Andy's Angle

While our main focus at the ABN is Ohio agriculture, we have joint ventures with radio networks in other states to produce farm programming. One of our partners is the Alabama Radio Network, so I had a passing interest when I saw this ad for Dale Peterson, a candidate running to be that state's Agriculture Commissioner:

Having never heard of this gentleman before, I think I like him. Aside from the jarring video production (how many smash cuts can you put into one ad, reallY?), this is a pretty gutsy spot. I like the "gut-check" mentality of the ad, particularly that he calls out a specific issue with his opponent without getting into the mud.

I have no idea of the partisan politics potentially at work in this race since our news coverage in the Yellowhammer State is generally focused on production and policy, but it is fascinating to see campaign ads for a post like Ag Commissioner. Ohio's Director of Agriculture is an appointed cabinet position, of course, but several states do elect their top ag regulators.

I'm spending the day moving cows and calves from one farm to another; Sunday should be our day of rest, but when the bull buggies can only haul on Sunday, you've got to put your Wranglers on and get to work.

Here are some posts and articles that caught my attention this week:

Lessons learned in Blue Corduroy - My great friend Scott McKain divines some business wisdom from our favorite youth leadership organization: While FFA moved from solely farming to all of agriculture, it never strayed from its core. Maybe part of its success — over one-half million members strong today — is that at EVERY meeting from a local chapter to the national convention with 50,000+ in attendance, the President asks, “Why are we here?”

That’s a powerful combination: Embrace your core principles while growing within them…and constantly ask yourself and your team to precisely define why we are doing what we’re doing.

Congresscritters and Childhood Obesity - Despite my earlier sentiments about Mrs. Obama's "Let's Move" initiative, this may be crossing the line just a bit... "A bill introduced this month in Congress would put the federal and state governments in the business of tracking how fat, or skinny, American children are."

Speaking of Mrs. Obama, by the way, not everyone is as supportive of her efforts as was I...

Christie for President - Well, I don't actually know enough about New Jersey's Governor to really form that type of opinion, but this video clip is more than enough to get my attention... Tell it how it is, Mr. Governor.

Local Food is Great in Concept, but... - Joanna at AgWired.com has a great piece on why the dogma of locally produced food can't begin to consider feeding the world's expanding population: Many people in our country do not live in areas that can even begin to produce food within 250 miles….Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada are just three states that could never produce enough food to feed their populations because they don’t have enough water and they would have to put land into production.

Colbert Tackles Survival Seeds - The funniest thing I've seen on the web this morning; Stephen Colbert rakes paranoid seed marketers over the satirical coals. Great stuff. Hat tip to John Phipps for the link.

Lehman Brothers is a Red Herring - ...at least in terms of Ohio's gubernatorial election. BizzyBlog shares some recent comments from Governor Strickland about his opponent's past employment at the failed brokerage. From the massive amount of ink spilled on this story over the course of the campaign, it seems to me that Mr. Kaisich neither earned an obscene amount of money from Lehman, nor that he earned it from unsavory activities... So, let it go already. Some might content that working in Congress all those years is every bit as unseemly as working for Lehman Brothers, Mr. Strickland...

Food Allergies All in Your Head? - Well, maybe not all in your head, but the New York Times reports that the vast majority of food allergies aren't allergies at all... Knowing some folks who have some very serious allergies, I found this article extremely interesting.

There are certain phrases or words that in a given context are used primarily to denigrate or smear one's opponent.

For example, the word factory used by itself means "production facility." In the context "factory farm," however, we've been conditioned to assume the farm in question is an unholy monstrosity where the environment is plundered and animals are abused for fun and profit.

For years, opponents of modern production farms of any significant size have been unfairly smeared with this label. Using the tactics of infamous radical Saul Alinsky, this slander has served to both separate and polarize large-scale farms from those bucolic pictures of tiny agrarian homesteads that once dotted the rural landscape.

I noted a new such covert phrase this week: "family-size farm." Perhaps this sounds like mere semantics, but consider the context: Chuck Hassebrook of the Center for Rural Affairs (an organization known for attacking large scale farms for over 30 years) said this week that the current farm safety net only benefits large land owners in the form of higher land values and cash rents. He claimed the system leaves Washington with too little money to invest in "proven rural economic development strategies."

Specifically, Hassebrook claimed that "by putting a real limit on payments to the biggest farms, we could make the farm program work better for 98 percent of farmers, the family-size farms, and then have the money to invest in creating the future of rural America."

So the new code word for farms that aren't run by evil corporate mega-farmers is "family-size." Why is this a big deal?

This is a big deal because more than 98 percent of farms nationwide are family owned and operated. This is what the environmentalists call "an inconvenient truth" because for years the factory farm smear has led us to believe that large scale farms are owned and operated by nameless, faceless global conglomerates who meet in shadowy rooms in the basements of their ivory towers. In reality, almost all farms are owned and operated by families like mine, who want to do the best job possible producing our food and protecting our natural resources.

Enter the new code word. Because farmers and agricultural advocates no longer accept the implied stigma associated with not being a "family farm" by pointing out that almost ALL farms are indeed family owned, the anti-farm crowd is adding nuance to its arsenal. Saying a farm is "family-sized" insinuates that there is a size at which a farm is no longer a wholesome family operation, but rather a corporate "factory" mega-monstrosity. Adding this cleverly-crafted code word also allows the environmental and animal rights extremists to continue setting up straw men for their radical agendas. If a logical thinker challenges their wild and baseless accusations by saying "I know a farmer that...," then the activist can simply say, "Oh, I'm not referring to 'family-size' farms, but to those giant corporate factory mega-farms."

To me, my opinion of farming is size-neutral because it's going to take all American farmers to feed the additional 100 million citizens expected to populate our nation in the next thirty years.

From organic to conventional, biotech to non-GMO, farming is a diverse and continually evolving profession. Rather than pit neighbor against neighbor and production practice against production practice, I choose to support all farmers, and thank them for the work they do in producing the food and protecting the natural resources on which we all depend for sustenance.

Last week I visited the White House Garden along with other members of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting. Unfortunately for all of us, our conversation with White House Assistant Chef and Food Initiative Coordinator Sam Kass was off the record. I say unfortunate, because Sam's message about the purpose of the Garden and the First Lady's "Let's Move" initiative was solid gold. Great information that has importance to all Americans, and all of us associated with agriculture.

Because the White House fears discussion and even the potential for dissent, the conversation was strictly off the record, and I can't share with you anything I learned at the White House. Specifically, they were afraid we'd ask about the garden's status as organic/non-organic. Organic gardening, in the grand scheme of this issue, is a red herring.

What I can talk about, however, is the press the First Lady received this week for her "Let's Move" initiative. Three different media outlets treated it in three completely different ways.

First, Reuters:

The report's recommendations include encouraging the food and beverage industry, the media and the entertainment industry to market healthier foods to children.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz said regulation should be a last resort.

"We have seen to some extent marketing of healthier foods to kids," he said. "But I also think that a regulatory approach is certainly not where we want to start."

There are important First Amendment concerns and if the government tries to regulate what foods can be marketed, "that would be a matter that would be in litigation for quite some time," Leibowitz said.

Instead, he suggested commending companies that are "really stepping up to the plate" and sometimes "shaming companies that aren't doing enough."

Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, said the report sent "a polite, but clear warning shot across the bow of industry" to take action.

"Industry will change its practices only when it has no other choice and we're getting to that point now," he said,

The panel also said economic incentives could help eradicate "food deserts" -- urban and rural areas with few, if any, supermarkets and grocery stores. The incentives would improve access to healthy, affordable food.

The Reuters report insinuated that the obesity issues in this country are largely due to the marketing of "sugary" foods, specifically sodas and soft drinks.

CBS, meanwhile, offered this:

The report includes familiar themes, emphasizing the importance of improved nutrition and physical activity. It also calls for some new and dramatic efforts to curtail marketing of unhealthy foods.

"We have a roadmap for implementing our plan across our government and across the country," Michelle Obama told reporters today.

But administration officials repeatedly emphasized the effort would rely on "bully pulpit" pressure and not any new federal mandates to push the changes.

Setting the tone for that pressure, the first lady said, "No one gets off the hook on this one from governments to schools, corporations to non-profits all the way down to families sitting around their dinner table."

She said she would "focus my energy" to keep the issue at "the forefront of the discussion in society."

The task force wants junk food makers and marketers to go on what amounts to an advertising diet. It says media characters that are often popular with kids should only be used to promote healthy products. If voluntary efforts fail to limit marketing of less healthy products to young viewers, the task force suggests the FCC should consider new rules on commercials in children's programming. It also challenges food retailers to stop using in-store displays to sell unhealthy food items to children.

CBS noted that the obesity task force released a 70-point plan to deal with the issue, but focused the majority of their reporting on the implications to food marketers and their advertising efforts.

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, naturally, took a completely different track in her coverage of the report:

While she crusades for organic foods and puts government pressure on corporations to stop marketing fast food and junk food to children, Mrs. Obama herself profited from the very same processed food industry she now demonizes.

In June 2005, a few months after her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate, Mrs. Obama hustled a seat on the corporate Board of Directors of TreeHouse Foods, Inc. Despite zero experience, the food-processing company put her on its audit and nominating and corporate governance committees. For her on-the-job training and the privilege of putting her name and face on their literature, the company forked over $45,000 in 2005 and $51,200 in 2006 to Mrs. Obama -- as well as 7,500 TreeHouse stock options worth more than $72,000 for each year.

The chairman of the TreeHouse Foods board, Sam K. Reed, was a top executive at Kellogg's and Keebler Foods, home of that great menace to children, the Keebler Elf. Before that, he headed up Mother's Cake and Cookie Company. The conglomerate sells cheese sauces, Cremora non-dairy creamer, instant soup, puddings and powdered soft drink mixes. Hardly the stuff of Mrs. Obama's new vision of nutritional paradise. TreeHouse is also a leading supplier of pickles used in the burgers of evil fast food chain McDonald's -- exactly the kind of corporate restaurants Mrs. Obama is now targeting in her war on urban "food deserts."

The corporation-bashing Mrs. Obama would have continued raking in her TreeHouse cash if it hadn't been for her husband's pesky pledge to pander to Big Labor and swear off Wal-Mart. The retail giant, you see, happened to be TreeHouse's biggest customer. And Wal-Mart is to Big Labor as sunshine is to Dracula.

With all of that in mind, what does the report actually say? Melody Barnes, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, shared this on the "Let's Move" blog:

The report reflects input from 12 federal agencies as well as the 2,500 submissions we got from parents, teachers, doctors, nurses and others. It includes 70 recommendations for public and private sector action, as well as concrete metrics and benchmarks to measure our progress towards our goal. Very broadly, the report makes recommendations in 5 key areas:

1. Getting children a healthy start on life, with good prenatal care for their parents; support for breastfeeding; limits on “screen time”; and quality child care settings with nutritious food and ample opportunity for young children to be physically active.

2. Empowering parents and caregivers with simpler, more actionable messages about nutritional choices based on the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans; improved labels on food and menus that provide clear information to help make healthy choices for children; reduced marketing of unhealthy products to children; and improved health care services, including BMI measurement for all children.

3. Providing healthy food in schools, through improvements in federally-supported school lunches and breakfasts; upgrading the nutritional quality of other foods sold in schools; and improving nutrition education and the overall school environment.

4. Improving access to healthy, affordable food, by eliminating “food deserts” in urban and rural America; lowering the relative prices of healthier foods; developing or reformulating food products to be healthier; and reducing the incidence of hunger, which has been linked to obesity.

5. Getting children more physically active, through quality physical education, recess, and other opportunities in and after school; addressing aspects of the “built environment” that make it difficult for children to walk or bike safely in their communities; and improving access to safe parks, playgrounds, and indoor and outdoor recreational facilities.

Okay. Now you have a pretty good picture of the discussion. Here's my stance:

Michelle Obama is right.

Let me repeat:

Michelle Obama is right.

(Cue sounds of readers' heads exploding at the thought of me agreeing with the White House)

Here's why Michelle is right on the money: We ARE too fat.

Set aside the potential policy implications of the food marketing rhetoric as reported by the Reuters and CBS stories and subsequent rebuttal from Malkin, and you have a pretty darn accurate read on the state of health in this country. We eat too much, we exercise too little, and we're getting fatter every day.

Speaking from my own personal and very public struggles with this weighty issue, we need to deal with our nation's burgeoning waistline now, and our best chance is by getting the next generation off to a good start.

I also applaud Mrs. Obama and her Task Force for recognizing and understanding that this is an issue of Personal Responsibility. By acknowledging that regulation is not the answer, Mrs. Obama sets the precedent that while we as a nation need to take this issue seriously and deal with it sooner rather than later, that this nation isn't in the business of legislating "healthy behavior." Encourage and incentivize = good. Regulate and require = bad.

Hopefully the White House communications shop will read this and grant my wish for an interview with Sam Kass and/or the First Lady on this issue, rather than continuing to shut Farm Broadcasters out of the conversation. We have a shared goal and agenda here: more Americans taking responsibility for their actions and health.

Similarly, I hope every American takes a cue from the First Lady and plants a garden. If we spent more time at home, we'd have a garden. I grew up with a garden at our house, and Grandma still sends me canned tomato juice and green beans from hers. I love the food we produced, if nothing else than for the nostalgia of those bygone days of my youth. What I learned from our garden, and what every American should experience for themselves, is that it takes the entirety of American agriculture to feed a nation.

This reality was perhaps illustrated best by the pepper incident of 1998. I went to a produce auction with my FFA Advisor to buy plants for the FFA greenhouse. While there, I bought several flats of pepper plants for my own use, intending to make pepper production part of my Supervised Agricultural Experience project. Dad, Little Brother, and I planted an acre of peppers, thinking we'd market the produce to local grocery stores and neighbors. We'd already started a successful local poultry business, selling home-raised chickens to friends and family, so we had a ready market.

The problem was that peppers were for the birds. Literally. Within weeks of planting, those damn birds had eaten every last one of my pepper plants! It almost seemed like it happened overnight: one day we had a patch of pretty pepper plants, the next we had a barren plot of pepper plant remnants.

Likewise we had years where our rows of potatoes didn't quite hit the mark, or perhaps our tomatoes just didn't produce a "bountiful harvest." Even the years when we had bumper crops, we could only produce so much on the plot of land reserved for the garden, and some foods we enjoy eating simply don't grow well in Southern Ohio. How many of us eat rice, for example? There are NO rice paddies in Southern Ohio, no matter how much we want to eat "locally produced" food.

So what am I saying, really?

I'm saying that we need to get behind Mrs. Obama and cheer for the concepts of helping kids eat healthy and exercise more. We should celebrate following the USDA's dietary guidelines and make sure kids get enough protein and dietary fiber in their daily intake. And we should encourage folks to take up gardening and learn the joys and discomforts of farm life so that they may appreciate the fruits of labor, and that they may learn to appreciate that food doesn't come exclusively from the grocery store.

Understanding that their is a tiny fringe of hippies who will continue to exploit the trend of consumer interest in "locally produced" foods to denigrate large-scale farms and food marketers, that those same fringe voices will likely smear anything not labeled as organic, and that they will most likely continue pushing for regulations to force Americans into their own narrow food agenda, we should nonetheless make our voices heard and stand for what is good and right. In this case, Michelle Obama is right on the money, and we should support her efforts in this arena.

I'm not sure how many votes this is going to win or lose (couldn't tell you anything about Tim Burns and the Pennsylvania primary), but this is funny stuff just on the face of things:

I've seen it all now...