Hey Pinhead, I'm right with you. It's not enough to chuckle at little kids telling their parents milk doesn't come from cows, it comes from 'the store'.... we have adults who think that either their McDonalds burger came from a farm that keeps its cows on the pus-filled brink of death, or that their 'organic, hormone-free, free-range' beef came from happy, chunky, smiling cows in open grassy pastures.
...that without pesticides, we can very easily use just ladybugs (!) or special varieties of said crop (but not genetically modified! just... different types?) to grow a bounty reliably.
*cough*bull#$%**cough*
Every method is going to have its drawbacks. I personally dislike the idea of chickens raised where they need to have their beaks clipped, etc, but if I was serious about that, I'd probably forego chicken until I could raise some in my back yard.
The only really 'natural' meat anyone is ever going to have is what they hunt and shoot themselves, but I don't see that being very likely, either.
The heart of the problem is that demand is so much higher than it ever was. Where I grew up, it used to be a farming community. Family farms all a mile or two down the road from each other, each family with about a hundred head of cattle. Some for beef, but more often for dairy. (we're still talking WI here) but as of late it's become unprofitable to be a farmer there anymore. Working full time on the farm and putting in a shift at the local foundry has become the norm for those still farming. Others have sold their farms to the big 'company farms' and lament the loss. Such is life, though. If the big man can produce more and cheaper, the little guy, with his high costs and relatively lower productivity and slimmer profit margins, is going to be gone.
