I don’t think I’ve met Chris Chinn, a fifth generation Missouri pork farmer and self-styled “agvocat” – bless her – but I’ve decided she’s one of the great minds of the 21st Century. I’m thinking we should nominate Chris for the Nobel Peace Prize or one of those MacArthur Foundation awards that dumps a ton of money on geniuses. Maybe we can convince her to run for Congress. Lordy, we could use some great minds right about now.

Why is Chris my new hero? Because she blogged on “Just Farmers” that ag needs to pay it forward when retailers do the right and smart thing.

When Dominos Pizza – the world’s largest pizza delivery company with 6,450 outlets worldwide – recommended successfully to its shareholders they reject a Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) stockholder resolution on gestation stalls, Chris blogged on “Truth About Agriculture” which spawned a Facebook Group – “Farmers Paying it Forward with Pizza” – where you can demonstrate your appreciation to Dominos by buying your family one or more of its pizza’s this weekend. It’s now called “the Ag Pizza Party.” My wife doesn’t know it yet, but Saturday night dinner is going to be an “Ag Pizza Party.”

Chris – who drove 45 minutes to pick up her Dominos pizzas – told Pork Network: “Dominos’ decision speaks volumes to me as a farmer. It shows they trust the experts I trust. It shows they trust me. I appreciate that.”

So, anyone reading this must forward these wise words to all friends and family, work and school colleagues, church congregations, the Elks, the Kiwanis, the Rotary, 4-H, FFA, everyone to whom you owe money to or who owes you money, the Chamber of Commerce and the folks down at the local watering hole or cafe, and tell them: Buy Dominos Pizza this weekend! And when you do, thank them for standing with U.S. farmers.

Over 80% of the Dominos shareholders rejected the HSUS propaganda, and while that’s a hefty percentage, I’d still like to see it closer to 99%. However, what I liked best about the Dominos show of backbone and solidarity is the following company statement: “We rely on animal experts to determine what is the best way to raise an animal that’s being used for food.”

The experts will tell anyone who asks or has the power to conduct a Google search – and that apparently doesn’t include the spineless retailers who have rolled over for HSUS on gestation stalls – there are as many good ways to raise pigs as there are pork producers, meaning each producer adapts systems to meet the farm’s needs and the needs of the animals. There are organic and conventional systems, free-range systems, stall systems, “family systems” and variations and combinations of those systems, often on the same farm. None of them is pig perfect, but professional farmers and their support teams determine which system best fits the needs and wellbeing of their animals.

And while I’m waxing effusive, another round of kudos goes to Tyson Foods – the target of another HSUS Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint.  Tyson again quite deftly kicked HSUS to the curb.

When asked about the SEC complaint, a Tyson statement said the following: “We’ve not seen the complaint…so it’s difficult to provide a specific comment. However, we will note that according to a new Humane Watch survey, HSUS appears to be deceiving its donors. The survey of more than 1,000 donors to HSUS found that 90% were unaware the organization gives just 1% of its budget to local pet shelters. After learning HSUS did not spend a majority of its funds assisting local pet shelters, 80% of the HSUS donors polled believed the group engaged in deceptive funding raising practices.”

This is what me must do in all similar situations.   Instead of simply taking the abuse, we need to reward our allies and ignore those who refuse to support us.

So, this fine spring weekend should be celebrated just as Chris Chinn recommended, with at least one big ol’ Dominos pizza – with a thank you note saying why you love Dominos – and maybe a Tyson’s chicken or two.   And if you care, I’ve got a list of restaurants, fast-food chains and supermarkets maybe you should avoid.

This was the week when one ag giant took on the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) and won in the court of public opinioni, while yet another food industry retailer folded to HSUS demands like a pup tent.

This tale of dueling titans began earlier this week when Safeway, the country’s second largest supermarket chain, joined McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s and the Compass Group (British-owned) in capitulating to HSUS and telling the world it would source pork from farms phasing out gestation stalls. This strikes me as the classic “win/win” of public relations illogic: If we’re part of a gang, no one can criticize us for being the only bad guy when it comes to farmers and ranchers; if we’re part of a gang, then it shows collective thinking on the issue. I say it shows Safeway has no independent thought process.

The surrender by Safeway was followed by a rather desperate move by HSUS in holding a tripartite press conference in DC, Little Rock and Denver to unveil its latest undercover video showing cruelty at a Wyoming hog farm – a farm owned by a Japanese company – it claims is a supplier to Tyson Foods.

However, while the actions shown on the video are inexcusable and all in industry should be outraged, HSUS’ media presence Wayne Pacelle continually tried to draw a straight line between the use of gestation stalls, the portrayed cruelty and Tyson sourcing pigs from farms which use gestation stalls.

Tyson responded in a measured fashion: “Contrary to the impression left by HSUS, there is no connection between this Wyoming farm and the pork that we process.” The company went on to explain it has a small subsidiary company which sources old sows from several locations and resells them; this Wyoming farm is among the farms from which it has purchased sows over time. None of the sows bought by the Tyson subsidiary goes into the Tyson pork line. Tyson has severed any relationship with the farm.

Pacelle obviously giddy over the Safeway announcement, tried to keep the anti-stall momentum going and continued to indict Tyson for seemingly even knowing the Wyoming farm existed. The HSUS groupthink is that if it can knock off the biggest or a couple of the biggest, the rest of the industry will fall in line like sheep. Apparently in this case, they’re correct as far as Safeway and the fast food crowd go, but dead wrong about Tyson. Tyson has been a target of HSUS since 2005, and a company which has continually had the backbone to tell HSUS to go pound salt, that it places science, animal health and wellbeing ahead of placating activist political agendas, sources from farms which use both stalls and open systems, insists that any farm from which it buys be certified under the Pork Producers Quality Assurance Plus (PQA+) program, and it conducts audits of its suppliers.

So while Tyson is my hero of the week, big kudos are also due the National Pork Producers Council, which when informed of the Safeway decision/announcement, refused to be a part of the silent gang afraid to offend the guys with the checkbooks.

NPPC President R.C. Hunt said the following: “With regards to Safeway’s decision to give preference to pork suppliers who phase out individual stall housing, the NPPC is concerned that similar actions taken by governments – or other restaurant or grocery chains – have increased production costs and consumer prices. These actions have forced some hog farmers out of business or caused them to reduce operations with no demonstrable benefits to the sows…it seems Safeway was intimidated by an animal rights group whose ultimate goal is the elimination of food animal production.”

So much for corporate social responsibility.

I’ve decided the general media are pretty much amateurs or hacks when it comes to accurately covering issues in food and agriculture. In no other area of our lives – including the arcane world of high finance – does a single profession get it wrong so much of the time. I’m allowed to say this out loud because I was a general newspaper reporter before I was an agbiz reporter/editor before I was a lobbyist.

I’m not talking about self-proclaimed “journalists” who go into a story with a definite opinion and a desired outcome, then proceed to winnow the facts and edit the video to fit that bias. Think “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” and on-farm use of antibiotics. I’m talking about reporters and editors who are too lazy or too ignorant – or both — to get it right, and do little to overcome those two shortcomings.

The latest and best example I can give you is the general media coverage of the fourth U.S. case of BSE – and the first in nearly a decade – announced April 25. That cow, nearly 11 years old, tested positive for atypical BSE, caught during routine USDA BSE surveillance testing. “Atypical” means it’s more than 99% certain the animal did not get the disease from eating diseased mammalian tissue, and may have spontaneously developed the cattle brain disease. That last part’s still the subject of scientific debate.

USDA’s Chief Veterinarian Dr. John Clifford provided a comprehensive briefing to the media. All of the facts which could be shared at the time were shared; all questions were answered. Subsequent reports on the results of cohort testing, etc., have flowed from Clifford’s office almost daily. Clifford, at least in the subsequent industry briefing, stressed several times the case was atypical and what that meant, that the animal was tested at a renderer as part of regular and routine USDA testing, was never presented at slaughter so no meat or byproducts entered the food or feed chains, and that beef and milk were safe. In short, the system worked.

Instead of presenting a relatively minor news story, several general media outlets ran with stories patently designed for shock and awe. Either explicit or implied food safety issues were raised where none exist. In one network TV report, the word “atypical” and its meaning were never used to describe the ancient cow found in California; in another network report, the “on-air talent” flat out stated there was a “break in the feed rule,” referring to the federal regulation banning the refeeding of mammalian tissues to bovine animals. Several major newspapers simply parroted activist criticism of USDA’s testing program under which about 40,000 animals are tested yearly. None of the examples cited qualify as objective reporting or even good entertaining-it’s-so-bad yellow journalism. To be fair, the best, most professional story I read – objective, balanced, factual and understandable by the layperson – was in USAToday.

So bad and so inaccurate was most of the popular press reporting that USDA took the almost-unheard-of step of issuing the federal government equivalent of a media slap down. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack’s press secretary, Courtney Rowe, sent to the media and released generally a polite but firm April 26 rebuke in which she took the press to task for harping on how much testing USDA does – a focus “(which) produced an unfortunate amount of misleading reporting” – ignoring other equally important components of the U.S. government’s BSE prevention and detection system. She also reissued to all the press all the information the department had already issued. They can’t say they weren’t warned.

For me, it wasn’t just the testing issue. The general media ignored USDA testing rates are 10 times greater than World Animal Health Organization recommendations; ignored the FDA’s publicly reported 99%-plus compliance rate among U.S. feed and rendering companies with the federal ban on refeeding of mammalian tissue to bovines; ignored the 99% reduction in global BSE cases since the height of the European outbreak in the 1990s, and pretty much ignored the context of U.S. cases – one in a Canadian import, and three atypical cases. And just for grins, a comparison to other industrialized nations would have added some context, as in Japan’s had 36 cases and Canada’s had 20.

The story should have been about a good, strong industry-government collaboration that’s resulted in a prevention/detection system that works. The story should have been about a system assuring safe food. The story should have been based on the facts of the matter, not on scare tactics that suck in TV viewers or sell newspapers.

Should we talk “lean finely textured beef” and how well the general media did on that one? I rest my case.

At the risk of divulging “secrets” of the lobbying trade, I want you to have some perspective on how a Farm Bill actually gets written. And while the cynics among the lobbying crew like to point out how the old axiom about never watching sausage or legislation being made was first coined about the Farm Bill process, rest easy. It ain’t all that bad.

Here’s the short version: The House writes a Farm Bill; the Senate writes a Farm Bill, then we go to conference committee and we all rewrite the Farm Bill. Now, that sounds like what you learned in 9th grade civics class, but it’s not Capitol Hill reality.

If you have no life or just a lot of time on your hands, fill up on caffeine, dig into the congressional/ag committee on-line archives and take a look at what played out during the 2008 Farm Bill debate. Compare what the House Agriculture Committee approved to what the Senate Agriculture Committee approved, then take a look at the final conference report and start making a list of language, sections, titles of the final product that were never even discussed during the respective chamber’s hearings, drafting, markup or floor action. Then create a second list of all those “important” sections of the respective bills that were included during regular action, but which disappeared completely during the conference.

This scenario will definitely play out this year. Why? Because the respective committees are pushing ahead with the hearing/markup phase of the process to get a bill done this year, but absent several key pieces of puzzle, to wit: A consensus among commodity groups on how to reinvent direct payments; a budget-slashing assault on federal crop insurance, which everyone says is the farmer’s number one priority; budget numbers in the House and Senate which don’t and never will agree; whither research, trade, disaster assistance, energy and the “miscellaneous” pieces/parts, and the great unknown – amendments and changes that will be occur once the bills hit the House and Senate floors.

We’re in the lipstick-on-a-pig phase of the bill writing process. Farm bills are never pretty – as previously stated – so right now both committees are demonstrating their ability to cut spending, discover and remove waste, streamline and modernize, all the while ensuring farmers both young and old continue farming. This is the period of supreme public posturing by the various “special interest” groups – including our brothers and sisters in the fruit, vegetable, organic, enviro, consumer and animal crazy crowds – with a vested interest in preserving government largesse, and it’s also the time when the whispering about “kill that program not this” goes on. This is when all of the dueling university and think tank studies get trotted out. This is when the regional and commodity rivalries are laid bare, and it’s hoped a foothold can be gained in the product that eventually heads to the chamber floor.

The committees will no doubt produce bills for their colleagues to vote upon. One reason the Senate is in the lead on this process – which doesn’t happen very often – is because the Senate doesn’t follow a formal budget resolution that stipulates spending caps. This does NOT translate into a spendthrift Senate, but it gives the panel members a lot more room to play than enjoyed by their colleagues in the House. The Senate Ag Committee also enjoys and benefits greatly from the expertise of Sen. Pat Roberts (R, KS), former chair of the House Ag Committee in his previous political life, and Sen. Kent Conrad (D, ND), chair of the Budget Committee and a member of the ag panel. Both have survived a lot of Farm Bills.

The House Ag Committee has the much rockier row to hoe (you’ll pardon the clichéd pun). It’s faced with a budget resolution to which spending must be reconciled – I know ag panel chair Rep. Frank Lucas (R, OK) says it’s just “an exercise;” it must face all of the serious budget hawks just waiting for the bill to hit the floor, those folks who keep chanting “go big” when it comes to spending cuts; it’s got about 385 House members who aren’t on the ag committee, likely have never met a real live farmer or rancher, who wouldn’t know a countercyclical payment from a calorie counter, and it has chamber leadership placing no great priority on getting a Farm Bill done in the first place and who will likely let everyone and his/her brother offer amendments so “the chamber may work its will.”

The final phase is “clean up,” as in “we did what we needed to do to get the bill to conference.” Now, the writing of the real Farm Bill begins. Hopefully, we’ve gotten most of it right. However, by this point we’ve also identified those sections which simply won’t work, can’t work or which don’t pass the political smell test any longer. This is when the fixing begins, be it surgical – as in excising a line, fine tuning some language – or wholesale, as in post-committee, but pre-floor, a better mousetrap was invented which needs to supplant what’s in the bill.

The conference report comes back to the respective chambers and if the legislative gods have smiled, it resembles for the most part what the members voted on earlier in the process. However, the legislative gods are notoriously fickle, so no one’s surprised when the only resemblance between what went into conference and what came out are the title and the table of contents.

If you – and every other farmer in America – weren’t so bloody rich, we wouldn’t have every Tom, Dick and Harry in the federal government calling for a slash-and-burn assault on farm spending.

OK, settle down. That statement reflects the prevailing government group-think about why it’s just fine to whack federal ag spending from direct payments to crop insurance to research. Rep. Paul Ryan (R, WI), chair of the House Budget Committee, pointed at record on-farm income when he released his committee’s budget resolution calling for a cut of at least $180 billion out of USDA’s spending over the next decade.

Just this week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), referred to as “the investigative arm of Congress,” cited record on-farm income in releasing a report proposing cutting $1 billion from the federal crop insurance program by capping the government-paid producer insurance premium subsidy at $40,000 a year.

Generally speaking, you can’t swing a dead cat in Congress without hitting some member or other who thinks farmers are sitting out there in the leather seats of the air-condition cabs of their luxury tractors and harvesters, clipping coupons, listening to the hum of their corn-based ethanol plant in background, all while the emailing their latest signed deal to sell 100% of their soybean crop to China.

It appears the common federal government belief is farmers and ranchers have finally figured out how to flatten out those cycles, control the weather, control demand – both at home and overseas – speed up/slow down crop and animal growth to match the market and time perfectly operation expansion or contraction, all without bank credit because farmers can simply spend all that cash they’ve piled up in the bank from last year’s success.

That good times never last and bad times can appear as quickly as a summer thunder storm is a reality that seems to elude our politicians, and I’m not convinced it’s simply naïveté or ignorance to blame. I think in many cases this new “rich farmer” alibi for such draconian ag spending cuts is another sad example of how this country’s food production system is taken for granted and if this nonsense works during budget battles, well, we’ll just deal with it later.

The notion of crafting a federal budget or a Farm Bill in the context that bad things never happen in rural America is not a wise move, unless Congress enjoys emergency ag assistance bills more than I think it does. The ultimate goal of any federal policy that touches food production should be, must be to literally protect independent producers during the toughest times. The secondary goal of such policy is to keep independent farmers competitive in a world market while hanging on to as much of the “free market” as possible.

Politicians who think a 21st century farm looks and operates as it did in 1960 need to be braced and given a strong dose of reality. It’s a tough sell when, overall, the ag sector is doing pretty well. We must get creative and remind the folks who hold our economic future in the palm of their sweaty little hand that bad things happen to good people no matter how many contingencies are accounted for.

Maybe we just remind them it’s a lot like losing an election

Last Sunday, the New York Times Magazine put out a national call for essays of no more than 600 words on why it is ethical to eat meat. Bastion of “ethical” behavior that the Times is – I won’t mention the number of Times episodes related to falsifying stories or plagiarized work – it’s thought by some agriculture should rise up and inundate the paper with treatises of no more than 600 words on why it’s OK to kill animals and eat them for food.

I think, as one ag group put it, this an “opportunity for engagement.” However, those who decide to enter this contest should understand: These are very choppy waters and this is not necessarily an objective forum.

Ariel Kaminer, is a journalist, one who admits she has no training in ethics, but who writes a column called “The Ethicist.” Only the New York Times would miss or ignore the irony in that. The column is more of a “Dear Abby” for guilt-ridden New Yorkers. In any event, Kaminer writes: “Ethically speaking, vegetables get all the glory.” Vegetarians and vegans “dominate the discussion” over meat eating, she avers, forcing me to ask: “What discussion?” Vegetarians and vegans dominate the public noise over meat eating because it’s that noise newspapers choose to cover.

She goes on to write “those who love meat have had surprising little to say.” Her next couple of sentences, in which she dismisses arguments of nutrition, natural order or culture, give us a clue to a prevailing attitude among journalistas who write about such things, and why we in farming or ranching — or any part of the food chain – remain cynical about the likelihood anyone at the New York Times will find anything we have to say of any value at all. (After all, this is the same newspaper which sees value in the opinions of Nicholas D. Kristof and Mark Bittman.)

The “fundamental ethical issue” is this, Kaminer writes: “Whether it is right to eat animals in the first place, at least when human survival is not at stake.” So now we’ve moved from “the ethicist” to “the situational ethicist.” The Times’ failure to recognize this speaks volumes.

Let’s turn to the selection of the judges in this exercise of ethical equivocation. First there’s Australian philosopher Dr. Peter Singer, the father of the modern animal rights movement with his 1975 book “Animal Liberation.” Then there’s Michael Pollan, author of “Omnivore’s Dilemma” et al, followed by Jonathan Safron Foer, who penned “Eating Animals” – actress Natalie Portman swears reading it turned her vegan; the aforementioned Mark Bittman, and Dr. Andrew Light, a Senior Fellow at American Progress specializing in international climate and science policy, and a professor at George Mason University where he is director of the Center for Global Ethics.

These folks are, in order listed, a vegetarian philosopher who holds all species are equal; a UC-Berkeley journalism professor who believes it’s okay to eat meat as long you hunt it and kill it yourself; a vegan pop novelist; a cook book author, and another philosopher with an expertise in climate/enviro issues. I’ve got an “ethical” question for Kaminer – what were you and your bosses thinking?

Having declared its allegiance in this battle of dietary philosophies based on its previous reporting and the scratchings of its op/ed columnists, this Times exercise in journalistic jingoism smacks of a set up. As a reporter and editor, I sat in enough story meetings to know the cynicism of the average journalist is north of excessive, so I can almost hear the assumptions and prejudgment of the entries. I can also hear the bad jokes and the laughter.

One of the definitions of “ethics” is as follows: “The rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.” I’ve got another essay contest topic: “Is the term journalistic ethics an oxymoron?”  Oh, and keep it to 600 words or less.

Does the House Budget Committee’s approval this week of a FY2013 budget resolution calling for ag to pony up $181 billion in spending cuts over 10 years mean the 2012 Farm Bill is dead?

No, but it makes it a heck of a lot tougher to write.

A lot of folks this week were surprised and a little disappointed when Rep. Paul Ryan (R, WI), budget committee chair from an ag state, unveiled his plan for slashing the federal budget and cited the “record prosperity” of farmers and ranchers as one reason ag has some sort of moral obligation to cut deeper into its spending.  Bad times come as quickly as the good, they argued; ag has contributed well beyond its fair share, they say.

What the Ryan resolution means, however, in a GOP-controlled House, is that now there are six GOP chairs of major committees, including Rep. Frank Lucas (R, OK), who chairs the ag committee, who’ve been challenged by their leadership to dig deeper so that the GOP budget resolution “saves” more than the President’s FY2013 budget recommendation.

A budget resolution, whether House or Senate, doesn’t bind the authorizing committees – those panels which write the programs – to cut anything out of anything. It’s sort of a “here’s-where-we-should/could-be” spending document. It’s a statement of goals and direction, of political will, and it’s a play to the folks out in the hinterland who want to see DC take control of the economy.

But as stated, the House Agriculture Committee must now embark upon “reconciliation” of its farm program reauthorization with what Lucas calls the “suggestions” of the budget resolution in mind. What’s “reconciliation?” Reconciliation is a provision in a budget resolution that tells a committee to change existing law so that spending/revenues are in line – or close to it — with the numbers in the budget resolution. So, with House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) on record saying he’s bringing the budget package to the floor next week, we have to see if he can overcome the bipartisan gnashing of teeth over cuts to marquee programs like Medicare. But let’s assume the House passes the resolution, what then?

The ag committee has until April 27 to come up with a plan to cut spending. This doesn’t have to match the Ryan resolution, but it would be good to get as close as possible. That’s the key word: “Possible.” I have every confidence Lucas and his committee can pull this Farm Bill rabbit out of the reconciliation hat if they have the political will – something in short supply generally in an election year. Lucas has a deal with Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D, MI) and the Senate ag panel to hold to $23 billion in cuts identified last December; he’ll likely come up with a bill that saves north of $23 billion, but at a level Stabenow and her panel can live with, and that can survive the “go-big” budget cutters on the House floor.

This is my seventh Farm Bill, and I’ve learned one thing:  Never underestimate the political miracles that can be wrought when politicians are up against a budget wall. This situation tests how cooperative ag groups can be;  which lobbying shops are better; how creative the accounting will become, and how the “out years” will suddenly become more important than the near term, even though those out-year “savings” will never materialize because we’ll back rewriting this thing well before.

As for the Senate, it’s pretty clear Sen. Kent Conrad, chair of the Budget Committee, isn’t planning on bringing a resolution to the floor of that chamber any time soon, and it’s also clear the Senate will not buy into the Ryan/House budget. At the same time, Conrad is urging his colleagues in the House to reject the Ryan resolution. Easy for him to say.

I may be the lone voice in Washington, DC, saying this right now, but I’m pretty sure we’ll see a Farm Bill this year. What it looks like is a whole other matter.

Years ago a then-vice president of the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) declared to me that when the U.S. abandoned its “cheap food” policy, the animals would rejoice. This, he averred, meant the days of farmers keeping food cheap through bad animal husbandry were over. As one who sometimes connects seemingly unrelated dots, I’m seeing some of the unintended consequences of this nation’s lack of an energy policy. This isn’t about what it costs you or me to fill our gas tanks – which for me was $68 last Friday – or the fiscal pain of this summer’s air conditioning bill, it’s about what the HSUS guru hoped for, namely the loss cheap U.S. food and what that means.

When the price of crude oil spikes, the media produces two kinds of stories: First, the cost of gas at the pump and what that will do to summer vacation plans; the second is what the price of oil does to jet fuel costs, how that increases airfares and what that means for vacation plans. What I’d like to see is an intrepid journalist figure out how spiking crude translates up the chain from farm to fork.

We love to tell U.S. consumers how lucky they are compared to Europeans or Asians. We spend on average only about 10-11% of our disposal income on food. However, what’s missed by most is that this is an average. Lower income folks pay a higher percentage of their take-home pay for food, averaging above 35% at the lower end of the income ladder. Those who make more, pay a lower percentage. So, who feels the most pain?

We know energy is the highest input in farming and ranching. Bless the natural gas frackers for keeping supplies high and prices relatively low, mitigating prices spikes in fertilizers, crop chemicals and crop drying, but you can’t escape the need for oil for diesel and gasoline to generate electricity, while running our trucks, machinery and heating our barns and homes. Add the feed input cost based on competition for corn and beans for ethanol and biodiesel – yeah, I know there are record exports and so forth contributing to these price spikes, but let’s agree that bidding wars for short supplies increases price. Now, amplify the on-farm cost-of-production impacts of higher energy prices on a pound of beef or pork or a gallon of milk, and carry that through the impact on the processing chain and onto the local supermarket or restaurant.

Even the “haves” – or as President Obama likes to call them “the more fortunate among us” – confront energy costs at the kitchen table. Across the income spectrum, consumers are making spending decisions on price, meaning if they buy meat, they go for lower grades and tougher cuts, they cut back on other animal proteins, and the limit or eliminate fast-food outlet visits.

So the imperative for an energy policy is far greater than most think. It’s not just driving to the mall or to work, it’s what you eat, how much of it you can afford, and what you’ll have to go without.

And, being the cynic I am, I’m awaiting the first member of either the House or Senate Agriculture Committees – or more likely, someone from USDA – to make the statement: “This is the new normal. Get used to paying more for what you used to pay less.”

I was asked by a European journalist the other day about the prospective impact of the 2012 elections on agriculture policy in the U.S. He wanted to know if any of the GOP candidates have “strong feelings” about agriculture policy, and do I think President Obama “gets it” when it comes to on-farm production and the importance of ag overall in the grand federal scheme of things. This is a question I, as a lobbyist, don’t like to answer. The rule is you don’t offend anyone in office, or who could be elected to office, who can mess with your livelihood.

But the question piqued my interest.  After all, right up there with gas prices, food prices are near and dear to every voter’s heart, right? So I took to the web to see where Mssrs. Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and Paul stand on ag issues, comparing what I found with what I know about President Obama’s priorities based on his programs and policies put forward so far.

Overall and from a priority standpoint, agriculture doesn’t sit anywhere near the top of any candidate’s list of issues, and that includes President Obama’s list. Based on statements presented on the candidates’ websites or gleaned from various media interviews, the candidates pay lip service to “a strong agriculture” or “this country’s farmers deserve our support,” but when it comes right down to it, there’s no there there.

We can assume Rick Santorum has the greatest experience with ag issues.  After all, he was member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture during his congressional tenure. However, while some statements during the Iowa caucuses may have ingratiated him to some voters, agriculture is conspicuously absent from his policy roster. The positions of Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts – not a “major” ag state – are also devoid anything resembling an agriculture/food policy.  Rep. Ron Paul, the lone libertarian from the most rural state in the GOP race, talks about free trade and such, but nothing detailed is offered. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich presided over many a House floor debate on ag/food bills, and comes from perhaps the nations’ largest poultry state, not to mention peanuts and all, but again, little public messaging can be found on farming, ranching or agriculture.

President Obama over time has demonstrated agriculture, to him, is an national export income machine, a biofuels feedstock source, a place where everyone should “know your farmer, know your food”and rural America is that part of the country desperately in need of greater broadband Internet access and options for off-farm employment. Again, no public priority is consistently placed on agriculture.

Is this lack of prominence for food and ag issues because there are relatively few aggie voters out there in the fly-over states, and the candidates play to the urban centers and industrial states? The answer is likely “yes” to both questions. But I think a big part of the reason for the absence of ag from political agendas is the disconnect between the general public – that generally includes the candidates – and the media when it comes to where food comes from, the challenges confronting those who produce the food and how to connect these issues to the national agenda.

To the public “food production” is a given; it’s always been there, always will be, and, while prices may bounce a few percentage points, food is generally affordable. Right now, the great majority of the voting public cares about gas prices, jobs, taxes and all things personally macroeconomic.

The media covering the candidates couldn’t care less about the issues confronting agriculture. Why? In the parlance of my former profession, it just ain’t sexy. Take the assumptions and priorities of the general public and layer over the agriculture/agribusiness ignorance of the average political reporter. That pretty much says it all.

Every national agriculture and food group should put together a list of key questions on the issues impeding their members’ success. These questionnaires should be put squarely in front of each candidate – including President Obama, and no, it is not acceptable to wait until after the GOP convention – with the admonition we won’t accept “I-support-farmers” answers. We want thoughtful, detailed responses because we’re going to publish them as widely as possible.

And my personal preference:  Any candidate who uses the words “cuisine,” “artisanal” or “locovore” is off the list.

I’m all in favor of the new Iowa farm privacy protection bill about to be signed into law by Gov. Terry Branstad. It’s a streamlined version of last session’s version, the authors having jettisoned most of the constitutional baggage that doomed its passage. I’m guessing most farmers and ranchers share my enthusiasm. The Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) and Mercy for Animals – heck, the whole animal rights movement – are not having a good day.

The new Iowa law makes it an aggravated misdemeanor on first offense to obtain access to a farm or ranch by false pretenses – hiding your true identify with a fraudulent name and resume, lying about why you wish to work for said farmer or rancher – and if you do it a second time, it becomes a class D felony.

I support this new law – and similar bills pending in New York, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska and Utah – because I believe in two things: Call a spade a spade, what animal rightists do when they pose as people they’re not to gain access to a farm for purposes other than the job for which they’re hired is a crime, plain and simple. It’s called fraud. Second, the boys and girls who get their giggles from lying to get jobs, gain access, steal intellectual property, etc., are not heroes; they need to understand there is nothing about their philosophy that places them above the law. That’s the risk taken when they start down this path. Live with the legal consequences of  your action or get out of the undercover video business.

This is not a law designed to protect bad actors. No one in animal ag condones wrongful treatment of animals, and more and more, farmers and ranchers — and the groups which represent them — are standing up and publicly calling out those rare few whose behavior makes us all look bad.

There is nothing in the Iowa law that inhibits legitimate whistle blowing. That is, if legitimate employee sees something wrong and reports it to management, and if that complaint is ignored and the alleged behavior continues, then that employee has every right to blow the whistle, and enjoy the protections of the law in doing the right thing. The Iowa law does not change this. Nor is there anything in the law inhibiting free speech, as is demonstrated every day in so many ways by the allegations, inflammatory rhetoric, demonstrations, and so forth that animal rightists throw at us. Heck, the day the Iowa Senate passed the bill, Mercy for Animals was all over the steps of the capitol, festooned and fulminating.

Inherent in the dishonesty of these illegal actions is the premise of the activist. The premise is that such criminal activity is justified on two grounds: First, all farmers and ranchers are cruel and abuse animals, and if you just hang around long enough they can be caught drop kicking animals for fun and profit. And since law enforcement won’t act, the movement must. Second, these self-styled social saviors believe they enjoy some kind of protected right to trample the rights of others in pursuit of their cause. Well, not in Iowa, not any more.

There are legal scholars who predict the Iowa law will be challenged on the grounds it represents what’s called “prior restraint,” or halting free speech before the words – or images – are produced.  Of this I have no doubt.  Nor do I doubt for  a minute that HSUS has revved up its legal machinery, contacted the Animal Legal Defense Fund, started signing up co-plaintiff groups, and will likely file suit before Gov. Branstad’s signature is dry.

However, it’s my contention – and that of a lot of others who study the ins and outs of this particular activist tool – that undercover videos are really the most cynical of the weapons in the animal rightists’ arsenal. Over the years, several of these videos have been shown to be doctored, skillfully edited or outright fabricated. Yes, some have revealed real problems, but again, in the grand scheme of such things and our social fabric, the end does justify the means.

Perhaps most objectionable, however, is that most of these videos are shot weeks if not months prior to their “release.” The “sponsoring group” awaits the most propitious media timing – it takes time, you know, to put together just the right kind of press event – and what speaks volumes is that most of the videos are rarely accompanied by any kind of formal legal complaint, or complaints are only filed well after the videos are in the public. So much for honestly caring about animals.

As much as I welcome the enactment of more protections for farmers, I’m kind of looking forward to a judicial review of these new laws. I truly believe the activists’ will fail. The legal process of discovery in these kinds of court cases isn’t pretty – for either side – but I think we’re up to the scrutiny.

There’s no reason to fear more sunlight shown on the tactics, motives and philosophy of the radical activist movement – or on our operations and our philosophy and practice of best animal care. Perhaps folks will finally figure out the ultimate real cost to the rest of us of unbridled “activist enthusiasm.”