We Have Been Branded
By Trent Loos

With a hint of spring in the air and the grass peeking through for another growing season, it is branding time in cattle country. Despite all the scrutiny the beef industry receives, most cowboys that place a hot iron on calves would never consider turning pairs out to grass that didn’t wear “their brand.” It may be considered identification, but the main reason we still use this tool happens to be a matter of pride. The pride in knowing whose calf that is. No matter who drives past, through or in, if they see the “backward seven F,” they know that animal is mine.

We, in agriculture, have been branded the same way by the consumer. The brand that has been placed on our right hip is “factory farm.” I entered a wonderful round table discussion about the stigma of the term “factory farm.” I had a person, whose family made a living selling swine feed for 23 years, tell me that “he just can’t endorse the factory farm.” Naturally, I questioned his definition of a factory farm. “You know - those large corporate farms.”

Here is the problem. We have people in agriculture using the term “factory farm” in a negative manner and the average citizen congers up the notion that anyone who is not producing animals under a shade tree with an open space, American Gothic technique, is not a family farm but a factory farm. We don’t have a chance to improve the public’s perception of our industry as long as we continue to have people in agriculture endorsing the very branding that is putting us out of business.

At another meeting, someone stated to me that we should endorse ourselves as “factory farmers.” Think about this for a minute. Every other thing the consumer uses is produced in a factory. What is wrong with the idea of food being produced in a factory? I have thought about this extensively and don’t really think that consumers would buy that logic. Back to my original scenario: if you buy a cow with someone else’s brand, you can’t change the existing brand so you simply add your own. The consumers have the visual image of a “factory farm” so etched in their minds that if this continues for long, it may be virtually impossible to erase that ‘brand” from their heads.

I fully believe that nothing is working against farm families more than the very branding of producers as “factory farmers” vs “family farmers.” As a matter of fact, you would be hard pressed to find many American farmers that would live up to the consumer’s definition of a family farmer.

As an example, I had a conversation with a gentlemen in Minnesota at the Dairy Farmers of America meeting. He was discussing the amount of time he spends working with Amish farmers. Then he noted that the amount of antibiotics used by the Amish farmers he knows was no different than the amount used by conventional producers. If any demographic in the population should come close to fulfilling the consumer’s definition of a family farm, the Amish should be it. In reality, they don’t exactly live up to this idealistic image either.

At the end of the day, we must look at the situation we are in. We have special interest groups like Willie Nelson and Farm Aid gathering big money in the name of saving the family farmer. Instead of helping family farmers, the money they acquire goes to groups who are suing the very farm families trying to make a living in food production. The term “family farm” is one of the few “warm fuzzies” left in this country about food production and true agriculturists are being out-marketed by activist propaganda.

My written word will not serve to provide solutions for this looming issue, but I hope to spark conversation in meetings, coffee shops, sale barns and other gathering points about how we should move forward. Next week I will present information about the groups that coin the phrase “saving the family farm” as a fundraiser and how that money actually works against the best farm families in this country. How many times will someone else put your brand on a calf that is in their yard? As long as we let someone else define who we are and what we do, we will only be defending our industry. If you are on the defensive, you are simply trying not to lose. That’s not a position we want to be in.

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