From the Director’s Desk

by Rob Terry, Executive Director

Despite representing less than 2% of Merck Forest & Farmland Center’s total acreage, our hilltop farm is deeply important to the organization in many ways. Over the last fifty years, consolidation has changed the nature of food production; gone are the days of ubiquitous family farms. Modern agriculture is largely industrial, commercial, and mechanized, bearing little in common with the children’s books and toys that introduce us to a fictionalized pastoral construct rife with straw hats, clean overalls, smiling cows, well-kept red barns, and glistening green tractors. With the exception of a subculture of self-reliant mavens, we are all reliant on agriculture. In spite of this, there are relatively few opportunities for people to experience food production first hand. This is where MFFC’s farm comes in.

Simply put, the primary purpose of MFFC’s farm is to fill the gap that has been created by farm consolidation. In nearby Addison County, Vermont, the last fifty years have seen every ten farms combined to one. As a result of that transition, there are 90% fewer children growing up on farms, 90% fewer community members helping out on a neighbor’s farm, 90% fewer folks in regional metropolitan areas with a farm in the family that they can visit in the summer. Today, more people than at any time in human history begin their relationship with the food system at the grocery store. There is a risk in this. The iconic images of farms often present on food packaging trend more towards the aforementioned fictionalized pastoral construct than the reality of modern commercial agriculture. Unfortunately, this iconography is not always consistent with the conditions that these animals experience or the associated environmental impacts.

MFFC’s farm provides an opportunity for visitors to see purposeful, regenerative perennial horticulture and livestock production in action firsthand. While MFFC’s livestock operation yields a variety of provisions (specifically fiber, eggs, and meat) its primary product is meat. Of the approximately eight billion people on the planet, it is estimated that around 86% regularly consume meat. While vegetarianism and veganism are both on the rise globally, meat consumption remains high. Annually, approximately 80 billion animals are raised for meat around the globe. The conditions that many of these animals are raised in, and the associated environmental impacts, present a variety of ethical dilemmas. Around the globe, different societies (and different individuals within societies) have varying opinions on whether it is ethical to consume meat; ranging from some who believe that eating meat is a moral imperative to others who feel it morally unjustifiable. As an institution, we respect each individual’s right to choose whether or not to consume meat based on their personal values.

Merck Forest & Farmland Center has chosen to raise animals for meat, but to do so as humanely as possible by raising them in a way that honors the animals’ nature, meets their needs, and affords them their key freedoms (an internationally accepted standard that grants animals the freedom: 1. from hunger & thirst, 2. from discomfort, 3. from pain, injury, or disease, 4. from fear & distress, and 5. to express normal behavior). MFFC’s livestock program also draws inspiration from a variety of sources including the work of Michael Pollan, author of a number of books including The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma Pollan explores a variety of value chains that bring modern humans food, assessing each in terms of how ethical, sustainable, and environmentally friendly they are. Through his examination, Pollan uses four meals to assess a variety of food production/acquisition strategies. As a part of this assessment, he identifies some practices that treat these value chains in a highly mechanical way while highlighting others that honor them as living organisms and systems.

Not surprisingly, those that that trend towards the ‘living organism’ side of the continuum yield results that are more sustainable as well as more ethically and environmentally sound.

Through a variety of on-farm practices MFFC strives to operate on the living organism side of the continuum. Animals on the farm are managed using high-intensity, multi-species rotational grazing. This practice, designed to mimic natural grassland ecosystems, involves keeping animals in small paddocks and moving to new pasture every 24-72 hours. In this system, sheep (the pickiest eaters on the farm) enter a new paddock first where they graze, fertilizing as they go. Once the sheep have moved on, in come the cows (well, just one cow here for the time being). The cows graze much of what the sheep left behind, depositing additional fertilizer as they go. Once the cows have moved on, in come the chickens and turkeys who will eat pest insects and parasites out of the sheep and cow manure, leaving their own fertilizer behind.

Throughout this process, careful consideration is paid to ensure humane treatment. Animals are well cared for, always provided access to shade and water, are led from pasture to pasture as opposed to chased, and are socialized from the time they are young to lessen the stress they experience from interacting with staff and visitors. When the time comes for the animals to be processed (which is always a difficult day for the farmers that have been caring for them) every effort is made to eliminate as much stress and suffering as possible. In addition to yielding improved animal health and well-being-based outcomes, this system also offers increased ecological benefits. Raising animals on pasture and over-wintering them on hay allows us to eliminate any tilling. No-till practices reduce soil erosion, improve moisture conservation, sequester and store more carbon, and improve soil biology.

In the upcoming years, MFFC staff will be working to introduce more interpretive information on and around the farm, with the intention of helping visitors better understand not only the practices that they are seeing, but also how they can make decisions at the grocery store that will support humane, ecologically responsible farming practices. Anyone interested in learning more about, or helping with, MFFC’s livestock operations should check-in at the visitor center to get more information about our “Meet & Feed” and “Animal Ambassador” programs.

See you on the mountain!

Merck-Made products available at the VC Include:

Pasture raised eggs

Frozen whole chicken

Organic maple syrup

Frozen pork and lamb, coming in the fall

Pick-your-own blueberries and raspberries (July-Aug)