Farmers Must Take Their Case To City Folks
August 17, 2001
Farm Groups Need To Show Up At The Big Eco-Demonstrations
With A Few Imaginative Costumes of Their Own
CHURCHVILLE, Va.– Farmers are tired of seeing their TV sets dominated by activists. Whether its guys in black masks breaking windows to protest farm exports, or kids in butterfly costumes telling the city folks that genetically engineered corn will harm the Monarch butterfly’s larvae, farmers would like to get the cameras away from eco-demonstrators.
There are some good ideas around. Opponents of the global warming theory recently organized a Student Climate Crusade about 40 students who demonstrated at the global conference on the Kyoto global warming treaty in Bonn.
One of the kids dressed up like a cow, because the methane from cows is ranked as a dangerous greenhouse gas. Another dressed up as Chicken Little, famous for telling her friends the sky is falling. They had a noisy drum and hand-lettered posters.
The students got a great response from the media, including footage on British Broadcasting’s World Service; interviews with top U.K. science reporters; minutes on French and Finnish TV; a story carried by Reuters news service.
The TV cameras are hungry for visuals to throw on the screen during the 11 o’clock news. That tells me farm groups need to show up at the big eco-demonstrations with a few imaginative costumes of their own: cows, milk cartons, wheat sheaves, whatever can be tied somehow to the point we want to make. Give TV the visuals it needs.
I personally need to start work on a raccoon costume and a Bambi, to represent the wild animals that would lose their homes by the billions if we mandated organic farming. The posters could say, “Don’t plow our forest for low-yield organic farms.”
I heard another good idea at a public affairs symposium sponsored by the Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan. Bruce Vincent, president of the League of Rural Voters, told us his group has had great success with a Provider Pen Pal program.
The group matches up school kids and Provider Pals (farmers, ranchers, loggers and commercial fishermen). The kids and Provider Pals exchange letters, photos and impressions. The Providers visit the schools in full regalia. Vincent is at www.ruralvoters.org. He needs both a few more pals and a few more dollars to expand the program.
When activists opposed to logging came to Vincent’s home town in the Montana forests, they were greeted with big signs that said, “Conflict industry go home.” Those signs got on TV too.
Let me also compliment the Potash Corp. for their new magazine ads. Their first ad shows a full-color shot of a panda in his bamboo forest home. The cut line says, “How More Productive Farming is Leading to More Productive Wildlife Habitats.”
The copy says that we can have parks, wildlife habitat and nature trails only because we’re getting higher yields on the land we farm. “If farmers weren’t able to restore the fertility of their soil after each harvest, most of the world’s land would have to be devoted to farming simply to keep up with the growing population.”
The second ad shows a farmer in the Dust Bowl days, shielding his eyes from the wind–and the soil particles being blown off his land.
The cut line asks, “Ever Hear the Earth’s Stomach Growl?” The copy makes the point that growing crops without fertilizer mined too many nutrients from Great Plains soils after 1870, creating the Dust Bowl potential in the 1930s. We need fertilizers to keep our fields green and productive. Thanks to the Potash Corp. for its leadership.
Farmers never used to have to explain themselves to city folks. When farmers did their jobs poorly and food was scarce, everybody admired the farmers.
Now that food is abundant, too many city folks are demanding we return to the very farming systems that created history’s Dust Bowl and wildland destruction.
If farmers are aggressively clever, we won’t have to starve our customers to regain their understanding and approval.
But we can’t wait for the activists to come over to our side; they’re getting too much cash and political power by telling the city folks we’re the environmental problem. We’ve got to reach out to the people in the center–with the message that high-yield farming and forestry is the only way to have room for kids, pets and wildlife.
DENNIS T. AVERY is based in Churchville, Va., and is director of global food issues for the Hudson Institute of Indianapolis. His views are not necessarily those of BridgeNews.
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Dennis T. Avery is based in Churchville, Va., and is director of global food issues for the Hudson Institute of Indianapolis.
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