How to Tell Your Story
Link non-farm audience vision of ag with elements of your own
Mike Wilson
Published: Feb 8, 2010
Farm groups can no longer write anti-tech consumers off as crackpots. Showing these folks hostility doesn't do you any good, says Ag Policy specialist Rob Paarlberg, a political science professor at Wellesley College.
"You don't want to define yourself as against those positions (organic, local food, etc). You'll only be waving red flags in front of elite opinion makers."
When consumers ask farmers why they can't simply scale up organic methods, it's tempting to give them a lecture. "First, you would run out of cow manure in a hurry, and a lot of that manure comes from conventional livestock farmers," says Paarlberg. "The land use requirements from lower yields alone would be preposterous."
Yet, the non-farm audience doesn't think that way. The key is to find a way to link their vision of food with elements of your own.
"What I’d say is, conventional farmers also use organic methods, like cover crops and rotation, but they don't use them 100%," says Paarlberg.
Some key talking points include how modern farming uses less energy and water, fewer pesticides, and less fertilizer per unit of food production than 30 years ago.
Pesticide usage has fallen with the advent of biotechnology. Soil erosion is roughly half what it was 30 years ago, thanks in part to no-till and sound government programs that support highly erodible land and wildlife refuge.
With precision farming, modern farmers use less inputs and fossil fuels and save more topsoil.
Even manure, once viewed as a waste item, is now looked at as a valuable input resource for crop production.
And, ahem, it's organic.
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Tagged: organic, farm, farming, fertilizer, pesticide
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