Activists are fighting the use of gestation crates, saying they’re cruel. Some Illinois pork farmers disagree. It’s a battle with implications for shoppers in Chicago and across the country.
Working from home in 2012 for a Texas-based company, Cliff McConville looked out at his 8-acre Barrington Hills property and decided it would look better with a couple of cows in his horse barn. Now he leases two farms and owns the Farm Store in West Dundee.
County forest preserve and conservation districts are charged with restoring land to the natural prairie and woodland of Illinois, but it s a slow and costly process. As a result, large swaths of district land are often leased out to farmers while awaiting restoration. Agricultural ecologists say there s a way to get a head start on restoration through regenerative agricultural practices like rotationally grazing animals and keeping a crop in the soil year-round.
The farming and grazing practice of regenerative agriculture, heralded by environmentalists as a major solution to climate change and water issues, is a conservation alternative to conventional farming. County forest preserve and conservation districts are employing it on land they can t restore themselves yet.