For all that American agriculture provides those who live here, particularly in the Central Valley, you’d think that people would be less ignorant about it. Then again there’s little wonder why Americans are so detached from their supply of food and fiber. After all, it’s so easy to go to the grocery store and pick through a dozen different brands of the same thing; fruits and vegetables are in plentiful supply, the dairy case is consistently stocked with a growing list of items and the remaining shelves and bins have even more choices.
Add to that the ever-decreasing list of people who make their living producing our food and fiber and it becomes a simple issue of numbers. The farmer does what he does in near anonymity. You may even know this farmer; you might go to church with him and his family, or you might shop the same local grocery store, but even then there’s a large disconnect between you and the farmer because you don’t buy your groceries from the farmer. He sells his produce, dairy products, meat, vegetables, etc. to someone who processes the raw commodities; that person likely sells them one more time before hiring someone to transport the finished product to the grocery store where they’re neatly stacked on shelves for you to buy.
That’s likely the root of the problem: farmers don’t sell their goods to the end-user; they don’t have the connection with the end user. That’s not necessarily bad, it simply illustrates a hurdle that the ag industry must overcome if it’s going to better promote itself. While it may be interesting to some, and useful in a sense for agriculture to promote itself in terms of dollars and jobs, the vast majority of the public likely doesn’t care much that American agriculture accounts for about 4 percent of the nominal gross domestic product, according the US Department of Agriculture, or that in California’s Central Valley, agriculture’s economic impact is recorded in the tens of billions of dollars.
While farmers have worked to educate themselves, have made strides in becoming more efficient in their practices, and have even joined forces to lobby their elected representatives, they’ve done little at best to educate their customers — the American public — about just what it is they do, how they do it, and why what they do is so important.
Farm Bureau promotes American agricultural products as the best and safest, but unless you’re involved with Farm Bureau in some way, you wouldn’t know that. Somehow that “best and safest” argument has not permeated American culture. Still it’s taken for granted until an outbreak of disease-causing bacteria makes headlines and evening news broadcasts. In some cases those outbreaks can be directly traced to imported food — think tainted frozen strawberries from Mexico several years ago that made it into USDA school lunch programs. Still, other outbreaks may very well have come from U.S. produced food, such as more recent headlines that blamed spinach, lettuce and tomatoes. As detrimental to health and safety that those issues were, instances such as those are more the exception than the rule. Even so, issues such as this make an even stronger case for a more concerted effort of education and promotion by the American agriculture industry.
As cities continue to push their boundaries and pave over farmland and interest groups work to further legislate and restrict farming practices at the ballot box, we’re in danger of pushing our food production across the border and overseas. The end result will be the total abdication of our food production to nations that don’t have our best interests at heart. We have a tremendous land grant college system that puts university research on farms and ranches, helping American agriculture provide the best and safest food of any nation on Earth.
Our national sovereignty rests on our ability to feed and clothe ourselves with what we produce and export another large part of this production. A cursory look at America’s failed energy policy illustrates this point. How many more imported barrels of oil will it take before we completely forfeit our sovereignty? If we cede our food production to other nations, we will lose more than a safe and ample food supply.
American agriculture has a lot going for it. Instead of complaining that the public simply doesn’t understand, help us understand what you do, why you do it that way, and how those practices provide me with a safe and bountiful supply of food.
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