I recently wrote about attending the Food Dialogues, a national “conversation about food” hosted by the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance
(USFRA), a new trade association funded by some of the biggest players
in the food industry – including the National Cattlemen’s Beef
Association, Dupont, and Monsanto. There have been a number of comments
on my post. I wanted to respond to one in particular from Hugh Whaley,
USFRA’s General Manager.
Whaley takes issue with how I characterize the makeup and mission of the USFRA, writing:
- Contrary to those who suggest, imply or state otherwise,
USFRA is NOT a policy organization. USFRA is America’s farmers and
ranchers who are committed to continuous improvement in how food is
grown and raised to provide healthy choices for people everywhere. Our
mission is to build consumer trust in today’s agriculture, all forms. - The farmer-and rancher-led organizations that are affiliates of
USFRA have all sizes, shapes and production methods represented by their
members. Small, medium, large; organic, natural, conventional.
To understand Whaley’s spin on who and what USFRA stands for, it
might be helpful to share a little background on Whaley himself and how
USFRA fits the mold of a common food-industry PR strategy.
For nearly 13 years, until March 2009, Whaley was an executive at the communications firm Osborn & Barr, founded in 1988 by former executives at Monsanto. While the company was its founding client,
the firm has brought on other agricultural clients, including John
Deere, United Soybean Board, the Cattlemen’s Beef Board/National
Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and the National Pork Board – all of which are current USFRA affiliates.
During Whaley’s tenure, Osborn & Barr helped to launch AFACT (American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology). Like USFRA, AFACT describes itself as a group ”
organized by farmers.” In the case of AFACT it was allegedly created ”
to defend members’ right to use rbST,” Monsanto’s artificial growth hormone sold to dairy farmers under the brand name, Posilac.
Though it was presented as a group speaking for farmers, AFACT was created in part by Osborn & Barr, which had been handling the Posilac account
since 2007. AFACT’s formation came at a time when Monsanto was reeling
from campaigns by real farmers and consumer advocates against the
artificial growth hormone. Responding to concerns that ranged from the
health of dairy cows pumped with the hormone to possible human health
effects rbGH, Yoplait, Dannon, Cabot Cheese, and other companies had by
2009 stopped sourcing milk produced with Posilac. Grocery chains had
started to eliminate it from their store-label milk, according to Food & Water Watch.
Similar to the spin about AFACT, Whaley describes the U.S. Farmers
& Ranchers Alliance as “farmer- and rancher-led,” with affiliates of “all sizes, shapes and production methods.”
Yes, USFRA
technically represents a range of farmers and ranchers, but only because much of its total budget –
$11 million a year or $30 million depending on who you ask – comes from federal “check-off” commodity marketing programs. These programs, now covering 19 different commodities,
compel all or most producers of these commodities, no matter the size,
to pay into promotion programs. Beef ranchers for instance must pay $1 per head on domestic sales. The money adds up: In 2007, beef check-off programs spent more than $90 million.
You might not have heard of these programs, but you’ve probably seen
their ads. Check-off dollars fund campaigns like “Beef: It’s What’s for
Dinner?” “Pork: The Other White Meat” as well as dubious marketing
efforts like the 2010 dairy industry partnership with Domino’s Pizza to amp up cheese use on its pies.
So because USFRA gets a good chunk of its budget from the biggest
commodity check-off programs – like beef, cotton, eggs, and pork – Whaley is
technically accurate: Farmers of all sizes do pay into this marketing
campaign, but whether the Alliance represents diverse interests is a
different story.
When I asked Laura Batcha, the Vice President of the Organic Trade
Association whether the Alliance reflects their members’ interests she
said: “We don’t believe the Alliance is communicating the benefits of
organic agriculture.”
The bottom line is the USFRA is being funded, in part, with organic
producers’ money without their consent or participation, since many
organic producers are required by law to pay into these check-off
programs. “While organic producers and handlers have been paying into
these check-offs for years, we have yet to see the funds be used to
promote organic food and agriculture,” said Batcha. “It’s essentially
taxation without representation.” In fact, sustainable and small-scale
farmers have been fighting in the courts against the legality of
check-off programs, for precisely this reason.
Fred Stokes, founder of the Organization for Competitive Markets and a
cattle rancher in Mississippi, concurred. The Alliance doesn’t “represent all farmers and ranchers,” he said, “These are the people
who put family farmers and ranchers out of business! This is an alliance
only of groups that preach ‘get-big-or-get-out’ and ‘efficiency through
vertical integration.'”
It’s also an alliance, Stokes noted, that gets a healthy portion of its budget from big business, too. As members of USFRA’s “Premier Partner Advisors Group” Monsanto, John Deere, and chemical giant Dupont each have pledged $500,000 a year.
So what is the platform USFRA is pushing? Whaley says I missed the mark here, too, writing:
- None of the issues discussed during the Food Dialogues
can be answered strictly in black and white terms. That’s why continued
dialogue is so important. Making grandiose (positive or negative)
statements about any form of agriculture won’t achieve solutions or help
Americans make sound and informed food decisions.
I agree with Whaley in one sense: Food systems are complex and more
dialogue is certainly needed to figure out the best approaches to
creating a safer, more affordable and sustainable food supply. But, I
would argue that some food issues
are black-and-white and taking a clear stand on these issues is the only way we will achieve such solutions.
To give several examples directly relevant to USFRA membership:
I believe everyone should have a right to know if the food they’re eating contains genetically engineered organisms (GMOs). So do most Americans who overwhelmingly want the right to know
what’s in their food. Yet, USFRA’s industry partner Monsanto has been
leading the fight against GMO labeling in this country, despite the fact
that most other countries with commercialized GMOs require it, even China.
I believe we should be doing everything possible to protect the
effectiveness of antibiotics – one of the most important tools in our
public health toolbox.
So do most Americans. Yet, as much as 80 percent of antibiotics in the U.S. are used not for human health but in factory farms, often for growth-promotion. A broad coalition
is calling for restrictions on these non-therapeutic uses of
antibiotics, citing mounting concerns about antibiotic resistance, while
many USFRA affiliates have been spearheading the fight against such restrictions.
I believe we should be actively working to phase out the most toxic pesticides in agriculture, those known to cause cancer, disrupt hormones, or impair brain functioning. So do most Americans. Yet, members of the Alliance, including the
National Cotton Council and the National Corn Growers Association, have
been actively fighting against regulations that would help us move in that direction.
I believe our tax dollars should be incentivizing healthy food production and healthy food access. So do most Americans.
Yet, members of the USFRA are among the key forces lobbying for
payments to commodity producers, including those, like corn growers,
that are not even producing food for people. Forty-four percent of corn
last year went to ethanol production; nearly half was diverted to animal
feed; much of the rest went to high-fructose corn syrup. (Thanks in
part to the success of this lobbying, from 1995 to 2010 the 15 members
of the board of the National Corn Growers Association – a USFRA board
member – received subsidies totaling $12,048,167,
while 62 percent of American farmers, and nearly all organic producers
and fruit and vegetable growers, received no federal subsidies at all).
Finally, I believe that protecting our nation’s water is one of the most important issues of our time.
So do most Americans.
Yet, many in USFRA leadership roles are among the key players fighting
federal policy that would promote tighter regulation of water pollution,
especially from “conventional” agriculture’s
nitrogen fertilizer runoff and industrial livestock waste.
Many of USFRA’s board, including the American Farm Bureau Federation,
National Pork Producers Council, Cattlemen’s Beef Board/Beef Checkoff,
and the National Corn Growers Association, as well as USFRA partner, The
Fertilizer Institute, work together under the auspices of the Waters Advisory Council. The Council may
sound like an environmentally minded organization, but as
The New York Times reports, it’s a ”
lobbying outfit” for some of the country’s “largest industrial and agricultural concerns.”
These are just some of food’s “black-and-white” issues. Without
indication otherwise, we’re left to assume the USFRA’s position on these
critical food issues reflects that of its membership and is out of step
with the real concerns of many, and in many cases most, Americans.
Whaley also suggests I misrepresented who was able to ask questions at the Food Dialogues at the four sites, noting:
- Questions were taken for all four of our panels from
in-person audience members, from people on Twitter and from questions
posted on our two websites. It is really unfair to say questions for the
event only came from industry. The questions represented many voices…
Questions may have come in from Twitter and Facebook, but, as I wrote
in my original post, at the New York City event I attended, and where
we in the media were asked to write down and hand in questions for the
panel, only one person got to ask a question: He was a rep from the
National Pork Council, a USFRA affiliate. Only one attendee got to ask a
question from the D.C. event that was shown at our venue: It was Jay
Vroom, head of the agrochemical trade group, CropLife America. Whaley
may contend questions represented many voices; it didn’t seem that way
to me. But see for yourself. The Food Dialogues are available online at http://www.fooddialogues.com.