I spent an interesting day in March with around 60 employees of an advertising agency in Boulder, CO. The company is hosting a series of speakers and videos to increase their employees' knowledge of what they called the "Food Revolution." The poster used to advertise the sessions had sort of a socialist realist drawing of a hand holding a fork.
I was there to give the farmers' viewpoint. It would be safe to say that Boulder is full of people who think that farmers like me are on a moral level with Ted Bundy. To say I was apprehensive would be an understatement.
I did my shtick, pointing out that we farmers will in the end do what consumers want. If they want us to farm without modern technology and have fertility rites honoring Gaia with a group of wiccans wearing ponytails, then I'll start advertising for spiritual healers to help my brother fill the planter with open pollinated heritage seed corn saved from an ancient Indian tribe. But if we do those things, there will be some costs - not only economic costs, but environmental costs as well. Not only that, but some unfortunate people elsewhere will starve to death.
Boulder can afford those things - Bangladesh cannot.
I thought they were receptive, and they asked thoughtful questions. A pretty good day, all in all.
Scared to death
Then my wife Julie and I went to lunch with some of the principals in the firm. They wanted to talk about GM seed. They are scared to death, and I listened to the founder of the firm, a successful man running a multi-million dollar business, explain to me that since we had started using GM seeds at about the same time autism and asthma rates had started to increase, there surely must be a connection.
I pointed out that just because the cock crows at sunrise, he isn't responsible for the sun rising in the east. He was not convinced. The firm refuses to do business with cigarette companies, and basically has the same attitude toward companies that use GM products.
A man named John O'Sullivan once said that everybody is a conservative in their field of expertise. A Blake Hurst corollary would be this: most of us are raving lunatics about things we don't understand. I will never found a multi-million dollar firm, or have an income a fraction of the very nice and thoughtful fellow who sponsored our trip to Boulder. But his grasp of science is a little short of his understanding of marketing.
The shelves of Boulder's farmers markets will no doubt continue to be full of food advertising its moral superiority, and my efforts will not make very much difference in the way people think about food.
But I'll keep trying.