AFBF: Join the Conversation About the Food You Produce

In her article Join the Conversation About the Food You Produce, Chris Chinn suggests something I hadn’t considered before.

Maybe it is time that we focus not so much on the fact that America’s food supply is safer and more abundant than any other nation’s agricultural output, and look to what resonates with the public. Right or wrong, the media and certain advocacy groups are targeting how our food supply is produced and asking the question “is your food safe?”

“People are more concerned about the methods we are using to produce food and the impact it might have to consumer health.” ~ Chris Chinn

As irritating as those questions can become to some of us, it’s kind of like the newspaper editor who acts as if he knows what the reader wants and needs, and tells a subscriber on the phone as much, rather than serving the reader by providing what he or she wants to read. Maybe that’s why the newspaper industry is in such decline, but I digress.

If nothing else, it’s time for agriculture to take the lead in terms of its message, rather than being the defensive coach, waiting to see what the offense throws at him before deciding his game plan.

Related articles

• AFBF’s Stallman Lays out Agriculture’s Change Agenda (farmbureau.wordpress.com)
• Annual Meeting Wraps Up With Laughter and Awards (farmbureau.wordpress.com)

Ceding America’s sovereignty through food policy

American sovereignty is probably in no greater danger than now as Congress moves to cede decisions on agricultural production and policy to the World Trade Organization and labyrinth of unelected government officials within the United States, including the Department of Homeland Security.

Section 404 of the Food Safety Modernization Act: Declares that nothing in this Act shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.

Why add language like this unless it’s the goal of Congress to cede control of our food supply to a nefarious body of despots? But I’m not the only one asking these questions. Check out this video and its assorted links. Even more information can be found at the Food Freedom blog.

 

America's sovereignty has always been anchored in our ability to be agriculturally self-sufficient. A bill in Congress would strip that ability from us.

The Food Safety Modernization Act will arguably establish suffocating layers of regulation upon American agriculture, to the point that American agriculture will cease to exist. As I’ve written in the past, American agriculture is truly our last bastion of sovereignty. When we lose the ability to sovereignly control our own food supply we will no longer be able to control our political destiny. Those who set our agricultural policy and ultimately provide us with our food will have complete control over us. Given that ours is a world of despotic power it’s not entirely unreasonable that our food supply could ultimately be controlled by the same kind of cartels that already control our oil and energy supplies.

Speaking of the word “reasonable,” S510 uses this word three times as it cedes czar powers to the various department secretaries within the US government. For example:

Section 101 -

Amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) to expand the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to inspect records related to food, including to: (1) allow the inspection of records of food that the Secretary reasonably believes is likely to be affected in a similar manner as an adulterated food; and (2) require that each person (excluding farms and restaurants) who manufactures, processes, packs, distributes, receives, holds, or imports an article of food permit inspection of his or her records if the Secretary believes that there is a reasonable probability that the use of or exposure to such food will cause serious adverse health consequences or death.

Section 102 -

Authorizes the Secretary to suspend the registration of a food facility if the food manufactured, processed, packed, or held by a facility has a reasonable probability of causing serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals.

Section 305 -

Requires the Secretary to determine whether a country can provide reasonable assurances that the food supply of the country meets or exceeds the safety of food manufactured, processed, packed, or held in the United States.

What is “reasonable” to our government officials? It seems that nothing in government is “reasonable” anymore given their track record to overstep constitutional authority.

Lest we forget that government is in the business to grow its size and control over our lives, this measure outlines the implementation of numerous yet-to-be-determined taxes upon our lives. Let’s take a look:

Section 107 -

Directs the Secretary to assess and collect fees related to: (1) food facility reinspection; (2) food recalls; (3) the voluntary qualified importer program; and (4) importer reinspection. Applies export certification provisions to food.

Section 401 –

Authorizes appropriations for FY2010-FY2014 for the activities of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the Center for Veterinary Medicine, and related field activities in the Office of Regulatory Affairs of the FDA. Directs the HHS Secretary to increase the field staff of such Centers and Office.

When has government not ever mandated something that it first didn’t make “voluntary?” This is another dangerous idea on a slippery slope towards despotism.

Section 112 -

Requires the Secretary to develop and make available to local educational agencies, schools, early childhood education programs, and interested entities and individuals guidelines for developing plans for individuals to manage the risk of food allergy and anaphylaxis in schools and early childhood education programs, to be implemented on a voluntary basis. Sets forth issues for such guidelines to address, including: (1) parental obligation to provide documentation of their child’s food allergy; (2) the creation of an individual plan for food allergy management; (3) communication strategies between schools or childhood education programs and providers of emergency medical services; and (4) strategies to reduce the risk of exposure to anaphylactic causative agents in classrooms and common school or early childhood education program areas, such as cafeterias. Allows the Secretary to award matching grants to assist local educational agencies in implementing such food allergy and anaphylaxis management guidelines.

The authority that Congress grants the various department secretaries is tantamount to the unconstitutional authority granted the treasury secretary to set and enforce financial policy of America. Congress is ceding control to unelected officials who, by default, become czars of their respective agencies, able to rule by edict absent constitutional controls. What’s wrong with our current system that this HAS to take place?

Just in case there wasn’t enough government control written into the act, read this:

Section 210 -

Requires the Secretary to set standards and administer training and education programs for the employees of state, local, territorial, and tribal food safety officials relating to the regulatory responsibilities and policies established by this Act. Authorizes and encourages the Secretary to conduct examinations, testing, and investigations for the purposes of determining compliance with the food safety provisions of this Act through the officers and employees of such state, local, territorial, or tribal agency.

What does this mean? Don’t we have grocery stores even in rural areas? This can’t be good! Take a look at this:

Section 406 -

Requires the Secretary, acting through the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, to study the transportation of food for consumption in the United States, including an examination of the unique needs of rural and frontier areas with regard to the delivery of safe food.

Why do we need any government agency studying how food is transported to rural areas unless the goal is to cut off those rural regions from the rest of the country? It can’t be to improve efficiencies because we know government is incapable of that. We already have a network of highways and railroad routes capable of transporting goods around America. Aren’t these sufficient to get groceries to the rural regions of the United States?

While this plan is arguably aimed at food safety, America already has the highest standards for food safety in the world. We merely need to enforce those standards and ensure that the food we import meets those same high standards. This is not an issue of food safety for the sake of food safety; it’s really an issue of granting control to an international organization whose board of directors is reminiscent of the Star Wars bar scene, and whose members do not have the best interest of the United States as its core beliefs and desire.

Taxing Californians out of existence

A generation ago consumers thought the best way to help the environment was to rid grocery stores of paper bags in favor of the more convenient plastic bags. The move  to rid stores of paper bags was aimed at curbing what environmentalists claimed was the clear cutting of America’s forests. In forested areas of the West the icon of this move became a relatively small owl that environmentalists claimed was being killed off by the timber industry.

Fast-forward a generation and now those “convenient” plastic bags that break if you put more than a loaf of bread in them are “evil” and must be taxed out of existence. It’s not enough to simply force grocers to go back to paper bags, the California legislature wants to mandate that grocers charge for those plastic bags. While these charges will obviously be passed along to consumers as a direct tax on their grocery bill, legislators will likely make the purchase of these bags a taxable transaction, meaning for every bag sold, the state will collect an additional amount in sales tax.

With California tens of billions of dollars in the financial hole and businesses fleeing the state, taking their jobs with them, California’s dimwitted solution to a non-existent problem is to create an even worse problem for the tarnished state. No longer can we be called the “golden state.”

Growing PR problem related to agricultural use of biosolids

The E. coli in this burger may not come from it being under cooked, but from the lettuce or onion that was possibly irrigated with effluent water from a municipal wastewater treatment plant that did not adequately filter out all bacteria prior to being used to irrigate farmland.

An ag industry newspaper called The Packer is reporting the discovery of E. coli in Romaine Lettuce coming out of the Salinas Valley in California. While this bit of news is not attached to reports of human illness preceding such a recall, this news serves as another black eye for California’s vegetable industry.

According to the article, the Andrew Smith Co. of Salinas recalled 1,000 cartons of lettuce on May 7 “after tests showed the presence of E. coli in a bag of romaine lettuce, the day after another company recalled romaine products — but the two recalls are apparently unrelated.”

While the article does not address it, it’s been reported that farms in the Salinas Valley have for several years now used treated sewage water from municipal wastewater treatment plants as a means of irrigating their crops. The move, according to one website, came in response about a decade ago to the intrusion of salt water in wells that irrigated the high-value vegetable crops grown in the Monterey and Salinas area of Central California.

Just a couple years ago more cases of E. coli were reportedly linked to spinach and other crops coming out of the same growing region of California.

This political and PR nightmare is not what Central Coast growers — or any farmers for that matter — need. But it’s one that farmers have invited upon themselves by agreeing with cities to take toxic water from wastewater treatment plants and use it to irrigate the crops we eat.

It was for this very reason that about a decade ago farmers in neighboring counties of Central California got together and banned the land application of sewage sludge and the use of treated effluent water on farmlands in agriculturally rich counties such as Stanislaus, Merced and San Joaquin. At the same time, farmers in Kern County California were being exposed in newspaper articles there about their practice of having sludge trucked in from nearby Orange and Los Angeles counties for use as “soil amendments.” That news surprised some vegetable farmers in Kern County, who immediately denied using sludge — the industry term is “biosolids” — on their farmland and tried to get an ordinance similar to other counties in order to ban the import and use of sewage sludge on farmlands there. Their fears not only stemmed from the possible contamination of their crops, but from the associated public relations nightmare they feared would befall them once word got out that municipalities were using carrot crops and other farmland to dispose of their municipally treated sewage.

Fast-forward a decade and we see the seeds of these fears bearing fruit in the form of tainted lettuce, spinach and other crops coming out of the nation’s salad bowl. In the expedience of getting rid of treated sewage solids and liquids, farmers have become an easy target for the cities as they push biosolids as a safe and cheaper alternative to other kinds of soil amendments.

The counties that argued against the land application of sewage sludge did so on the grounds that there are truly no guarantees that the treatment processes used eliminates all of the toxins and heavy metals that are part of the municipal waste stream. In short, it’s not just the human waste that gets flushed down all those toilets, but everything else from the petroleum products to the dangerous chemicals illegally dumped by businesses and clandestine drug labs that makes it into the waste stream at the municipal waste treatment facilities that is also a big part of what gets dumped on farmland through these agreements between the cities and farmers.

When are farmers going to learn that they can’t play roulette with cities and expect to not lose when the public learns of these practices and stops buying their produce? The cities surely have no stake in farms losing their ability to sell their crops; it’s the farmers who have everything to lose when consumers decide to stop buying their produce. What happens when packing industry efforts to move more fruits and vegetables through the USDA school lunch program are successful and we wind up with thousands of sick or dead school children because of a few bags of tainted lettuce or other commodities — all because cities coerced farmers to use treated sewage products on their farmland?

PR: Where farms and consumers meet to eat

Before the food we eat winds up served here, top photo, it starts in farm fields such as these in California's fertile San Joaquin Valley, below.

For all that American agriculture provides those who live in California, particularly here 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. It’s 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 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. While you may know this farmer from church or your local school sports team where your children play together, there remains 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.

Then again in today’s global economy you might not even buy the food produced locally. Check the labels of the fruit and vegetables (if you can find a label) on the fresh produce you buy at the grocery store. Avocados and melons from Mexico might sit a bin or two down from the fruit grown in Chile. What kind of phytosanitary rules governed the production of those fruits and vegetables before being imported into the United States?

That’s likely the root of the problem: farmers don’t sell their goods to the consumer. 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 alone, agriculture’s total economic impact is over $50 billions 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 customers about just what it is they do, how they do it, and why what they do is so important.

With the advent of social media some farmers are doing what they can to impress upon the public their importance. Web sites, blogs, twitter feeds and Facebook pages such as:

• http://twitter.com/JeffFowle
• http://www.keepcaliforniafarming.com/
• http://www.advocatesforag.com/
• http://www.ilovefarmers.org/about.html
• http://dairygoddess.wordpress.com/

are doing what they can to educate folks about the importance of American agriculture.

For a long time Farm Bureau has promoted American agricultural products as the best and safest, but even then we still have legitimate issues and concerns of food safety in America with tainted beef and tainted vegetables causing food borne illness and death. 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. We hear nothing until another outbreak of Salmonella or e-coli breaks out then all of American agriculture is painted in the same negative brush strokes by the drive-by media.

In some cases those outbreaks can be directly traced to imported food — think tainted frozen strawberries from Mexico several years ago that illegally made its way into the USDA school lunch program. Still, other outbreaks may very well have come from U.S. produced food, such as more recent headlines that blamed spinach, lettuce and tomatoes for illness and death across America. It is still suspected that the Salinas Valley farms involved in growing these commodities also use treated effluent water (think sewage sludge). That in and of itself is a whole other issue of monumental proportions.

As detrimental to health and safety that those issues were, they are more the exception than the rule. Even so, this makes an even stronger case for a more concerted effort of education and promotion by the American agriculture industry, along with a fervent drive for improved food safety standards in America.

Our national sovereignty rests on our ability to feed and clothe ourselves with what we produce, and to be able to 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.

Paying protection money or suicide by politician: Either way American citizens and consumers lose

I don’t pick it or grow it, weed it or water it, spray it or till it. I don’t stay up nights to make sure the wind machines and water are running to keep it from freezing. I don’t worry about the rain during the spring bloom or the late-summer harvest. I don’t stress over whether to buy millions of dollars of insurance to cover crop damage from thunderstorms and hail. I don’t worry about the fluctuations of feed prices and milk prices, or even about the availability of bees to pollinate my orchards.

As an American consumer I, like all other American consumers, take for granted that my grocery store shelves will be stocked with ample supplies of safe and healthy food produced here in the United States. My only concern when I peruse the bins of fruits and vegetables in the store is the source of my broccoli, apples or melons (did American farmers grow them or were they imported from foreign countries?). I’m appreciative of labeling laws that make it so I can make an educated choice of whether to buy fruit that was grown in Chile or in the United States.

What I do worry about is my country’s ability to sovereignly govern itself. I worry that my country is losing its sovereignty through policies that believe we’re better off buying oil from foreign nations than mining our own domestic sources of oil; I also worry that these same mental midgets and their political supporters will someday soon regulate the American farmer out of existence and force us to go begging for food from third-world nations. The irony is that some of these same political supporters are the very farmers that right now feed this nation.

I know many farmers. I’ve worked closely with farmers as a journalist and even worked with them for a period of time to promote American agriculture. They appear to be hard working and honest people. They prefer the farm to stuffy meetings and they would much rather do what it takes to produce quality agricultural commodities than have to wade through piles of regulations that stifle productivity and cut profits.

So why do farmers continue to support politicians who regularly vote to cut their water supplies, take their land, and regulate their ability to do business because some well-paid whiner claims that growing the food that feeds the nation isn’t as important as some bug, fish, mammal or reptile?

Today the California Farm Bureau Federation announced its support for Carly Fiorina for US Senate to replace Barbara Boxer. While I’m not arguing that Boxer doesn’t need to be sent out to pasture herself, the choice of Fiorina is certainly puzzling, given her reluctance to really come out and tell the voters what she stands for. What we do know about her is she’s closely tied with Arizona Senator John McCain, who we all know would run from his own shadow if it appeared to his right. That alliance alone makes me as a voter suspicious of her and much more likely to vote for one of the other Republican candidates for US Senate.

I’ve long been puzzled by agriculture’s decisions to financially support Liberal politicians, then a year or two later when those same Liberals vote to shut off water supplies or for more stringent rules to the Endangered Species Act, or for some other anti-business, anti-farming piece of legislation, they complain as if that vote came as a complete shock and surprise.

Maybe it’s because farmers are coy and they know that Liberal politicians like to spend money that’s not theirs to buy favors that will help them during their reelection campaigns, and maybe, if farmers don’t squirm too much and agree to pay ample amounts of protection money for the reelection campaigns of these same politicians, then maybe a well-placed farmer might be awarded with a political appointment or some other financial stocking stuffer.

Meanwhile, America’s ability to be agriculturally self-sufficient suffers and it becomes more necessary for us to import food from nations that are a military coup away from deciding that the United States is not a favored trading partner anymore and should pay much more if we want to buy the food they produce.

We know what it’s like to be held hostage by the price of a barrel of oil that’s set by a cartel that doesn’t have America’s best interest in mind when it meets in secret. Imagine a world where similar tyrants gather in seclusion to decide who gets to buy the food supply they control and how much that food will cost. Sadly, we appear to be on the slippery slope to that end, and the announcement by California’s leading farm organization to support another Liberal politician (albeit one with an “R” behind her name) is just that much more grease on the slide.

Buying politicians or paying protection money: They’re one in the same

Some of the farmers who's water deliveries were eliminated last year have been regular contributors to the same politicians voting to cut those deliveries. © Todd Fitchette

There’s a common storyline in old gangster movies where the mob boss goes into someone’s store and tells the store owner that it would be a shame if something bad happened to him or his store. In this case of explicit implication, the store owner decides to “buy” the rather expensive protection services of the local mob boss. It might work, but it’s extortion nonetheless. Politicians play a similar game with their constituents, particularly those who represent groups of like-minded constituents.

Take for example the farm groups that consistently gives money to Democrats thinking that maybe someday these Democratic lawmakers might, kind of, maybe see things their way and stop writing laws that take their water, land and livelihoods. As much as the Supreme Court has ruled that political contributions are protected under the First Amendment as free speech, the case can be made that such donations to sitting politicians are nothing more than legalized extortion. If nothing else, these political donations do not generate the return on investment that the farmers would expect. So the question then becomes, why continue donating to and supporting these wasted causes?

It happens on a regular basis. Farmers contribute to many of the same politicians who then side with the environmental extortionists and further strip farmers and the rest of us of our private property rights and extort more money from us in the way of taxes, fees and levies. I’ve seen it happen with Dianne Feinstein, who claims to enjoy support from farmers, only later to reportedly threaten physical harm against the head of one prominent ag-based organization who also happens to be one of her constituents. Read the story “Breakdown” in High Country News for one such example.

This puzzled me when I used to work for one ag organization and was a reporter and editor covering the ag industry. I could never understand allegedly conservative farmers and ranchers donating richly to the coffers of folks like Feinstein and other Liberals. The line of defense was similar to the honest storekeeper who admits to his closest friend that he doesn’t like paying the mob, but if he doesn’t the cost to him, his family and his business would be worse.

I’ve written in the past on the national security implications such votes have. Farmers and ranchers in America not only provide the safest and best food and fiber produced anywhere in the world, but they contribute in a large way to our national sovereignty by making us agriculturally independent from the rest of the world.

California agriculture (and its larger American ag industry cousin) would do well to end this practice of voluntarily contributing to these criminals. While blackmail is an ugly word, what other word aptly describes the implied threat that if you don’t give to my campaign I’ll vote against your wishes, but then again when the time comes around to call on those favors, the politician suffers a lapse in short-term memory and still votes in favor of legislation that further restricts farming and ranching and adds one more nail to the coffin that will someday be eulogized as “American Agriculture.”

Farm water a national security issue

The ability to capture water to irrigate farms has always been a human consideration. Even with water storage facilities such as Shasta Lake and its 4.3 million acre feet of storage, water policy in California allows most of the water captured in storage facilities in California to flow out to sea unused by the agriculture which feeds and sustains the United States and much of the world. ©Todd Fitchette

I have long argued that our battle over water for agriculture has much larger ramifications than the economy of California’s Central Valley. The cheap and ready access to irrigation water is not only vital to for the existence of farms and families in California, it’s imperative if we’re going to remain a sovereign nation.

Discussions over water have become a crusade here in Central California. The reason it’s become such an issue (again) is because the bureaucrats who control the flow of irrigation water believe that protecting the Delta Smelt, a tiny fish with no commercial value, is more important than growing the crops we eat and export.

Farmers have long been innovators in many ways. In fact farmers from around the world will gather next week at the World Ag Expo in Tulare, CA to consider the purchase of new technologies that will further make them more efficient. They’ve had to be more efficient. Profit and loss margins tend to be thin in agricultural production, and in most cases are reliant on things out of control of farmers: the weather and world markets dictate whether farmers will even have a crop and what those crops will be worth once they’re harvested.

It doesn’t help when bureaucrats and do-gooders looking for a cause change the rules after the bets have been placed. You could rightly understand the outrage people would have in Las Vegas if the house called for the bets, and after the bets were placed, the house completely changed the rules in their favor and swept the table clean. That’s what happens on a regular basis as the federal government repeatedly violates the contract it has with farmers to provide water in the Central Valley. These failed water deliveries and cutbacks always happen after predictions of water are made and farmers have borrowed money from the banks to plant their crops. But lately farmers have stopped planting in California’s fertile Central Valley because the predictions of water deliveries have continued to drop to levels unsustainable for agricultural production.

Agriculture has always been the lifeblood of our nation. Even after the industrial revolution moved people off the farm and into the factories, we’ve been self-sufficient when it comes to our food production. What’s even more remarkable is that fewer and fewer people continue to produce more than enough food for the rest of us here in the United States.

Ours isn’t a problem of a lack of water in California, but a lack of water when and where we need it. Much more water falls on California each year through rain and snow than we’re able to store. The ability to collect more of that water and make it available for agricultural and urban uses doesn’t take any water away from the Delta. In reality, it would stabilize flows through the Delta by giving us the ability to slow the runoff and release it in a more controlled manner. There’s another phrase for this: it’s called flood control.

Before Shasta Dam was built, much of the Sacramento Valley was uninhabitable during certain times of the year. Now with facilities like Shasta and Keswick dams, we’ve not only allowed agriculture to flourish in the Sacramento Valley, but we’ve allowed for urban development as the flood plains became livable thanks to the ability to control the flow of water down the Sacramento River. As an added perk, we created a whole host of recreational opportunities for people.

While we could do well to increase the storage capacity of lakes Shasta, Keswick and Oroville, we need similar storage facilities along the west slopes of the southern and central Sierra — facilities that would collect and store water for farmers and cities alike. Water that could even be used to restore the San Joaquin River.

We can do what it takes to build the storage and conveyance systems necessary to provide ample water for agricultural production and urban uses, or we can let a very loud minority have its way and kill agriculture in California. If this happens, we’ll cede our agricultural self-sufficiency to other countries that likely won’t have the best interest of the United States at heart when we go begging for food.

Farmers must better educate the public

Today's dairy cow eats better and is healthier than ever because she is under the regular care of a veterinarian. ©Todd Fitchette

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 to the point that it impacts agricultural policy from the federal to the local level. It’s taken for granted until an outbreak of disease-causing bacteria makes headlines and evening news broadcasts and even then it’s missed in the hysteria and hype that reporters can bring to the issue. 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.

American chile production cools while consumption increases

While eating my chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant last week in New Mexico I came across one of those informational brochures on the table that further illustrates the lackluster opinion our elected leaders have of American agriculture and why we’re destined to lose much more than a vital American industry if we don’t put the brakes on fast.

According to the New Mexico Chile Association the New Mexico chile industry is in steep decline thanks to foreign competition that is raising chile peppers cheaper than it costs to grow them here. Sound familiar?

Since the height of New Mexico’s chile production in 1992, when 34,500 acres of chiles were harvested, that acreage has dropped to around 11,000 acres. While China is trying to corner the oleoresin market — oleoresin is a natural plant product — Mexican companies are taking advantage of reduced regulations and cheap labor to steal the US market share of green chili. All this, plus competition from other foreign nations, has led to a dramatic drop in the domestic production of chile peppers.

Why is this important? Because American phytosanitary regulations are why consumers here have such high confidence in American-produced agricultural goods. American agriculture is also why this country remains sovereign, though President Obama is working hard to cede our sovereignty to other nations by selling our debt to nations such as China, but I digress.

Moreover, American-grown chiles have scored better in taste tests, particularly those from the Hatch, NM area, and in restaurant surveys than foreign-grown chiles. Ironically, the consumption of chile peppers in the United States has increased, according to the New Mexico Chile Association, while we continue to decrease our domestic production.

We need to protect our domestic food source from foreign competition through all means necessary. We have very little domestic oil production right now and look where that’s got us! The catastrophe awaiting us if we cede our food production to third-world nations with little to no food safety regulations will literally kill us.