How people like you are making a difference to market pressures and demanding a better world.
Case study 1 of 6:
Cattle Raising
1 Gary thinks some methods are better than others
Gary knows things about how cattle lives are different across the range of farms.
he thinks he has a fairly good perspective on the whole cattle system.
Knowing what he does he swears to never buy from zero grazing systems but him knowing this doesn’t seem to affect the attitudes of the majority of consumers.
He begins to look out for products that are not done like this.
(also its quite hard for jeff to know if it is zero grazed or not).
Most people seem to not really take the news about it to heart in the same way. They don’t seem to be affected by occasional news stories buzzing around in amongst the rest of the noise. The mob may just believe that it can’t really be that bad or else the government would do something about it. Or at least will not believe enough to take a personal hit for it in terms of giving away more money for a similar (seeming) item.
2 He uses Follow This Food to create a community answer on a number of specific topics within a broader topic of cattle raising.
He, along with other people in the know, create answers explaining..
(It may also possible to answer a question that covers the whole topic of raising cattle that combines all the different topics into one idiot's guide to beef. Good, okay, and bad,)
3 organisations and users give their support to back up what he is saying
The answer is not just Jeff’s small point of view anymore it is a view that represents a whole community of peoples views, including key subject matter experts.
And then connects with more communities of people in the know to validate and further improve their collective answer.
4 More unusual claims can be attached to a product.
So when Maria comes along and buys a joint of meat, which claims to be particularly ethical to the cattle, she can find out more. Just at what end of the scale, which Jeff and other have laid out, does the product score for how the cattles habitat has been.
[labels could say:
Organic Grass fed
Comfortable housing
Great level of sunshine hours
Spacious fields
Very Healthy farm
Whole life onsite no markets, Localness: 4 star
Antibiotic use meets organic standards
Organic standard soil management
5 Scanning the label tells Maria about the producer and all the information collected using tracking technology
6 She can compare different communities answers so can be critical of the claims made
Maria might not trust how the article has been written so can come and see who is involved and who endorses this view. She can find out if they are people who just want to let people know what is good or if they are marketers intent of spinning a myth just to make money. Se can see the points they make.
(In answer to the same commonly asked question, which this community answer is from, there she finds other answers representing different viewpoints. She can see how they understand it. As well other common questions can be found attached to a topic that holds them all together too)
7 She can dig deeper into what she believes
Even claims in these answers can be questions and backing up with evidence from communities
If she is not sure about a point made she can dig deeper and find answers to a further question.
New questions:
Junk...
An ethical producer can open up about exactly what they do.
A producer can show what they do and compare it to the answers laid out by Gary and his collaborators. So they can position themselves against the full range of producers right from the best to the worst.
Even if they are not perfect they can position themselves in the grand scheme of things
They can just be honest about what they do. There is no need to compete against the myths put about by loud marketing.
So when Maria comes along and buys a joint of beef she can find out just at what end of the scale, which Jeff and other have laid out, does the product score for how the cattles habitat has been.
can see these claims
She can find out more.
[labels could say:
Now in the shop many extra claims could be made on the printed label. Ones that might not be understood. Great level sunshine hours, organic fed, Spacious field, Very Healthy farm, Settler Whole life onsite no markets, Localness: 4 star, Antibiotic use meets organic standards, Organic standard soil management
Each of these topics can be claimed on the label. You can then scan the label to view the farm as well as see the communities of experts in farming who show what these claims mean in context with the full range of practices out there.
That some cattle will live their lives with lots of space, mostly outside on rolling hills but also in other farms, that might be next door, the cattle may remain incarcerated their entire lives in zero grazing systems.
You could just rely on a single passive label to tell you that you are buying good enough food. Or, as we suggest, you could have all the different aspects of farming explained by groups of people in the know, like Garry. (You can trust them because it is openly discussed and experts and organisations can give their stamp of approval to the claims.). In cattle farming for example you can see :
For each key aspect about raising cattle Garry visits the topics and answers the a good commonly asked question that is asking for explanations about what he knows.
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