BY BLAKE HURST
City councils in Cleveland, Alexandria (Virginia) and Chicago have all recently passed resolutions banning the administration of antibiotics to farm animals, unless they’re sick — the animals, not the city councils. City councils pass resolutions all the time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if each of these distinguished groups has opinions on football team names, investments in the Middle East and global warming as well. It’s much easier to pass resolutions than it is to actually govern. Perhaps when Chicago’s murder rate is lower than rural Missouri’s, when their pension plan is fully funded and when the potholes are fixed, then we might have some interest in their thoughts on the food supply.
It seems that the further people get from the farm, the more opinions they have about how food ought to be produced. When your only connection to the growing of crops and animals is paying the monthly bill to a lawn care company, farming seems pretty darned easy. I’m convinced there are more than a few of our city cousins who unknowingly hire the local yard service to spread a monthly dose of pesticides and chemical fertilizers on their lawns, while at the same time frequenting the organic aisles of their local grocery store.
This is why I’m in favor of backyard chickens and community gardens. Spend a little time treating coccidiosis, squish a few horn worms that are eating your tomatoes, watch bacterial blight wipe out the neighborhood tomato crop, perhaps clean up after a weasel (ferret) who has visited your free-range chickens, and city dwellers will perhaps start to understand why farmers do the things they do.
Farming is risky, dirty, dangerous, demanding and always comes down to working hard to surmount the challenges that nature puts in the way of food production. Sure, I understand that we have to work with nature, that we have to protect nature, that the environment is important. But I also understand what army worms can do to a hay crop or root worms to a corn crop. We need to cooperate with the environment, but sometimes Mother Nature doesn’t get the memo about how we should all get along. Sometimes raising a crop is a battle, and it’s always hard.
On August 5, voters will have the chance to help ensure our food supply. They’ll have a chance to be part of the annual adventure of raising crops and tending to animals. We’re so very fortunate in America, and particularly Missouri, to have farmers who get up early and stay up late to produce an amazing cornucopia of food, at prices that make it available to everyone. That’s never happened before in history. It is a blessing to everyone who eats, and farmers need your support so we can continue to do what we do. I hope that every citizen of Missouri has a successful gardening year, that those backyard chickens are laying, that the community gardens across the state produce tomatoes that find a home next to some bacon from a Missouri farm. And I hope everyone interested in farming and eating will support Amendment #1.
Blake Hurst, of Westboro, Mo., is the president of Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.