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Thursday, May 11, 2006

Best Food Nation

Here is a new industry driven website intended to tell the farmers' and ranchers' side of the food production story. I haven’t had time to read it all, as it covers a lot of territory from beef to potatoes, but it seems to do a pretty good job of offering a somewhat simplified version of the realities of farmers' stewardship of land and animals.

I think this kind of thing is the right way to go in the effort to combat the propaganda shoveled around by animal rights and other activist groups. I have found that nearly every time I make an effort to explain why we do something on a farm, even something that might seem a little weird or wrong to a non-farm person, they at least try to comprehend. However, even with a newspaper column, this weblog, and years of sitting with the show string at fairs chatting with the city folk who wander by, I can only talk to just so many people. Same for every farmer and rancher. There aren’t very many of us and we tend to be kind of busy. Activists on the other hand have huge budgets and massive numbers of volunteers and paid staff.

Maybe web sites like this, especially if they send out plenty of press releases to the MSM can help with the job of counteracting the garbage people have to wade through to learn about how their food is grown.

I am going to give Best Food Nation a link in my sidebar anyhow.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I totally get what your saying...
I was raised on a farm; which is where I get much of my inner desire to help animals in a natural way when it comes to every day remedy needs...
But being an herbalist draws two kinds of people to my articles...
All naturists in their own way... but a lot of activist PETA types...
I see the natural proceses of life from a country girl perpective vs a city person who doesn't under stand where I came from.

I never seem to stop talking about what is natural & normal... like cats having kittens before getting them fixed or meat or no meat... animals protein is nessary for optimum health.

Keep up the good work.
Aidana
MY HORSE BLOG:
http://www.blogcharm.com/ShuvaniStablesAllNaturalHorseAndLivestockRemedyAndProductBlog/
MY EXOTIC ANIMAL BLOG:
http://www.blogcharm.com/shuvanimals/

threecollie said...

thanks

Anonymous said...

I've been doing a little bit of reading of that site -- though I'm kind of off-put by it's attitude that "everything is hunky-dorry" with agriculture so butt out if your not a farmer. It gives some information on how things work from the bigger perspective but fails to look at the details.

Things aren't all the great on the farm. Too many farm programs outmoded and fail to keep up with the relaties of modern society. They benifit the largest farms and subsidize smaller ones too little. They don't always encourage the best pratices, and leave a lot of farmers either living in poverty or subsidizing thier farms by other jobs.

They're certainly are people in the farm community like any other community which either out despiration or malice do really bad things to animals or the land. We should be critical of such things, but our criticism should always be in the larger context of things.

Nobody wants excessive bureaucratic mandates strapped on them, nor do they want to be forced to follow silly regulations to appease an interest group. We must be vigrous in our opposition to people who want to turn people's farms into ideological vision, but we also must work to make progressive change happen on the farm.

Then again, I'm a Democratic activist with a cowboy hat in Albany. So you can ignore me. :)

Anonymous said...

Just read your Friday's column in the Amsterdam Record. What a entertaining story, always look forward to Friday's paper because your're in it. You certainly live an interesting live.

threecollie said...

Hey there, NY Cowboy,
Guess I can't argue that the farm world isn't perfect.
But then what is? And I have to agree with you on how some subsidies are distributed. The money sure doesn't do what it was intended to do any more.
However, that being said, SOMEBODY has to speak up to counteract the garbage about farming that many activist groups pump out like smelly bilge. I am not thrilled that Tyson and other companies of that ilk are doing the talking on the site, but at least most of what is being said isn't outright misinformation like garbage like "The Meatrix" and such.

I am really glad you stopped by to leave a comment. I like your site, and hadn't seen it before. I am afraid we will have to agree to disagree politcally, but you have lots of useful material there.

threecollie said...

Hi Karen,
Can't thank you enough for your kind words. They are the biggest incentive I have to keep writing. Thanks for stopping by.

threecollie said...

Thanks for taking time to comment. Feedback is the driving force in blogging.