Ag Needs To Deliver A Much Needed Message
March 1, 2012 If you’ve been watching TV the past year or so, you might have run across a commercial set in a cornfield. In this spot, an actress is talking about how the human body can’t tell the difference between high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and sugar, regardless of the product. She quotes various studies to make her point. “Sugar is sugar,” she concludes.
This commercial was created by various industry trade groups and food manufacturers in an effort to combat the image that HFCS is harmful — a stigma that has hounded the sweetener since the mid-1980s.
And it’s about time. I remember in my days covering the soft drink market, the notion that HFCS was “bad” was always present. Yet manufacturers never seemed to want to respond directly to these claims. Many thought that addressing these criticisms was the same as acknowledging they were legitimate. The majority of players chose to just point at mountains of research that proved HFCS was safe — without getting this message out to John Q. Public. Unfortunately, this stance allowed the fear-mongers to keep the public opinion spotlight on their views — right or wrong — for almost 30 years. That leaves a lot of misinformation to refute now.
Which brings us to the ag marketplace. Back when I first started in this business 12 years ago, many retailers and suppliers to grower-customers suffered from the same lack of action my former friends in the soft drink industry did. Most of the ones I talked with just directed me to the various research papers on the safety of biotech crops or fertilizer application. “We have science on our side,” I was often told in these early days. “That is enough.”
Except it wasn’t. Industry critics and special interest group have continually chipped away at many modern agricultural practices. They’ve taken these messages to the public through in-person rallies, educational films and, perhaps most damaging, Internet sites/blogs/columns.
Luckily, the tide seems to be finally turning on this front. During the past year, I’ve seen many industry trade groups and suppliers loudly proclaiming the benefits of sustainability and precision farming to the entire world through public forums and informational articles. At a few of these events, ag critics have appeared, defending their positions while engaging in fact-driven debate with industry proponents. News reports from these point-counterpoints can be used by ag supporters to show that our industry is responsible and environmentally friendly while helping to feed the world’s ever-growing population.
But there needs to be more. I remember during this year’s Super Bowl, one of the most memorable ads featured actor Clint Eastwood telling how America, the auto industry and the city of Detroit were all making comebacks. This is the kind of strongly delivered message agriculture needs to send to the public — that what we do is right and good for everyone. The stakes are too high to just sit back and wait.
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