Preserving Care at Scale: Manchester Farms
What happens when a family farm grows far beyond its backyard beginnings?
In this episode of One Bite is Everything, host Dana DiPrima speaks with Brittney Miller, second-generation owner of Manchester Farms in South Carolina, a farm that began more than 55 years ago on a picnic table and now raises millions of quail each year.
Scaling agriculture often means losing the intimacy that once defined it. Systems replace instincts, automation replaces people, and efficiency overtakes care.
Manchester Farms has taken a different path.
Brittney describes a business that produces millions of birds while still operating with the culture of a family farm. Employees are known as “flock members,” hatch day still feels personal, and decisions are made with a constant awareness that the farm supports more than a hundred families.
Dana and Brittney discuss the realities of running a vertically integrated poultry operation, how chefs helped shape the modern market for quail, the regulatory quirks of an industry that sits between FDA and USDA oversight, and the challenge of building a business in a sector that receives no government subsidies.
But underneath it all is a deeper question:
What does it take to grow a farm without losing the care that made it successful in the first place?
This episode explores an important question in our food system from inside a farm of tiny birds.
Find Manchester Farms here: https://manchesterfarms.com
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