Nebraska Farm Bureau battles misconceptions

The Nebraska Farm Bureau is refocusing their efforts in order to better educate the general population about their organization.

The Nebraska Farm Bureau is a general volunteer farm organization which has various different types of farmers and ranchers as members throughout the state who raise all different types of commodities, according to Craig Head, Vice President of Issue Management.

"Out in this part of the state, there are sugar beats, dry beans, there's corn out here obviously. We represent those folks, and we represent cattle interests and people who raise pigs and the full gamut of agriculture. We have a lot of different people who do a lot of different things," Head said.

The bureau also consists of members who raise crops traditionally with the use of GMOs and members who have embraced new and emerging markets by raising crops through organic production.

According to Head, these new markets have changed the way the the organization and the agriculture community in general operates, changing the mindset from years past where the focus was on raising corn, feeding it to the livestock and shipping the remnants elsewhere.

"It's different. Nebraska has been known as the 'beef state', and that's because we raise a lot of corn and feed it to a lot of beef. But there are a lot of new emerging marketplaces that are out there. It's kind of the rise in interest in buying local and the whole foods market. Some of those markets are changing some of the ways that we do things," Head said.

As an organization, in recent years, the bureau has been working with farmers and ranchers throughout the state in order to make sure that all aspects of the bureau and the members under its supervision are given due diligence through spreading accurate information to people across the state concerning their methods of production.

"What we do as an organization is try to bring all of these different interests together through our county farm bureau structure. There will be approximately 88 county farm bureau meetings that take place throughout the fall. Each county is made of local farmers and ranchers that get together and talk about things that are affecting agriculture," Head said.

However, with the expanding marketplace, the bureau has found itself in an uphill battle against common misconceptions that have been planted in the minds of the general public.

"One of the things I think has been a real concern in agriculture is that it seems like, with the emerging markets, one of the things that's being done is to differentiate products within the market place some folks have marketed different, not necessarily pointing out the pros of their product but pointing out the negatives of other people's products," Head said.

Marketing methods of this nature most notably came to light through a video by Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., commonly known as 'the Scarecrow', which seemingly attacks giant companies that treat food like another product to process and contrasts that with food made in sustainable ways that is fresh and wholesome.

Chipotle Spokeswoman Danielle Winslow stated in an interview with The Denver Post that the film "simply invites viewers to question where we are heading as a society, and to think more about where our food comes from and how it is prepared."

However, Nebraska Farm Bureau president Steven Nelson took exception with the video, publicly stating that the video "disparages farm and ranch families who care very much about the well-being for their fellow man, the animals in their care and the land and natural resources entrusted to them."

For his part, Head believes that the video has seemingly only helped to back misconceptions about the change in the agriculture field in recent years, leaving the farm bureau in worse shape to better inform the public of the reasoning behind the recent changes in agriculture through technology and general evolution over time.

"We understand that some people only use grass fed beef or whatever their standards are, but that doesn't mean that what everybody else is doing is bad or wrong," Head said.

One common misconception that Head hears a lot is that people believe that what is happening on the farm is wrong simply because it doesn't match up to the image in their head like they would have learned from the popular 'Farmer Brown' books of the past.

"Those stories are great, and they give a great of agriculture. But that's not really what it was all about. There's a lot of hard work and other things that go into it. You're getting banged around by animals that are 350 pounds. That's hard on a person," Head said.

Head also has concerns about the misconceptions about why animals are kept in stalls rather than kept outside as is the general public's perception of how things should be, citing that it truly stems from ensuring animals safety.

"People see those stalls and things, and they think they're just horrible. Well, those stalls a lot of times what they do is to make sure that the animals are able to access food without competing for food and that they don't hurt each other," Head said.

The bureau is also very active in policy issues for farmers and ranchers throughout the state. Recently, the main focus has been on property tax issues that have arisen in the past year, primarily concurring the fact that farmers and ranchers make up three percent of the population, yet pay approximately 24 percent of the property tax bill, according to Head.

"In rural Nebraska, that means a lot of funding for schools. It's just the nature of the beast. You have to have land to farm and when the taxing mechanism is taxing land, it tends to be hard on farmers and ranchers. They have to have that land to do their job," Head said.

Along with property tax there are also water issues which are coming to the forefront of discussions.

"Water is going to continue to be a big issue just from the standpoint that we use it in everything we do in agriculture. One of the things we struggle with is that people wonder why agriculture uses as much water as it does," Head said.

According to Head, the bureau has even conducted a study to see what the impact of irrigation systems had on Nebraska farmland last year in the midst of the drought.

"We had contracted to have a study done last year to see what would be the impact if we had not had irrigation last year. It was worth $11 billion to the state's economy. 31,221 Nebraska jobs had we not had irrigation would be gone. A third of those weren't even in agriculture," Head said.

Another point of tension comes in the ongoing speculation surrounding the use of GMOs which Head believes has helped in not only creating drought resistant crops but also lowering the environmental impact farming has through Roundup Ready technology.

"Instead of going through the field three or four times with that tractor and burning all that diesel fuel with that environmental impact, if you only have to go through the field once, it eliminates fuel. It eliminates environmental exposure, and it allows us to use less pesticides. GMOs have gotten a bad wrap, but there are reasons for them," Head said.

Though the bureau has a lot of work set out for itself in the coming year to inform the public of what is truly going on in agriculture, Head says that they will strive to address public questions and concerns in the future.

"It's not all bad. I think that's our fear that there's a lot of people with concerns of that so we need to answer those concerns," Head said.