11.13.2007

Take away a reason for them to blame ag industry

To quote Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”
That message, lifted from the Rolling Stones, underlines the tone the editorial office of The Delmarva Farmer followed a couple weeks ago when senior editor Bruce Hotchkiss penned “Now’s the time to be proactive” in its Oct. 31 editorial.
Everyone should know the history, but for those who don’t:
As the health of the Chesapeake Bay has declined in recent decades, more fingers have pointed at the agricultural community: No oysters? Blame ag. ... No Bay grasses? Blame ag. ... No crabs? Blame ag. ... No wind for your sailboat? Heck, blame ag.
Many of us thought the climate couldn’t have gotten worse than when former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening threw his state’s farmers under the bus — particularly the poultry industry— when trying to find a quick answer for the mysterious fish kill a decade ago for the public after scores of dead menhaden were discovered with sores and lesions in the lower Bay.
The non-informed public — which is quick to blindly accept anything it reads in print or hears on the 6 o’clock news — joined the finger-pointing.
One can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees fact has always been out there: There is no better steward of the land than the farmer. Why would someone who relies so much on the land and the waterways around it be so destructive to those components?
The farmers — perhaps more than anyone — understand what is good to the environment and what is detrimental.
Still stinging, only just recently have farmers grown to trust some environmental groups like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation — which had formerly targeted the ag community but lately had come around to understand progress in the Bay’s health was possible with the farmers’ help. And the farmers have shown they were — and are — willing to offer their assistance by participating in such innovations as nutrient management plans and the cover-crop program.
Other environmental groups such as the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy have worked hand-in-hand with farmers to help keep their land in ag production and have annually hosted events like Rural Heritage Day to remind the public of all the good farmers do.
OK, ... history lesson over.
The climate got just as bad, if not worse, in a hurry earlier this month in Salisbury with the Eastern Shore Poultry Summit — organized by the radical group Waterkeeper Alliance.
The farmers — again, particularly the poultry industry — suffered the cruel sucker-punch to the belly when chairman Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — after a lunch that featured chicken, by the way — brutally assailed them with his ruthless attack when trying to explain the Bay’s faltering health.
His Waterkeeper Alliance had promised the idea behind the Poultry Summit was that it would make possible a discussion between the environmental group and the poultry industry on what can be done to help the Bay. Kennedy had proven by the time his keynote address was over that the premise was apparently just a design for a public ambush.
Fortunately for the ag community, it was sort of a muted ambush. Word had gotten out several weeks before and it was apparent to many what Kennedy & Co. had in mind. The Waterkeeper Alliance had already waged deep-pocketed battles against the pork industry in other parts of the country. The blueprint is well-chronicled.
As we said in the Oct. 30 editorial, two days before the Summit, “The hammer is coming down.”
That’s why we here at The Delmarva Farmer wrote that it was important for the ag community to continue to display its good-faith efforts to help the Bay.
We knew the message wasn’t exactly what the farmers would enjoy reading (at first blush), but we thought it was an important read.
And a farmer or two did indeed question us about the message of the editorial in the beginning of the week. Not so after Kennedy’s diatribe two Thursdays ago.
The mainstream public is already quick to drink the Kool-Aid whenever farmers are blamed when it comes to the Bay. The precedent is there.
But if the farmers can continue to show they are doing their part without it being a response to just another accusation, it can go a long way toward putting the blame in the right direction.
Like, oh, I don’t know ... maybe the growing housing sprawl and the sewage-spewing systems that go with it?
The nutrient management plans go a long way toward that, but farmers need to police themselves and have 100-percent compliance. Ninety-nine percent may play by the book, but that one percent is still too much.
Farmers are the first ones getting the blame.
Anything to take away a reason to blame ag is always a plus.