- Kim is a vocal champion of agriculture everywhere she goes,
from the grocery store to the airport.
And if you knew her, you would know this to be very true.
She grew up as a farm girl, and as a wife,
mother of two, graduate of UW-Madison,
and was a dairy nutritionist for nearly 15 years.
Kim's true passion is sharing the real story of agriculture
with everyday consumers.
She is the Wisconsin State Coordinator for Common Ground,
a regular contributor on Rural Route Radio,
president of Wisconsin Women for Agriculture,
proud member of the American Dairy Coalition,
and academy member of the National Speaker's Association.
She loves snowshoeing, reading, fishing with her kids,
and playing her guitar around a campfire.
Please join me in welcoming Kim Bremmer,
owner of Ag Inspirations from Greenwood, Wisconsin.
[applause]
- Thank you!
Am I on?
Thanks, Tammy.
Well, I appreciate the opportunity
to get to come and present to you today
and when we were first talking about this session
this topic was given to me,
and I thought, yeah that would be really fun.
Then I started putting it together
and I thought, this is gonna be really great,
because how many of you have ever been asked about GMOs?
How many of you, when you get asked about them,
have the lady who looks like that when she's asking you?
Right?
I don't think I've ever seen anything in the discussion
about food and farming divide more friends and family
than the topic about GMOs.
And it is a really big deal, and it's everywhere.
You don't have to look very far
to find the latest story about it.
So what I hope to convey to you today
is that there's two important parts
to what I'm going to walk through.
And one is that I do
think that knowledge is power
and most of the time when I talk to people
in agriculture and farmers,
you don't want to engage in the conversation
because you don't feel like you know the right numbers
or the right statistic,
or you don't feel like you know quite enough about it
when this lady's coming at you, right?
So I want to leave you with some things today.
But the second part of what we're going to walk through,
and I think is the most important part,
is that you don't need to know all of those things,
that you don't need to be intimidated by this lady
because you have a much more important message that matters
and that communication about GMOs is much more important
than any of the statistics that I could possibly
give you today.
But to keep you happy, I still gave you some,
and we'll talk about them.
But I hope that we can have
a good conversation about it today
and I can convince you that communication
is a much more important role,
and that's where you fit in.
So, GMOs.
These are near and dear to me because
I was in the feed industry,
I was a ruminate nutritionist for nearly 15 years.
Four compartments to your stomach, I'm your chick,
we have been feeding GMOs to livestock
since they came out in 1996.
Over a hundred billion animals,
over three trillion meals,
so I think I have a pretty good front row seat to GMOS.
So what are they?
Let's walk through a little bit of that first.
How many of you have heard Dr. Oz, right?
We have fish genes in tomatoes, that's a GMO.
Yeah, no, not true.
But we love him, right?
Seedless watermelons, not a GMO.
So let's talk about what they are.
If we're gonna talk about GMOs and plant breeding
we have to recognize how far we've come
in domesticating plants.
Now, none of these are GMOs,
but I think it's an interesting perspective
to think about where plants started
and where they are today.
So we have a great picture up there
of watermelons, corn.
The picture of corn, that's teosinte.
That's 10,000 years ago before we did anything to corn,
domesticated it, that's what it looked like.
That would not feed a whole of anything today,
would it?
Bananas had seeds in them. Look at the carrot.
Ew...
And then, cabbage, kale, and broccoli
all came from that plant.
None of these are GMO
but certainly we have been breeding plants
and changing them over time
for 10,000 years.
But what is a GMO?
GMOs are crops developed with biotechnology,
genetic engineering,
a more precise breeding technique.
GMOS are not a thing that we put into anything,
they're a breeding process.
We take a gene that has a trait that we want
and we put it into a species where we want it.
Or we silence a gene,
there's two things that can make it a GMO.
So, good example,
let's talk about,
anybody here plant Roundup Ready® corn?
Or Roundup Ready® anything?
Alfalfa or soy beans?
Do you know where that gene originated from?
A petunia plant, very good.
Now, we don't pop up greenhouses everywhere
and grow petunias so we can make Roundup Ready® crops,
but the gene came from a petunia plant in the beginning.
Then we grow it in a bacterium today,
because that makes a lot more sense.
So we take a gene that has a trait that we want,
and we put it into another species
or we silence a gene.
Now this picture up here shows the number of GMOs
that there are.
So there are eight commercially available GMOs today,
two more will be in the supermarket next year
because they were just approved.
So we've got corn, cotton,
canola, alfalfa, sugar beets,
papaya, squash, and soy beans.
That's it, it's not seedless watermelon,
it's not Dr.Oz's made-up tomatoes,
there's eight.
But, the Innate® potato and the Arctic® apple
were recently approved.
The Arctic® apple is an apple that won't brown.
It has a gene shut off,
so the gene in charge of the enzyme
that causes the browning in an apple
when it's exposed to oxygen will no longer brown.
Interestingly enough,
I recently talked to the guy who came
up with the Arctic® apple.
He's been working on this for 20 years,
he's actually a farmer.
He married into a family that has an orchard
in British Columbia
and he got tired of looking at all of the apples
that they were throwing away
because they would never make it to the shelf in time.
So they were great looking apples,
but their life was going to be shortened
because they'll get brown.
So he started working on it,
and he's a biochemist by nature
and learned how to shut the gene off
and has gone through the seven years
of regulatory processes,
and now it's been approved.
So, an apple that won't brown.
The Innate® potato was also recently approved.
That has a gene that has been shut off.
It won't brown or bruise,
and it also won't release Acrylamide.
Acrylamide is something potatoes release
when you boil them or fry them.
So, healthier potatoes.
So these are the eight, plus the two that
were recently approved.
So the history of genetic modification of crops,
just to look a little bit at the timeline
and where GMOs fit in here,
so 10,000 years ago you saw what corn looked like
in the picture, teosinte, right?
10,000 years ago we started domesticating plants.
In the 1700s we started crossbreeding plants
within a species.
We'd find a plant that looks better than this plant,
you'd breed the two together
and hope that this one took on the better traits, right?
Half of the parental genes.
The 40s and 50s was when we really started getting
into genetic variation and understanding
the different gene pools of plants.
We started using things like inter-species crosses
so we could get things like tangelos.
We started using mutagenesis,
which is using a radiation or different chemicals
to change DNA in different seeds.
Not scary.
Very safe.
A process that we used.
So next in line to that is biotechnology and GMOs.
And the 1980s was when we stared working on GMOs.
The first ones were on the market in 1996.
There's a lot of words on here.
This is in your handout, too, but I think it's a great visual
just to explain the process of really what we're doing
in a very simple way.
So traditional crossbreeding of plants,
you have the mother and father,
maternal paternal plants,
the genes are together, you get half of each, right?
When we're using biotechnology,
it's very precise plant breeding,
we're going for a very specific trait
on a very specific gene
and we're putting it where we want it.
So it's a process, it's not a thing,
it's not anything that's injected into plants,
irregardless of what you see on the Internet,
it's a process.
I like this slide, even though it too,
I apologize, has a lot of words,
but the important parts on here
is that it walks through the selective breeding
of plants, then the inter-species crosses,
then mutagenesis, then GMOs.
But important points on here are
we are affecting in all of the traditional ways
of breeding plants,
thousands to hundreds of thousands of genes.
But when you look at GMOs,
its one to three genes that we're targeting.
So, again, precise plant breeding.
But, if the discussion about GMOs
with the lady who we started with, with her face,
if any discussion we were having was based on science,
we really wouldn't have a lot to discuss,
because the science behind GMO technology is very sound.
So what's all the buzz about?
This is where your communication comes in,
that our number one goal when talking about hot topics
with consumers today who have no idea
what you do on a farm everyday
is that we need to do this,
we have to help people recognize
that what you do everyday on your farm
is better aligned with their values
than what they already thought.
Because this is the part that's missing,
your story, your story of your farm,
your story of what you do on it,
is what's missing in the discussion,
because people are generally removed from a farm today,
four plus generations.
You are outnumbered 99 to one in our country,
so people don't understand,
most people can't even really tell you
what the acronym for a GMO means,
let alone why in the world you'd use it.
They just know it's bad because they heard it somewhere.
So, it's up to us to start talking about GMOs
and you don't need to memorize the first 10 slides
I showed you 'cause that's not the part
that's missing.
The part is your story and your message that matters.
This is my favorite acronym of communication,
it actually comes from the United States Farmers
and Ranchers Alliance,
they call it their E.A.S.E.,
they do communication trainings called E.A.S.E.
But the first 'E' stands for Engage.
So, we need to engage in discussions
about GMOs, about all the hot topics
in agriculture today
by having a conversation.
We do this out of order all the time,
and I'm as guilty as any, right?
When someone says something about GMOs that
we know isn't true, or something about our farm that isn't true,
what's the first thing you do?
[audience discussing] Right?
You puke on them, right?
You're wrong, I'm right.
Here's why I know this: because you're wrong.
And it's getting us nowhere.
We have to stop puking on people.
It's not the knowledge that anyone's missing.
But we need to engage in a much better discussion
because we're capable of that.
Women in agriculture, we are capable of that.
We are more capable than our male counterparts.
Anyone gonna disagree with me?
[laughter]
No.
Engage in the conversation, first and foremost.
Find your common ground,
especially as women in agriculture.
What is likely our common ground
when it comes to talking about food?
We feed our families too, right?
We feed out kids. We feed our families.
We eat the food we grow.
'A'cknowledge.
This is what I think is the most important letter
in the acronym.
It's also one of the most difficult ones.
It remains the hardest one for me today,
and I talk to thousands of people.
You have to acknowledge that
all consumer concerns are valid.
Even if you don't agree with them,
even if it seems to be the most ridiculous thing
that you have ever heard anyone say.
Doesn't matter.
You have to acknowledge that all consumer concerns are valid.
How do you do that?
Best thing you can do is ask a question.
One of my favorite things, though,
when the lady who we started with
comes at me with something...
I like to call them food evangelists,
people who have this really big opinion
about how food should be raised
but have never been on a farm in their life.
When they say something to me,
I say, "Did you get that on the Internet?
Because you know, not everything on the Internet is true."
[laughter]
Okay, see your reaction? They laughed.
You laugh, they laugh.
They all will laugh because they know that you're right.
It's true, right?
Because then it makes them take a pause and go,
maybe I did get that on the Internet
and not everything on the Internet is true.
It makes them laugh.
We're really just trying to get people to take a pause
in the conversation.
We want them to think about things
from maybe a different perspective.
Maybe what you're doing on your farm
is better aligned with their values than what they thought.
And it only takes a pause to do that.
So my favorite thing to do is always to say,
"Did you get that on the Internet?
Because you know, not everything on the Internet is true."
Or, "That's a great question.
I had not heard that before. Where do you get that from?"
"Ah, there's a lot of misinformation out there.
"I understand why everyone is so confused,
but here's what I know, because on my farm we do this..."
It's just having the conversation,
but acknowledging that their concerns are real.
Then, and only then, do you 'S'hare.
This is the nice word.
We're not puking on people. We have to stop doing that.
Now we share things from our perspective, right?
"This is how I see it on my farm.
"Every farm is different.
This is what works for me."
And then, you 'E'arn trust.
Because we're just trying to find
the common middle ground in the conversation.
You are never going to get anyone to understand
what you do on a farm every single day
100% of the time.
But you just want them to take a pause
and go, "You know, maybe what I was thinking
isn't quite right."
"Maybe this person is an expert on growing food,
"or raising animals.
I guess I hadn't thought about it like that."
If you had any idea how many people I meet
where I say, "Have you ever talked to a farmer?"
and it's as if I asked them a question in Mandarin,
because they never thought about it like that.
"I guess I never have asked a farmer.
"Why would I ask a farmer?
I can ask my yoga teacher's chiropractor, right?"
"Why would I ask a farmer that?"
But you have to get people to start to try and think
and to use you as a resource,
because there is no one who tells your story
better than you.
If you get nothing else from this,
this is the most important slide.
It's not about the fancy statistics.
It's not about being able to recite anything about GMOs,
although you can tell people there is only eight.
It's about "Why would farmers plant GMOs?
What is your reason?"
Because all farmers have to deal with weeds,
and bugs, and plant disease and drought.
And it does not matter
if you have an organic farm or a conventional farm.
All farmers have to deal with these things.
Our crops compete with 30,000 species of weeds,
10,000 species of plant-eating bugs.
My organic farmer friends use chemicals too.
It's their job. You have to,--
You have to protect your crops.
Healthy plants make healthy food.
There's over 50 commercially available pesticides
my organic farmer friends use.
And they should; there's nothing wrong with them.
We all have this responsibility as farmers
to protect our crops.
Biotechnology and GMOs
are just a tool that we can use.
Furthermore, you wouldn't use it
if you didn't need it, right?
What are the GMO crops that you plant?
If you have a weed problem,
you might plant Roundup Ready® something.
If you have root worms, corn borers,
you're gonna be planting some Bt varieties.
If you don't have those things, you don't plant them.
It's just a tool that you use.
And change nutritional profile.
We'll talk about it later in the slides, as well.
But we can do some amazing things through biotechnology
to improve the nutrient profile of foods.
Most recently on the news,
Iowa State is working on some bananas that have
more vitamins and minerals in them
and it was using biotechnology and GMO technology.
So when I put these in this perspective
to the lady who's yelling at us from the first slide,
then the conversation oftentimes shifts to,
"Well, where does all this come from?"
It's not that--
It doesn't sound that scary when you say it like this,
when you're just dealing with weeds,
and bugs, and plant disease, and drought.
And if a gene is coming from a petunia,
that sounds pretty.
Like, where is all the buzz coming from?
So, the one thing that you have to know
that you're up against is a lot of money.
But I can contend that the message that you have
in your "why" and "how" you do things on your farm
will always win.
But we can't talk about it without talking about this.
Where does all this buzz come from?
When I go talk on my daughter's high school class
or any other class for that matter,
I ask everyone if they've heard of GMOs.
They raise their hand.
"How many of you think they're bad?"
They all raise their hand.
And I live in the middle of Wisconsin,
where there's twice as many dairy cows as people.
My county has 66,000 cows and 32,000 people.
I am in rural Wisconsin,
but all the kids there think GMOs are bad.
Where does it come from?
An academics review shows that the organic industry--
not organic farmers--
I don't have a problem with organic farming.
I have friends who have certified organic farms.
I do have problem with their marketing,
because of this.
An academic review of the organic industry last year
showed that they put over $2.5 billion dollars,
with a 'B',
into over 300 organizations
whose mission is
to discredit modern agriculture and GMOs.
Well, marketing is easy if you're marketing fear.
Fear sells.
Go to the grocery store, read the labels.
It sells, it sells, it sells.
So, it is challenging.
This is why you cannot talk to people about GMOs
and only talk science.
It's very difficult to explain mutagenesis and biotechnology
in a conversation
when what you're competing against
is a very simple message of fear marketing
that's funded by a lot of cash.
But your message is bigger than that.
And it's more important than that.
And it's your message of why,
and what happens on your farm.
And the words you chose...
The words are very important.
One thing I talk a lot about when I talk to farmers
is to stop speaking Farmer , you know?
Y'all speak a different language.
For a long time, when I would talk to people
about ruminate nutrition things,
I'd be talking about a TMR.
Till I had a lady one day say,
"Is that like a shot you give them or something?"
And I thought, "Well, how could you not know that
that's a Total Mixed Ration?"
But it's because I speak Farmer .
I don't speak Consumer .
So we have to start choosing our words better, right?
Pesticides...
Most people can't tell you the difference
between a pesticide, insecticide, a fungicide.
"I don't know. It's just a chemical,
and I know from the Internet that that is bad, right?"
But, pesticide helps prevent bugs from eating
and stealing nutrients from my crops.
That's understandable.
Fertilizers and nitrogen today:
There is nothing more exciting to me
than hanging out at the airport
and talking to people about precision agriculture.
It's awesome, because people have no idea.
I say, "Hey, I would love it
"if you would come out and sit in the tractor
"when it is steering itself,
"talking to one of the 26 satellites in space.
"And you can watch it precision-apply fertilizer
"where I need it in the field and not where I don't
"because I have the fields mapped.
"I know what nutrients are in my dirt
because I have it mapped."
And they look at you like you're from outer space.
Because everyone thinks that we need to look like
the American Gothic portrait, right?
Pitchfork, sad face, dirty clothes.
Science and technology and innovation
are keys to the success of agriculture today.
It's how we've gotten here.
1952, first year we had more tractors than horses,
That wasn't that long ago.
GMOs: When someone asks you what they are--
a tool-- use Consumer words.
They're a tool we use. We help protect our crops.
It helps me use less chemicals.
It reduces my carbon footprint when I'm farming.
Explain your "why."
And you don't plant them where you don't need them.
It costs more money.
So the good stuff is the middle ground in the conversation,
to help people better understand what you do everyday,
how you care for your soil,
how you care for your crops.
Fun facts!
So there are eight.
It's always fun to rattle those off to people
'cause most people think that there's GMOs everywhere.
Another thing that people will ask me all the time,
"Well, I just don't think that that's natural.
"I don't think GMOs are natural.
"From everything I know about them,
I don't think it's natural."
What do I say?
Acknowledge concern, right?
"You know what? I have heard that.
"Valid point.
"But what you have to remember is:
"Genes are not static.
"They don't stay in one place.
"Mother Nature moves them all on her own, too.
"We have over 150 genes in our genome
"that did not come from us.
"We have genes from algae in us.
"We have genes from fungi in us.
"Mother Nature moves genes, too.
"We have genes in a monarch butterfly
"that came from wasps.
"We didn't do that.
Mother Nature did that because genes are not static."
Carbon footprint.
Sometimes, especially the people
I would consider food evangelists,
talk all the time about chemical usage.
I say, "Chemical usage and carbon footprint:
"they go together, right?
"We're trying to use less chemicals.
"We're always preserving topsoil.
"But GMOs took over 62 billions pounds of CO2
"out of the atmosphere last year.
"That's the same as taking 12.4 millions cars
"off the road a year.
"That's a pretty cool technology.
"I can make a difference from my farm
when I'm conserving resources like that."
And those are numbers that they take into consideration,
the number of trips across the field, right?
Because those of you who plant GMOs,
less trips across the field.
Conservation tillage, no till.
Every time you break the soil open,
you're releasing carbon from it.
So when we can use things like no till,
that's good for the environment.
And what's good for the environment
is good for everyone, including us.
Our values align with everyone's too.
Labeling-- I get that all the time too.
"Well, if GMOs are so great,
"then why in the world won't you label them?
Why are you fighting that?"
Well, because we label ingredients.
We don't label a process.
If you were born via in vitro fertilization,
am I gonna say, "You have to get a big tattoo
"on your forehead, wear that the rest of your life,
because it makes you that much different?"
No.
And we don't want states to have their own individual labeling.
That's a patchwork system that costs us all money.
I personally think our food has enough labels on it.
Have you been to the grocery store?
No wonder our customers are confused.
Non-GMO sunflower seeds at KwikTrip? Come on!
There are no GMO sunflowers,
but thanks for putting that on the label, right?
It's all over.
If you want non-GMO food,
you can find it, go ahead.
There's a non-GMO label verified,
it's got the little flower on it,
that's on foods today.
Buy certified organic, that's non-GMO.
We don't need another special label
because the people who are pushing the agenda
behind a labeling process,
a mandatory labeling,
are people who want GMOs gone.
The first step to doing that is labeling them.
Good question we get all the time, right?
"Well, they are not safe. Come on.
That rat study showed that they're not safe."
The Séralini study. Anybody hear of that? No one?
It's the one that everyone wants to recite.
It has been retracted.
They used rats that naturally get tumors,
but said that the tumors came from GMOs.
Oh, sneaky.
No wonder that did not get published
or in any peer-reviewed journal
because it was bad science.
Are they safe?
There are over 1,700 peer-reviewed published studies
that show that GMOs are safe.
In the world of risk assessment,
GMOs are probably some of the very most safest foods
we can possibly put in our mouths today.
The regulatory process is six to seven years.
This isn't something that got dreamed up last week.
We did it in a lab and we're eating it now.
They take on average 13 years to come to the market
and millions of dollars.
Zero adverse effects ever reported.
And organizations that consider them safe
are not just here in the United States.
All regulatory agencies in the EU, European Union,
also say they're safe.
Which is fun to share with people
because a lot of times people will say,
"Well, you know, they're banned in Europe."
Not exactly.
Europe imports them.
Their regulatory agencies say that they're safe.
They just don't allow their farmers to plant them.
So they import them from us.
feed them to their livestock...
and people.
One thing I do wish--
And in our country GMOs have to go through USDA, FDA, and EPA.
Safe to grow, safe to eat, safe for the environment.
Six to seven years regulatory process
and $130 million on average.
One thing I do wish, if I had a wish list,
is that I wish
companies whose GMOs did not get approved
would share that story.
Because I also think that that's an important thing
to share with consumers.
I think that the average consumer
who's scared of GMOs
thinks that every GMO that we come up with
gets approved and we use it,
which is not the case.
Case in point:
Brazil nuts have more protein than a soybean.
It would be really nice
if we could take the higher protein gene
from the Brazil nut,
put it in the soybean.
We'd have higher-protein edamame, tofu,
those kinds of things for us.
We'd have higher-protein soybean meal
to feed to our cattle, pigs, chickens.
So it could be great all around the board.
Six-and-a-half years into the project,
and probably many millions of dollars,
the project gets scratched,
because there was two genes that changed too much
from their parent plants.
So they did not want to take the risk.
Because protein variants
tend to be the things that lead to food allergies, mostly.
It was never proven that there would be a food allergy.
There was never a person made sick.
It never even made it that far.
The company made the decision,
because they didn't want to take the chance, the risk.
There are a lot of GMOs that don't make it to the market
because we have a lot of things in place.
Who grows them? This is a great map.
Grown, imported, used in field trials,
70 countries.
So all the green is where we grow GMOs,
all the orange, they import them from us,
and then the field trials are in gray.
See the EU on the map?
They just don't allow their farmers to plant them yet.
But as their quota system changes,
I suspect we'll see that change, too,
because they need to compete with us.
The future.
Golden rice, anyone heard of it?
So, there are poor countries in the world
that have vitamin A deficiencies
that cause blindness in many children.
We don't have this problem in our country.
We're elite.
But many countries, they do.
One of their primary crops is rice,
so they isolated a gene out of a daffodil plant
to increase the beta-Carotene in rice,
vitamin A precursor.
Increase the nutrient profile of food.
It's been approved.
It's gone through all the regulatory agencies.
Some free seed was given out for some people to try,
and what happened?
Activists burned their fields.
So now, farmers in a lot of countries
are scared to plant it,
even though it's been proven safe.
So we have a lot of people
we can share the story of GMOs with
so this thing doesn't happen.
Soybeans: higher oil soybeans, less trans fats,
working on that.
Oranges: anyone had to buy orange juice
in the last eight months?
It's expensive.
So the orange groves in Florida are really struggling.
They have something called the citrus greening fungus,
and it's wiping them out.
See that orange on the right? Not pretty.
So they have isolated a gene out of spinach
that could likely save the orange groves.
It's just, "Will consumers let us use it?"
Corn: we're always working on corn to use less water.
It's no secret that agriculture
is a large user of water
so anytime that we can conserve water,
we're going to do it.
We need science and technology to be able to do that.
But we're getting corn more and more drought-tolerant
to be able to grow using less water.
Chestnut trees: there's some GMO research
going on with the chestnut tree to bring it back.
Wheat: we're working on wheat that won't have any gluten
for people with celiac disease.
Now, there is no GMO wheat.
I get asked that all the time.
People will say--
In fact, I was at the Dietitians Conference last year,
the big one in Wisconsin.
There was a dietitian at my table
and she said, "You know, I have all these food allergies
"and all this gluten stuff in my school now
because of this GMO wheat."
I said, "Hey sister, there is no GMO wheat.
It's not one of the eight."
And she did not believe me.
I said, "Now, this one you can Google.
"Go to Google University, check it out.
There is no GMO wheat."
She came back at dinner that night.
She's like, "I did not know that."
And she has PhD in nutrition.
So I felt pretty smart.
Cassava is the other picture
that's on this slide.
Cassava feeds a lot of people in Africa,
so we're working on higher nutrients in cassava for people.
So the message that matters,
what I really want to convey to you is that
when you are talking about
any of the hot button consumer issues today,
including GMOs,
that you really have the message that matters.
That your message is about sustainability.
And of all the farmers that
I have had the chance to speak with,
the one thing you are terrible at
is you do not toot your horns.
Because you're humble people, right?
I have yet to see anyone stand up and say,
"Hey, you know what? I am a kick-butt farmer.
"I make food, fiber, fuel, pharmaceuticals--
"122 life-saving pharmaceuticals
"for the rest of you.
I'm outnumbered 99 to 1, and I'm kicking butt."
[laughter]
You don't do it, right? You're very humble.
But if I asked any of you individually,
"What have you improved on your farm
in the past year?"
you could name 10 things, right?
Because you are always improving what you're doing,
every single day.
You are always improving how you care for you animals,
how you care for your land and your crops,
and how you make safe food.
This hasn't changed.
This is the same as my grandpa, right?
My grandpa wasn't a bad farmer,
but I certainly don't want to farm like him today.
When my grandpa was a kid,
it took five acres of land to feed a person.
Today, we're feeding people on less than a third of an acre.
That's not because we're ruining natural resources
and because we're bad farmers.
It's because we're always improving what we're doing every day.
We're using science and technology and innovation
to grow food, fiber, fuel, pharmaceuticals, right?
When was the last time you were proud
and stood up and told your story?
Because you have a lot to be proud of.
Every facet of agriculture has
this message of sustainability to share.
That we continue to produce more,
with fewer resources, than ever before.
Dairy industry:
Today, we make 60% more milk with 16.4 million fewer cows
than when my grandpa was a farmer.
We nearly cut the herd in half, but we make 60% more milk.
How did we do that?
Improvements in genetics.
Improvements how we feed cattle.
Our nation's livestock eat better than us.
We balance their diets every day for over 62 different nutrients
right down to specific amino acids.
They eat better than us.
And when we get that much more milk,
with that many fewer cows,
that saves resources.
That uses 65% less water,
78% less feed,
90% less land.
We're only going to continue to get better.
We grow twice as much corn per acre as our parents did,
five times as much as our grandparents did.
That's not on accident.
It's because we're always improving what we're doing.
Every facet has that same story of sustainability,
of continual improvements over time,
of producing more food,
growing more food with fewer resources
than ever before,
and you should be pretty proud of it.
Farm Bureau's numbers:
Farmers today grow 262% more food
with 2% fewer resources than in 1950.
You know, that was not that long ago.
Never stop learning.
This is a list of some of my favorite resources.
Peer-reviewed science will answer your questions,
anything you have.
FindOurCommonGround.com is a great resource.
GMOanswers.com is focused strictly on biotechnology.
BioFortified.org, as well.
FieldToMarket.org has a lot of crop information.
GeneticLiteracyProject.org and kfolta.blogspot.com,
Kevin Folta's blog... all great resources.
You can use them, you can share them,
but never stop learning.
How do you deal with the very hostile people
when you're trying to have a conversation
about anything in agriculture, including GMOs?
Well, a couple of things.
Some of it is trying to have the conversation
to find what you have in common, where you can link.
And some people you never will be able to do that with.
And that's okay because...
you also need to know when to disengage.
You're not going to convince everyone
all the time
that what you do is good.
So you have to know-- and I have said this to people--
"We're just going to respectfully disagree, you know.
Thank you for your comments."
Acknowledge their concern.
"But I respectfully disagree with you
"because I know what happens on farms,
on my farm."
The other very important point,
and I said it in the last session,
but did not hit on it in this one, is:
You never look good making someone else look bad.
And sometimes we're our worst enemies at that, right?
We're the first ones to
sometimes want to attack our neighbor.
Or we don't agree with what they're doing,
when there's really not that many of us.
And sometimes it's good to think back to my mom,
in my head, saying,
"If you can't say anything nice,
don't say anything at all."
And that doesn't mean that everyone follows those rules, right?
But at the end of a conversation,
who is more reputable and looks better?
The person who slung the mud
or the one who didn't?
So, you never look good making someone else look bad,
and we don't need to attack each other
on different methods of farming.
You know, I can stand up here with 100% confidence,
and say, "I absolutely, positively disagree
with how organic food is marketing today."
But that does not mean that I'm disrespectful
to my organic friends.
Organic Valley Milk jug has my friend Emily Zweber on there
with her son, twirling him around.
When I go to the store, I snap a picture and I send it to her,
and I write her a text,
"Still not buying it, but cute picture."
[laughter]
No, I'm not-- Because we're recording,
I'm not going to say what she sends me back,
but I say, "Hey, sister, that's $7.99 a gallon,
"and I know that there's over 300 studies
"that say that there is no nutritional difference,
"there is no safety difference.
It's just a different method of farming."
That's great. Everything is about choice.
But farmers have choices, too.
So, consumers have choices, and so do we.
And what works on my farm does not work on the next farm,
does not work on the next farm.
Every farm has their story of what works for them,
which is where your voices are needed more than ever.
People don't understand how individual
and customized every farm is.
Well, thank you. I appreciate it.
[applause]