By Carie Moore
Take a walk down the cereal aisle. There is the same cereal in 5 brands, each trying to compete against each other with a clever but different name. Now, think about the choices farmers must make. When you see chemical after chemical and seed after seed, do you think, “Wow, why do they need so much chemical?”
It’s like your cereal choices. Bayer, Syngenta, Dow, each make a crop product that is labeled just like your fruit loops, fruit rings, tootie fruities, or rainbow O’s. Same with seed; they have the same traits just a different trade name. As farmers, we are also overwhelmed by a lot of choices.
Many times, the generic seed is cheaper. Like your cereal, it doesn’t mean the product isn’t good, you’re just not paying for the name.
Monsanto doesn’t own farmers who use their product, just as General Mills or Post doesn’t own you. It’s a choice you have, which product is better for you based on cost and results.
It’s not black and white. When you plan a wedding, you need a caterer, venue, attendants, decorator, band for that event. You can’t do the whole event yourself. You need help, and it must be people who are proficient and affordable.
Each crop needs an agronomist, banker, seed supplier, chemical supplier, seeding help, harvest help, bins, transportation, and possibly more, depending on your farms commodities. This happens every year.
Next spring, when you are getting ready to plant your garden and you walk into the store and see all the seeds to choose from, think about the farmer. Farmers make the same decision with their seed. Then you get moles, and grubs, and grasshoppers, and who knows what else, and you need to find something to eliminate them from ruining your garden. Multiply that by 600 for my farm and 4,000 for our friends’ farm. You might grab the most expensive one because you only have an acre…we can’t do that, or we would be broke.
Science. The public says we like to talk about science. That’s because like you, we love our technology. It has allowed us to streamline farming to be better stewards and more efficient. Your GPS system saves you time and gas money, same goes for a farmer’s GPS. We don’t want to waste fuel and time doubling over acres. We surely don’t want to waste money and product by seeding where we already seeded or spray more chemical than we already sprayed. We don’t want to be “close enough” either, cost wise and environmentally. That’s something you can take to the bank. Literally.
Are the cereals you bought when you were 10 still around today? If not, either the demand wasn’t great enough or it was replaced with a similar yet better product, so they changed the name of it.
That’s what happens with seed and chemical in a farmer’s world. A patent expires, a weed becomes resistant, or a seed has a new trait in it that is resistant to rust so we don’t have to spray for it. People want less chemical, but they also don’t want gene editing. I say, if there is a piece of DNA in a fish that will make a tomato cold resistant, and the producer and the public will benefit, DO IT!
Farming, although a lifestyle, is a profession. You must narrow down your concerns before we can even begin to address what you want to know. When you ask about farming, do you want to know about beef, dairy, swine, poultry, fish, row crops, specialty small grains, edible, pulse crops, vegetable/high tunnel, fruit, root crops, forage, fiber?
You have choices upon choices, because you wanted it. farmers are trying to accommodate that, for our state, our county, and the world. I think that makes us pretty amazing.
I have often complained about how long it takes me with 3 kids to shop these days. Until writing this I realized, it’s NOT the kids, Carie!! It’s that fact I have 25 toothpastes to choose from. It’s the 50 different shredded cheese choices because shredded isn’t good enough there has to be finely shredded and just shredded. It’s the 30 different hot dogs from bun length to regular to brats to chasse filled to turkey. Women used to send their husbands to the store for a loaf of bread and all he needed to know was white or wheat.
We have so many choices. Maybe we have too many choices.
Read Carie's first post on Choices upon choices