The image challenges our country’s corn growers have faced during the past two or three years are unique to the industry … once well respected and held in high esteem up by many for producing good quality, low-cost food, they’ve taken a beating.

The abusers fall into two primary camps, at least from my persepctive, and two main causes for their image abuse to corn growers:

1. ignorance (or a kinder way to put that would be lack of
information) and,
2. outright lying to twist and distort people’s image of corn for
their own benefit.

In PR, we call that “spin.” A word, by the way, that usually carries a very negative image of its own. In this case, it is.

In my educated opinion (and experience), the average consumer, including many in DC, fit into the first category — unless they happen to be tied to agriculture in some way or another. Unfortunately, even many politicians and aids to politicians very close to ag haven’t a clue.

Ok, I’ll be kinder — they need more knowledge about the facts of the ag industry; in this case, corn production and consumption in particular. They need to understand facts like agribusinesses own less than 5-10% percentage of farms while 90-95% are owned by family farmers … and have been handed down for generations.

And then there are those business industries, two of which I have in mind that feed our cars and our bellies, who fit into the second category.

They’re running scared of losing profits down the road (pun intended) since ethanol-blended gasoline will allow people to travel further and pollute less, among other things.

Or they want to shift the blame for increased costs in their retail stores for various food items. It’s kind of hard to blame commodities like corn for that when a $3.50 box of corn flakes has about 7 cents worth of corn in it.

I liken them to a bunch of children (and many adults, too) who are always blaming everyone else and not taking responsibility for their own actions.

Anyway, long story shorter, Corn Farmers Coalition must be making some real positive strides since “everyone’s” talking about it.

I, for one, am glad to hear there’s buzzzzzzzzzzz.

Now if only the naysayers would grow up and make their judgements based on good science and accurate facts instead of fiction, foulplay, and dumbfoundedness!

Good luck NCGA and CFC funders on continuing the buzzzzzzzzzzz …. and making sure it’s creating a positive image of corn like was the original intent!

Nancy