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.
As Mark noted in the previous post, last week was the annual National Association of Farm Broadcasting Trade Talk. There is probably no event like this in any industry where representatives from over 150 companies and organizations get to interact with about the same number of farm broadcast reporters walking around doing interviews in a six hour period. Most broadcasters come away with between 15 and 30 interviews that come in especially handy over the holiday season! Pictured here at the National Corn Growers Association booth are Mark on the left, and Joel Heitkamp with KFGO in Fargo, ND preparing to interview NCGA First Vice President Bart Schott of North Dakota.
One of the major topics of interest at Trade Talk was the late harvest, and even though North Dakota’s corn harvest was still in the single digits last week, Bart expressed optimism about the crop. “If we get a few more weeks of really nice weather, we’ll get this corn crop off in good shape,” he said. Despite the problems this year, he says the crop continues to look good and is still expected to be the second largest on record, “If there’s ever been a debate about whether we can produce enough corn feed our exports, livestock industry and ethanol industry, this will be the second year in a row that we’ve proved them wrong.”
Listen to my interview with Bart here – one of the dozens NCGA reps did last week with farm broadcasters – and podcasters!
Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” may not be a “real” news show, but the lighter side takes itself seriously enough to have big name political guests and do semi-serious interviews with them.
Such was the case this week when former Vice President Al Gore appeared on the show to promote his new book “Our Choice” about how we can solve the “climate crisis.” During the interview, Stewart said that making choices to help the environment can be confusing for people. “We were told ethanol was the answer, turns out that’s worse for the environment,” Stewart said. The former VP, who supported corn-based ethanol while in office, did little to defend the fuel in response to that statement. “Yeah, but the new forms of ethanol that they’re coming up with now actually are not bad for the environment and we can switch to the new kinds that will be much better,” Gore said.
Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Bob Dinneen says that short exchange highlights a disturbing trend in ethanol misinformation. “Failing to understand the issue and continuing to propagate factually inaccurate information, even on a faux news show, is dangerous and undermines the legitimate debate about our energy future,” said Dinneen. “This trend in statements by prominent and influential individuals is leaving the American people with a false set of choices about the various roles of renewable energy across the board.”
Dinneen extended “an open invitation for Mr. Gore to visit any of the nation’s ethanol facilities and to attend the industry’s annual conference next February in Orlando, Florida.” No response from the VP yet.
Host and chief national correspondent John King visited the farm of Neale Shaner in Fort Calhoun, and the Advanced BioEnergy ethanol plant in Fairmont, where he stood on a mound of dried distillers grains with ABE Plant Manager Grant Johanson. Here’s a taste of the article:
Watching their 12-row combine harvest the corn is a sight to behold, methodically scooping ears from the fields and dramatically increasing productivity. This corn won’t end up on a dinner table but instead at a giant Cargill plant just up the road, where it is processed into ethanol and several corn byproducts.
In Washington, ethanol is a source of controversy, with many lawmakers arguing it is an industry unfairly propped up by generous federal subsidies. To Nebraska, however, it is the direct source of roughly 1,000 jobs at ethanol production plants across the state, many of them located in small towns where those 40 to 50 plant jobs are the local gold standard.
A team of journalists from Japan were in Nebraska last week, hosted by the Nebraska Corn Board as part of a U.S. Grains Council trade mission. For some, it was the first time they ever saw corn growing in fields. The group visited Darr Feedlot in Cozad, a corn farm in Seward, the Monsanto Water Utilization Learning Center in Gothenberg, Advanced BioEnergy in Fairmont, Bunge Milling in Crete and the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.
Alan Tiemann, chairman of the Nebraska Corn Board, hosted the team on his farm near Lincoln. “They got to see cattle on feed, where distillers grains and corn are fed, and then an ethanol plant where distillers grains is produced,” said Tiemann, pictured here in the blue shirt showing two members of the team a combine. “The new water learning center impressed the team. They found it very educational and it gave them a chance to see a number of seed technologies at one time. The milling operation and stop at the university added to the foundation of U.S. agriculture we provided for the group.”
“Team members were impressed by the high quality of Nebraska corn and the farmers’ use of agronomics and biotechnology to produce an abundant crop more efficiently,” said Tommy Hamamoto, the U.S. Grains Council’s director in Japan, who accompanied the group. “Journalists on the tour have a better understanding as to how U.S. corn is produced and used, which will help them better explain the U.S. grain system in fact-based news articles back home.”
Apparently my post critiquing the Illinois Times article about food got a rise out of one blogger who called it “yellow journalism.”
What is amazingly ironic about this blogger’s viewpoint is that he accuses us of not getting the facts straight, yet he thinks it’s irrelevant that the Illinois Times article had the production of corn in the United States off by 11 billion bushels! He says, “Whatever the total yield of corn is (and yeah, let’s lump it all together until the bloggers at the National Corn Growers Association can explain to us mere mortals why we shouldn’t – whose your audience, baby?), it is in fact true that only a tiny percentage goes to the fresh market.” Why get the facts straight when they are really not pertinent to your cause? And why try to understand the difference between corn for grain and sweet corn? Who really cares when that is not your point?
The blogger also says, “The wack thing about Corn Commentary’s spit ball is that it’s called “Abundant Food Is Good,” an idea neither Food, Inc. nor it’s reviewer at the Illinois Times contests.” Yet that is exactly what they are doing when they attack American agriculture and food companies. These are the same people who were complaining about food price increases last year and blaming them on ethanol. Yet if the ideas for food production they have were mandated, the increase in food prices would be astronomical in comparison – and much more permanent.
I assume that the blogger was using the term “yellow journalism” as a play on the color of corn, since the definition of yellow journalism is much more in line with the tactics of “Food Inc.” and other activists. Wikipedia gives several characteristics of yellow journalism that more than apply to people like that, including the use of “misleading headlines, pseudo-science, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts.”
America has the safest, most abundant, and most affordable food supply in the entire world. That would be a good thing, right? For some people, however, this is somehow a bad thing.
Basically, it was an endorsement of the movie “Food, Inc.” with its own glaring fact errors and one-sided “reporting.”
Let’s just start with the most obvious. According to the IT, “Only the tiniest fraction (less than a bushel per person) of the 1 billion bushels of corn grown annually comes to consumers as corn — on the cob or as chips, tortillas, cornmeal, etc.” Actually, our corn production in this country last year was 12 billion bushels. And that’s only corn for grain, some of which may be counted as food grade for chips, tortillas, corn meal, etc. Sweet corn production is not measured in bushels, although this article attempts to clump it together with field corn as if it were the same thing.
But, that’s just being picky. I’m sure that was an innocent typo and really has nothing to do with the reporter’s main point, which is that somehow having affordable, abundant and safe food year round is bad. She points out, (correctly) “In 1960, the average family spent 18 percent of its income on food; today that figure has plummeted to nine percent. That’s less than was ever spent on food throughout history, and less than is spent currently anywhere else worldwide.” We have a “staggering array of choices” and produce available year round even when it’s not in season.
However, the reporter says, “If that sounds almost too good to be true, in many ways it is.” Actually, it is not only true, but it is good as well.
She then goes on to blame the federal government for subsidizing “lazy” farmers who are addicted to government payments “like cocaine.” She also says that the fact that 95 percent of U.S. farms are family owned is true, but misleading, because really it’s companies like ADM, Cargill, Tyson and Monsanto who control agriculture in the country, not the family farmers.
And we use too much fertilizer and fossil fuel and slave labor, etc. So, what we need to do as a nation is switch “from conventional to sustainable farming, defined as farm practices that don’t deplete the land and natural resources and that provide living wages to farmers and farm workers.” And she tries to convince us that somehow this is not going to result in a less abundant or more expensive food supply:
Many remain convinced that industrial agriculture is the only way enough food can be grown to feed a hungry world. They’re skeptical — even disbelieving — when told that sustainable farming, using methods both old and new, can actually produce more food per acre than conventional farming. But numbers provide the proof. An acre of conventionally raised corn at today’s prices would fetch $602, although by the end of the year, it’s projected to cost $716.55 — and takes 50-plus gallons of fossil fuel to produce. In contrast, a local Springfield produce farmer using sustainable practices says he earns as much as $16,000 per acre.
Note that this is literally like comparing apples to oranges – or probably in this case, corn to strawberries. Growing an acre of produce to sell at a local farmers market is not in any way comparable to growing 4,000 acres of corn.
The article begins with a scene at a local farmers market where an old man is asking the price of strawberries. They are $3.50 at the farmers market, compared to $1.99 at the grocery store, where the reporter tells him they are “shipped in from California and grown with toxic chemicals. They don’t have much flavor ’cause they’re picked before they’re ripe — probably by illegal immigrants who’re paid slave wages.” The old man replies, “They taste fine to me.”
It is great and wonderful for us to have strawberries from California before they are in season in Illinois – and it is equally great and wonderful that we can have fresh, locally grown produce in the summertime. What is really great and wonderful in this nation is that we have that choice. Not having the choice will lead to a less abundant, less affordable and less safe food supply.
It has never been more important for supporters of corn ethanol to set the record straight and make their voices heard.
Here is a perfect opportunity. A Business Week editorial by Ed Wallace posted yesterday is crying out for comments. “The Ethanol Lobby: Profits vs. Food” presents a re-hash of all the same tired arguments against ethanol – from food versus fuel, to cutting down rainforests, to excessive water usage, etc.
One new criticism I found especially slanted was that states like Indiana and Nebraska don’t support the use of E85 because, in the writer’s opinion, they don’t have enough E85 stations. He ignores the fact that of the 2000 E85 stations in the country, nearly 1300 are located in the corn belt. I have already commented on this article – corn growers need to do so as well.
The National Corn Growers Association last week called on all those interested in the future of U.S. corn to help the association set the record straight about false attacks on the corn and ethanol industry. NCGA President Bob Dickey said, “Now, more than ever, we need an team of 300,000 proud U.S. farmers who grow corn to defend our way of life and stand up to these false attacks now and always in order to win the debate.” NCGA has also provided an on-line resource for growers to utilize in getting facts to back up their opinions.
One of the ways NCGA suggests is writing letters to the editors of local weekly and daily newspapers as frequently as possible. I would add that searching out and commenting on anti-ethanol articles posted on line is important as well. Unlike writing to local newspapers, most on-line comments are published without delays or editing. You can also engage other commenters in discussion and challenge their opinions. If even half of our 300,000 proud U.S. farmers would take an hour a week on their computers to search for stories about ethanol and make comments, it would make a significant impact.
Speaking of comments, the Environmental Protection Agency has officially opened a 60-day comment period for proposed changes to the Renewable Fuel Standard. The comment period will be open until July 27. Corn growers are strongly urged to make their voices heard on this important issue for the ethanol industry. In addition, the comment period on the proposal to allow an increase in the amount of ethanol that can be blended into regular gasoline has been extended to July 20.
This may be a busy time of year for many farmers, but it is worth it to take some time and fight back to win the debate over corn and corn ethanol.
The New York Times had an editorial over the weekend under what they call their “Running Commentary” featuring thoughts from five different economists on why wholesale prices for food were up 1.5 percent in April, the biggest monthly increase since January 2008. The title is “Food Prices: Myths vs. Reality.”
Here’s a summary of the five responses from the economists:
1. Bill Lapp, former chief economist with ConAgra Foods, blames it on reduced availability of corn, increased demand for ethanol, and lower livestock numbers.
2. Arizona State University business professor Tim James pointed out that the increase is wholesale prices, not retail, which is a more volatile index. The consumer price index actually shows a 0.2% decline in food prices.
3. UC Davis extension marketing economist Roberta Cook says there are many factors that influence food prices and one of them is tomatoes …. no, wait – it’s consumers’ willingness to pay more for better tomatoes.
4. Michael J. Roberts, assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University, noted that food prices declined in four of the five previous months, commodity prices dropped 70 percent between July 2008 and March 2009 and prices are now some 55 percent off last summer’s highs.
5. Finally, Washington State University ag economist Karina Gallardo basically said there are too many factors affecting too many different types of food to say with any certainty why prices went up.
So what did we learn from this, class? If this were multiple choice test, which answer would you pick if you were asked why wholesale food prices were up in April?
A. Ethanol
B. Don’t worry about it
C. Eat better tomatoes
D. Prices are actually lower
E. None of the above
The Congressional Budget Office report on ethanol and food prices released last week spun both ways for ethanol, depending on the media outlet and which side of the food versus fuel debate your corn is buttered.
For example, the San Francisco Chronicle headline proclaimed “Energy Blamed More than Ethanol For Food Prices.” Others with a similar spin included Midwestern papers like the Des Moines Register and the Grand Island Independent.
Headlines from the Associated Press and Reuters, however, led with a more negative spin. AP headlined “Report: Ethanol Raises Cost of Nutrition Programs.” Unfortunately the report only quantified the effect of higher corn prices on last year’s food price increases, even though it specifically notes that “certain other factors—for example, higher energy costs—had a greater effect on food prices than did the use of ethanol as a motor fuel.” It would be nice to know how much higher gasoline and electricity prices helped to raise the cost of nutrition programs, but CBO was only charged with finding out how much ethanol was to blame.
The report made some important points about the inability to predict ethanol’s future impact on food prices because the forces determining that impact move in opposite directions.” Federal mandates now in place require additional use of ethanol in the future, which would continue to put upward pressure on prices. In contrast, increases in the supply of corn from cultivating more cropland, increasing crop yields, or improving the technology for making ethanol from corn or other feedstocks (raw materials) would tend to lower food prices.
What was interesting about the report was that there was something in it for everyone, with both sides of the food versus fuel debate claiming that it supported them. I guess the government just wanted to be fair to everybody.
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.
As Mark noted in the previous post, last week was the annual 
Such was the case this week when former 
Host and chief national correspondent John King visited the farm of Neale Shaner in Fort Calhoun, and the Advanced BioEnergy ethanol plant in Fairmont, where he stood on a mound of dried distillers grains with ABE Plant Manager Grant Johanson. Here’s a taste of the article:
A team of journalists from Japan were in Nebraska last week, hosted by the 
Alan Tiemann, chairman of the Nebraska Corn Board, hosted the team on his farm near Lincoln. “They got to see cattle on feed, where distillers grains and corn are fed, and then an ethanol plant where distillers grains is produced,” said Tiemann, pictured here in the blue shirt showing two members of the team a combine. “The new water learning center impressed the team. They found it very educational and it gave them a chance to see a number of seed technologies at one time. The milling operation and stop at the university added to the foundation of U.S. agriculture we provided for the group.”
What is amazingly ironic about this blogger’s viewpoint is that he accuses us of not getting the facts straight, yet he thinks it’s irrelevant that the 
Basically, it was an endorsement of the movie “Food, Inc.” with its own glaring fact errors and one-sided “reporting.” 
Here is a perfect opportunity. A 
Here’s a summary of the five responses from the economists:
For example, the