Would you eat food from someone without a working knowledge of agriculture? Would you send your child to a school where the teachers weren’t trained as educators? Are you comfortable voting for politicians with no leadership experience? As I watched the Michigan Primary results come in last Tuesday, my thoughts wandered to these questions.
When did experience become such a bad thing? Experience teaches us lessons. Experience gives us a reputation. Experience allows us to build trust. Yet in politics as in agriculture, there are some who want to paint experience as unnecessary.
Experience has taught American Agriculture many things. We have learned that to feed a growing population, we need to produce more food, more food choices, and the safest food possible on a shrinking land base. Experience has taught us that Mother Nature will have a major affect on how our crops mature, and we have come up with some incredibly ingenious ways to counteract the tricks Mother Nature throws our way.
Recently there is renewed interest in agriculture. I have read articles from Michigan to Massachusetts that highlight someone’s new endeavor into agriculture. The characters in the story differ, but the storyline remains the same: a person can’t find employment, and as a result, he or she decides to plant a garden and sell the produce at a local farmers market. While the local food movement adds choice to our food system, we cannot disregard the experience a long-term farmer brings in his attempts to feed a population that cannot eat locally. Keep in mind, our nation’s experience has shown us that we can’t produce enough food near our population centers to feed everyone.
Experience has become such a four-letter word in politics that politicians are being elected to office without much of any of it. Term limits were supposed to be a great way for us to get rid of the bad politicians and replace them with new, improved models. The biggest thing term limits did in Michigan was reduce the historical experience of our senate to virtually none. New members will hold 29 out of 38 senate seats here. Talk about lack of institutional knowledge.
In politics as in agriculture, a small number of bad actors can give the rest of us a very bad name. We must condemn those bad actors and explain how our experience has led us to utilize the technology and modern production practices that allow us to feed the world. Our food system isn’t perfect, but like our representative republic, it is the best in the world.