An Unusual Farm
Sunday, July 4th, 2010I know of a farm where they don’t feed the animals. They even allow predators to roam freely, taking up to one fifth of their stock. And they’re proud of it.
That sounds pretty awful, but it’s not, it’s actually very good news. You can hear all about it in this video of a talk by Dan Barber. Dan is a New York chef who is quite outspoken in his views on the way we produce food today. He’s also a nice guy, which comes across clearly in the video. If you’d rather read a transcript, here it is.
The farm Dan talks about is Veta la Palma. It’s a fish-farm on the Guadalquivir river, in Spain. It produces 1,200 tonnes of sea bass, bream, red mullet and shrimp each year. Miguel Medialdea, the farm’s biologist, explains that they don’t need to feed their fish because of the way the farm is set up.
Miguel himself says that he is not an expert on fish, but he is an expert on relationships. By working with nature to build a sustainable ecosystem, instead of working against it to maximise profit, Veta la Palma produces fish in a way that also benefits the wildlife of the region.
In fact, their farm is one of the most important private estates for bird life in Europe. Before the farm, there were only 50 bird species there, now they count 250 species. This includes flamingos that commute 150 miles daily from their nesting sites to feed there, following the A92 highway.
If that’s not a recommendation for the quality of the fish, I don’t know what is!
