Tonight a couple of my colleagues are rehearsing for a presentation tomorrow in St. Louis. In preparation for their meeting, I needed to take a couple of phone calls in the past few days and get on my work email tonight to answer a couple of questions. I have been enjoying a wonderful maternity leave with my children and family and really have not worked. I am totally immersed in 110% mommy and out of the loop when it comes to my work. But as I was flying through emails tonight and deleting most, I was quickly bringing myself up to speed on what is happening in the industry and seeing different headlines. And the below head line caught my eye so I linked it to my blog to share. It shakes me to the core. I have typed out my opinion a few times on this article but it gets to be so emotional and lengthy that I keep deleting it to make my opinion concise. I am not there yet and being immersed in 110% mommy leads me to needing to bathe and feed my baby right now! So I will leave you with the link. Read it all. Comments welcome.
Time trashes American agriculture   Dairy Herd Management Magazine – Industry News
Katie:
As I have been out and about in the countryside this past week this has been a major source of conversation. Like you, I am outraged. And, like you, I can’t seem to find the words to express how disturbing I find this trend of hatred for the American farmer. The more and more disconnected American consumers become from the farm, the more I believe we will have these issues. We continue to produce the safest, most abundant and CHEAPEST food supply anywhere in the world. The reason that most consumers don’t have to give a second thought to their food is because it is always abuntantly available. It gets my blood pressure up to read opinion articles like this disguised as news. I’m interested to read your additional thoughts on the matter.
Hmmm…I read this with interest when it arrived last week. As a former journalist, former farmer and aspiring critical thinker, I have a few thoughts (surprise, surprise :).
1. The Niman’s have a fantastic publicist. Seriously. You can’t buy this kind of press.
2. This is a perspective piece. Bryan Walsh explained on drovers.com that it is not a traditional, objective journalistic article. Which is fine, except that the reader would assume the cover story on Time to give equal attention to both sides of an issue. A true journalistic approach would have best served the reader in this case. Such an article would contain points you agree with and points you don’t, leaving the informed reader to decide on his/her own.
As with other issues facing our world, informed dialog is missing. The reader can’t just fly off the handle when presented with a point he/she disagrees with, but should rather aim for an informed perspective that is respectful of differing views. Without objectively penned journalistic work, this is tough.
3. The article neglects to purport a solution to the issue of providing food for our country and the world. I agree that Americans, in general make terrible food choices. I agree that buying local is a good solution for those who can afford it and are interested enough to do so. And I agree that the corporatizing of American food production at the cost of the small farmer has been damaging (though the issue, especially as it relates to the prioritization of subsidies is an entire article in itself). That said, there is still a shortage of food in the world and, thus, a demand for the production of it. Though the Niman’s have an ideal operation (um, north of SF? Holy EXPENSIVE land!!) it is not feasible to feed the world in this manner. Yes, I’m sure the meat is delicious, but this is not a reasonable approach for meeting the nutrition needs of our world.
Ok, that’s all for now. Cute babies. Annika is gorgeous and growing like a weed!
Hugs from KS, SK
I quickly read the link you attached. WOW. I’m going to have to do some more reading tonight when the little ones are in bed. I’m going to forward it on to Drew. Now THAT should get some loud reactions 🙂
Courtney