The Road to Madera by Diane

August 3, 2007

Once out of the immense sprawl, traffic and smog of Los Angeles, we found ourselves on Interstate 5, heading north toward Madera. The landscape seemed rather stark to my northeastern greenery eyes, but there’s a beauty to the dry brown and gold mountains that you travel through. And the sky is this unbelievable blue, and the sunlight is sharp and clear, so the contrast of the gold against the blue is truly beautiful, almost surreal.

As we headed out of the mountains and into the Central Valley (I think just past Bakersfield), we started to see dairy factory farms on the side of the road. Apparently, industrial agriculture has plans for this area of the country and many more factory farms are slated to move in.

If you’re unfamiliar with industrial ag and factory farms, please visit our Sustainable Table Issues section to learn more about what’s been happening with our food supply over the past 30-some years. (If you start with the section on factory farms, you can get a brief background.)

The Eat Well Guided Tour is not about exposing factory farms or documenting what’s wrong or bad - though I highly, highly recommend you check out Food and Water Watch’s Factory Farm Map that was just released – you can find out if a CAFO – confined animal feeding operation - happens to be in your area. This tour is about celebrating the positive and is to show you that sustainable food from small, family farms is more common than we all realize – we believe this is no longer a movement because there’s nothing to move toward anymore; it’s here. And sustainable, healthy food is here to stay – we all just need to catch up with what’s been happening for a while now.

But because we were literally driving by some of these farms, we stopped and took some photos, which I’ve posted up here. I eat dairy, so I’m not here to preach a vegetarian message, but I can tell you that I want my cheese and dairy products from animals that were raised outdoors on green pasture, as they’re supposed to be. Cows shouldn’t be locked up in a hot feedlot, which consists of dirt and manure mixed together and, if they’re lucky, some open sheds to give the animals some light.

What struck me the most was how friendly and inquisitive they were. As we stopped the bus and got out, some of the cows literally started running toward us. Leslie (our media person) was walking down the road a bit to take some shots, and she nearly started a stampede as the cows came barreling across the dirt toward her. And they just stood there looking at us with these beautiful, open eyes – I’m not trying to sound corny, but you really did want to go up and hug one. Really.

Hmm, maybe I will hug a cow before this tour is over.

Want to read more about our events today?

Hollywood to Madera
Pie Ranch

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