Thread by @eatcookwrite

THREAD
This is a heartening story of real progress in building support among farmers for conservation ag and dealing with climate change. But ...
politico.com/news/2019/12/0…

#fafdlstorm

... it quietly highlights what I see as a major hurdle in the communication and psychological dynamics of stewardship issues in ag circles. At least in my experience.

1. All too often the pointing out or highlighting of a general environmental issue related to agriculture – maybe by researchers, maybe journalists, maybe by environmental groups –– is taken by farmers as "blaming farmers" when it is not meant that way at all.

It's certainly not meant to blame any individual farmer, and yet, that is how it is heard.

It is not at all a moral indictment of any individual farmer, and yet, that is how it is felt.

Acknowledging that nutrient runoff from farms is causing eutrophication is not a moral indictment of individual farmers. It's just an acknowledgment of a problem which seeks to find causes, barriers to solving the problem, understanding the incentive structures, etc.

[note: this is not a thread about nutrient runoff. I'm not here in this thread to debate the ins and outs of nutrient runoff. I'm using it as a placeholding example of A common environmental impact of farming.]

If anything, the folks drawing attention to the issue are dying to figure out how to HELP farmers address the issue, though, sometimes it's also necessary to set hard and fast standards –– the dread regulations.

But more often than not, there is a willingness, much more than in most industries, a willingness to provide resources - subsidies, grants, extension services, public investment in R&D (no other small and medium-sized businesses get this level of support. none. nada. zilch.)

But over and over again, pointing out the problem triggers defensiveness. Which is a shame, because the highlighting really isn't an attack or an indictment. It's usually an opening for farmers to access more resources to be better stewards.

The other disconnect between what is being said and what farmers are hearing is this is the difference between;
A. Whether one is doing their level best as a steward of the land?
and
B. Whether those stewardship efforts are adequate to the task at hand?

The answer to A can be "Yes" and the answer to B can be "No". The answer to A is the moral question. The answer to be is simply material and empirical.

It's very easy to be doing your level best in the context of market realities, vagaries of nature, whatever situation you inherited and are building upon, etc, and coming up short on hitting the metrics necessary for true environmental sustainability.

You can only do what you can do in the context of running a going concern that turns a profit.

So, the moral question of whether you are doing your level best needs to be separated out from whether it's adequate to the task at hand. You can do your best and still need help. Nobody is blaming you for that. Nobody that I know of.

There's a big but though. Always a big BUT.

The exception here is when organized ag groups claim to be interested in nothing other than stewardship but fight tooth and nail against enforceable standards and accountability.

That really hurts credibility and blame can be assessed and laid where it's earned.

You can say that this or that regulation is overkill or poorly conceived, but in general, serious stewards don't have to fight accountability because they exceed the standards.

The third leg of this stool is highlighted in the secrecy the meeting in the Politico story required just to happen.

It's a manifestation of what I call The Lake Wobegon Omertà of Farmers.

The Lake Wobegon Omertà of Farmers holds that, as far as the public is concerned, all farmers are above average –– in their agronomic skills, their business acumen and administrative skills, their environmental stewardship, their commitment to animal welfare.

This is obviously absurd, but it remains the case that defensiveness in the ag community means that problems can only be admitted in-house (aside from bland acknowledgments that there is always room for improvement) & that some individual farmers just aren't committed stewards.

I don't know what to do about all this. I think it has to come from within the ag community. I spent 5 years trying to create an environment where farmers could discuss this stuff without feeling blamed or indicted and we never really got these.

We never stopped getting deflections to the culpability of golf courses (Why aren't we talking about golf courses!?! ... Because this is forum that focuses on ag, not groundskeeping.)

or every time an issue was raised (the point of the forum after all) inevitably someone would ask why farmers get blamed for everything when there was nothing in the content 'blaming' farmers.

As someone trying to help bridge the information and cultural divides among different groups going in different directions, this phenomenon was an enormous time and energy sink. It left me pretty discouraged, so the story @hbottemiller tells here is very heartening to me.

Anyway, that's what this piece got me thinking about.

#fafdlstorm ~fin~