It’s really fun when you have a brush with greatness and it is no more apropos than when you run into a celebrity in Anaheim during Commodity Classic. Well the celebrity I’m referring to is our very own NCGA past president Ken McCauley, who was featured in the book Power Trip. Now Ken is quite modest and didn’t really tell people that he made it into the book. From start to finish it took more than two years from the time the author Amanda Little visited his farm in White Cloud, Kansas to the time it made it to the book shelves (Fall of ‘09).
Needless to say, as soon as I saw Ken I told him I’d read (and reviewed) the book and he was, well, flabbergasted after he got over being shocked. But he shouldn’t be shocked – the book is very good and Ken did an amazing job of getting out a strong American agricultural message. The book is about how tied our world is to fossil fuels. From transportation to medicines, to plastic to agriculture, fossil fuels are a part of our everyday lives, and Little helps us understand how embedded they are, and addresses the question of how we move away from them.
In an recent blog from Mark, he celebrated that fact that Food Inc. didn’t win an Oscar. Unfortunately you can’t mention that “documentary” without thinking of Michael Pollan who wrote Omnivore’s Dilemma and promotes a world of organic farming. When on Ken’s farm, Little asks him about Pollan to which he replied, “It’s not a way to maximize production.”
Ken explained that the drawback of these organic methods is that they require more labor and time, and in turn generate lower profits. Organic farmers also tend to have lower yields per acre and higher prices.
The question Little didn’t ask him: How is the world going to feed 9 billion people without production agriculture? It’s not.
Ken is very conscientious about sustainable farming since his land, puts food on his table too. Farmers understand more than most that they must take care of the land that feeds them. I just wish consumers understood that better.
Well, to better understand our addiction to oil and the need for production agriculture through the eyes of a great man, Ken McCauley, then be sure to read Power Trip.
During a press conference at Commodity Classic, the question was posed to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack whether the Department of Agriculture should be re-named the Department of Food – which I guess would make him the Secretary of Food.
Vilsack said you could look at the department in a number of different ways. “When the department was founded in 1862, the substantial percentage of the population was in the farming business, so it made all the sense in the world to call it the department of agriculture. Today, the mission of the department of agriculture is fairly diverse and not very well understood by a lot of people in the country. Seventy percent of our budget is in the form of food assistance – the SNAP program, the WIC program, the school lunch and school breakfast programs. Now, one could say that makes the argument for the Department of Food, but I would say a lot of those programs are benefited from commodity purchases which help stabilize markets and that’s beneficial to the farmers, so maybe it’s okay to say Department of Agriculture.”
“We do a lot of rural development activities, trying to build strong communities and regions and trying to promote business and industry, and so you might think we should call it the Department of Rural Development. Except that the vast majority of farm families get a substantial percentage of their income off the farm, so the capacity to create jobs in rural communities basically helps people keep the farm, so maybe it’s okay to call it the Department of Agriculture.”
Ditto for the department of global food aid, or forestry, or food safety. “The point is this is a department that has multiple missions but at the end of the day, every single mission comes back to the beginning of this department, which is that it’s beneficial in some form or fashion, directly or indirectly, to farmers,” Vilsack concluded.
I have always been a fan of dolphins but after last night’s Oscars I am an even bigger fan. That’s because in the best Documentary Feature category Food Inc., the diatribe against American agriculture, got a good old fashioned smack down by The Cove.
The Cove” follows animal activist Richard O’Barry — who once trained dolphins for the television show “Flipper” — alongside a team of filmmakers as they attempt to document dolphin slaughter in the Japanese fishing village of Taiji.
Food Inc. shows filmmaker Robert Kenner attempting to slaughter American ranchers and family farmers and send us all running back to backyard gardens and 1900’s vintage farms. He shows us the worst examples of how livestock is raised in this country and also wants us to question the healthiness of corn in our food supply.
Food Inc. is clearly a piece of “food advocacy work” rather than honest journalism, according to Dan Glickman and he ought to know. The current chairman of the Motion Picture Association of American is a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under President Bill Clinton. (Maybe someone should do a documentary on how the Ag Secretary makes the pilgrimage from DC to Hollywood. Now that would at least be interesting.)
Family corn farmers represented by the National Corn Growers Association lashed out at Food Inc. in advance of last night’s festive event saying the documentary shouldn’t win the Oscar because it not only grossed out grocery shoppers, but was unfair to the nation’s farmers.
The dictionary says the noun documentary describes a film or TV program presenting the facts about a person or event. Kenner’s propaganda clearly should have never made it to the red carpet.
Perhaps now we can relegate Food Inc. to collect dust on the back shelves of video stores where it belongs and farmers can go back to producing the safest and most abundant food supply in the world.
The opening of the trade show is the real “official” start to the Commodity Classic and that happened Thursday afternoon here in sunny Anaheim, California. The exhibit hall is filled with the latest and the greatest technology and machinery for growers of corn, soybeans, wheat and sorghum. According to the latest official attendance figures, there are 4291 attendees at Classic this year, including 1363 growers from all over the country and over 130 media. This is the 15th annual Commodity Classic, which started as the combined meeting of the corn and soybean growers, but in recent years has grown to add wheat and sorghum grower organizations as well.
Take a look and a listen to the official kick off and ribbon cutting for the 2010 Commodity Classic below and check out the Agwired Flickr photo album for constantly updated photos from the convention.
To commemorate the start of the 2010 Commodity Classic, Agwired’s Chuck Zimmerman wore his WTF t-shirt on the trip out to California.
WTF stands for Where’s The Food, Without The Farmer? and Chuck got lots of attention from people in the airport, on the plane and in the hotel. Since he tweeted it before we left Kansas City, it was picked up and re-tweeted enough that a number of people in California had already seen it before we arrived! Photo credit goes to Tricia Braid Terry of the Illinois Corn Growers.
Buy your own WTF t-shirt from I Love Farmers, They Feed My Soul – which is appropriate for the Commodity Classic in Anaheim, since it was started by students at Cal Poly. They have a great website and it is a great effort to support – so if you have not been there yet – check it out today!
We love farmers. They feed our soul. Together we are working to help our generation understand the importance of knowing where our food comes from and who produced it.
We’re not your typical “who cares” kind of young people from the Millennial Generation. Sure, we all have cell phones and we text like crazy. We have iPods and spend way too much time on Facebook and MySpace, but we care about our planet. We care about our country. We care about the American family farmer.
The latest attack on atrazine was all over the major news outlets today – the weed killer makes boy frogs into girl frogs.
To illustrate this, they had a photo of frog porn – an allegedly normal male frog mating with an atrazine-freakazoid-male-turned-female frog. Don’t feel bad if you can’t tell the difference – neither can they. The picture was provided by study author Tyrone Hayes with the University of California at Berkeley, so we have to take his word for it.
Of course, it would be funnier if it did not potentially impact the livelihood of farmers who rely on this important herbicide. According to Alex Avery, Director of Research and Education at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Food Issues, the study’s author is an “admitted anti-atrazine activist.”
“Dr. Tyrone Hayes has spent more than a decade allied with eco-activists peddling scare stories due to alleged health effects from atrazine. Yet despite his decade-long search and after more than 50 years of widespread use of this herbicide by farmers to minimize soil erosion while combating weeds, Hayes can offer no compelling real-world evidence that atrazine poses any appreciable risk to amphibian populations anywhere,” Avery stated.
This is not a new issue for atrazine. In fact, EPA has already looked into such previous claims but dismissed the concerns as unfounded. The problem is, this story literally has sex appeal. No one will care if it’s true or not – they have fornicating frogs and great jokes to give the story repeatability. With atrazine currently under review by the EPA, this new study will require another round of review. Better hop to it!
Are today’s farmers feeding and taking care of their animals properly?
It seems to come down to who you trust.
Marcia Gorrell, agriculture reporter for The Marshall Democrat-News in Marshall ,Missouri, is today’s guest blogger, and offers the following commentary on the confusing and contrary information bombarding consumers regarding our foods origin and safety.
Do you believe the family farmers who have spent their whole lives producing food? The farmers who have built modern farming techniques, step by step, generation by generation — building on the lessons, failures and successes of those who farmed before them?
Do you believe the scientists or researchers who have spent their entire careers studying animals, nutrition and food safety? Do you believe the USDA or the FDA who are tasked with making our food supply safe?
I have as much suspicion as anyone when it comes to the government, but in the case of food safety, I can’t argue with the results.
While the rest of the world’s agriculture has been ravaged by outbreaks of Mad Cow Disease and Bird Flu, we in the United States have not. Somebody is looking out for us and doing a good job. (more…)
That’s what Iowa Renewable Fuels Association Executive Director Monte Shaw said in his address at the 4th Annual Iowa Renewable Summit last week.
“Now, before I get fired please allow me to clarify,” he continued. “I do not believe that the production of ethanol and biodiesel in the US leads to the destruction of the Amazon rain forest. Quite the opposite.”
After looking at this year’s corn and soybean production records, I have come to the conclusion that the simply astounding productivity gains of the American farmer is changing the way we use land in the United States. After all, 2009’s record corn crop was produced on 7 million fewer acres than the year before. Those acres went somewhere!
Shaw points out that “renewable fuels production has never used a kernel of “baseline” commodity production. American farmers produce more commodities for food, feed, exports and other non-fuel uses than they did in 1980 – and on fewer acres. Yet while expanding these non-fuel markets, the yield gains provided enough “new” corn to also produce 10.6 billion gallons of ethanol in 2009.”
I believe better science will clear up the current indirect land use debate. Plant technology will continue to improve production efficiencies. Seed technology and better agronomic practices will continue to boost commodity yields at an increasing rate. In short, it won’t be long until corn ethanol achieves the scientific benchmarks of an advanced biofuel.
Research by Purdue agronomist Tony Vyn has shown that corn plants are in a fierce battle with each other for resources.
“There is a hierarchy that is formed, even though the plants are genetically the same and should be equal in size and stature,” Vyn said about his findings, which were published in the early online version of the journal Soil & Tillage Research. “No-till corn yield reductions have little to do with an overall height reduction early in the season. They have more to do with height variability during vegetative growth.”
Vyn said yield losses of up to 14 percent can be attributed to this competition in no-till fields where corn is planted the year after corn. In those fields, the leftover corn residue creates patches of soil with lower temperatures and different water and nutrient content. Seeds planted there are at a disadvantage.
There may still be corn left standing in the snow, but USDA says the 2009 corn crop was a record setter.
In today’s crop production summary report, USDA projects U.S. corn production at a record 13.2 billion bushels, up from 12.9 billion bushels projected in USDA’s December forecast and 1 percent above the previous record of 13.0 billion bushels set in 2007. The corn yield is estimated at a record 165.2 bushels per acre in 2009, 2.3 bushels higher than the December forecast and 4.9 bushels above the previous record of 160.3 bushels per acre set in 2004.
Rebecca Fecitt, U.S. Grains Council director of biotechnology programs, said the continued utilization of scientifically proven biotechnology applications provided by life science companies will help to increase corn yields, solidifying the need to continue developing markets for U.S. coarse grains.
“We hope to see this upward trend in yields for U.S. corn continue. As science becomes even more sophisticated, it will help increase and maintain our yields. This will be instrumental in feeding the world’s forecasted 9.1 billion people by 2050,” said Fecitt. “The growing population, especially in developing countries, will demand more meat, milk and eggs as incomes continue to increase. We have to maintain our biotechnology education efforts in order to ensure that grain derived from biotechnology is accepted around the world.”
The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) says this proves the amazing productivity of the American farmer. “The unparalleled productivity of America’s farmers continues to amaze even the most skeptical of critics,” said RFA president Bob Dinneen. “Despite unfavorable weather conditions from start to finish, farmers produced considerably more corn than the food, feed, and fuel markets are demanding. Such gains in productivity undermine any claims that U.S. biofuel production will require new lands in other nations to come into production. There can be no question that American farmers have both the capability and the can-do attitude to feed the world while simultaneously helping reduce our nation’s reliance on imported oil.”
American farmers should be commended for this accomplishment.
It’s really fun when you have a brush with greatness and it is no more apropos than when you run into a celebrity in Anaheim during Commodity Classic. Well the celebrity I’m referring to is our very own NCGA past president Ken McCauley, who was featured in the book Power Trip. Now Ken is quite modest and didn’t really tell people that he made it into the book. From start to finish it took more than two years from the time the author Amanda Little visited his farm in White Cloud, Kansas to the time it made it to the book shelves (Fall of ‘09).
In an recent blog from Mark, he celebrated that fact that Food Inc. didn’t win an Oscar. Unfortunately you can’t mention that “documentary” without thinking of Michael Pollan who wrote Omnivore’s Dilemma and promotes a world of organic farming. When on Ken’s farm, Little asks him about Pollan to which he replied, “It’s not a way to maximize production.”
During a press conference at Commodity Classic, the question was posed to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack whether the Department of Agriculture should be re-named the Department of Food – which I guess would make him the Secretary of Food. 
“We do a lot of rural development activities, trying to build strong communities and regions and trying to promote business and industry, and so you might think we should call it the Department of Rural Development. Except that the vast majority of farm families get a substantial percentage of their income off the farm, so the capacity to create jobs in rural communities basically helps people keep the farm, so maybe it’s okay to call it the Department of Agriculture.”
We love farmers. They feed our soul. Together we are working to help our generation understand the importance of knowing where our food comes from and who produced it.
The latest attack on atrazine was all over the major news outlets today – the weed killer makes boy frogs into girl frogs. 
That’s what 
Research by Purdue agronomist Tony Vyn has shown that corn plants are in a fierce battle with each other for resources.
There may still be corn left standing in the snow, but USDA says the 2009 corn crop was a record setter.