Barbarians at the Gate

There are places in this country where 36 inches of rain falls each year. Imagine. Where rich black topsoil covers level fields. Where GPS controlled, air-conditioned tractors are the only visitors, and where the subsidy money falls from heaven just like that generous, regular precipitation. Well, we ain’t there, and thank God for that. The harsh environment of these high plains has made us lean and tough and hungry. But we haven’t forgotten, we have family lore about these rich lands, from back before we were pushed into the deserts to the west.

With 5-12 inches of rainfall, long winters and high winds, row crops are out of the question here. Unlike the dirt farmers in the midwest, we haven’t become dependent on government subsidies, on synthetic fertilizers, on pesticides and herbicides. We’ve see what that’s done to the people in the fertile pleasant farms of the midwest and it’s not pretty. Rivers and ground water so polluted it’s not safe to drink. Excess fertilizer flows downstream creating a dead-zone the size of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico. The herbicides and pesticides pollute and destroy the natural ecosystems. Insects and birds are decimated. The livestock are housed indoors, in tiny filthy cages, their waste is managed in industrial processes requiring serious safety precautions. Corn and ethanol are used at biofuels that are far worse for the environment than the oil and gas they replace for no reason that isn’t completely cynical. This green and fertile land is now a desert in biodiversity and when the last of the topsoil is blown away or eroded downstream, it will be a literal desert.

What poor stewards we’ve appointed for this exceptional land. If this was all it would be shameful enough but there’s more. When corn and soy production are taken to the limit, everything else must be subordinated and destroyed. That includes our health as the foods we consume get filled with these cheap and nutritionally deficient grains. Even the best genetic scientists can’t put into corn what no longer is available in the dirt.

But those rich and temperate lands haven’t seen the last of us, we’re coming back. Our mission at Brother Bull is to sell premium ground beef and use that money to buy up prime farmland, returning it to the native prairie. It won’t make economic sense. We’ll be called idiots and barbarians and worse names. However like regular steppe barbarian we don’t care what these dirt farmers think, we’ll do it because it’s a noble challenge, and we love to be part of something heroic.