This past week I read an article about about an Austrian animal rights group that is attempting to have the European Court of Human Rights grant human rights to a chimpanzee. One of their arguments is that the chimpanzee is very similar to a human so we might as well give them human rights.

All of us in the human race should be insulted by this attempt. While our DNA maybe very similar, we are not the same. Human rights should be reserved for humans.

One other thing to remember. These animals were considered a food source for humans at one time. Allowing this chimp to have human rights will only open the door for other food animals to be granted them too.

Here is a link to the article.

As a part of my routine when I work one of my part time jobs. I stimuate the local economy in the town I work and head to the local breakfast counter where all the worlds problems are attempted to be solved. One of the local farmers throws the paper at me and says "Look at this! Honeybee Terror in Maine! What are we going to do?!"

I said, well, lets start with the farm bureau blog and see where that goes. The long and the short of the story, which I will post below, is about a Southern Maine community that wants to "regulate" the ability for people to have honeybees at their homes.

I have always had the thought that when something is regulated then its only a matter of time before it is banned or more red tape is placed so that things cannot be easier to manage. So, I guess my question is that the people who are afraid of these honey bees, have they ever eaten an apple before? Anyone had honey mustard before? Where do you suppose that comes from? Do they not know the importance of pollination?

At a time when honeybees are having a hard time in repoduction wouldn't you think we could use a surplus? Even better at a time when gasoline is $4.00 a gallon and grocery prices have gone up, wouldn't you think that people should be able to raise their own food effectively?

As a maple producer, I am concerned with these type of ordinances. Im not sure where the right to farm law comes into place, but I think that society should really look at what we are going and what we are doing. Just today there was a story about surviving this winter and with heating oil on a rise people are going to burn more wood, but yet wood prices keep going up. Perhaps people will be doing the lost art of "canning" more this year to save money on the other end?

Click on this link for the whole story.

I welcome your input.

Today's consumer hears a lot of information about food and food safety. Many groups try to persuade consumers that one method of agriculture is better over another, and that certain methods produce safer food. This confuses consumers and creates many misconceptions about agriculture.

One example of this came this week on Morning News Beat by Kevin Coupe. The article was called "Extolling the Virtues of Pasture-Based Farms." I’ve read several items by KC and he genuinely cares about food safety and supporting farmers. Because there are so many ways to get information today, it's hard to define the facts from misconceptions. KC reported about an article he read in the Detroit Free Press which talked about pasture based farms which specialize in grass-fed animals that are not “fattened” up with grain or kept in restricted areas. The Detroit Free Press article implies beef raised this way tastes better, and creates happier farmers with bigger profits.

KC comments that farms that raise grass-fed aniamls will be well positioned if there is ever another major beef recall. The media coverage on the beef recall which happened in Februray has confused many consumers. The beef recall was not issued because of the safety of the meat, or because of what the cows may have consumed. The beef was recalled because the animals were mistreated by employees at the processing facility. This fact was not made clear in the media.

KC is just like you and I, he is a consumer who wants healthy food produced by American Farmers and Ranchers.

Please take a few moments to contact Kevin Coupe and thank him for supporting agriculture and tell him how you provide safe food for this country on your farm or ranch. Kevin can be reached via email at: kc@morningnewsbeat.com. Together, we can help Kevin hear the story of agriculture!

A big victory for farmers this past week came as the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to hear a case brought from absentee landowners against a cranberry grower.

The story in a nutshell goes something like this: several vacation home owners are upset about pollution on the lake; they assumed it was caused by run-off from the cranberry farmer, whose bogs border the lake. The cranberry farmer has followed all rules and regulations and has never been cited for any wrong doing.

The State of Wisconsin joined the law suit lead by the state Attorney General against the farmer, with no regard for state law which clearly protected the farmer’s rights. The cranberry grower won the first judgment and subsequent appeals until the state final withdrew its support for the case.

Now the Supreme Court has stopped it dead in its tracks. So why should you care about what happens in Wisconsin? Just a case of bad luck for this farmer? Not really. All farmers understand how critical water is to sustain crops and livestock, but just having water is no longer enough.

As the society we live in becomes more environmentally concise, all farmers will continue to be scrutinized for the practices that are implemented on their farms. Farmers who have always been terrific stewards of the land, water, and air will be held to higher standards than they ever have before, but the bottom line is farmers are not the only ones who can impact water.

As farmers we need to continue to demand that others are held to the same standards and play by the same rules.

On May 13, 2008 ABC’s “World News” ran a story about beef and climate change. The broadcast featured the author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” Michael Pollan. The feature suggested consumers should eat less beef, up to 20% less to be exact.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association was contacted by the reporter and they gave a statement from John Maas, DVM, beef producer and professor at the University of California-Davis. Following is Maas' statement to ABC: "Eating beef contributes positively to the environment. Cattle are net recyclers of carbon dioxide, which means they actually consume more CO2 than they release. Cattle are essential to a functioning carbon cycle. Cattle do this by eating grass. If cattle don't eat grass, the grass will burn and release all the carbon dioxide. Cattlemen are America's original environmentalists." However, ABC chose not to include this information in their segment.

ABC cheated their viewers by presenting only one side of the story. It amazes me how frequently agriculture is misrepresented in the media and how often the media chooses to tell a skewed version of a story because negativity sells. As agriculturalists, it’s our responsibility to correct this misinformation and insist the media have higher standards when it comes to reporting.

We’ve always heard how important media relations are, but this definitely proves the point. We need to contact ABC and other media outlets and request positive reports on agriculture; reports which tell the accurate story of agriculture!

Today I recieved an email regarding the pork industries efforts to tell our story, more importantly the correct story!

These three videos feature experts answering consumer questions on animal-care issues. The Pork Checkoff’s You Tube channel can be found at http://www.youtube.com/PorkCheckoff.

Each of the videos can be found at:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR6v49miz_Q
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEsGjjdHEsk
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y7LiKlDZXw

The Checkoff needs your help in spreading the message about these You Tube videos. Please take a few minutes and watch the videos. Each video is less than three minutes long. Then pass them along to your friends, colleagues and contacts. The more people who view these videos and rate them, the higher the videos will appear in the search results. This can be very helpful in telling our story effectively.

Saturday, May 10th is the date for the National Association of Letter Carriers Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive. Earlier this week I received a plastic bag in my mailbox describing the program and stating that I should put my non-perishable donations in a bag by my mailbox and my letter carrier would deliver it to a local food bank. America's Second Harvest is a partner in this food drive. As part of the Harvest for All program, Farm Bureau Young Farmers have partnered with America's Second Harvest over the past several years to help stop hunger in the United States. It is important to support our local food banks with our time, donations, and money throughout the year, but please take time to help your letter carrier Stamp Out Hunger tomorrow, May 10th.

As some of you know, my mother-in-law, Debi, and I have a retail meat business, The Pork Shoppe, where we sell pork products direct from the farm to consumers. We mostly market our meat via farmer's markets, farm pick-up, and delivery. We also have meat available at a retail location and a few restaurants feature our pork products. The Pork Shoppe was the brain child of my MBA program's final project. I studied the demand for locally raised livestock and products directly marketed from the farm. The Pork Shoppe was my way to contribute back to the farm since there isn't room for me to be solely employed by the farm at this point. The Pork Shoppe allows us to do some niche marketing with only a few of the hogs our family farm markets each year and more importantly it allows us the opportunity to educate our urban neighbors.

Debi and I have never hid the fact that our hogs are raised in confinement. When consumers ask questions about our pork, we are proud to tell them the truth which includes the facts that we take better care of our pigs than we probably do ourselves, that we only use antibiotics when neeeded, and that our pigs are raised in climate control buildings, which is a necessity in Indiana where it does get very cold during the winters and very hot and humid during the summers. Once we get the chance to explain our story and that we take care of the pigs ourselves, most people are completely ok with our hogs being raised in confinement. We are one of the unique vendors at the market as most of the other vendors are organic vendors or "all natural". This has never been a problem or an issue with the other vendors until this past weekend.

One of the beef vendors, who I would have referred to as a friend at the market, asked me if I had ever seen The Meatrix. Of course I had, but I just let him talk to see his angle. He was very excited about the Meatrix and had contacted them and told them about our farmers market and how it was full of family farms. Those behind The Meatrix, the GRACE factory farm project, sent him magnets of all of the Meatrix characters along with several different brochures about the "dangers" of factory farming and sustainable agriculture. My fellow vendor thought that I would be excited to share this information with my customers. He also thought that we should show the 3 different Meatrix spoofs at the market's visitor booth. Having seen the 3 spoofs, I knew for multiple reasons that I did not want these spoofs shown at the market. For no other reason, they are very graphic for the children that visit our market and do not depict the truth.

I took this as an opportunity to point out to my fellow vendor that those behind the Meatrix were opposed to how we raised our hogs on our family farm since our hogs were raised in confinement. He tried to say that they were only against factory farms, but I asked him what was a factory farm. He really couldn't answer. He was very nice and had never thought about the fact that the Meatrix would depict how we raise hogs in an untruthful way, but I was appalled. I never thought that I would have to defend my family farm to a fellow vendor or consumer. I understand if consumers don't want to buy my pork because it isn't what they want, but to have a fellow vendor promoting the Meatrix and how it defends sustainable agriculture was something I never thought I would do. I also never thought that I would have to defend agriculture at an agricultural event. Sustainable agriculture... interesting concept to me. Do people really think that we can feed this country let alone the world if we don't feed animals in confinement? I think what we do on our family farm is sustainable agriculture.

I realize like with everything that there are a few bad actors in the confined feeding world; however, there are many family farms just like ours that take the best possible care of their animals and the environment. Getting this message out to the masses is only going to get harder and harder which means we can't give up. Telling our story is the best thing we can do to promote agriculture and more specifically our family farms.

This past week we vaccinated, tagged and sorted cattle and took them to pasture. Sounds like work doesn't it. Well, for me it was vacation, or at least that is what my full-time employer thinks since this past week was classified as vacation leave. Working cattle on the weekend, planting corn after work or feeding calves before work hardly seem relaxing but that is the reality most of us are facing.

I am one of the many young farmers or ranchers in Farm Bureau who have full-time off-farm jobs to finance their full-time on-farm dream. Some kids grow up wanting to be baseball players or astronauts but all I have ever wanted to do is ranch. However, the reality is that I need a full-time job to provide for my family, so I am forced to get my "ranching fix" after work hours.

I would guess I am not alone. In fact, I would bet that I am in the majority of young farmers and ranchers. Most of us have to have a town job to provide necessities such as medical and dental insurance. What does that mean for Farm Bureau?

We are a segment of the ag population that needs to be included and encouraged to participate in Farm Bureau. As the number of ag producers dwindles we need to be more inclusive to those who are involved in production ag on a part-time basis.

We had our annual Farm Field Day in our area on Friday. We live in Central Utah, Juab County, and each year our county Farm Bureau invites the 4th grade students to come onto a farm and learn. We had about 150 students and they were able to go to a dairy, and then come to a farm where we had stations.

We had these stations: Equipment (a John Deere dealer came with different equipment), Sheep (we had a producer come with a couple of lambs), Fruit (we had a producer come with apples for them to learn and taste), Safety (our State Farm Bureau Safety guy came to talk about 4 wheeler safety), Grains and Seeds (our Extension Agent came and talked about different grains, and then we had whole wheat bread for them to eat), and a Wheat Craft (where they took and put wheat with wet cotton balls in a bag to watch germinate in a couple of days).

We have our local FFA chapter send some of the members to come help. Afterwards we eat lunch with the FFA kids and all the presenters.

It always goes over well. The 4th graders seem to enjoy the field trip. I hope that they learn something while they are there! It is one of my favorite things to do with Farm Bureau.

Taste what happens when fruits and vegetables mature to vine-ripened perfection. Taste what happens when they are picked within hours of being in the field. Fresh strawberries are delivered to my families roadside market several times daily straight from the field. Roadside markets provide fresh from the field produce and reinforce the direct link between farmers and community. The strawberries, the sweet corn, or the jam bought at the roadside market help renew the relationship between the consumer and the farmer.
So make it a habit to visit local farmer's markets often, and taste the freshness. Enjoy watching the seasons come and go. Savor the flavors of each season...