The Quietest Epidemic in America

I'm 1,500 miles from home, 22 days into helping an 8,000-acre ranch in Montana transition to the next generation. The scale is something I'm still adjusting to. A couple days ago I turned 250 cows out on an 858-acre pasture. A single paddock bigger than most farms back home. There are three herds out here, miles apart, and you can't just walk out and put eyes on everyone.

Last Tuesday I woke up under the weather. Three herds to check. I didn't feel like ten miles on the side-by-side. So I put a drone up 300 feet.

I could read an ear tag from three miles away. 826. Clear as day.

Saved me an hour. Probably two.

I've flown the drone enough times now to know how I feel about it. I'm impressed every time. From 300 feet I can mostly see what I'd see on foot. How she's standing. Whether she's chewing cud. The snapshot is good. The thing I don't get is the relationship. Cattle that see you every day on foot move different around you than cattle who only see a thing in the sky. You can't build that from a controller.

I put the drone away and called home.

Eliza told me Wendy had died. One of our horses. She said it the way a kid does who's grown up close enough to animals to know death is part of the cycle of life. I was proud she was the one to call and tell me.

I asked Sam what I should make for dinner. He said make a sausage salad. Who makes a sausage salad?

We talked about who was mowing the lawn. Whether the dog was getting enough attention. Eliza said chicken noodle soup might be her new favorite food. I told them to take care of each other and the dog, said I love you, and hung up.

Then it hit me. 

I'd just checked my cattle through one screen and my family through another.

And I started laughing. Because just about every time I write about why our food system is broken, I land on the same root cause. Distance is the disease. Trust is the casualty. You can't certify your way out of it. You can't label your way out of it. That's why Grass Roots exists. To keep the food system close enough to trust. And there I was. Doing the long-distance version of some of the most important relationships in my life.

Turns out it's an epidemic in our country. In 2003, the average American spent an hour a day with friends. By 2020, it was 20 minutes. The Surgeon General has since called it an epidemic of loneliness, on the same public health shelf as smoking. Nobody set out to live this way. Technology just keeps giving us more convenient ways to try to stay connected without being in the room.

The drone is a genuinely great tool. The phone call kept me connected to my kids on a night I needed it. I'm not against screens. I'm typing this on one.

But staying in touch is easy. Staying close is work. That's how a family holds together. That's how a community gets built. That's how a food system gets fixed.

Your Farmer,
Cody