Waste Not, Want Ham: Part II
Agricultural Alchemy; A two-part series on the most popular protein in the world.
“[Alchemists] show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
There are only three books I’ve ever read more than twice. The Old Man and the Sea, All the Pretty Horses, and The Alchemist. Before you congratulate me, these are all really short books, and I did have to read them all in school. But each time I reread them—sometimes decades later—the stories impart new life lessons and spiritual meanings, previously overlooked. This especially goes for The Alchemist.
Paulo Coelho’s, "The Alchemist" follows the journey of Santiago, a young Andalusian shepherd who sets out to pursue his personal destiny, a hidden treasure near the Egyptian pyramids. While on his journey, Santiago encounters a mysterious alchemist, a master of the ancient practice of transmutation, the turning of base metals into “noble” gold. For the rest of the novel, the alchemist is a mentor to Santiago, imparting invaluable wisdom and guiding him to listen to his heart, follow his dreams, and find his true purpose.
I always wanted to be Santiago. I wanted to find my alchemist; some old geezer Mr. Miyagi speaking in obtuse metaphor about life until—one day—his “sand the floor” helped me kick that preppy punk’s ass. If you’re lost, you need to watch The Karate Kid again.
But I digress.
I’ve been a little infatuated with alchemy ever since, obsessing about turning waste into wealth, rags into riches, trash into treasure. Maybe it started with turning leftovers into a fabulous meal, composting kitchen scraps into “black gold,” making a sculpture out of rusted junk. You could even say butchery is like alchemy. Turning trim into a smash burger or confit beef into bolognese, butchery is culinary alchemy.
So, what if alchemy could turn the most vile of rotten food into the aromatic allure of sizzling bacon? Sounds like hocus pocus doesn’t it? Let’s get back to Vegas.
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I’ve never been to a ranch on Mars, but that’s probably the closest corollary to the scenery around LVL Farms. Southern Nevada is home to some of the driest and most intimidating deserts in the Southwest. On one notable visit to Valley of Fire State Park—which is just up the road— it was still 100 degrees at midnight.
To get to LVL, I had to drive past Republic Sanitation. Semi trucks and earth movers performed an elaborate dance of manmade mountain making. The trailers dumped five tons of rubbish at a time, then massive bulldozers pushed the confetti-colored garbage uphill, spreading it in a thin layer. Close behind, front end loaders dumped clean dirt on top. Slowly, a mountain emerged, climbing hundreds of feet into the air, one part dirt, one million parts trash.
I pulled up to the farm office, a double wide mobile home painted barn red. But that was the only object that resembled a farm for miles. Off in the distance was what looked like a small fuel refinery. Otherwise, as far as the eye could see, there was only rock, sand, and dirt. Oh, and the giant landfill at my back. Where was the farm?
I decided to write down some last-minute questions when a Chevy truck pulled up. With my car off, I needed to open the door to greet my host, Sarah.
Immediately, I was assaulted with the odors of the largest municipal landfill in the state of Nevada. For a split second, I was completely disoriented. The stench of billions of tons of trash buckled my knees. The noxious cocktail of sour and acrid scents burned my sinuses and coated my mouth with a putrid metallic tang. Had I accidentally bit my tongue in the confusion?
I felt light-headed, like I was at altitude. I was struggling for oxygen, but nervous to inhale. Sure I’d smelled awful things before: garbage bags roasting in the steamy streets of New York City, that first dirty diaper after my kid transitioned to solid foods, a possum found many days after it had chosen to expire behind my backyard orange trees. But this was something new; complete olfactory overload. The stench of decay, waste, destruction, neglect. Looking out at the trash ballet going on behind us, I felt violated by the weight of humanity's wastefulness; the grim reality of uncontrolled consumerism.
I feigned a smile at my host, my eyes tearing from the ammonia fumes. Were my nose hairs smoldering?
“The smell sticks with you don’t it,” Sarah said through an open window. She wasn’t getting out of the truck.
I scrambled around the hood to the passenger side, hoping the recirc button was on in the cab. As I opened the door, Sarah’s blue heeler sat up, panting, tail wagging, eager to welcome me but unwilling to move over much in the seat. Dodging muddy paws, I forgot to put on my seatbelt as Sarah pulled away.
Country music played on the radio too low to hear over the rattle of the truck. Sometimes I heard the white noise squelch of a camouflage-colored walkie talkie clipped to Sarah’s t-shirt. A line of Dwight Yokum came through clearly as Sarah pushed the PTT on her comm, “Sarah for Clayton, can you go take care of the front end loader. My pig tour is here..over.”
We've got a big problem.
Los Angeles County produces more than seven million tons of organic waste every year. Almost a quarter of that is food. Globally, organic waste (also made up of paper, wood, landscaping and biosolids (i.e. poop), makes up the largest waste stream on the planet. This means that more than one billion tons of food or $940 billion in economic losses occur annually, all the while one in nine people on the planet remain undernourished globally.12
Food production and distribution also has a tremendous resource cost, requiring 10% of the nation’s energy, 50% of its land, and 80% of all freshwater. And then we just throw a bunch of it out. Up to 40% of all food ends up in landfills.3
The good news is that these waste streams are ideal materials for reuse. Composting is the most common process, turning organic trash back into nutrient-dense soil. As a result, many cities around the world have compost programs to turn local and municipal waste into dirt. I participate in a program in my neighborhood, and fill an orange five gallon bucket with coffee grounds, egg shells, and veggie scraps every week. But composting takes time, and it ain’t cheap. I’m an environmentalist, but I’m also a businessman. My little alchemist says, “Rather than just turn trash into dirt, what if we could turn it into gold? Or better yet, bacon?”
Now you’re talking.
The pick-up truck crested a small hill, and I could see eight large hoop barns in the distance. Sarah rolled down her window. I braced myself for another olfactory onslaught, but instead was greeted with the sweet, subtle, and more earthy odor of animal manure.
“We’re here.”
Close up, LVL Farms looks pretty different from the average US pork operation. Most American pork is raised indoors in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). They’re called factory farms for a reason; large, windowless buildings on concrete floors with a manure lagoon out back to collect all the muck. You can learn more about feedlots in an article I wrote earlier this year 2024.
But LVL, short for Las Vegas Livestock does things outside like the sustainable pig farms my butcher shop worked with. The hoop barns look more like Quonset Huts than barns, large arched open air shade structures designed for optimal airflow. Each hoop barn has 600 pigs rooting around in deep organic bedding with plenty of room to roam.
“That sod came from Allegiant Stadium, where the Raiders play,” said Sarah pointing at the grass her pigs were rooting through.
I considered telling a pigskin joke, but she had another punchline.
“The stadium replaces that sod every week, so it’s a great partner for us.”
Every week? That’s a lot of grass. Then I tried to imagine the scale of waste generated from a stadium full of 70,000 NFL fans. There are eight scheduled home games this year. That’s almost 600,000 people, or the population of Dallas.
LVL Farms receives about 20 tons of food waste every day from casinos, food prep companies, and grocery stores. They pick up or receive dumpsters of meal scraps, expired grocery store items, and melted ice cream. But they aren’t allowed to feed the scraps directly to the pigs. Instead, that refinery-looking plant I saw on the way in is the “cooker.” A large auger loads the food into a machine which “depackages” it. Then the remaining “stuff” is fed into a tank and boiled for 30 minutes. The resulting slurry or “swill" as it’s called in the industry, is then cooled, pumped into a tanker truck, and piped into concrete troughs that line a side of each of the eight hoop barns.
Pigs squeal with delight as they rush the troughs and dig into the slop, which resembles Thousand Island Dressing. Every day, 4,800 pigs are eating 20 tons of food waste that would have otherwise been dumped into the landfill. In addition, diverting this organic material also reduces methane–a brutal greenhouse gas–and leachate, a fancy word for dirty water runoff that might pollute the aquifer. All of the resulting manure is cleared out regularly and sold to local farmers as topsoil for next year’s crops.
Next, Sarah shows me their egg chickens that eat (or drink) about 10 gallons of the slurry daily, as well as some spent barley from a local brewery. I asked about a pallet of white buckets nearby. They were expired cookie dough. She hopes the increased sugar content will help boost egg production. I wonder if the eggs will just taste like snicker-doodles.
The next barn is full of 200 goats and sheep. Although I’ve seen a goat eat a tin can, Sarah reminds me that they’re technically herbivores, so they can’t eat the meat and fat-heavy swill. Instead, they enjoy a colorful and halfway appetizing pile of fruit and vegetable scraps from a local meal prep company. At the far end of that barn, they’re also experimenting with six beef cattle chowing down on watermelon rinds, carrot peels and onion skins.
We’re then joined by LVL Farms Co-Owner, Hank Combs. He’s a quiet but earnest gentleman who drives a pretty expensive pick-up truck. I ask him what the biggest challenge is to growing his operation.
“We’ve got plenty of feed to expand our operation to 25,000 pigs. But it’s really about financing,” he said. “And the processing.”
For LVL Farms, once the pigs are fat enough, they have to be trucked to Fresno, some 400 miles away, in order to be slaughtered and portioned. There isn’t a single slaughterhouse in the state that will take them.
“And how’s the meat?” I have to ask, “What does it taste like?”
Sarah mentions that the higher fat and protein content means the pigs grow faster and are more flavorful. “You can taste the difference for sure.”
I’m disappointed that the tour doesn’t come with samples.
Although LVL Farms is unique in Nevada, and one of only a few “swill-fed” operations in the US, there are others globally. In Japan, more than 35% of all food waste is recycled into animal feed. There, the government collects and manufactures “swill,” and then resells the product back to farmers. Even though there are energy and distribution costs, the swill still is still 40-60% cheaper than conventional feed. This institutional alchemy means that a historically high expense (the collection and disposal of trash) can now be a “green” revenue stream and provide new jobs.
Japanese Farmers who raise swill-fed animals market their meat as an “eco-pork” premium product.4 People will pay top dollar for pork that is closing the loop on resource utilization, and promoting sustainable agriculture.
As I watched Las Vegas recede in my rearview mirror, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had just lived a hidden chapter of Coehlo’s book. Like Santiago, I had embarked on a journey filled with profound lessons and spiritual meaning. I witnessed the transmutation of waste into wealth, and scraps turned into savory delights. Agricultural alchemy reduced the burden on landfills, provided a sustainable solution to food waste, and produced a beautiful and delicious product, with a few jobs to boot.
Heading home, I experienced a feeling I hadn’t felt for some time.
Hope.
Hope for the potential of LVL Farms. Hope that the success story of Japan will be heard louder. Hope for similar operations springing up and flourishing worldwide. Hope for economic models that motivate more of us to save our planet. Hope that people might spend some time implementing solutions for our shared troubles, rather than exhausting themselves by pointing out the problems.
And then I remembered one of my favorite lines from The Alchemist. I smiled, and the freeway got a little misty.
"It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary."
Where is LVL's pork distributed, and is it available to the general public.
Great piece Steve!! Learned SO much and LOVE that LVL exists ... Gives me hope.