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Protect the Harvest turns ten-years-old

A Protect the Harvest staff member says in its first ten years, the organization has grown into a watchdog group defending agriculture against special interest groups. Protect the Harvest grew out of an effort to defeat a ballot measure pushed by the Humane Society of the United States that would regulate dog breeders in Missouri.

“And they put together a campaign against it and got it to where it only passed by less than one percent,” said Dave Duquette, national strategic planner for Protect the Harvest.  The organization, founded by oil company owner Forrest Lucas, works to head off legislation that would restrict agriculture.

“Now we’re out there fighting and protecting agriculture and our way of life, basically, against organizations that get billions of dollars a year,” Duquette told Brownfield Ag News.

Protect the Harvest has opposed legislation from California’s egg law to a bill in Massachusetts restricting animal confinement. He says opposition is mounted with comparatively much less money than is spent by proponents of such bills.

“It takes a lot of money to build a lie, and it takes nothing to tell the truth,” said Duquette. “We’re out there telling the truth about what’s going on so it really is not near as expensive for us to tell the truth as it is for them to build a lie.”

Next steps for Protect the Harvest, according to Duquette, include raising money to elect pro-agriculture lawmakers.

AUDIO: Dave Duquette

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