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Its getting to where you hate to pick up a magazine,
click on the TV or even go to a sporting goods store. Everywhere you turn,
an instant expert is lecturing you on the shortcomings of agriculture.One recent evening, TV news watchers were shown a video of
male baby chicks being discarded at an egg hatchery in Iowa. The
surreptitiously obtained footage was aimed at raising consumer ire against
factory farming.Cotton producers have been confronted with signs above a
display of polyester clothing distributed by Under Armour that read COTTON
IS THE ENEMY. Efforts to get sporting goods stores to change the message
have been fruitless.An article in the Aug. 21 edition of Time magazine
may win the prize for being an affront to agriculture, however. Bryan
Walshs story, Getting Real about the High Price of Cheap Food is a
classic case of stretching and bending the truth
to prove a point.Walshs article purports to show that Americas abundant
supply of cheap food comes at a high price to the environment, animals and
humans. What it shows is how little Walsh and others who share his
views know about farming and the economics of feeding a growing world
population.The story, which can be found on the Time.com Web site,
contains many of the claims environmental and organic farm groups have been
making for years, but Times elevation of Walshs opinion piece into
a full-blown cover story has surprised farm organizations.Walsh takes the two or three incidents of bad actors
that sold tainted food to consumers in the last 12 months and turns them
into an indictment of the U.S. food supply as bad for us, even dangerous.
The article concedes that Americans spend less than 10
percent of their incomes on food, but Walsh gives little credit to
innovations by farmers. He claims a transition to more sustainable,
smaller-scale production methods could be possible without a loss in overall
yield.But it would require far more farm workers than we have
today,” he writes. With unemployment approaching double digits and things
especially grim in impoverished rural areas thats hardly a bad thing.Those are the words of someone who has never spent a day
on a 1950s and 1960s farm or seen the figures on the hundreds of hours it
takes farmers in Africa to clear their fields for planting due to a lack of
herbicides.(In a radio interview, Walsh said Time is going
away from objective reporting and moving toward becoming part of the
conversation. He said he had heard opposing views to the opinions expressed
in the article, but chose not to include them.)Its fine to have a conversation when the participants
have some knowledge of what theyre talking about. Sadly, that isnt the
case with Walsh.
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