HOLDING FRIENDS ACCOUNTABLE

Goodness knows in the good farming sector of agriculture--as opposed to bad farming--we need friends.  This post is not to crucify; it is to point out blind eyes on our own side and unnecessary sensationalism.

                  Farm Action is a friend to good farming.  A friend to me.  The folks there have a heart that's in the right place. I follow their weekly updates almost religiously and have quoted from them many times.  They uncover facts and figures you won't find other places.  One came in today, though, that illustrates the Achilles Heel of good farming.

                  The post is about a coloring book handed to children attending the Minnesota State Fair titled Producers, Pigs, and Pork.  Published by the national Pork Checkoff, which is a quasi-governmental program that exacts a toll from pig farmers to promote pork, the coloring book extols the virtues of factory farming, farrowing crates, and all things industrial.  It even explains the virtue of slatted floors over mud wallows.

                  Is it despicable?  Yes.  Is it unfair to use non-industrial pork taxes to pay for promotional materials that impugn outdoor production?  Yes.

                  But here's where I'm going to call my Farm Action friends to account.  The post uses a farm photograph to juxtapose outdoor pigs with the coloring book's virtuous confinement pigs.  The on-farm photo of a better pig production arrangement outdoors has a farmer with his pigs in a horrible dirt landscape.  Not a blade of green vegetation exists.

                  The picture is what we call a moonscape.  It is unsanitary, unhygienic, and ecologically devastating.  Nothing protects the soil from erosion; the pigs have clearly been there way too long and have eaten, tromped, and destroyed every vestige of vegetation.  It's everything bad about outdoor pig production.

                  To defend that photograph as the positive antithesis of the industry's coloring book is not putting our best foot forward.  It is rather opening our side up to industry vituperation.  Goodness, it's the re-beginning of dreaded hog cholera, which dominated hog farms in the early 1900s and was one of the primary catalysts for moving pig production indoors.

                  Folks, if you're going to make a case for outdoor pig production, you need a pretty picture. Outdoor pig production can be beautiful with good management.  But nothing about outdoor pig production is positive with bad management.  I see that routinely with backyard chicken flocks, in dirt runs.  They're ugly and unsanitary and probably why too many backyard flocks get high path avian influenza.  If you're going to point a finger at something you don't like, you'd better be above reproach yourself.

                  Secondly, the Farm Action post says "all pig farmers pay" into the checkoff.  Our farm doesn't.  To my knowledge, none of the farms we buy piggies from pays into it either.

I don't know if we're illegal, but I think a solid case could be made that a farm like ours would be exempted from the checkoff toll inasmuch as all its publicity pooh-poohs our kind of farming.  The truth is all pig farmers do not pay into the checkoff, and to say so, again, opens the post to charges of sensationalism, overstating the case, and innuendo.  Our side has enough good arguments without wading into overstatement.

                  The checkoff program is another case where the powers that be do not recognize good farming and bad farming.  It's just farming.  It doesn't recognize good pork and bad pork; it's just pork.  As the MAHA movement progresses and consumer mistrust toward Big Ag increases, it will become harder and harder to demand a "no distinction" mentality.  More people realize the emperor has no clothes.  Big Ag is exposed for the horrendous protocols it espouses.

                  While I love any post taking on Big Ag, our side must be careful to put our best foot forward and to speak truth without embellishment.  The facts are stark enough.  To my friends at Farm Action, I hope this lands on soft ground.  I want seeds of goodness to sprout and to hold our side accountable to being above reproach.  That's how we win the day.

                  What are other examples where good people or organizations have hurt their cause unintentionally?