By Brian Hefty

There is a small group of people in the United States who have decided that you and I, as farmers, are not doing a good job.  They don’t believe our food is safe.  They believe that we, as farmers, are polluting the water.  They believe we are destroying our land.

We have two choices on how to react to all this.  We can just disregard it and hope it goes away.  Since our urban population in the U.S. continues to grow, odds are high that in the future there will be less understanding about agriculture and what we do, so ignoring this problem most likely won’t work.  Our other choice is to arm ourselves with the facts and become vocal about what we do on the farm.  I know.  That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, but unless we talk, others will do the talking for us, and that’s not going to be good.

There have been 3 incredibly misleading things that have come out in the media in just the last couple of weeks that lead me to talk to you about this today.  I’ll give you the quick summary along with the actual facts below:

  1. A recent newspaper article in the Midwest claimed farmers were quickly tilling more acres and destroying our ecosystem.  What they neglected to tell you in this article were the following key points:
    • We are crop farming far FEWER acres in the U.S. than just 30 years ago
    • Soil erosion is significantly less on the farm today than 30 years ago, and it’s dramatically down from the last time we had a drought this significant in the 1930’s
    • Farmers today are producing far more food for our growing world than ever before, while using less fertilizer per bushel, and again, using less land than just a few decades ago
    • In order to remain in the government farm program, farmers are NOT destroying wetlands
  2. Agent Orange Corn.  Many media outlets have picked up on this one, because Dow is launching Enlist Corn in 2013.  This corn will be tolerant to 2,4-D.  Again, the media misses the facts:
    • Agent Orange has been off the market for years
    • While 2,4-D was one of the components of Agent Orange, it was the other ingredient, 2,4,5-T that caused the safety problem because it was found to be contaminated with a harmful toxin called dioxin
    • 2,4-D actually has an LD50 of 1000, so it takes 5 times as much 2,4-D to kill you as caffeine
    • 2,4-D has never been proven to be a carcinogen.  Certainly there are dangerous chemicals in our society and 2,4-D should be used with caution, but 2,4-D is not an extremely hazardous material, and it definitely should not be referred to as Agent Orange.
  3. Biotech Corn Causes Cancer in Rats.  There was a recent French study that claimed biotech corn (which they refer to as GM or genetically modified corn) caused cancer in rats.  Monsanto and many other scientists are disputing the data.  Here was my favorite quote.  “In my opinion, the methods, stats and reporting of results are all well below the standard I would expect in a rigorous study – to be honest I am surprised it was accepted for publication.  I am grateful for the authors for publishing this paper, as it provides a fine case study for teaching a statistics class about poor design, analysis and reporting. I shall start using it immediately.” – Prof David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, University of Cambridge.  Biotech crops have been used in the U.S. for almost 20 years and there have still been no studies in the U.S. that have determined that biotech corn (or other biotech crops for that matter) is more harmful than conventional crops, despite countless credible studies being conducted.  Global food production over the last 5 years is the greatest in history.  There is little argument that without biotech crops, these yields would not have been achieved.  Since we still have millions of people around the world who are starving, more needs to be done to increase food production and distribution.

I know this topic may make you a little uncomfortable, but I think it is a shame that farmers are under attack from people who either don’t have all the facts or choose to ignore the facts.  The United States has the safest and most abundant food supply in the world, along with the safest and most abundant drinking water supply in the world.  While you won’t generally hear this from most Americans, I say THANK YOU!  We would not be where we are today as a country if it wasn’t for the American farmer.