High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching

I'll give you a simple example with chickens. On average, we eat a whole chicken once per week. So to be 100% self sufficient, lets say we need to grow 50 chickens.

A common cornish cross chicken goes from 0-5/6lbs in 6-8 weeks. If you want to be fair weather, then you buy in march/april, harvest in may/june. You can buy them online and they'll ship them to you direct, or in our case, to a nearby post office and we go pick them up. They cost about $1 each.

So, you have 50 chickens arriving, what do you need? A place to put them (fairly small space requirement, actually,) food, and water.

The baby chickens arrive, and you need a place to put them before they can survive the evening.

I made a simple brooder box (2'x6'x3') using 1x4 douglas fir, osb board, and some steel mesh / simple frame for a lid/roof. This took me about 2 hours to build because I didn't use any plans and kind of just winged it. I could make it in 30 mins now.

Next, I made a basic chicken tractor. This is a place for the chickens to sleep at night. Same idea as before, a simple box with some ease of access/cleaning stuff, and put it on wheels so you can move it about.

During the day, depending on your ethics, they need a place they can stretch their legs and move about that is protected from predators. In my area, I have bobcats, racoons, opossums, and hawks. And I live in a residential area, so effectively dealing with them is a huge hassle and I have to work around them. A combination of movable electrical netting and making sure your chicken tractor is raised off of the ground at night is very important. I learned this the hard way, there was a lot of very unsettling things the racoons did.

Lastly comes harvesting. It takes a couple of minutes per chicken when you're in a groove. The most time consuming is de-feathering and then vacuum sealing. You can do this all in 1 day with some friends, or spread over a few weekends if you're by yourself.

So direct answers:

> This all sounds pretty labor intensive to me

There is effectively 0 required labor until harvest, which you can outsource too. You can buy all of the stuff I mentioned for higher startup costs if you want.

> About how many hours per year do you think goes in to this?

Let's be very conservative and say 20 minutes/day for 8 weeks. Then 10 minutes per chicken. 8x7x20/60=~19 hours, +9 hours for processing, 25-30 hours a year

> Like is this something that could be a weekend hobby?

A small daily chore like working out or taking a shower. The downside is no (long) vacation during grow/harvest.

> Or does it require more substantial lifestyle change?

The biggest lifestyle change I have seen is people understanding where their food comes from and coming to terms with the fact that in order to eat meat, an animal has to die. If you're over this hump, and have a little space that you're willing to dedicate to this, no change is required.

Sorry for the essay, hope this helps.

2. Right to repair. Seriously, they cannot repair their own equipment.

3. Add legal protections against GMO companies. Or other large private companies. More than a few small farms have be buried in legal bills.

4. Stop putting corn ethanal in gas. Its a poor use of fresh water. It’s provided almost universally by large farms. It reduces the quality of gas. We are much less dependent on foreign energy than when this was put in place. I guess this one will mostly sort itself out with electrification.

5. Universal healthcare. Or affordable healthcare for small businesses in general. Farming is very accident prone work.

6. Put stricter health regulations on animal husbandry. Big ag animal farms are some of the least sanitary work environments in the US, I’d rather shovel coal.

Edit: Bonus, consider loosening drone regulations for rural areas. They are valuable surveying tools, and line of sight requirements is unnecessary in many agri situations