Friday, September 30, 2011

Farm Bureau writer bemoans Americans' lack of knowledge about how their food is produced

"The majority of today's population in this country is as much as three generations removed from the farm and the knowledge about what goes on in the agricultural realm of farm life is becoming even more distant for most every day," Pettus Read, communications director for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation, writes in the Daily News Journal of Murfreesboro. "The abundance we all enjoy when we walk into our local grocery store has made us complacent to the appreciation of what it takes to get the food from the farm to market shelf."

Read says "good intentions" of people who know little about farming can complicate life for farmers. He steers clear of controversial specifics, but cites the case of a woman who took a calf from the Middle Tennessee State University dairy farm, thinking it was abandoned; when it was returned the cow would not let it nurse. (Read more)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I grow my own cantaloupes, and lots of other things too. No listeria at my house.
And I'm not at all surprised at the story about the calf, although I'm surprised Mama Cow did not butt the nitwit. None of our cows would have missed her. Our property is so rough, we work the cattle on horseback and with dogs. The result is our cattle are not at all people friendly.

Al Cross said...

The calf was alone near a fence, through which the woman reached.