This is a perfect elegant dinner for your family or a group of friends. It is extremely tasty and looks fantastic! When you slice this thickly it gives this gorgeous opulent look on the plate, and will make you look like a star chef! Not only that, you can say it is grass-fed!


Ingredients:

• Red Wine Sauce
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3 shallot, minced
• 8 mushrooms, sliced
• 1 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 2 cups dry red wine(of good quality)
• 1 ½ cups beef broth
• 2 fresh thyme sprig
• 1 tablespoon butter, room temperature
• Salt and pepper to taste

• 1 La Cense Chateaubriand roast
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• Crushed black pepper and kosher salt to taste

Preparation

For red wine sauce:
Heat butter in heavy large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add shallots and mushrooms; sauté until tender. Add sugar; sauté until mixture is deep brown, about 4 minutes longer. Add vinegar; stir until liquid evaporate. Add wine; boil until reduced by half. Add broth, thyme and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium; simmer uncovered for about half an hour. Finish with butter.

For beef tenderloin:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Sprinkle beef generously with salt and pepper. Place beef roast in roasting pan with a rack with a meat thermometer. Roast in oven until thermometer inserted into center of beef registers 120°F for medium-rare, about 35 minutes. Transfer beef to cutting board and let rest 10 minutes.

Oat farm in Georgia, circa 1940

The origin of our farm subsidies came out of the rampant overproduction and environmental devastation that happened during the 1930s.  Farm subsidies are supposed to not only ensure a food supply for us all but also to protect farmers from the severe fluctuations in community prices.  At the core of farm subsidies is the idea that a democracy must have a safe steady food supply that not only feeds us all but also helps farmers ride the waves of our market without losing their farms.  If farmers lose their farms then we as a nation have no one to grow our food.  Unfortunately, the original meaning of our farm subsidies has changed and there has been more stress put on feeding us (regardless of quality) than there has been on helping farmers keep their farms.  Farm subsidies, as they stand now, benefit large corporate farms more than they do small farms, and they benefit feedlots more than they do grass-fed producers.  In the 1930s, about 25% of Americans lived on small farms, but by 1997 only 2% of our population lived on farms; not only that, there were 6 million farms in 1930, and now only 157,000 farms account for 72% percent of the farm production.  How did this happen?

There are many reasons, but I think one of the largest reasons is that as less of us farm, fewer people are impacted by how hard and challenging farming has become (especially small operations).  Family farms have been declining at an alarming rate for the past 20 years; with large mega farms sprouting up all over rural America, there are so few voters that understand or care about agriculture policy.  During the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression farmers railed together; this is no longer the case because there are so few of us to protest.  Farmers protested in the 1930’s, sometimes even violently, for their right to hold onto their farms.  When foreclosed farms went up for sale, neighboring farmers would come to the sale to intimidate buyers.  They were a suffering community of one. Unfortunately this is no longer the case. Today, farmers suffer largely in silence and alone.  It is not until the farm is gone and the cows shipped, that neighbors realize how much trouble their neighbors were in.  In New York State, most farmers live at or below the poverty level.  Many are not aware of this because farms look pretty; they are in many ways how we all dream to live, but this is a hard lifestyle made even more difficult because of our mismanaged agricultural policy.  This was not always the case; farming was profitable --the backbone of America and our rural communities were vibrant centers where people raised families.

Rural America has changed too; as the family farm disappears so does a viable economy, and many communities start to fail.  For the first time in the history of the world, more people live in cities then they do in rural areas. What does this mean for us all? Is it better for less to make more food, or is it better to have many make food for us all?  This is a very complex issue, and the more thought put into it by all of us, the better off we all are.

The Wall Street Journal published an article today on the emerging Chicken Housing Crisis. Yes, you heard me right: a chicken housing crisis.

Wall Street Journal:

"There's no way we'll make the chicken house payments," Mr. Dixon says from his farm abutting the Ozark Mountains.

A chicken housing crisis has cropped up in the U.S., and it's producing some of the same bleak results as the human one -- foreclosures, lawsuits and devastated homeowners.

In the wake of last year's bankruptcy filing by poultry giant Pilgrim's Pride Corp., hundreds of farmers suddenly find themselves unable to make mortgage payments on their pricey chicken coops.

To cut costs, Pilgrim's, the nation's second-largest chicken company, has terminated contracts with at least 300 farms in Arkansas, Florida and North Carolina.”


The Flathead Beacon and Brownfield Network both recently reported on an increase, due to the recession, in abandoned horses, particulary in Colorado, Nevada, and Montana. This is the way that we will see the fallout of the economy affect small farmers and the animals under their care. Yesterday, Franny blogged about the fact that the House version of the stimulus bill did not include funds for a Federal Farm Loans, which would help farmers in times of need. We have yet to hear whether or not funding was allocated for these loans. Did the language of the bill need to have a line item to additionally address a farm animal housing crisis? What about a bailout for my brethren? We are affected too.

The chicken housing crisis shows us how fragile a vertically integrated food system is in an economic downturn. The poultry industry is almost entirely vertically integrated, meaning that a few large companies control the distribution and production (whether through contracts or direct company ownership) of almost all of the poultry consumed in this country. When a big company like Pilgrim's Pride goes down, a lot of small producers are left without a system through which they can sell their products. The beef industry is also vertically integrated, with the exception of the small producers who find ways to sell their own products through cooperatives, at farmer’s markets, or over the internet. While most farmers take out large loans for equipment and initial operating costs, any fallout in the distribution system they depend on could induce financial ruin, leaving the farmer with large loans and no distribution system to grant an income for repayment.

Will the chicken housing crisis and the horse abandonment problem prove to be just the first ripple in a larger farm animal keeping crisis? Will this force us to find a way out of the vertically integrated food system, or will it result in even more monopolization and vertical integration?

Above photo by John Athernon