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A white Ford pickup truck broke through a thick curtain of fog one morning in February, winding its way down a muddy farm road in California’s Central Valley. From it emerged a 64-year-old dairyman, burly and tan, who left the engine running as he lumbered toward me with open arms.

“You must be Mark,” I said, warning him I wasn’t one for hugging.

“I’m a hugger,” he said, pulling me in anyway. “I feel like I’ve known you for a lifetime.”

I had spent the past couple of weeks corresponding with Raw Farm founder Mark McAfee, who’d filled my inbox with messages and PowerPoints extolling the virtues of his most important, and controversial, product: