HOUSING AND HEALTH
Referring to the awesome concept of turning Eureka, California’s inner-town parking lots into affordable housing (“California’s affordable housing contested under the guide of environmentalism,” November 2023), I can’t think of a better idea than repurposing those for people who really need housing. The pushback — increasing walking distance of customers to stores to avoid alleged personal attacks — might be the lamest, least well-conceived argument I’ve ever seen. At a time when health problems linked to lack of exercise are running rampant, the best thing we can do is walk outdoors more — even if it’s a longer distance to the store from the car.
Ema Lea Shoop
Elected city council member
Yuma, Arizona
CO-OP POWER
I read your recent ranching article, “What Montana’s independent ranchers need to survive: customers” (November 2023), with great interest. I am part of a ranching family in Oregon, and I run the Regenerative Ranching Program for Sustainable Northwest. We’re helping ranchers raise beef in harmony with nature.
One of our most significant partners in this is Country Natural Beef (CNB), a cooperative of ranchers since 1987. All of their 100-plus ranches, including my family ranch, are enrolled in our regenerative ranching program. This co-op model allows ranchers like the ones featured in your article to focus on what they do best — ranching. By banding together, they can better manage sales, marketing and other business activities as a group.
CNB has had a lot of success with this model and broken through to retail chains. The co-op structure allows ranchers to tap into partnerships like the one with Sustainable Northwest, which secured federal funding from the USDA’s Climate-Smart Commodities program for a five-year program to help expand its regenerative ranching practices and reach more consumers.
The benefits of the co-op model are great, as are the opportunities and the challenges. Co-ops offer a counterpoint to industrial agriculture that has yet to be fully tapped.
Dallas Hall Defrees
Sustainable Northwest and Defrees Ranch
Baker City, Oregon
Thank you for the awesome article “What Montana’s independent ranchers need to survive: customers.” At this point, big corporate monopolies control 90% of our food, squeezing out the small farmer and rancher 1% at a time, while most of us lemmings march to the nearest big-box, where we can conveniently get all our groceries in the same place and spend less. Problem is, when something seems too good to be true, it probably is. If we don’t change our buying habits, our planet doesn’t have a chance, much less local meat.
Julie Smith
Golden, Colorado
MEANINGFUL MENTORS
I wanted to commend Sterling HolyWhiteMountain’s piece (“Contemplating Cormac McCarthy,” November 2023). I, too, was lucky enough to have a teacher like HRH. SAB began as my professor, but became an ally, friend and eventually my Ph.D. advisor. He was a complicated man, capable of both generosity and cruelty.
When he died, I, too, thought I knew something of grief. However, his absence lingers through the years. I also find myself wishing I could talk with him about one more idea. One more paper.
Thank you for making space for such a wonderful piece, and thank you to HolyWhiteMountain for putting such complex feelings into words.
Erin Gilpin
Bishop, California
AGRICULTURAL EXPLOITATION
Kudos on your October 2023 article exposing the abuse of herders in the sheep-ranching industry (“The dark side of America’s sheep industry”).
The plight of poor immigrant sheepherders and their callous treatment by greedy, uncaring ranchers deserves our attention. But we’ve learned more: The government agencies that exist to prevent abuse and redress wrongdoing are either insufficiently resourced or working within a regulatory environment where the laws are inadequate to protect victims of abuse, or they lack the leadership and energy to pursue wrongdoing and the ability to coordinate with sister agencies. Your article makes clear that rural legal services programs are vitally important to secure the rights of poor agricultural workers. If we care about helping workers, we need to push to get more funding and staff for free legal services.
That change will be a slow uphill climb. Meanwhile, I’ll decline to buy lamb or its byproducts. If others do the same, maybe the sheep industry trade groups will get the message.
Fred Krasner
Ashland, Oregon
GOOD STORY ON GOOD FIRE
Thank you for the hard-hitting article on cultural fire in California “Cultural fire is good fire, and California needs more of it.” I am now a new subscriber and look forward to more excellent work.
Roger Carroll
Omaha, Nebraska
LOVE WHAT’S LOCAL
As someone who makes a conscious effort to appreciate the landscapes closest to my home, I especially enjoyed Ruxandra Guidi’s excellent piece “We don’t need utopias” (September 2023) and its focus on the local and the here-and-now. When I read that the inspiring project Guidi covered was called “Drutopia,” I couldn’t help but smile. I was reading it the day before I began a two-week vacation to appreciate the unique natural beauty in the region I live. The first week I had dubbed “Larchapalooza,” as it focused on backpacking trips to appreciate the splendor of alpine larch at peak fall color, and the second was “Soaktober,” which focused on appreciating the geothermal wonders of natural hot springs. I think having a bit of levity and hype around exploring our natural environments is a beautiful and important thing, and I was glad to read about kindred spirits in other parts of the West.
Mark Wetherington
Hamilton, Montana
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This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Letters to the editor, December 2023.
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