A farmer who is a con man is no better than the used car sales man selling you a lemon.

I’m in a frustrating position right now holding onto information that absolutely triggers my injustice complex, and I don’t know what to do about it. I have to actively fight the urge to blast what I know, and let some others make systemic decisions that will create protocols for the long haul. I have to fight a selfish desire to speak truth NOW, in order to allow for community development. My mind agrees, my heart is in turmoil. While I wait for the systemic responses, I’m going to do some therapeutic writing on the topic while maintaining anonymity for those involved.

Farming & ranching is hard period, but raising food with INTEGRITY and consideration of animal welfare & for ecosystem is very hard. There are always economic pressures that would tempt a producer to take a shortcut. That is where a moral compass and integrity come in. When we decide that we will raise food and market it to our community as raised with integrity, pastured, raised on our farm, organically raised, humanely raised, we enter into an agreement of trust with our community. For those of us legitimately going the extra 100 miles to make the sacrifices to raise food this way find out that a fellow farmer/ rancher is marketing a similar story, but raising that food in confinement, or worse selling meats they aren’t raising and are coming from outsourced systems of commodity production, it illuminates what we in sustainable production ag battle at the local level and at the global level, greenwashing.

For years I’ve had my suspicions about the deceitful marketing of this one operation, but it was about 6 weeks ago that I was sent a screenshot that confirmed these suspicions. For six weeks I’ve stewed. Last week, I made a couple calls, confirmed more information, and then confronted the farmer directly. I’ve confronted this farm directly and privately in the past about deceitful marketing, it was in regards to using the term Organic when it was clear that operation was not certified nor practicing organically. They blamed a web developer for writing the copy for the website at that time. Since then I continue to pay attention to their social media and website copywriting. It would appear that this farm, after being confronted by myself and several other farms in Central Oregon for the same issue of deceitful marketing and misuse of labels around sustainability, they make a conscious decision to keep lying. I find this to be immoral, and it threatens the trust within a local food food movement that is filled with farms with integrity who are actually walking the walk.

A farmer who is a con man is no better than the con man selling you a lemon at the used car lot, except I think this is actually way worse because what we are talking about here are animals lives, and good intentioned people looking to source their meats from local operations doing things with integrity.

First, I confronted this farm privately in October 2023. This week I confronted the farmer again and on the phone and via text message he admitted to the false representation of their practices, but denied the buying of butcher ready hogs from confinement operations in Eastern Washington. I spoke to the seller of those butcher ready hogs, he told me how many loads he’d delivered to this farmer, so his denial/ his words no longer have any weight with me. For context the seller told me that these hogs, “can’t just be put out on pasture, if you put them out in the sun in the elements and change everything all at once they’ll get sick on ya.” These pigs are raised indoors in such unnatural conditions their whole lives, that if you were to put them into the natural environment they will get sick. That’s the level of sickness that is being repackaged and marketed to Central Oregon eaters as “pastured family raised pork!” It makes me so angry.

I believe that redemption is available to all, but first one must admit fault and correct those faults. This farm’s products still sit on shelves where conscious consumers shop, their products are on menus in Bend, their social media continues to make posts showing the 100 hogs they have on pasture now who actually were raise indoors from Dec-June and are 100/650 hogs they will sell this year. Based on my conversation with the farmer it would appear that in 2025 so far upwards of 280 hogs will have been raised indoors, harvested and sold as pastured pork.

I’ve got to carry on with my work and life, and I have to allow for others to make their decisions about how they will handle this information. I have a terrible pit in my stomach about holding this information, about the reckoning this family will face, and I am still trying to decide what a good outcome is. I think this farm needs to address this all head on. But my assumption is that they will deny, make excuses, and frankly carry on posting content on social media and keeping their website copy the same, and many more people will continue to eat pork they think was raised with integrity when in fact, it was not.

I don’t want anyone in farming to fail, and I also don’t want one bad actor to create an environment of distrust in our local food community that is filled with incredible farmers acting with great integrity.

Frustrated,

Cate