Farmers Try to Polish Up Their Tarnished Image
James Eckert flew all the way from his apple and peach orchard in Belleville, Ill., to stand in front of hundreds of California farmers last Saturday morning and deliver a harsh message: American agriculture is in trouble with the public.
“We’ve all been touched by this loss of consumer confidence,” Eckert told the group, which had gathered in Van Nuys to stump for Prop. 135, agriculture’s alternative to a sweeping environmental initiative. “I liken this whole affair to some kind of uneasy wake-up call. We’re here to answer that call.”
To much of American agriculture, the awakening has been a rude one. As the farm crisis of the 1980s gave way to the consumer confidence crisis of the 1990s, the image of the American farmer has eroded.
In 1985, Americans donated $9 million in a star-studded Farm Aid concert to help farmers losing their land. By 1989--four years and several pesticide scares later--farmers barely ranked above chemical companies in a national survey gauging the most trustworthy sources of food-safety information.
“There are more people who think we are killing them now, and that’s totally false,” said John Alesso Jr., president of the Los Angeles County Farm Bureau and a retired Lancaster onion farmer. “It’s misinformation that they’re basing their consensus on now. . . . It just doesn’t make sense.”
American agriculture is trying to do something about that tarnished image. And its livelihood--$158.9 billion in U.S. farm receipts, $17.5 billion in California--depends on it.
Critics of American agribusiness say it’s only natural that farmers finally discover image control and turn to public relations for relief. The problem, they say, is that it’s too little too late, a shortsighted answer to a long-term problem.
“I think that the American farmer has done a fabulous job of providing inexpensive and, in some cases, quality produce,” said Thomas J. Graff of the Environmental Defense Fund. “But the issue that they’re most vulnerable on is safety. Ultimately they’d be best off putting their chips on improving that record rather than spending all that money on P.R.”
With environmental reform efforts such as California’s Prop. 128 threatening agriculture’s ability to use a catalogue of chemicals, farmers from Middleborough, Mass., to Marin County, Calif., are getting out and talking to consumers, spending millions of dollars to tell their side of the story: that agricultural chemical use does not endanger the consumer or the environment.
Last Saturday, for example, farmers combed the San Fernando Valley, handing out almonds and flowers--along with Prop. 135 brochures. Four days earlier, a public relations effort called FoodWatch began filming a commercial romanticizing food and farming to air Thanksgiving Day.
After surveying consumers across the country about their views on farmers, the American Farm Bureau Federation set up booths at state and county fairs this summer to talk about modern farming and food safety. On Earth Day 1990, the National Cattlemen’s Assn. ran full-page newspaper ads boasting: “Every day is Earth Day for American cattlemen.”
The fight over the hearts and minds of California consumers comes to a head Tuesday, when voters decide on measures affecting the state’s agricultural economy. Prop. 128, called Big Green by its supporters, will phase out many chemicals used on crops.
Prop. 135, known as the CAREFUL initiative, is the agribusiness alternative. It would strengthen food safety measures, but it falls short of the changes espoused by Big Green. No on 128 and Yes on 135 campaigns have raised a combined total of about $15 million.
Proponents of California agriculture like Farm Bureau President Bob Vice, believe the roots of Prop. 128 are purely political. Others contend that wholesale change is here because of deteriorating consumer trust and ignorance about agriculture.
“Consumers are two and three generations removed from the land,” said Christopher Klose, a spokesman for the National Agricultural Chemicals Assn. “And 98% of the American public lives in an urban-suburban environment. We have to get them back to the farm and tell them that Wheaties come from wheat.”
That’s why the association is pouring money into the fight against Prop. 128 and “participating in the education of California voters,” Klose said.
The organization surveyed the public after the Alar scare in 1989 to find out who fearful consumers trusted as spokesmen for agriculture and food safety.
The survey showed that consumers trust themselves most of all. Sixty-one percent of respondents said they were their own best sources of information.
Farmers got only 11% of the trustworthiness vote. Chemical companies and food processors tied at the bottom, with a meager 3% of consumers’ confidence.
A 1990 survey by the American Farm Bureau Federation showed that, while Americans believe that farmers may be basically trustworthy, they are “not as convinced that farmers are conscientious about protecting food safety and the environment.”
The survey showed further erosion of consumer trust: Seventy-one percent agreed that farmers are more interested in surviving economically than in using chemicals safely. Sixty-nine percent said farmers are too easily convinced by chemical companies to use chemicals in farming.
Eckert and his California partner, Cliff Peters, a fruit grower from Reedley, found out about consumer concern and agricultural ignorance firsthand when they knocked on doors in Van Nuys.
Their first contact was Jane Gerber, who answered their summons with a sponge in her hand. Prop. 135? “I don’t really know anything about it,” she said.
A little farther down Ventura Canyon Avenue, pediatric nurse Patty Rhone was clearer on the concept. “I think farmers are being dishonest with us,” she said. “But I think the chemical companies are being dishonest with them.”
What Eckert and Peters did on Saturday was to join the dozens of agricultural organizations that have, in the past year or two, picked up the banner of “telling the farmer’s story” to America, using everything from sophisticated videos and slide shows to print ads and speakers bureaus.
About two years ago, cranberry growers in southeast Massachusetts began to meet with their neighbors to talk about their work. The effort began when residents started calling with questions about farmers’ practices.
“So few people are involved in farming any more, it’s really necessary for farmers to get out and talk to their neighbors,” said William Frantz, manager of environmental affairs for Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc.
In June, the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives mailed the first of two public relations packages to its members to “use at the grass-roots level, to help address consumer fears on vital food safety and water quality issues.”
The first installment contained a 12-minute video and a slide show called “Food for Thought,” a speech and a sheaf of ads for placement in local newspapers.
“The challenge is to reach out to the customers, talk to them directly, tell them how we farm, the role that pesticides and fertilizers play, the fact that we care enough to minimize or eliminate health risks,” said R. Thomas Van Arsdall, the council’s vice president of agricultural inputs and services.
In California, the nation’s No. 1 farm state, the farm bureau made an early start on outreach with an Agriculture in the Classroom program that began 10 years ago.
Vice’s favorite recollection of this early effort is a tale about a teacher introducing a farmer to her class: “Kids, remember when you put your shirt on tomorrow and see that symbol that means it’s made from cotton, just remember that you saw the animal today that it came from.”
The Farm Water Coalition cropped up in California 18 months ago to help urbanites “relate to farmers’ concerns, water being one of them.” And a group of Fresno farmers is working to get an official state public relations commission for agriculture, funded with one-tenth of a cent for every dollar in farm receipts, or a whopping $17.5 million.
That’s a hefty price tag for a program that already is causing divisiveness in the farming community. Bruce Obbink, president of the California Table Grape Commission, agrees that farmers have a problem, but he does not believe that public relations is the answer.
“Farmers have been so busy promoting and growing their products . . . that they have neglected to put a face on themselves and on their products,” Obbink said. “But you’re not going to do that by some public relations scheme. Farmers must take some positive actions.”
