The commercialization of farming: producing meat for a hungry world: change "will require a rethinking of our relationship with livestock and the price we are willing to pay for safe, sustainable, humanely-raised food.".

• Author: Nierenberg, Danielle
• Position: Science & Technology

WALKING through Bobby Inocencio's farm in the Rizal province of the Philippines is like taking a step back to a simpler time. Dozens of chickens roam around freely in large, fenced pens, pecking at various indigenous plants, eating bugs, and fertilizing the soil. The scene may be bucolic, but Inocencio's farm is anything but simple. What he has re-created is a successful system of raising chickens that benefits small producers, the environment, and even the chickens. Once a "factory farmer," Inocencio used to raise white chickens for Pure Foods, one of the biggest companies in the Philippines. Along with the breed stock and feeds he had to import, Inocencio found himself dealing with a lot of imported diseases. He thus was forced into buying expensive antibiotics to keep the chickens alive long enough to take them to market. Another trick of the trade Inocencio learned was the use of growth factors that decrease the time it lakes for chickens to mature. At the same time, he noticed that fewer of his neighbors were raising chickens, which threatened the locale's food security by reducing the locally available supply of chickens and eggs.

As the community dissolved and farms that had been around for generations disappeared, Inocencio became convinced that there had to be a different way to raise fowl and still compete in a rapidly globalizing marketplace. "The business of the white chicken," says Inocencio, "is controlled by the big guys." Three large companies run the white chicken trade in the Philippines. In the last two decades, the Filipino poultry production system has transitioned from mainly backyard farms into a huge industry. In the 1980s, the country produced 50,000,000 birds annually. Today, that figure has increased tenfold. Giant poultry producers have benefited from this population explosion. Average farmers, however, have not. So, Inocencio decided to go forward by going back and reviving village-level poultry enterprises that supported traditional family farms and rural communities.

Inocencio's farm shows that the Philippines can support indigenous livestock production and stand up to the threat of the factory farming methods now spreading around the world. Since 1997, Inocencio has been raising free-range chickens and teaching other farmers how to do the same. He acknowledges that the way he used to raise chickens, by concentrating so many of them in a small space, is dangerous. "The white chicken is weak, making the system weak. And if these chickens are weak, why should we be raising them? Limiting their genetic base and using breeds that are not adapted to conditions in the Philippines is like setting up the potential for a potato blight on a global scale."

Inocencio's birds are not given drugs, either. Antibiotics, he maintains, are not merely expensive, but encourage disease. Instead, he found the answer to preventing disease in chickens in his own backyard. His fowl eat spices and foliage that have antibacterial and other medicinal properties. Chili, for instance, is mixed in grain to treat respiratory ailments, stimulate appetite during heat stress, as a dewormer, and as treatment for Newcastle disease. Moreover, native plants growing on the farm are used to treat disease and provide a low-cost alternative to drugs.

There was a time when most farms in the Philippines and everywhere else functioned much like Inocencio's. Today, though, the factory model of raising animals in intensive conditions is spreading around the globe. Meat once occupied a very different dietary order in most of the world. Beef, pork, and chicken were considered luxuries, eaten on special occasions or to enhance the flavor of other foods. Yet, as agriculture became...