grateful to the landlord who wanted to see the milk used and not wasted.

The rice stores well, and if we feed it out at 10-15% of the pigs’ normal ration (as advised in the plethora of research articles I’ve read on the topic) we have enough for nearly two years. The milk will last a couple of months if fed out at up to 20% of their ration. We actually live next to a dairy and have been discussing buying milk directly from him as we would pay the same as we were paying for pellets (50 cents per litre, and we pay 50 cents per kilo of pellets) for a higher quality feed, while supporting one of the many struggling dairy farmers in Australia (he’s been paid as low as 25 cents per litre this year). So if more waste-stream milk doesn’t come our way we have another source of milk, a near-perfect feed for pigs as it contains the essential amino acids needed for optimal health, fertility, and growth.

Inspired by all this salvage feed, I contacted a local free-range egg farmer we know and have planted the seed with him to get their egg seconds as well, which he said he’s happy to barter for pork (when the other pig farmers who take some don’t get in first!).

This windfall of salvaged feed sent me back into a whirl of planning for 2017 – I do love a good spreadsheet – and we’ll be adjusting a few priorities now that we’re entirely reliant on salvaged feed.

For a starter, building a shed near the pig paddocks with a 20-foot container to store dry feed in a rodent-proof box has jumped up the list. While we wait for our oaks to produce for the pigs, we’re also keen to collect acorns and chestnuts in autumn and dry store them in the container to feed out, in this case not so much diverting waste as using a wasted resource that is abundant in our region.

The tractor we’ve wanted to buy for a few years but just couldn’t fully justify in a system we are physically capable of running manually (for now – ask again in a decade!) has also climbed the priority ladder. Offloading many tonnes of feed by hand is neither desirable nor sustainable when it’s our regular feed source. One mad week of offloading nearly 20 tonnes made us feel proud and strong, doing it regularly would quite likely make us feel dumb and tired!

A critical point about the shed and the tractor is that we can afford them because we just erased a significant feed bill from our budget – as with all things, taking on more labour ourselves rather than outsourcing it to others frees up more cash to invest in infrastructure and equipment.

But on that labour point – dealing with salvage feed is significantly more labour-intensive, and it also usually comes with a level of packaging waste that ultimately costs us as well. In the case of the rice bags, we have to pay if we need to deliver rubbish to the tip more than once per month. And there’s the extra time and labour to unpackage the rice and the milk, as well as milling and soaking the rice to make it fully digestible by the pigs. Some of this is a nuisance and is a hidden cost if you’re not paying attention. I’ve adjusted our business planning spreadsheet to fully account for the change in motor vehicle use and increase in waste disposal to ensure we know how much this ‘free’ feed actually costs us (financially – we also weigh all financial choices up against the environmental and social benefits of each decision, and salvage feed wins on every count).

The necessity of learning more about pig nutrition and carefully adjusting their rations to ensure they’re getting the best possible diet is some of the real work of farming, something that’s been lost in large-scale industrialised agriculture where the knowledge and competence to source, process, mix and distribute feed has been outsourced to another segment of the ‘industry’.

Stuart and I are both feeling excited and invigorated by our newest milestone and its requisite stepping up our skills and knowledge. It’s got us back on the case of working out an effective and productive mixed perennial and annual fodder cropping system in the paddocks as well.

There are more improvements happening with the cattle I’ll write about soon enough, where I’ll include details on the introduction of the chickens and their eggmobile out on the paddocks providing an incredible ecological service to our soils while nutrient cycling what would otherwise be ‘waste’ from our own boning room. This year we not only quit commercial grain and made it fully onto salvaged feed, we also went from being ‘paddock-to-plate’ to being ‘paddock-to-paddock’!

Bring on 2017!

Postscript: A quick note on waste-stream feed, animal health, and food safety.

Swill feeding (feeding waste feed that includes any meat product or product that has been in contact with meat) is banned in Australia and much of the industrialised world. There are some good reasons for this, as some downgraded food can become contaminated with pathogens that make animals and/or the people who eat them ill. For example, foot and mouth disease, which can be derived from contaminated meat products fed to pigs, has wrought havoc with pig production overseas. A blanket ban on swill feeding is typical of most regulation – incapable of dealing with complexity – and clear guidance and monitoring of use of swill would obviously be preferable for a small-scale farm. Meat meal is actually quite common in most pig feed (they are omnivores after all) – it is heat treated to kill potential pathogens. We have concerns about the origins of said meat (and fish) meal, so always opted out of that option in the pellets.

What I will say about the moral panic around feeding pigs swill, a practice claimed to be thousands of years old, is that it serves to protect the interests of Big Ag (whether intentionally or not) to the detriment of small-scale farmers. Intentionality is to an extent immaterial – the consequences are that a) food is wasted that could have gone to producing more food, b) small-scale farmers are forced to pay higher feed costs rather than use their labour to re-purpose waste, and c) most farms are forced to rely on monocultural grain production.

While we obviously don’t feed any swill to our pigs, we would love to see a day when sensible, safe regulations were put in place to allow swill feeding to reduce waste, increase smallholder profitability, and end reliance on unsustainable grain production for livestock feed.

Fertility and focus: lessons from 2016

So there we were, sailing along smoothly, with a bounty of piglets in a perfect little symmetrical cycle – two sows in with the boar, job done, a month later the sows come out, and then an average of eight little piglets per litter three months later, left to suckle for their first six to eight weeks before the whole thing would start again. Weren’t we clever? With 12 sows that meant we could produce over 180 pigs for meat per year. And that can mean nearly $200,000 revenue from just the pigs in our direct sales model with full control of the butchering and value adding.

And then one month there were no piglets. The next month (March) the two Marys only gave us 10. And the next month there were none. The ensuing months the decline continued, with some sows simply not getting in pig and others looming large only to deliver further small litters of just four and five piglets.

Stuart noted the decline and decided to start leaving sows in longer with the boar to give them a chance to cycle more times in hopes of getting in pig. To do this, he would leave the first pair in and then add another pair, and another until Borg would have up to six ladies in his paddock. This went on for some months and the situation actually worsened, with just three litters providing 15 piglets over three months. A litter of 11 was lost entirely to foxes when Pink farrowed unexpectedly in the middle of the paddock.

Stuart said he figured we might need a new boar. Borg (our original boar) was just over five years old at this stage, and Elvis was nearing three.

I told Stuart to make sure the litter record was up to date and do some analysis before we made a decision about whether we needed a new boar or new sows (our original sows Big Mama, Keen, and Pink were the same age as Borg). Very caught up in the butchery schedule, managing the still-new processes around the curing room, and overcommitted to my advocacy work for food sovereignty, I foolishly didn’t offer to help with the analysis. It turns out that Stuart wasn’t really sure what to do with the data we’d been capturing about the herd for the previous four years, and also that he’d been getting less diligent about recording all the data.

In May we bought a young boar (Prince) in readiness for when Borg was retired, be that sooner or later…

We knew that Big Mama had failed to get in pig over the past year, and at five years old we slaughtered her in May. It was emotional taking our first sow to the abattoir, but as a commercial farm we had decided years earlier that our sentimental selves needed to accept the realities of what we do – we raise pigs for food, and the breeding herd are all part of that system even though we grow quite attached to them. Being such big old animals we knew the muscles would be full of flavour, and chose to turn them into our farmstead cures of coppa, pancetta, and Eganstown air-cured ham. The size of the hams lend themselves well to curing for longer, and so these hams will be cured for a minimum of two years, with the names of the sows carried through to the packaging to honour them and offer what we hope is a respectful recognition of the part they’ve played at Jonai Farms.

At the start of July Stuart came in from the paddocks with a knitted brow and told me we were in serious strife, with not enough pigs on the ground to meet our commitments to our CSA members. He’d done a stocktake of exactly how many growers we had out on the paddocks and worked out we only had half as many as we normally would have. In May we had cut back from slaughtering eight to six pigs per fortnight as we were worried about the shortfall, but the new count showed we had to cut back to a mere three pigs per fortnight to make it to the end of the year. It was a blow.

I finally got my distracted head back in the game and swung into action. Updating the spreadsheet with Stuart’s memory of where he’d left gaps was a frustrating exercise to say the least. I think it’s fair to say the situation tested us as life and business partners, but that while it was difficult and stressful, we both handled things as generously and graciously as possible while feeling alternately angry and guilty for the part we’d both played in not identifying and addressing the decline in fertility earlier. But there’s nothing to be gained by simply pointing fingers and having tantrums – it was time to move forward.

Some pretty simple analysis with the spreadsheet quickly told me that Borg was the problem. He’d only sired two litters in the previous year to Elvis’ successful 12. Like with our first sow, it was sad to make the call to end Borg’s life, but again these are the realities of livestock farming – most of us can’t afford to treat our breeders as pets when they’re no longer productive, neither financially nor in land use.

We separated Borg from the girls to reduce the risk of boar taint when he was slaughtered, and at five and a half years old we turned him into the most delicious Cumberland sausages I have ever made, loaded with garlic-infused red wine, bay leaves, and heaps of fresh herbs from the garden. I used the fat from younger pigs to further reduce the risk of taint, and was surprised and delighted to find they had no trace at all of it.

At the point where we had at last gained clarity after six months of fumbling along we brought our vet in to preg test the rest of the sows to see what the next four months looked like for us. As expected, none of the sows who had been exclusively with Borg were pregnant, but happily most of those Stuart had joined with Elvis were.

We discussed all the variables that might have got us into trouble in the first place with our vet:

• an older breeding herd;
• lack of diversity of the genetics in a heritage breed;
• a very hot, dry autumn, summer, and spring – high temperatures are known to cause seasonal infertility and we’d had three of those seasons consecutively;
• the addition of cheese to the pigs’ diet – too much sodium could affect fertility;
• overweight sows due to too much cheese in their diet; and
• putting too many sows in for long periods with the boar, which could affect his semen count or even his interest in joining.

Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to say which of these variables have affected the herd over the past year the most. Clearly Borg was no longer viable, and we’re seeing regular litters again from Elvis and now also Prince, so that’s one problem solved (for now). But we’re still getting smaller litters than we were in the first few years – averaging six when we had reached eight when things were at their best. Overall our average pre-weaning mortality (stillbirths and squashing) for the past five years is 14%, but this year it went up as high as 26%.

We’ve just ordered another young boar to replace Elvis in the next year, and we’ve made the decision to bring in a Duroc terminal sire. Our reasoning is that with the limited lines available in Australia we’re at continued risk if we don’t ensure greater diversity in the herd to get our litter sizes back up. The Duroc genetics should also give us slightly larger piglets at birth so a higher survival rate would be expected. We’ll continue to select gilts from the purebreds to try to do our part to maintain the Large Black genetics in Australia.

We’re also doing more research on the pigs’ feed – we currently feed a mixed ration of a majority spent brewers’ grain from a local brewery, pelletised grain (primarily wheat, barley and lupins), and Stuart is just re-introducing a small amount of the seconds cheese to increase the protein (especially lysine) again without overfeeding and creating a fat or sodium issue. We’re also focusing on learning what fodder crops will work in our climate – hot, dry summers and cold, wet winters – in order to reduce our reliance on commercial grain while maintaining the appropriate nutrition for the pigs’ growth and reproductive health.

During the period of greatest crisis (between June and September), we made the decision to buy a dozen young growers from two other free-range farms we trust and grow them on to supplement the meat in our system. They were Large Blacks like ours, though a few were crossed with Berkshire. As a butcher I find different breeds on different feed can bring astonishing variations in meat quality. In this case, the pig carcasses from one of the farms had very poor structure in the meat and the fat. The flavour, while good enough and certainly not bad, lacked the sweetness of our pork. But it was the texture – the structure – that was strikingly different. It was flaccid, and the fat wasn’t the usual white, firm sponginess we’re used to, it was almost beige or light brown, and had an oiliness to it, as well as lacking structure. In one batch of bacon the fat actually rendered out – when I cut open a block there was just a pool of fat… we pulled that piece from production and ate it at home. Again, there was nothing really wrong with the flavour, but it didn’t sing like our pork and the sloppiness was quite unappealing.

When we asked the farmers about the pigs’ feed before they came to us, we learned that they’re fed primarily on cracked barley, but also get some linseed and hemp seed oil. That coupled with less groundcover on the paddocks in the more marginal country where they farm seems to have resulted in insufficient protein and perhaps trace minerals (?) to grow healthy, strong muscles. It was yet another lesson for us – we saw and tasted firsthand the difference the right feed can make (and yet acknowledge our feed may still be contributing to the reproductive issues…).

Aside from the fact that as a tragic optimist I can tally all of this difficult year up to be a sum total of massive learning and improving as farmers, the serious good news story to come out of this is the success of community-supported agriculture (CSA). Back in July I had the unenviable task of writing to our wonderful community of CSA members to tell them of our plight, and to ask for their support. While CSA is explicitly a risk-sharing model where the members are asked to support farmers through difficult growing periods and the vagaries of nature, we didn’t really think we’d ever have to test the model in this way. It’s fruit and vegetable farmers who are more vulnerable to fickle nature, right? A hard frost or a severe windstorm is the sort of thing that might wipe out a crop, but it doesn’t faze a hardy herd of pigs. Well, turns out fertility can be just as unpredictable as the weather…

I wrote to the members and told them their bags might not be as heavy as what they signed up for, but that I would add some of the high-value cures, bone broths, or extra beef to make up for it if that was okay with them. I pressed ‘send’ and held my breath… and then I wept as the responses flooded in… they were overhwlemingly supportive, kind, and appreciative of our transparency in all parts of the farm. Without our members, we might have simply copped a nearly 50% loss in sales, but instead we only suffered some 15 or 20% loss.

Nobody had to go get another job, we know a lot more about pigs’ reproductive health and nutritional needs than we did a year ago, and production is increasing steadily back towards normal. If our story helps even one other farmer identify fertility issues more quickly and avoid what we’ve been through this year then telling this story will have been worth it. And if the non-farming folk out there read this and have a greater appreciation for the complicated variables farmers deal with every day to get food to your table then it’s definitely worth it.

This was a hard story to write. While we’re committed to radical transparency to do our bit to repair our broken food system, sharing failures is scary and makes me feel vulnerable and conscious of the uncharitable ways some might use it to disparage our efforts. But there it is, we’re learning and sharing and doing our best.

In recollecting the past year with all the benefit of hindsight I’m totally exasperated by our early inaction to start addressing the problem systematically and seek the right advice. I’ve been banging on for some time about the importance of keeping good litter records, but your records are only as good as the data you collect, and they’re only useful if you analyse that data. And even once you’ve analysed it, there may be multiple factors at play and solving farming problems is a complex matter… and an incredibly interesting and rewarding one when you start to crack the code again!

To the farmers and vets out there - please feel free to offer your experiences, advice, and wisdom. We welcome feedback from those who know more or differently than us!

And here’s to a more fruitful and focused year ahead! 

Community-supported agriculture at Jonai Farms

My interest in community-supported agriculture started in early 2000 as an eater in search of local, organic vegetables for my dear little family of three, soon to be pregnant with the fourth of ultimately five Jonai. We were living in Santa Cruz, California, pursuing the granola, earth-mama lifestyle so prevalent in that part of the world in spite of the exorbitant cost of living. Living on just $35,000 per annum with a rent of $1600 per month, we didn’t have cash to spare.

I was a vegetarian at the time, which helped keep food costs down, but I was also determined to feed the little people I had grown inside my own body organic produce only. And so after many months of joyful shopping at Santa Cruz’s excellent twice-weekly farmer’s markets, we stumbled across the CSA farm run by the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC).

Even now, the UCSC CSA vegie box is a mere $25/week, payable as $560 in advance of the 22-week season. It was a struggle to find the money up front, but UCSC offers low-income households a few options to improve access, and we were able to pay in two instalments instead of one.

The bounty was incredible – a box of seasonal fruit and veg plucked from the farm each morning before collection time. Interacting with the student farmers and hearing about the harvest – successes & failures – was a highlight of the week, often helping us understand better what was and wasn’t working in our own little garden a mile away from campus.

A decade later we found ourselves setting up our own farm in the central highlands of Victoria, Australia. From the beginning we were keen to run the farm as a CSA, but until we tested our supply of ethically-raised rare-breed pork and beef, we didn’t feel confident asking people to commit. It seemed wrong to ask the community to share our risk when we weren’t even sure what the risks were, and had no production data to know what our average litter sizes or carcass yields would be.

The first year of meat sales (second year on the farm) affirmed our caution in waiting to start the CSA. We had a lot to learn about farming and butchering, and were pleased with the way demand for our produce grew rather organically as supply grew, without placing undue pressure on us to produce more.

Halfway through that first year of selling meat, we crowdfunded a $30,000 boning room and I trained as a butcher while Stuart built it, and we see the crowdfunding as our first foray into community-supported agriculture, because that’s just what it was. People pledged an up-front payment for a reward of fresh pork we delivered once we had a licensed boning room. And that’s how it works – people take a risk with you and you deliver, and so we did.

The same month we got our licence for the boning room was also the month we launched our CSA. It was also just a few months before we reached peak production – an average of eight pigs and a side of beef per fortnight. We’d watched our land carefully over the previous two years as we went from our original single boar and five breeding sows until we reached two boars and 12 sows on our 69 acres in addition to an average of 18 cattle.

We have sufficient demand to grow more animals for meat, but our land would suffer, so we reached the limit set by our soil and climate. We’d set out to be an ethically-viable no-growth model, and two years in, we found the limit of our start-up growth. It also just happens to be a very full and fulfilling schedule, and the workload, while sometimes quite intense, is sustainable for a small family farm.

So with those three variables – taking over our supply chain with the boning room, reaching peak production, and launching the CSA – in January 2014 we went from running a small loss to making our first profit, and we’ve been profitable since.

The first month, we had eight subscribers, which gave us an assured income of just over $12,000 for the year. Six months into the CSA, we had 25 members, and by the start of the second year our community had grown to 40, with about two-thirds based in Melbourne and one-third spread around our region. As we enter the third year, we have 74 members and a waiting list for Melbourne, with room for about 15 more members in the region.

In exchange for 6 or 12 months payment up front, or a monthly payment, subscribers get 3, 5, 6 or 10kg bags of pork only or mixed pork and beef cuts, including our range of smallgoods. The bags now may also contain pet treats, bone broths, air-dried muscles such as coppa, lonza and pancetta, and charcuterie such as our popular pâté de tête made from the heads.

The CSA currently guarantees us an income of just under $100,000 out of a total revenue of approximately $170,000 projected for 2015-16. The remainder is about $50,000 in ad hoc sales in the region and through farm gate, and approximately $20,000 from our monthly workshops. Our profit margin is around 30%, giving us an income of just over $50,000 after all farm expenses are covered.

Our cost of living here is so low as we grow and barter for the majority of our food and live a low-consumption lifestyle that we find this income meets all our needs, and will actually increase slightly as we improve certain processes and eventually stop building new structures!

Aside from a secure income, there are too many benefits to the farmers and the eaters in community-supported agriculture to possibly quantify, but I’ll mention a few. For us, getting to know our members, their preferences, and their appreciation for our efforts and the uncommonly delicious results is invaluable. The emails, texts, and photos on social media sharing how people have cooked our meat, or how their children will no longer eat any sausages but ours are salve to knuckle-weary farmers at the end of a day of what must otherwise be thankless toil for those working in a disconnected, windowless industrial boning room or cavernous sheds full of shrieking, stinking, miserable pigs.

Since joining your csa our monthly spend on meat has reduced by heaps. Also the meat you provide is so nourishing that we often have some left over by the time the new bag arrives (usually bacon so i freeze it). We get the small pack and it is enough for three full size women who eat well! (One is 12 but she is the middle size person). AND of course the taste is sensational. All three of us were unable to stomach pork prior to trying yours! You are awesome!  Thank you. (CSA member Tani Jakins, 2015)

Even the critical feedback – not enough meat on the ribs, too much fat on the bacon, uncertainty about the grey colour of our nitrite-free bacon – is so much easier to hear from people with whom we have an ongoing and genuine relationship. This feedback has helped me improve my butchering skills as members have guided me with their desires, just as it has taught many of them that fat is delicious and nitrites are the only reason most bacon is lurid pink.

Logistically, running a CSA with bags of mixed cuts enables me to ensure every carcass is fully utilised, and makes packing day a much simpler exercise than when I was cutting and filling bags to custom requirements. And the standard CSA set box model teaches eaters to be better, more resourceful cooks attached to seasons and the reality of just 28 ribs and two tenderloins per pig. It also means automated repeating invoices, instead of endless documentation of weights after packing followed by 100 tailored invoices into the night before delivering 400kg of meat.

Having attended the Urgenci: International Network for Community-Supported Agriculture conference in China in November, we’ve come back full of ideas from our CSA farming comrades around the globe, including plans to share our budget with members (starting with sharing the financial data here right now!), and preparation to host a members-only Open Day on the farm, with butchery & cooking demos, music, and of course a long lunch of Jonai Farms pork and beef surrounded with organic bounty from other growers in our beautiful region.

At Jonai Farms & Meatsmiths, we say we don’t need to scale, we need to multiply. In our region and across Australia we see this happening rapidly, and we’re delighted to be amongst at least half a dozen small-scale free-range pig farms within 100km of us. There’s room for many more if our waiting list is anything to go by, and imagine a land re-populated with families caring for the land, sending our kids to the local schools, and re-creating vibrant rural communities. You won’t get that with scale – quite the opposite in fact.

Community-supported agriculture comes from an ethics of connectedness, care, and solidarity. It ensures accountability at both the farmer and the eater end of the equation, provides a viable living for farmers, and helps everyone learn more about the hows and whys of food production. As we enter our third year of running our farm as a CSA, we’d like to thank our members – those who’ve been with us since the beginning and those recently arrived – we couldn’t do this without you.

If you’re interested in reading further about CSAs around the world, have a look at the Urgenci website, and especially the Principles of Teikei, developed in Japan, the birthplace of CSAs in the 1970s.

Viva la revolución!

Principles of Teikei

Principle of mutual assistance

Principle of accepting the produce

Principle of mutual concession in the price decision

Principle of deepening friendly relationships

Principle of self-distribution

Principle of democratic management

Principle of learning among each group

Principle of maintaining the appropriate group scale

Principle of steady development

Grow Your Ethics Part Three: The ethically-viable no-growth model

In Part Two of Grow Your Ethics, I wrote about supply chain control and connectedness.

In Part Three, I’ll share:

how and why we avoid a growth and competitive mentality,

how we manage the farm with fair labour,

what radical transparency has meant to us over these past few years, and

how all of these parts of our system come together to nourish us and our community while still respecting the pigness of the pig.

We live in a world that values productivism – the idea that more production is a necessary good. That we should constantly strive to produce more, and that society’s (economic) well-being is based on increasing production.

‘Sustainable intensification’ is a logical outcome of the productivist mindset, but under what conditions can we intensify production in a way that is in fact sustainable? If it involves putting more animals on less land, many would argue that it is impossible to do so sustainably. Concentration of effluence alone creates an environmental dilemma that requires more energy, infrastructure and externalization of the problem as the effluence is hauled offsite or, in worst-case scenarios, pollutes local waterways.

As long ago as 1975, British economist E.F. Schumacher declared that:

Infinite growth in consumption in a world of finite resources is an impossibility.

40 years later, we are still being told that we must grow the economy, get big or get out, and work to economies of scale to be as efficient as we can be.

At Jonai Farms, we agree with Schumacher’s claim that ‘small is beautiful’, and we are committed to running an ethically-viable no-growth model.

That is, we are led by our ethics, which we understand must be financially viable for us to survive and thrive. And our ethics include a rejection of productivism that we believe is the root of the current problems inherent in the industrial food system.

I’ve written previously on the need for an ‘ethics of scale’ rather than economies of scale. We’re currently living proof that it works, with a healthy profit margin that ensures we can pay all our bills, look after our animals properly, and still manage to travel each year to expand horizons and strengthen the family bonds.

We don’t compete with the other wonderful growers around us, we collaborate, support, and promote each others’ efforts.

We don’t need to scale, we need to multiply.

More small farms means more people on the land, which means thriving rural communities, which drives better resourcing of regional and rural towns. It means buses full of healthy children streaming into dynamic and diverse schools, and access to food grown locally by people you know personally.

There is no disadvantage in having more farms growing more food, whereas there are uncountable negative consequences of scaling farms. Scale decreases the number of people working the land, and increases automation typically through higher petroleum consumption. Bigger farms are demonstrably less diverse, and monocultures are riskier systems, which require higher chemical inputs to manage.

Small-scale agroecological farms like ours are more labour intensive, which we value as it means more people learning and earning an income, and a richer community on the farm. But one of the wicked problems of the emerging fair food farming movement is how to treat farm workers as well as farm owners fairly.  

We have a diverse approach to solving this problem at Jonai.

In terms of paid labour, we have a school-based farm apprentice, the wonderful Will, who works with Stuart 2.5 days/week. As the daily farming operation is technically manageable by one person, having Will here is of most benefit to progress further works – new building projects, more fencing, and soon, introducing egg chickens into our system behind the cattle on the paddocks.

We also have my head meat grrl Jass, who is paid to work with me in the boning room for the two major pork-cutting days (out of five processing days) each fortnight.

Next we have our volunteer residency program, a three-month opportunity to learn our system back to front. Our residents live on the farm with us in purpose-built accommodation (a converted 20-foot container with lovely views over home dam), and/or in the solar-powered hut next door on our lovely neighbours’ property, which we barter for with meat. J

Residents work five days per week with us, and are welcome to spend weekends here or away as suits them. They assist out on the paddocks through to the boning room and kitchen – wherever the need is greatest on any given day. We all sit down to three cooked meals each day and discuss farm logistics, new projects, and food politics ‘til the cows come home.

Finally, I run a meatsmith roster as we’ve had so much interest from people wanting to learn to butcher from me (especially women – Meat Grrl Mondays are legendary!). So on any given butchery day we’ll have one or two other volunteers lending a hand, learning to cut, and playing Captain Cryovac. They never leave without a thank you in the form of some Jonai uncommonly delicious ethical meats.

In regular conversations with the stream of helpers paid and voluntary, we ensure that our system is fair for all involved. While confident that we’re offering appropriate value to our volunteers, we’re very conscious of the need to seek feedback that everyone feels they are being treated fairly.

Short-term internships and voluntary residencies, it seems to me, are a great way to balance the problem of the need for extra hands on the farm with insufficient cash flow to employ a lot of people. But anything longer than about three months on a farm like ours would run the risk of exploiting that labour as by then people have mastered the systems to the point where they are a very useful and indeed autonomous part of the farm.

We semi-regularly take a few weeks or a month off from having residents to test that the farm is manageable without them – if it wasn’t, we believe we should pay for the labour in addition to the room, board and tuition we already provide. Each time we find that we can still run the farm on our own with our two paid employees, but it’s not nearly as fun and is a very demanding schedule!

This level of detail and honest accounting for our system brings me to the importance of radical transparency at Jonai Farms & Meatsmiths.

Over these past four years we have shared our successes (crowdfunding & butchery, hurray!) and failures (the regulator destroyed our salami, boo!), and the minutiae of our decision-making processes. Sometimes it has been hard to be so open – we copped a lot of criticism (mostly from vegan abolitionists, but also from other quarters) when we told you on Radio National of our decision to castrate, for example. And we’ve also been given a huge amount of positive feedback and support for our sharing.

We share to keep ourselves accountable to all of you, to our animals, and to the land. We share so that others don’t have to reinvent the wheel or make the same mistakes we have. We share because for too long food has been grown invisibly, and people have a right and need to know just how your food is produced. We share because we’re in this for the movement, and we want to help grow more farmers, not push them aside in order to pursue endless growth ourselves.

Ultimately what we’re really about at Jonai Farms is connectedness. Our connections keep us honest and ethical. A strong connection to the pigs and cattle carries a responsibility to ensure they only have that ‘one bad day’. And the daily feeding, wallow checking and litter admiring means feet on the ground and eyes on the paddocks, which ensures we’re accountable to our soils. If an area has been hit hard by too many pigs, it’s immediately apparent – we reject moonscaping the paddocks as unsustainable land management.

Connection to our workers holds us accountable to a fair day’s work for everyone. You can’t sit down to three meals a day together and look your workers in the eyes if you’re treating them unfairly. We have been blessed with so many intelligent, hard working, passionate, and fun people over these past few years, and we’re ever grateful for all of their contributions.

Connection to our community here in the central highlands of Victoria involves a lot of bartering, sharing, helping and being helped.

And connection to our eaters is what makes us most accountable of all. Our food must not only be delicious, it must be as fair as we say it is, and critically, it must also be safe. If something goes wrong, we know every person we have sold our food to – there’s no hiding behind a long supply chain and the capacity to be faceless behind a slew of distributors and retailers. If Jonai pork makes you sick, you’re going to ring the Jonai.

Connectedness is knowledge, pleasure, and accountability.

Small is beautiful.

Ethics are delicious.