The Dream is Farming

It has been 46 years today since Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. It is something that on this day we see racial division today and, seemingly, some who wish to insure that division is there rather than moving past it. There are many who have a dream today that are seeing it slip away. They feed our nation. Black, white, brown skin does not matter - all face the same biased judgments in the media. All face the governmental interference and threat not only to jobs but a way of life. They're farmers.

I have a friend who proudly says "once a Marine always a Marine" - there is a bond, a kinship with other Marines even though they may serve 20 years apart or more. Similarly among farmers there is a kinship. There may be widely different food produced but it's a common bond whether a hog farmer in Iowa or a dairy farmer in the southwest. Once a farmer always a farmer, and even those without 400 acres, see and feel the sting of inaccurate media portrayal.

A double barrel blow this week came from Time with a shoddy, poorly researched piece that didn't even talk to farmers. It was followed with a NY Times report insinuating farms had no soul.

Time once celebrated farmers. A cover story on October 24, 1955 proclaimed "AGRICULTURE: The Closest Thing to the Lord." It featured highlights on several Future Farmers of America - FFA - members who excelled to the Star Farmer level. Indeed there were quotes such as "Yesterday's FFA leaders have helped bring US agriculture to the most bountiful state ever known to any civilization and in so serving their nation they have served themselves." FFA and farmers have continued to do that - building up from the 800 plus acres of the 1955 era. "Today's FFA leaders, building on the experience of their predecessors, have even greater opportunities" they said.

It spoke of Tennessee's Joe Moore being selected on statistics for the honor. Those statistics included farming 505 acres, owning 85 of that, renting from family the balance. It includes $15,000 of equipment, $16,000 in livestock including 71 cattle, "30 of them fine purebred Aberdeen-Angus plus seven registered Duroc-Jersey sows and about 80 sheep." Joe ran, it said, a $49,000 farm business and was worth $37,000 at 21 years old.

It illustrated with words a typical day for Joe, using a grease bucket to slop sows nursing pigs, pushing to make money, showing historically one cropping the land then it being taken over by blackberries and watching calves to know whether or not to treat for illness. It pointed to what we now call a black baldy picking at feed. "..Joe took the steer's temperature, found it four degrees above the normal 101 Fahrenheit. He and the teacher purged the calf with laxative, hypoed it with penicillin, and in a few days it was back with the other young feeders."

It told of using sulfa powder to treat a calf injured at weaning, a calf that it noted would likely have been lost by previous generations. It documented feeding sows and noted "a sow with new pigs is one of the farm's most dangerous animals, both to humans and to her pigs. If not fed with supplement containing tankage, a sow may indulge in the money-losing practice of eating her young." It documented the story of building this farm up and spoke of the future. "Beginning to make good money from his Durocs, he decided he could do even better with a modern, sanitary farrowing barn." It showed as an FFA member someone who had learned to think through and make decisions.

So fast forward now to 2009 and the sons of those same progressive farmers now took American agriculture to an even higher level. Instead of the glowing reports of FFA we don't hear of FFA but of, according to Bryan Walsh of Time magazine, farmers are producing meats and "feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population."

The pigs from those lots of days gone by were much more likely to have manure wash out of the lot and into water ways than today's farms. Yet today's Time magazine talks of "recalls involving contaminated foods this year - including an outbreak of salmonella from tainted peanuts that killed at least eight people and sickened 600." Perhaps it's splitting hairs to note that there is no news coverage of a peanut recall of that magnitude this year. Did it miss the news?! Or can it be that the peanut PASTE recall done because of improper processing, with seemingly inadequate inspections, is being passed to blame to farmers?!

If you grow a tomato, it's good quality food. Your family eats it too. Someone buys it, uses dirty equipment to make salsa and sells it, and then others get sick. Is that your fault?! Of course not. Nor is it peanut growers' responsibility months after the fact! This is an educated reporter so surely biased facts don't escape him, indicating perhaps it was a deliberate dig at farmers?

Time notes "First Lady Michelle Obama's White House garden has so far yielded more than 225 lb. of organic produce - and tons of powerful symbolism." They leave out the part - and perhaps 'organic' is different in DC but I was unaware it included sludge, also reported on that White House area. Indeed according to The HuffingtonPost.com - who DID look at both sides - sludge is federally forbidden in organic standards, and was used on the White House lawn, although it has been more than three years ago. Still they note "In some areas where sludge has been heavily used, whole families are evincing the same symptoms: sores in their nasal passages, chronic staph infections, crippling headaches and sinus troubles. Yet -- despite the mounting evidence -- EPA wants to continue to promote sludge as a benign alternative to fertilizer."

Despite this omission and conflict of information Time passes judgment on farmers with "if you don't take care of your land, it can't take care of you." Farmers DO take care of their land! The media, the government agencies that want - and get - ever increasing control when they can't agree on or manage what control they have - have an issue with farmers.

They and others making movies say farmers won't talk - but when farmers try to talk in open forums it's dismissed as "factory farm propaganda" or even "spam"! It's presented as advertising makes people buy things. People aren't smart enough to make decisions for themselves so "don't think just read this" "journalism" takes over. Sounds good.

"Most hog waste is disposed of in open-air lagoons, which can overflow in heavy rain and contaminate nearby streams and rivers." This was a claim made in the Time article. Remember those hogs in open logs? Where did the manure go when it rained? It's represented the pigs can't move around. Yet many tours are available online that explain housing, manure handling and other issues from the Illinois Farm Bureau and the Ethical Treatment of Pigs. None of this was even mentioned in passing by Time! The fact is pigs do not sweat - pigs are often pictured outdoors in mud because that protects them from heat and sunburn. "Cruelty" accusations have also been made when animals are in muddy lots - yet keeping the pigs in clean, sanitary pens in a climate controlled building it bad. Even the previously represented "modern, sanitary farrowing barn" is worthy of insults and banning now.

According to the Oregon State Extension the #1 practice to eliminate manure contamination of water is don't let animals contact surface water. Where do these "approved" outdoor raised animals deposit manure? Forty years of observation tells me pretty much wherever they're standing - including surface water. This was enforced to the extreme of ranchers not being able to use creeks to water cattle so as to keep them away from waterways. Valued as fertilizer, the manure naturally nourishes the fields, yet this is criticized too, as well as the use of any kind of sprays farmers may use.

Even the antibiotics needed to treat sick animals at the first sign of illness, perhaps before some see therefore it could be deemed "preventative" is criticized. Time reports "The Institute of Medicine estimated in 1998 that antibiotic resistance cost the public-health system $4 billion to $5 billion a year - a figure that's almost certainly higher now." There is a drug over the counter or prescription for every sniffle, sneeze, runny nose, cough, fever and itchy eye issue known to man. It is a multi-billion dollar industry. In 199 it was $96.1 billion - which, also, is almost certainly higher now. This doesn't include the prescriptions of $161 billion. (SOURCE) Each time we - as human beings - take something for small things it also allows those viruses to get stronger. Yet rather than look at OUR intake of antibiotics and other drugs lowering OUR OWN resistance we want to tell a farmer that his sick pig or cow shouldn't be treated because it's their fault we're sick? What doesn't add up here?!

According to the FDA "21 percent of all antibiotic prescriptions to adults, were written to treat colds, upper respiratory tract infections, and bronchitis, even though over 90 percent of these diseases are caused by viruses on which antibacterial drugs would have no effect" - which allows the viruses to gain strength! Yet despite this media such as Time and the New York Times blame farmers for overusing antibiotics!

Yet Time says ""These antibiotics are not given to sick animals," says Representative Louise Slaughter, who is sponsoring a bill to limit antibiotic use on farms."It's a preventive measure because they are kept in pretty unspeakable conditions."" Now if low doses allow the viruses to gain strength (already established) then if routinely mis- using antibiotics there shouldn't be an issue with CAFOs as the antibiotics wouldn't work and all animals would be dead.

Time holds up the Niman enterprise - whose representative says in a hog video the hogs aren't confined in any way - with a fence clearly in view! It's implied those are family farms and the others aren't - despite many generations of all sized farms. It also implies that large operations don't tend to the animals daily - which is just not true!

While choice is great and I've long upheld small farms and grow it yourself, it's different to portray opinion as fact such as many media outlets have been doing. They criticize eating steaks, mashed potatoes and butter - all natural produced food.

It is OUR responsibility as consumers to regulate portions and how much we eat. Not restaurants (most provide take home containers!) or growers. We - each one of us as consumers - decide what we are going to put in our shopping carts or plate, pay for and consume - and at any point in the decision process we can decide what and how much to consume!

Increasingly those who view farmers and agriculture with an open mind and listen are finding the spoonfed information is false. Some outright say they were lied to. More than ever misinformation abounds and now it's spread by major media. It's time for Americans to make their own sources, ask their own questions and not rely on media to inform you. Informing and convincing is not the same!

Many farmers have a dream - to make a living wage, to gather the respect from the people may be much to hope for. It's time to say THANK YOU.