Week 60 - Chewing...

I was going to title this week's blog (2nd week of October) "slow", because that's just how I feel. This fall we signed up for an intramural flag football team and our scrimmage was against some undergrad referees. Let me tell you, they are fast. I know we all say that flag football is an offensive scoring type of game, all speed, downfield passing and misdirection, but I think I am just getting slower over the years. We got school like a bunch of old folk, and our second practice out, the starting QB tore his hamstring. It only gets better. Of course, my wife and baby girl did show up to see us play, so that we pretty fun. I can keep up ok on defense (our whole team is solid on the D), so at least they had something to cheer about. I haven't spent much of my life in organized sports, so it was kinda fun to be out there playing a regulated game and hearing someone on the sidelines cheering. Something I missed out on all those years.

Speaking of missing out, I feel like every day we drop our little Hannah off at daycare and then pick her up even more grown up. She still isn't really rolling, but her eyes are more attentive and she continues to improve her facial recognition and rewards us with adorable smiles. Mommy and Daddy both have sports teams to celebrate as the Bucks and Spartans roll on, and we get to trade off whose colors are worn based on game times, value of the game or the most likely - how quickly Hannah spits up all over the green.

Pretty hard to say goodnight to this little cutie. :)

Sparty's littlest fan down on the playmat for game day.

This week on campus, we were visited by a giant meat bus, no joke. There is a movement traveling around with the program called "Chew on This!", where you sit in on a video in exchange for all you can eat pulled pork, fries and beans. Well, you can bet I didn't wait too long to jump in on that. The pork was delicious, and I started a genius trend of stacking pork on beans on fries, forgoing that needless bun in lieu of more efficient plate space. Topped with barbeque sauce, it was like a carb and protein salad. But enough about the food, I really wanted to talk about the movie for a minute.

View inside the "Chew on This" trailer.

When you go into the movie trailer, you sit into cozy theatre-style chairs, and the room goes dark. Then you are hit with loud noises and sound effects as a professional wrestler quote facts about the food industry. Generic info that people like me have heard a thousand times about the need to feed 2 billion more people by 2050, the reality that most Americans don't know where their food comes, what the advertising schemes of natural or organic really mean, or the basic statistics of the premier role of America as a supplier of wholesome nutrition to the world - all of this is spat out in black and white (or red) text, interjected with some of the most ignorant comments made by people about their food, ever. So in all honesty, I didn't really learn anything. I already know that we grow food for people around the world. I also know that the elitist animal elimination movements (not really about animal rights) represent a small fraction of the global population that can afford to be snooty and claim a moral hierarchy in their decision about protein products. Of course, they can also turn a blind eye to the truth about what they eat and deceive the public in regards to the safety and integrity of our food production system. And that's what really frustrates me in all of this. Sure, I got free food and it was great, and the movie was fine. And I know there were people in the crowd who learned a few things or had their eyes opened to the naivety of those around us regarding where their food comes from. But this movement was preaching to the choir. I asked into this and found out that there had been fears about taking the buses on to main campus. They were afraid that the student animal rights groups would rally and cause a disturbance. And it is this fear that is holding us back from truly reaching people. We should instead be proud of our efforts for sustainably and responsibly raising the affordable nutrition for those here and abroad.

Fear leads to defense, and defense cannot win the struggle against ignorance that starts in the public school system and persists in undergraduate education. When our teachers stopped instructing about food, and our students got too far away from the farm and facts of life, we allowed schools to ignore the little things and they have grown into monster problems (and that goes far beyond agricultural food production). Instead of shrugging our shoulders and pointing out how ignorant people are from our corner of the ring in fear of brushing shoulders with adversity, our industry needs to take back the role of food production and nutrition as a staple in the education of every young person in America. Agriculture is one of the first sciences, and a great place to start growing our only only saving grace of this decade - the fact that there are new generations coming that can be less selfish and ignorant of the sacrifice and work ethic that built America and feeds the world.