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This is a look inside what a typical family run meat chicken (called broilers) farm looks like in Ontario. This barn is one of two barns, each with two floors holding about 14,000 birds per floor! What you see here is the way almost all broilers birds are raised which is a "free run" system. Therefore any "free run" stamp on chicken in the grocery store is redundant. Just to clarify, free range is the same set up however the birds have access to outside.

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Although this is a documentary on Canadian agriculture, this picture is from a large scale American dairy farm milking 4,000 cows 3 times/day! The term factory farming gets tossed around a lot in the city, yet this herd consisted of healthy, clean cows that had plenty of room to move around and enjoy their lives. These little ones are the future of the herd and 35 calves on average are born here each day! A perfect example of a large scale family owned operation with outstanding management and workforce who care about the animals they raise.

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Alright boys and girls, it's go time! I hope everyone has enjoyed what they have seen so far with everything we have done but we cannot finish the film without your support! It's time for the farmer's voice to reach the city and here is our best shot. A big thank you to everyone who has donated so far! There are some pretty cool rewards for donating, so I hope we can share them with lots of you. Tag, share and help spread the word!

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A week ago we sent out our first #beforetheplatechallenge nominations. Today we are in complete amazement of the reach and participation thanks to YOU!  In one week:

19,437 trailer views

328 shares

1,100 new Instagram followers

700+ challenge posts including people from USA, Australia, New Zealand and even a coffee farmer in Guatemala

$1,685 raised

2 podcasts

3 interviews

The support has been amazing and now we need your help backing our Kickstarter campaign! We need to make sure we can finish this documentary that gives the farmer a voice in the cities. The link is in our BIO. This is one of our favourite posts from the challenge sent in by @l.zieleman

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Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field

Dwight D. Eisenhower, September 11, 1956 34th president of US 1953-1961 (1890 - 1969)

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"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field"

- Dwight D. Eisenhower, September 11, 1956

34th president of US 1953-1961 (1890 - 1969)

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If you would like to see Before The Plate as a finished product please help us out! We need backers in order to complete the film and get it to the masses. 

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Every single product on those shelves came from a farm in some form or another. If you ate today, thank a farmer

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Not all offices are created equal. A shot from our first farm tour of the project. This was a 5,000 acre cash crop and vegetable farm operation in Southwestern Ontario 

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When it's time to get work done on the farm it's all hands on deck! Harvesting wheat on a large scale cash crop/pig farm in south western Ontario

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Who was more curious? Us on a tour of this great dairy farm or these ladies with us pointing a camera around? These cows are in line waiting to be milked and then will go back into the main barn.

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After 2 hours and 25,000 eggs later, we set up a couple stools right in front of the egg packing machine and started asking questions! It was an amazing opportunity to see this brand new, state of the art egg farm.

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A big shout out to the man behind the camera who has made this whole production possible!

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For those of us who have not seen a modern dairy farm, here is an example of farming and technology coming together in amazing ways! With new "free flow" barns, cows now have the ability choose when they want to be milked by walking into a milking robot. Dozens of health indicators are checked and all data is uploaded to a computer for a farmer to analyze in order to make better management decisions. This is not factory farming, this is the future of farming

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An amazing moment captured on our first farm tour for this project!

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Cool little write up in this week’s Ontario Farmer!

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Here you have it folks. Words of wisdom spoken by a woman who is truly at the forefront of dairy innovation, herd health and welfare.