Your Opinion: Right to farm response

Dear Editor:

Earlier in July, Dr. John Ikerd presented his Top 10 reasons to question Amendment 1. Ikerd has a long history of opposing most everything that has happened in farming since Henry Wallace was secretary of Agriculture: once again, he doesn't disappoint.

Amendment 1 is not about corporate farms. Period. The amendment says nothing about the legal structure of farms and protects farming practices used by farms both small and large. Farms of all sizes provide food, but none do so for free, although Ikerd seems to think family farms are charitable organizations, while larger farms are organized to prey upon the weak and infirm.

Ikerd is upset that "industrial agriculture" hasn't reduced meat and egg prices in 20 years. Keeping food prices stable over two decades seems like quite an accomplishment to me. The restrictions on agriculture Ikerd favors would actually increase food prices.

Farmers of all sizes will no doubt notice the irony in a fellow who has, throughout his career, benefited from rapidly increasing tuition prices while criticizing farming for keeping prices stable. He also worries meat consumption will increase among "affluent consumers in developing countries." I certainly hope so.

The Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act are federal laws that are not affected by anything we do here in Missouri. Ikerd knows our state cannot make exemptions to those laws for you, me or any foreign entity. Ikerd crosses the line here from advocacy to falsehood. He knows better.

I heard Ikerd speak 30 years ago. He makes the same charges against modern technologies now as he did against the practices we farmers used then. Nope, modern seeds and weed control methods are not the same as a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. They weren't 30 years ago, and they aren't now.

Ikerd charges that the right to farm amendment denies people their inherent human rights of self-determination and self-defense when those are the very rights of farmers threatened by a nationwide attack on agriculture, an attack Ikerd has aided.

Ikerd left his family's dairy 50 years ago. He chose the security of an academic career over the risks and challenges of farming, yet demands farmers and consumers ignore the progress made in the last five decades. He wants us to live on a farm exactly like the one he left. Agriculture must change with the times. A necessary part of that growth and improvement is passage of Amendment 1.

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