Online Public Relations Thoughts

The nightmare of any business is to have a highly publicized recall followed closely by another. Sony recently went through that with its burning batteries. Now comes news that an outbreak of E.coli illness on the East Coast of the US had come from vegetables -- scallions -- grown in California. This is the second such outbreak in four months. The last one occurred in spinach from California. Even though the scallions came from a different growing region of the state, it is black mark against farmers there that won't go away for awhile.

A recurring incident ignites speculation, none of which is good, such as: Have farmers adopted practices that have tainted the soil? Has water used to irrigate crops become permanently polluted? Has intensive farming practices used in the State ruined the land? California is a hotbed of environmentalism, and one can be sure critics are already in full cry.

The danger is even deeper than city dwellers know. There is a "back to nature" movement in the food world that idealizes small farms, organic vegetables and custom growing. There are those who say something like this would never happen, if there were more farms and less factory farming. These same people forget there wouldn't be a sufficient food supply either, if we went back to the old ways of growing food. The old ways were terribly inefficient and the cost of food was much higher than now. This movement, however, is creating a public relations problem for agriculture, and I believe it is serious.

Fewer farmers grow more food today than at any other time in world history, and they will have to do even better as the population of the world continues to burgeon. But fewer farmers means less votes and less influence in public debate. Those who don't know can start dictating to those who do. It's happening already.