Recently a local auction made the news as yet another location of "recurring animal cruelty." Video of a bull being herded to the scales by employees was turned in to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), where it was distributed to local news stations and the internet video-sharing website Youtube. Representatives from the HSUS swarmed the area to "keep an eye on things" and people from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) arrived in an attempt to defend the auction owner and employees. As expected, the uproar has been the talk of farmers and auction patrons since the incident, and we have yet to see exactly what will come of the mess.
History has proven again and again that an individual holding a video camera has a very powerful influence over what is seen and understood by viewers. Thanks to the narrow scope of the lens, something positive can be portrayed as something horrifying, or something harmless can twist into an act of cruelty on TV. A look behind the scenes is often necessary (and usually unavailable) to determine the legitimacy of many video documentaries.
Today we will peek at the real story that has the future of a family-owned auction barn hanging by a thread (this information comes from first hand witnesses and regular attendees of the auction).
Like I said, the video focuses on several young men herding a bull from the holding pens to the scales and then the sale floor. As the animal charges out of its individual holding pen, the workers begin whooping, hollering and whacking the bull with fiberglass motivating sticks as they follow it down the narrow aisle. The "shocking" and "cruel" aspects of the video, as seen by the individual recording it and subsequently the newscasters and their audience, are the workers' noisy antics and the cracking sound of the motivators when they make contact with the rump of the bull. I know I sound like a broken record because I say this all the time, but the media stir caused by this video is yet another example of non-farm people reacting to something they have never experienced and do not understand.
Put yourself in the shoes of the workers on the floor. You are standing in a narrow aisle preparing to release a 1,500 - 2,000 pound animal that is stressed, unpredictable, and potentially violent. The bull needs to be directed to a certain area, and all you have in your hand is a flimsy fiberglass stick (approved as an anti-cruel animal handling tool) to defend yourself and get the job done. Pretty intimidating situation. And lets face it here, opening the gate and saying "c'mon buddy, shoo, lets walk over this way..." will prove to be entirely ineffective.
So what do you do? Throw open the gate, make a racket, and get the animal moving before it has time to assess the situation and make a wild break for it. I am sure the guys made a little more noise than was necessary (they like to put on a show), but cracking the giant bull on the rear-end with a small stick does not even approach cruel treatment - the sensation from the stick is comparable to a rubber-band snap on the arm from a mischievous first grader. The ordeal looks a little chaotic from an outsider's perspective, but it is necessary for the protection of the workers and ultimately gets the job done with little disruption to the animal(s).
Few understand this reality, and the Humane Society wildly overreacted to the video (as usual). Here is where it gets a little interesting. Several HSUS women have been making a point to attend the auction as a way of letting everyone know that they are watching the animal handling. Because there is a major lawsuit that will determine the future of the family business hanging over their heads, no employee wants to cause even more commotion by whacking animals back into line as the women watch over them like vultures. Just a week after the video made the news, a particularly wild cow entered the sale pen and began to charge around the space. Animal control techniques were limited to a few arm gestures and some mild hollering (rather than an effective snap on the nose) causing the men to lose complete control of the animal. A quick decision was made to get the wild cow out of the sale area and away from audience members as quickly as possible, but when the gate was opened the animal charged and rammed a worker directly in the chest, knocking him to the ground and injuring him severely.
This is proof that the Humane Society of the United States is concerned only with their agenda - they will not listen to reason, they care more about public exposure than the well being of other people, and they use their extensive funding and free time to target and harass any business that deals with animals. My greatest hope is that eventually the public will become aware of HSUS illegitimacy and funding to the organization will trickle down to nothing. Every time they throw up a road block for American agriculture we lose another family business and a little more of our domestic food supply - a reality that is much more unacceptable than motivating an animal with a stick.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Valuable, Viable, Visible.
In March I had the pleasure of attending the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau Young Farmer & Rancher (YF&R) convention in State College. The weekend was an excellent experience, designed for young people aged 18 - 35 who are directly involved in farming and food production. Everyone at the convention - from the speakers who came to provide us with insight for the future to the DJ that entertained the crowd in the evening - was from a farm, and it was truly a great feeling to be able to interact with a group that shares the same concerns, hardships, passion, and understanding that I have for agriculture. My experience at the convention provided me with some excellent insight into the issues currently looming over the head of food production, and I am excited to share the information with all of you.
My favorite speaker from the event is named Matt Rush, a 30-some year old Farm Bureau member who owns and operates a mid-western cattle ranch with his dad. Matt was the final speaker of the two day event, faced with the task of sending us back to the farm with a new ambition and hope for the future.
He started out by re-enforcing what we as farmers already know: as our population continues to move away from agriculture, farmers are all too content to hang back, quietly going about our business producing food for the 300 million others who do not. While we have been working along behind the scenes, the mainstream population eventually forgot about farms and food production, reducing producers to "just dumb farmers" and actually turning against those on whom they rely. Now activist groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and (you saw this coming, yes?) the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) control far more of the public's opinion concerning animal food production than do the farmers who raise and care for the livestock. Individuals spearheading food trends are suddenly convincing people to cry out against our large farms, demanding a return to the old days of 40 acres and a mule (never mind the fact that the food demand created by our 307,000,000 person population can never be filled by small farmers). In other words, farmers are now in a position requiring them to fight the people they are faithfully feeding (I have said this before, but mainstream America is fiercely biting the hand that is feeding them, and I do not think they realize it is happening).
Producers are in an interesting situation, as I hope you can see, but Matt had some superb advice for his audience to take home. He told us that farmers have to change our quiet ways and survive this surge of negativity and ignorance by remaining Valuable, Viable, and Visible. Here are his examples for each.
Valuable. We have all heard the term "pull your weight," which is something farmers do very well. As I mentioned, our population continues to grow and move away from agriculture; today, less than 2% of American citizens are farmers. That less-than-two-percent, however, is productive enough to provide food for the remaining more-than-ninety-eight-percent. Every one modern farmer today feeds an average of 140 other people who will never have to set foot on a farm to have a nutritious, safe meal. Those 140 people are free to direct their attention towards other advancements because their focus and funding do not revolve around finding food. So, are farmers valuable? You bet.
Viable. In the United States, we tend to think that we do everything best and the rest of the World is relatively insignificant. Matt said he was guilty of this sub-conscious feeling until he traveled to Germany and visited what can best be described as a global grain exchange. He described an ultramodern skyscraper with and ultramodern meeting room where he met a young man who buys and sells grain from around the World based on a half-cent per bushel cost totaling billions of dollars (in other words, enough half-cent bushels are exchanged that the total value reaches billions of dollars). The young man rattled off numbers and statistics that made Matt's head spin, and then the German said "I am going to tell you something that American producers will not like to hear. I do not care whether or not your country grows anything. If you stop entirely tomorrow, Australia will fill the void in the grain market. If Australia does not, South America will; if South America does not, Europe will; if Europe does not, Canada will, and so on." When we give an inch in this country, the rest of the world immediately takes it. American farmers must continually push towards the future to remain competitive in this global market.
Visible. Matt is a really funny guy, and he incorporated stories that helped make his point as he spoke. He described a trip he was taking to speak at a convention. His plane was completely full except for the seat directly beside him, and the flight was delayed at the gate (with everyone on board except the occupant of this one seat) for approximately 45 minutes. Matt was getting irritated and decided to bury his thoughts in a book when, as he put it, the most outlandish, ridiculous looking young woman stepped on board at the front of the plane. Given his luck with seat mates on previous flights, Matt knew immediately that she was the occupant of the empty seat beside him. Sure enough, she plopped down and immediately began talking about the day's events (her late arrival was the cause of the flight delay). Matt tried to ignore her, but the book in front of his face was not going to stop her discussion and they ended up talking about the usual airline topics: destination, occupation, etc. It turned out that the woman was an actress (not wildly famous, but she had been in a good number of movies and was making progress). She almost fell out of her seat when Matt told her he lived on a ranch and raised cattle. Matt said she was thrilled because she had never met "a real farmer," and they ended up having a very enjoyable and intelligent conversation about agriculture. At the end of the flight, the woman promised Matt that if she ever made it big, she would remember him and would be proud to represent farmers in a non-farm public. That is a pretty awesome commitment from a very unexpected source. His lesson from the experience is this: we, as young farmers, need to be proud of who we are and what we do, and should make every attempt to reveal our farm roots to those around us. Matt said his reluctance to speak with the ritzy-looking person on the flight almost eliminated his opportunity to share his agriculture story and educate someone who had never even MET a farmer about food production.
The YF&R convention was awesomely inspiring. I, and hopefully every other young farmer present that weekend, am doing my best to tell agriculture's great story to anyone who will listen. As the word gets out, our opponents will learn that we are committed to our farms, we are small in numbers but strong at heart, and we are ready to carry the torch for agriculture through the hardships of the future in order to light the path for the next generation of proud producers. Oh, how exciting it will be.
My favorite speaker from the event is named Matt Rush, a 30-some year old Farm Bureau member who owns and operates a mid-western cattle ranch with his dad. Matt was the final speaker of the two day event, faced with the task of sending us back to the farm with a new ambition and hope for the future.
He started out by re-enforcing what we as farmers already know: as our population continues to move away from agriculture, farmers are all too content to hang back, quietly going about our business producing food for the 300 million others who do not. While we have been working along behind the scenes, the mainstream population eventually forgot about farms and food production, reducing producers to "just dumb farmers" and actually turning against those on whom they rely. Now activist groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and (you saw this coming, yes?) the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) control far more of the public's opinion concerning animal food production than do the farmers who raise and care for the livestock. Individuals spearheading food trends are suddenly convincing people to cry out against our large farms, demanding a return to the old days of 40 acres and a mule (never mind the fact that the food demand created by our 307,000,000 person population can never be filled by small farmers). In other words, farmers are now in a position requiring them to fight the people they are faithfully feeding (I have said this before, but mainstream America is fiercely biting the hand that is feeding them, and I do not think they realize it is happening).
Producers are in an interesting situation, as I hope you can see, but Matt had some superb advice for his audience to take home. He told us that farmers have to change our quiet ways and survive this surge of negativity and ignorance by remaining Valuable, Viable, and Visible. Here are his examples for each.
Valuable. We have all heard the term "pull your weight," which is something farmers do very well. As I mentioned, our population continues to grow and move away from agriculture; today, less than 2% of American citizens are farmers. That less-than-two-percent, however, is productive enough to provide food for the remaining more-than-ninety-eight-percent. Every one modern farmer today feeds an average of 140 other people who will never have to set foot on a farm to have a nutritious, safe meal. Those 140 people are free to direct their attention towards other advancements because their focus and funding do not revolve around finding food. So, are farmers valuable? You bet.
Viable. In the United States, we tend to think that we do everything best and the rest of the World is relatively insignificant. Matt said he was guilty of this sub-conscious feeling until he traveled to Germany and visited what can best be described as a global grain exchange. He described an ultramodern skyscraper with and ultramodern meeting room where he met a young man who buys and sells grain from around the World based on a half-cent per bushel cost totaling billions of dollars (in other words, enough half-cent bushels are exchanged that the total value reaches billions of dollars). The young man rattled off numbers and statistics that made Matt's head spin, and then the German said "I am going to tell you something that American producers will not like to hear. I do not care whether or not your country grows anything. If you stop entirely tomorrow, Australia will fill the void in the grain market. If Australia does not, South America will; if South America does not, Europe will; if Europe does not, Canada will, and so on." When we give an inch in this country, the rest of the world immediately takes it. American farmers must continually push towards the future to remain competitive in this global market.
Visible. Matt is a really funny guy, and he incorporated stories that helped make his point as he spoke. He described a trip he was taking to speak at a convention. His plane was completely full except for the seat directly beside him, and the flight was delayed at the gate (with everyone on board except the occupant of this one seat) for approximately 45 minutes. Matt was getting irritated and decided to bury his thoughts in a book when, as he put it, the most outlandish, ridiculous looking young woman stepped on board at the front of the plane. Given his luck with seat mates on previous flights, Matt knew immediately that she was the occupant of the empty seat beside him. Sure enough, she plopped down and immediately began talking about the day's events (her late arrival was the cause of the flight delay). Matt tried to ignore her, but the book in front of his face was not going to stop her discussion and they ended up talking about the usual airline topics: destination, occupation, etc. It turned out that the woman was an actress (not wildly famous, but she had been in a good number of movies and was making progress). She almost fell out of her seat when Matt told her he lived on a ranch and raised cattle. Matt said she was thrilled because she had never met "a real farmer," and they ended up having a very enjoyable and intelligent conversation about agriculture. At the end of the flight, the woman promised Matt that if she ever made it big, she would remember him and would be proud to represent farmers in a non-farm public. That is a pretty awesome commitment from a very unexpected source. His lesson from the experience is this: we, as young farmers, need to be proud of who we are and what we do, and should make every attempt to reveal our farm roots to those around us. Matt said his reluctance to speak with the ritzy-looking person on the flight almost eliminated his opportunity to share his agriculture story and educate someone who had never even MET a farmer about food production.
The YF&R convention was awesomely inspiring. I, and hopefully every other young farmer present that weekend, am doing my best to tell agriculture's great story to anyone who will listen. As the word gets out, our opponents will learn that we are committed to our farms, we are small in numbers but strong at heart, and we are ready to carry the torch for agriculture through the hardships of the future in order to light the path for the next generation of proud producers. Oh, how exciting it will be.
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