Cyndi's Two Cents

Summertime

Summertime and the livin’ is easy

Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high

The fish might be jumping and the cotton might be high, but I don’t think when DuBose Heyward along with Ira and George Gershwin penned those lyrics back in 1958 they were talking about farmers!  Hay has been made on our farm and I can promise those who were involved in bucking small square bales and stacking them on the wagons thought anything about that task was easy.  The big round bales take less physical work once they’ve been made, but getting everything hauled and stacked is time consuming. 

There are some leisure activities that I love about summertime.  County fairs, community picnics and numerous festivals are held across the Heartland of America during the mid-year months. Saturday mornings on the square in many small towns you will see farmers selling that which they have grown.  These events draw people from farms and agribusiness as well as those with little real knowledge of what happens on farms and agribusinesses and present a great opportunity for us to do a better job of telling our story.

Ask shoppers at a local farmers’ market whether or not they try to avoid GMOs, or better yet, ask them what a GMO is and you will quickly understand how little many consumers know about genetically modified organisms.

You might remember when late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel sent a crew out to conduct interviews about GMO’s with shoppers at a Hollywood, California farmers market. It was funny, but also disturbing because it was just another example of how confused and misinformed people are about food, science and agriculture.

Some might say the video piece on Jimmy Kimmel’s show was simply a publicity stunt; an attempt to poke fun and increase ratings.  Maybe it was.  The fact is, I have had personal experience talking to consumers at a local farmers’ market in the Midwest, and I promise you there are a lot of people right here in the heartland who oppose GMOs although they don’t really know what they are.

It’s hard to find a more misunderstood and divisive issue not only at your local farmers’ market and polling place, but across food production and the entire food supply chain.  People are afraid of what they do not know and it is clear that there is much work to be done to educate the consumer about what a GMO is and how it allows for more food to be grown in more places using fewer chemicals and natural resources.

An Iowa State University study shows that without biotechnology, global prices for soybeans would be 10 percent higher and corn prices would be 6 percent higher.

I know (and happen to be related to) some farmers who raise or have raised non-GMO crops.  If those farmers can make a premium, I’m all for it.  But most of those farmers I know who raise non-GMO crops know very well the scientific consensus is that existing GMOs are no more or less risky than non-GMOs.