Farmers have the facts on sustainability - and more

By Don Hutchens

Agriculture is under attack. On one hand, corn is vilified as the cause of obesity; while on the other, the conversion of corn to ethanol is causing worldwide starvation. Corn prices, supposedly driven by ethanol demand, have led to high food prices. To hear others tell it, American farmers are destroying the environment, depleting natural resources and mistreating animals.

When corn prices spiked to historic highs in summer 2008, there was little or no recognition of the impact of $4.00 gas and soaring energy prices, which affect every stage of food production from tractors to trucks to the coolers in the grocery store. There was no mention of speculative commodity and oil trading by hedge funds—or the weakness of the dollar. And now that corn and gas prices have receded to more “normal” levels, our grocery bills have not. Hmmmm.

We don’t have a farm crisis or food crisis in this nation. We have a crisis of truth, inflamed by special interest groups and media eager to believe and repeat whatever these groups feed them.

In response, Nebraska corn farmers—and their colleagues across the nation—are no longer sitting on the sidelines. Farmers in several states, in conjunction with their state checkoff and membership organizations, have joined to form the Corn Farmers Coalition. This initiative is designed to offer up science- and research-based facts that demonstrate the ability of corn farmers to grow more with less—and do so responsibly.

Producers are farming smarter and farming better than ever before. Here are some of the facts:

*Farmers grow five times more corn than they did in the 1930s—and today they’re doing it on 20 percent fewer acres.

*Today’s farmers produce 70 percent more corn per ounce of fertilizer than as recently as the 1970s.

*Less than 15 percent of all the corn farmland is irrigated. The other 85 percent relies solely on rainfall.

*Reduced tillage and other farm-management practices have reduced soil erosion 43 percent over the past two decades.

*Family farmers grow 95 percent of America’s corn.

*The energy used to produce a bushel of corn has decreased by 37 percent since 1987.

*Carbon emissions from corn production have dropped by 30 percent per bushel since 1987.

*Even with increased corn demand for livestock and ethanol, we still export one of every five rows of U.S. corn to other nations.

The ability to grow our own food is a huge strategic asset for America—and the fact that we have the most abundant, most affordable and safest food in the world is too often taken for granted. Growing more with less—less land, less water, less fertilizer—and doing it year after year after year—if you’re looking for the definition of “sustainability,” that’s as good as any I’ve heard.

To their credit—and as it turns out, their detriment—American farmers and ranchers have pretty much invested their talent and energy on doing their jobs instead of telling people about how good they are at it. In the meantime, Americans have gotten farther and farther from the farm—and believe that hamburgers come from McDonald’s and milk comes from the dairy case.

A groundswell of anti-agriculture interests—from the Grocery Manufacturers Association to the American Petroleum Institute, from the Humane Society of the United States (vastly different from the people who run your local animal shelter) to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)—is taking control of the dialogue, while those of us in agriculture have been quiet too long. Moreover, we don’t have millions of dollars to spend on ad campaigns to sway public opinion and divert attention from what’s really happening. We don’t have the ear of sympathetic, big-city media who are far removed from understanding where their food comes from—and apparently want to share only one side of the story. We don’t have best-selling authors, television talking (shouting?) heads or high-powered lobbyists fanning the flames of myth and misinformation—attempting, successfully in many instances, to turn propaganda into policy.

What we do have are the facts—and the research to support them. You can see for yourself by visiting http://www.NebraskaCorn.org, http://www.CornFarmersCoalition.org or contacting the Nebraska Corn Board at (402) 471-2676 for your personal copy of “The Corn Fact Book.”

One key fact is that no one—and I mean no one—cares more for the environment, our natural resources and food animals more than the farmers and ranchers who depend on them for their very livelihoods and their children’s future.

Farmers aren’t looking for a pat on the back. But they certainly don’t expect or deserve to be attacked for doing exactly what our nation and the world have always depended on them to do.

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