county fair

It's fair time again, with our county fair running this week, to be followed in about a half month by the start of the state fair.  Fairs are good for rural communities, giving us the opportunity to turn off the internet and get into a physical person to person contact with someone, anyone, who may be doing work similar to ours and whose life features some of the same problems and opportunities as does ours.  We are in increasing danger of losing that and it cannot be replaced by more electronic gadgetry. 

But the livestock shows, and the teams of livestock judges who run them are an increasing problem for those of us who see things a little differently.  They are about the packer, the processor and the meat industry, farmer be damned.  Try to take one of these first place winning "breeding gilts" home, breed it and get it to farrow a decent litter of pigs and come into milk right.  These animals are ultra lean, more grotesque in their shape and outline every year, and the most attention the average livestock judge will pay to maternal characteristics is to tilt his head over a bit and pretend to count nipples.  There is no difference that I can see between the judging standards for the breeding classes and the market animals.  This is to say to the farmer that what he needs in an animal that fits on his (or increasingly "her") operation doesn't matter.  The fact is that the kind of body structure of medium frame and adequate fat cover that makes for a good functional sow is the same needed for good tasting pork.  Ultra lean is a packer's dream and a farmer's nightmare.

Over at the cattle exhibition, some of the same tendencies are obvious.  Beef breeds tend toward the kind of huge dinosaurs that will not finish on grass,  The dairy show is not about animals producing milk on grass.  Yet the use of grass is one of the best economic tools any independent farmer has.  It is best for any serious farmer to view these judging events as a kind of science fiction, and a diversion from reality.  Chuckle at the spectacle, but don't bring the ideas home.

Jim