Episode 182: Agriculture, food policy, and county fair lessons from a summer on the homestead

Kody Hanner shares a solo episode that mixes personal life updates from a wildfire-filled summer with a practical rundown of major agriculture and food safety headlines. She also closes with a long reflection on county fairs, 4-H, and how local agricultural education shapes capable, community-minded kids. In this episode, Kody connects homestead life, livestock management, food policy, and youth ag education into one big picture of how agriculture touches daily life far beyond the farm. She also explains why she thinks local food systems matter more than ever when large-scale supply chains, regulations, and public health issues all collide.

Key topics

• Kody explains how a major wildfire near her home pulled most of her family into fire duty for much of the summer, leaving her to run the farm, the business, and the home largely on her own.
• She gives a homestead update, including 31 piglets across four litters, her mixed pig breeding program, and her goal of growing Hanner Homestead into a recognizable source of quality heritage pork.
• She talks about a new Brown Swiss bull calf, A2A2 testing, and how that information helps shape long-term dairy and beef management decisions.
• Kody shares poultry plans for the year, including raising meat birds later than usual and using new Idaho laws to make direct retail sales easier.
• She introduces her homemade udder balm, which she says has become a practical chafing cream for firefighters and may soon be offered more broadly.
• We discuss the Cargill and Tyson meatpacking antitrust and price-fixing settlement, and Kody breaks down how monopolistic control can squeeze farmers while raising consumer prices.
• She covers a feedlot study that found unexpected lactation in some cattle and heifers, then walks through possible causes, including hormone implants, high-concentrate grain diets, plant estrogen activity, and mold exposure.
• Kody reviews the tension between commercial feedlot management and her own preference for grass-fed livestock and smaller-scale production decisions.
• She provides an educational explanation of recent food safety outbreaks, including Cyclospora and Salmonella cases linked to produce, and emphasizes how contamination can occur at many points in the supply chain.
• She explains the difference between common public assumptions about imported produce and the actual layers of certification, inspection, sanitation, and testing that major food systems use.
• Kody discusses the effort to define ultra-processed foods more clearly and the push to reform the GRAS system, which allows certain additives to bypass deeper review.
• She highlights ingredients and additives she sees as problematic, including BHA, BHT, azodicarbonamide, red dye number two, brominated vegetable oil, and other questionable compounds.
• The episode closes with a detailed look at county fairs as agricultural education, community infrastructure, youth development, and a major economic force in rural life.

Episode Links

• Udder Balm Recipe: https://www.thehomesteadeducation.com/udder-balm/
• The Cargill Lawsuit: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-rules-beef-purchasers-can-pursue-price-fixing-class-actions-2026-07-17/
• Lactating Steers: https://members.acresusa.com/lactating-steers-hormonal-implants/
• FDA Outbreak Updates: https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/investigation-multistate-outbreak-cyclospora-illnesses-iceberg-lettuce-july-2026
• GRAS definition: https://www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-packaging/generally-recognized-safe-gras

Homestead Education Links

• Homestead Education Curriculum – http://thehomesteadeducation.com/homesteadeducationcurriculum
• Homestead Family Reading List – https://www.thehomesteadeducation.com/homestead-summer-reading-list/
• Instagram – https://instagram.com/homestead_education
• Facebook – https://facebook.com/thehomesteadeducation