Grazin' Hell

Like a lot of people, Chris Baggott's views on food and agriculture were upended by the writings of Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin. Unlike most people, Chris had already had at least two careers worth of success before he launched Tyner Pond Farm with his wife, Amy. 

His first entrepreneurial venture was a small chain of dry cleaners, where he learned the value of email marketing. In the late 90s. After closing the dry cleaning business, Chris co-founded an email marketing platform called ExactTarget. He left ExactTarget in the mid 2000s to co-found another company Compendium block where in 2010, Chris and his wife founded Tyner Pond, an AGA and USDA Organic certified farm about 20 miles east of Indianapolis, Indiana. 

In 2013, ExactTarget and Compendium were both purchased by Salesforce and Oracle respectively. Those exit events were not an excuse for the Baggotts to slow down. In fact, they're probably busier than ever.  

Find a certified-grassfed farm or ranch near you.

Learn more about American Grassfed.

Learn more about Tyner Pond Farm, The Mug, and Griggsby's Station.

Purchase "The Omnivore's Dilemma" from an independent bookseller.

Purchase "In Meat We Trust" from an independent bookseller.

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Joe Maxwell has spent his life fighting for working Americans. He's been a farmer, a soldier and attorney and a politician winning seats in the Missouri House of Representatives and the Missouri senate before serving a term as Lieutenant Governor. 

More recently, Joe spent five years leading Organization for Competitive Markets, which in its own words, "is a membership based research and advocacy organization, working to expose and break the stranglehold of corporate consolidation in our food and agricultural economy." 

Joe stepped away from OCM to found and lead a new group, Family Farm Action, which calls itself, "a progressive voice fighting to protect America's family farms and rural communities from multinational agribusiness monopolies that are destroying rural economies and way of life."

We spoke with Joe about his experience with the farm crisis of the 1980s, corporate consolidation in agriculture and how it has impoverished rural America.

Find a certified-grassfed farm or ranch near you.

Learn more about American Grassfed.

Learn more about Family Farm Action.

Learn more about Organization for Competitive Markets.

Purchase "The Jungle" from an independent bookseller.

Follow AGA on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.