In her book “The Art of Simple Food,” Alice Waters writes: “Learn where your food comes from and how it is produced. Seek out ... producers who take care of the land. Buy eggs, meat, and fish from producers whose practices are organic, humane, and environmentally sound.”
Alice could easily have added “and buy your pork products from Jude Becker of Becker Lane Organic Farm.” She does. And serves Jude’s organic pork in her restaurant, Chez Panisse.

So does The Zuni Cafe and many of the country’s celebrated chefs and manufacturers like Applegate Farms, who share Alice’s and Jude’s philosophy of responsible, sustainable farming over factory farming.

Recently I had the pleasure of talking with Jude, a sixth-generation pork farmer from Dyersville, Iowa. For a young man of 33, Jude possesses 150 years of family farming knowledge and pride — and the passion of bringing the best product he can to you and me. On the day we spoke, the temperature peaked at -10°F and Jude had just come into the farmhouse after ensuring that his piglets were warm and their water hadn’t froze.

Like his father and grandfather before him, Jude didn’t choose an easy road. Just a passionate one — paved with hard work, understanding, and care of animals and the land. Cobble this together with the healthiest and humane ways he knows to raise his pigs and you get pork that is not only nutritious but unbelievably delicious — the way pork was meant to taste.

That means raising his pigs with no growth hormones and no antibiotics. Jude’s farming mantra is simple: Raise pigs naturally. It’s the best way ethically, environmentally, and nutritiously.

Industrial farms often claim to use antibiotics to keep costs down to consumers. But, says Jude, “Industrial farming only controls cost if all we measure is cheapness to the consumer, and externalized costs to the environment, society, human health and meat quality degradation are not measured.” If these are factored into the equation, he says, then industrial farming is not cheap. It does, however, cheapen the quality of life of animals and humans, resulting in devastating long-term costs.

No doubt about it: Organic farming and the humane approach to raising pigs costs more on the surface. The main costs, says Jude, are housing, land, labor, and food. “Two-thirds of any pig farm’s cost is food. If we look at outdoor and organic systems, we need to realize that the labor cost is higher because we aren’t using the technologies designed after World War II to house lots of pigs intensively in barns and have them live over their effluent.”   We are using a lot more land per pig.”

In land use, he says, his 6,000 pigs get around 80 acres of pasture and another 80 acres devoted to grass seedling that will be established sod/pasture the following year. By comparison, industrial pig-farming uses just a couple of acres for buildings to house its pigs, with some buildings capable of holding 5,000 pigs - cramped, inhumane, and unsanitary conditions by any standards.

Another aspect of labor costs is in the birthing process. There’s a real cost difference between an anesthetized, machinelike operation of industrial farm breeding and an organic family farm where knowledgeable and caring farmers and their farm hands see  that newborn piglets are well cared for, mother sows have rest, and the births are a reason to give thanks and to be cherished. This type of cost can never be measured in dollars alone.

These are but a few of the differences between Jude’s methods and those employed on factory farms, and they only begin to address the quality of life issues.  Says Jude, “Why must we treat animals like they’re in jail?”  That sounds simple, but it invokes much thought. I think if we’re going to eat meat, we ought to realize that we’re consuming the flesh of another sentient being. These beings live a life apart from the human world and have their own set of instincts and behaviors. If we know the animals have a consciousness, then isn’t the energy of their life experience manifested in the flesh of the physical body?”

In addition, using antibiotics in pigs, he says, destroys the beneficial bacteria and organisms pigs need for good health. “We ought to encourage the animal’s immune system, rather than just kill everything with antibiotics.”

If that’s not enough, Michael Pollen in his new book “Food Rules, An Eater’s Manual” cautions: “The diet of the animals we eat strongly influences the nutritional quality, and healthfulness, of the food we get from them.” Where they have access to green plants, he writes, “The food from these animals will contain much healthier types of fat (more omega-3s, less omega-6s) as well as appreciably higher levels of vitamins and antioxidants.”

Like his family’s farm, Jude’s decision to become an organic pig farmer as opposed to a factory farmer has a long history. Says Jude, “I grew up in a family of contrarians. Against his banker’s advice, my grandfather took the farm’s profits in 1930 and bought a color movie camera to record area farming, family picnics, 4-H Club events, and county fairs.” Jude’s grandmother, now 96, snapped photos to record family members and preserve their traditions.

 “She still organizes the family celebrations,” he says, “which tend to be tied into the seasons, with Easter being the first spring celebration.” The bounty from their orchard, berry bushes, vegetable garden, and forest provide natural reasons for family and friends to gather. For example, he says, “We’ll make a party hunting for morels in our forest and then come back to have a feast of mushrooms.”
 
Jude is somewhat of a preservationist himself and serves on a regional committee to restore and preserve the area’s historic barns, which he’s done with his own family’s. Another of his projects is building a museum to house his father’s wood sculptures.

But it’s not the family’s appreciation of art and culture that make them true contrarians: It’s their view on farming. After World War II and especially during the 1980s, when Midwestern family farms were capitulating to the pressures of industrialized farming, the Becker family stood firm against the modern, mass-produced food way of thinking. Instead they kept to their traditional ways of farming, heritage breeds of pigs, and their stewardship of the land.

Things didn’t get easier for the Beckers.  In 1997 Jude decided he “had to find a new way or no longer continue farming. The commercial marketing paradigm was not going to work for me.”  He turned to organic farming and to the animal welfare of his traditional breeds of Chester White and Berkshire pigs. Two years later his USDA organic pigs were being raised and sold.

Still, going organic is not the most profitable. “Artisanal or niche farming is made to seem sexy and glamorous; it’s anything but,” he says. “The artisanal farmers are not getting rich ... nor are they doing it to get rich. They do it because it’s in keeping with them spiritually, morally, and philosophically.”

So what keeps him going?

Says Jude, “The fulfillment I get from the process of farming and from my partners who helps us — the chain of people such as the chefs and manufacturers like Applegate — who share my philosophy on food and who are committed in turning their resources and energies into making relationships and building pathways to reach the consumers who have the same philosophy.

“Together [consumers included] we're creating an alternative economy outside the industrial food world." Together, he says, those who share the same philosophies are creating a healthier and more humane world.

As Alice Waters said, “We eat every day, and if we do it in a way that doesn’t recognize value, it’s contributing to the destruction of our culture and agriculture. But if it’s done with focus and care, it can be a wonderful thing. It changes the quality of your life.”
Jude Becker is doing just that.