ENVIRONMENTALISTS: ALL FARMS THE SAME

  You know how once you see something, you can't NOT see it?  Like the arrow in the FedEx logo.  Look at the bottom of the E and the left of the x and you see an arrow--once you see it , you can't unsee it.  

                  I've been harping on the failure of people to distinguish between good farms and bad farms, good farming and bad farming.  In the Sept. 15  (yes, I usually stay a few days behind) Wall Street Journal, the full page ad on the back is from The Conservation Fund and signed by Larry Selzer, President and CEO of the environmental organization.                 

                  Titled "Conservation needs to learn to say 'yes'," the open letter chastises the environmental movement for primarily saying "no."  He encourages environmentalists to say "yes" because "we need to build."   

                  The next paragraph and one sentence in particular jumped out at me:  "Wetlands protect against floods, storm surge, and extreme weather.  Forests store carbon, filter drinking water, and extend the life of reservoirs.  Farms provide fresh, local, and sustainable food.  Urban tree canopies keep cities livable through a heat wave.  These natural systems are necessities, not amenities.  They do the work that built infrastructure cannot." 

                  I made the sentence you can't unsee bold so nobody would miss it.  A simple "some" as the first word to the sentence would change everything.  But such is the farm-cult in our nation that even environmentalists can't bring themselves to distinguish between good farms and bad ones.  In fact, the inconvenient truth--to borrow Al Gore's famous phrase--is that 90 percent of farms (I'm being charitable) do NOT provide fresh, local, and sustainable food.  Arguably, only 3-5 percent fit that category. 

                  What is it about farming that has folks tongue-tied to speak the reality?  A Nebraska soybean farm exporting to China and sending three tons of soil per acre per year down the river produces nothing fresh, local, or sustainable.  All three are strikes.  A Tyson chicken farm does not provide fresh, local, or sustainable anything.  A corn outfit sending corn to a government-subsidized ethanol plant isn't even producing food.  I'd call that four strikes.  Ditto the alfalfa farm exporting hay to Japan and Saudi Arabia for their race horses.

                  How do you arrive at conversational and policy clarity when people buying full-page WSJ ads are too timid to speak even a modicum of truth?  I'm beginning to think the biggest agriculture problem we have in the U.S. right now is ubiquitous farm worship.  I have nothing, nothing, nothing in common with a Tyson chicken farm.

                  I don't use GMO feed.  I don't confine massive numbers of chickens on their own toilet.  I don't keep lights on them so they can never sleep but instead will eat themselves silly.  I don't process them in facilities that can't, won't, and don't hire neighbors.  I don't electrocute, gas, or suffocate my chickens--all harsh.  I even own my chickens.  I don't medicate.  I don't vaccinate the birds.  Nothing, nothing about our farm and a Tyson outfit is similar, and yet we're lumped together like one big happy family in American farming.

                  If we expect consumers to reward farming meritocracy, it's time to differentiate the good ones from the bad ones.  It's like saying a blanket "preachers do good things."  Some do and some don't.  Broad brushing any vocation as if all are above reproach doesn't help the cause of goodness.  It waters down goodness.  Everyone gets a pass.  That's not how you honor goodness.

                  I challenge you to start listening and watching for this.  It's like Big Food being unable to say Coca-Cola is bad and Kombucha is good.  Progress begins when people realize everything isn't progress.  If we're going to have good farming, the starting point is having the courage and clarity to identify what we want juxtaposed with what we don't.  Larry Selzer, you may think you're being magnanimous, but in reality, you just threw the farmers you'd like to see under the bus by refusing to call out their deficient counterparts.  Shame. 

                  In a normal conversation about farming, what is the most common reaction if you matter-of-factly say "a lot of farming is bad?"