The Truth About Agriculture

Believe it or not, fake news exists around agriculture, just as it does around politics and other topics. The purpose of this post is to help you spot fake news as it pertains to the folks who grow your food and fiber. There are certain obvious ways to tell, and I'll explain these briefly below. 1) Talk to Farmers, not Activists This is probably the most important tip, in my opinion. The fight for the right to tell their story properly is important to farmers. Activist groups such as PETA, the HSUS, Greenpeace, and the March Against Monsanto will do or say anything to make sure you listen to them, even if it's false or not entirely accurate. And if that means they get to throw farmers under the bus and ruin their reputation, even better. In addition, most of them have literally no idea how farming production systems work. In the case of GMOs, they rail against farmers who use pesticide resistant crops, but what they don't realize is that organic crops use pesticides,...

Everything's better with bacon on it. People put it in green beans, wrap it around steak, fry it for breakfast, use it to flavor pinto beans, and Naeglin's Bakery in New Braunfels, Texas even crumbles it up and puts it on top of doughnuts (Texas peeps, if you're ever in New Braunfels for vacation, you're wrong if you don't stop at Naeglin's for a doughnut or kolache or a loaf of their pumpernickel bread). However, there's more to the hog than bacon. People make pulled pork from roasts and picnic shoulders. My family enjoys ham at Christmas time. And don't even get me started on grilled pork chops. I like mine thick and juicy. Now that I've made you hungry with all this talk of pork chops and doughnuts, perhaps you'd like to know how your pork is produced. It's quite simple, really. In fact, pork production is quite straightforward because hog farming, like chicken farming, is vertically integrated, meaning the animal goes from a newbo...