Why We Need Independent Journalists from Rural, Ranching America
I started UNWON to shine a light on the people who build, feed, clothe, and defend a nation; the ones you can't see from the road.
America has never been more removed from the food we eat. Ranchers and farmers are relegated to the outskirts of society. Suburbs and cities are agricultural deserts. Long-haul truck drivers connect the two.
Those green places America drives by on the freeway aren’t there by chance or the generosity of some wealthy landowner’s heart. These are working lands, where the nation’s food grows and grazes.
Less than 2% of Americans work in production agriculture. You can’t see them from the road. They’ve been the stewards of our land and natural resources for generations.
I grew up in a rodeo town in the mountains of Northern California, spending my childhood on generational ranches where time stopped decades ago.
Since growing up, I have lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and D.C. My first experience away from home was pure culture shock. I saw for the first time that my way of life, the world I took for granted, was unique. As an adult I’ve learned to navigate both worlds, and I’ve focused my career on journalism, documentary film directing, and writing to bring these two Americas together.
We are losing 2000 acres of American farm and ranchland every day. In my first documentary on West Coast ranching, a rangeland science professor at Berkeley told me a story about a Native American man who listened to one of her speeches on wilderness and approached her afterward.
“Wilderness is a myth of the white man,” he told her. “We took care of this land.”
Few ranches make it to the third or fourth generation. Human stewardship is a natural resource as precious as water, air, and wildlife. Those who live with and by the land are a national treasure. Once that deep land knowledge, passed down through generations, is broken, it is gone forever.
Although some 98% of Americans eat meat, most will never raise beef cattle. They’ll buy their protein in cellophane and cardboard. The label won’t mention how that steer lived through a bad winter storm—whether a rancher crawled across ice to rescue him, or bottlefed him in his kitchen, or brought him in his truck to stay warm his first few hours of life when Wyoming temperatures hit 60 below. The label won’t discuss how that animal grazed dry forage down, protecting the ranch and the town beyond it from a wildfire, or the metric tons of carbon sequestered beneath the soil through the ancient harmony between ruminant and photosynthesis. It won’t describe the endangered species that co-existed with cattle on privately-owned rangeland, as some 67% of our vulnerable species do.
To anyone outside ranching, it may seem counterintuitive that the men and women responsible for the dirty work of feeding a nation have a greater appreciation for the value of an animal’s life than any consumer. Wrapped in clear plastic, there is no sign of the struggle and sacrifice, nor of the sacred beauty of a life lived close to nature, communing with the cycle of life and death.
The obsession today is with leaving a light footprint on earth. But human life is costly, whether you do the work of survival yourself or outsource it. Someone out there is paying the price, managing the land, raising the meals you’ll eat a year from now. You just can’t see them from the road.
A version of this piece was written for IRON USA:
Keely Brazil Covello is a writer, investigative journalist, and documentary film director. She works with her sister and creative partner Michaela Brazil Gillies. Their most recent documentary short, High Country Murder, investigates the unsolved murder of an elderly rancher in Northern California. See the film and read her work at www.americaunwon.com or on Instagram at @americaunwon.
Beautifully written! Thank you for sharing these stories. 🙏
It's a sad state of affairs. Most people have no idea where there food comes from. They think it comes from a store, with no knowledge of how it gets there.
They don't know that if big business takes over the family farms, that food will be considered a luxury instead of a necessity. but then, most people consider chips and coke food.