Yes, it’s that time of year again: I just spent a week slogging through mud and asking a lot of dumb questions for our FFA section.
We had two students this year, Alex Osborn and Hunter Todd. I didn’t take Alex’s photos, though (she had some great senior pictures with her cattle and family FFA jackets), so the pictures with this post are all from Hunter’s story.
The FFA section is actually one of the most difficult projects I do all year, because I’m terrified of screwing up. I didn’t grow up around agriculture, and these high school seniors have usually spent their entire lives learning a career. I have to ask extremely simple, basic questions to accurately portray what these kids do. But I think the end result is something that can connect to anyone, no matter their starting knowledge.
In college, I realized not everyone understands how deep agriculture goes, and what goes into it. I realized it when people thought it was funny that I knew as much as I did, and I seriously knew next to nothing. I think there’s something there about it being one of the large divides in how people in this country understand each other. Our rural communities are built from agriculture, depend on agriculture, and value agriculture. But those who are separated from agriculture don’t understand just how much knowledge goes into the industry alongside the hard work.
If you’re wondering why I keep going on about knowledge, I learned something new this year (I always do). I interviewed Alex and Hunter at the same time, and had them explain livestock judging to me. Then, when I was taking Hunter’s photos, I had him do some judging on the spot. I was kind of floored by how much he was able to know by looking at a cow (it’s a lot more than made it into the story; he went so fast it was hard to keep up). It’s something I think is basic to people who grew up in that world, but unknown to those who grew up outside of it. That’s the divide.
While I interview students for the FFA section, I always hear about how agriculture is perceived, how they’re getting bad press. Alex, like Abby Bertz, who I interviewed two years ago, cares so much about this issue in particular that she’s going into marketing as an attempt to solve it. I told her I was surprised the industry is driving them toward marketing rather than journalism, but she reminded me that agriculture journalism programs are drying up, even Mizzou shuttered its program.
That’s a loss. Because the problem is, as Hunter pointed out, about balance. I’m not talking both sides nonpartisan balance, I’m just talking about an accurate narrative. I’ll start by defending community papers: I think we do a good job of showing our farmers, their work and their input in our communities. But those stories rarely break into regional and national news. Instead, you have the bigger industry issues, like whether certain chemicals cause cancer. And because what we’re talking about here is food, much of the discussion falls into low-information, diet-fetishizing discussions that are often meant to scare people about things like genetically modified grain.
I’m not saying, at all, that the agriculture industry should be exempt from criticism. I’m concerned about the pesticides — I’m worried about whether they’re causing cancer to the farmers and their families. I think we need to take those issues seriously. But we also have to remember to tell full stories about the people who do this work, who live this life this way, who have modern problems like getting decent internet for their kids’ schoolwork and keeping up with technology for their farm (there is a lot of technology used on farms now), as well as the traditional problems, the man vs. nature aspect of farming.