INTERNATIONAL
SPREADING THE FACTS
Michelle Miller - michelle@thefarmbabe.com
How to Better Communicate Fear of Chemicals with the Average Consumer
The dose makes the poison and ag chemicals are applied very minimally. Using more than necessary is a waste of time and money!
A 24 | agairupdate.com
For those of us in agriculture who grow, spray, cultivate, and harvest, what we do on a day-to-day basis seems pretty normal. Maybe you’ve done it your entire life, maybe it’s your main multigenerational focus but don’t always know how to communicate the tough topics. But it is important that we tackle tough topics and clear up misconceptions. If people aren’t comfortable with what we grow, they won’t buy our products. Activist groups are trying to ban what we use because they don’t get it; or they’re worried about food safety or chemicals and that ultimately affects policy. Education is important and I’d recommend never shying away from these topics. Discussing the tough topics gets easier with practice, but policy is influenced by the people. When people vote incorrectly or try to change our practices- it can negatively impact the environment, global food security, family farms and so much more. So when tackling misunderstood issues with the general public, I recommend trying analogies that everyone can understand. Like, you know how if you swallow an entire bottle of aspirin you could die? Do you know how if you have a headache and take two of them it’s totally safe and beneficial or necessary? The dose makes the poison and ag chemicals are applied very minimally. Using more than necessary is a waste of time and money! Now let’s take that idea and apply it to agriculture. Ag planes are used to spray crops to control weeds, insects and diesease. Similar to a garden, everyone knows you must control weeds, tend to the health of the plant and eradicate the
pest or they’ll take over and you’ll lose that crop. The only difference is that a majority of farms that feed the world are thousands of acres. Would you like to come over and weed all that by hand? I didn’t think so.
Now let’s talk organic. I know it’s a sensitive subject, but people buy organic thinking they don’t use chemicals may be misled through expensive marketing tactics. So what about glyphosate as an example? Also known as Roundup and possibly considered the mainstream media chemical boogeyman, it is a very popular herbicide used in millions of gardens around the world to control weeds. On a farm, this is done on a large scale but the minimal amount actually used may shock the average person. For example, 22 ounces per acre is a popular rate of application which is equivalent to less than two beer cans over an area of land the size of a football field! Now I don’t know how many of you can picture only two beers at a football game? I know I can’t. It’s extremely minimal and generally sprayed one
