When Howard Lyman approached his banker about
starting an organic farm, his banker laughed. After Lyman made the
change from chemical-based farming to organic and became a
vegetarian (he’s now a vegan), he lost weight, and his blood
pressure and cholesterol dropped. Now he’s the one laughing.
Lyman, a fourth-generation farmer, made the
choice to go organic when his doctor found a tumor on his spinal
cord. After his recovery, Lyman made some changes. He sold most of
his farm, began work with the Montana Farmers Union, and became a
“closet vegetarian.”
“I would have rather been caught riding
a stolen horse in Montana than being a vegetarian,” Lyman
says.
But Lyman wanted to do more. He joined the
lobbyists on Capitol Hill for American Family Farmers. He founded
the nonprofit organization Voice for a Viable Future. After an appearance on the Oprah
Winfrey show about mad-cow disease in
1998, he and Winfrey found themselves on the receiving end of a
landmark lawsuit by Cactus Feeders, a group of Texas cattleman, for
“knowingly making false statements” about the agriculture
business. After nearly six years, the lawsuit was dismissed by a
federal court.
Lyman set out to show the world what was
happening inside the agriculture and cattle industries. He had
already written a bestselling book, Mad
Cowboy: Plain Truth From The Cattle Rancher Who Won’t Eat
Meat, but he wanted people to see what
was happening.
“I believe we are a visual
society,” Lyman says. “We don’t learn a lot from
what we hear, but rather what we see.”
Lyman collected more than 100 hours of footage
from around the world and edited it down to 80 minutes for the
documentary, Mad Cowboy: The
Documentary, which, he says,
shows all facets of the cattle industry from farmers to
scientists to senators. He started filming in June 2002 and
didn’t wrap until the fall of 2004.
“I wanted to show how we as American
people are affecting our environment,” Lyman says.
Lyman and his wife, Willow Jeane, plan a
60-day tour around the country, logging more than 6,000 miles to
spread his message. He says his latest book, No More Bull, “answers
the tough questions like when someone says, ‘You’re
vegan, what do you eat?’ ” The book has the answers,
with vegan recipes and information on diets. No More Bull is due out this
summer. =
The Springfield Vegetarian Association will
show Lyman’s film Mad Cowboy:
The Documentary at 7:30 p.m.
Tuesday, June 21, at Lincoln Library, Seventh & Capitol. The showing is free and open to the public.
This article appears in Jun 16-22, 2005.
