By Gene Hall

Celebrities don’t seem to like modern agriculture very much. Some speak out strongly, even attack the way we grow our food today. Some are eager to jump on the bandwagon of the week, endorsing the latest trendy food-related topic.

Most of this is harmless. Farmers will grow for whatever markets consumers support—organic, grassfed, local, slow food or whatever’s next. There is nothing wrong with any of that. The problem comes when the anti-agriculture propaganda machine suggests that the world can be fed that way. It can’t, unless legions of people are willing, once again, to personally take up the burden of growing their own food as their great-grandparents did.

By Mike Barnett

“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Remember that famous line in the movie Network, the movie made in the 1970s starring Peter Finch as deranged news anchor Howard Beale? I’ll certainly never forget it.

I had a Network moment at the recent American Farm Bureau Federation annual meeting in Seattle, where president Bob Stallman stood in front of over 4,000 Farm Bureau members from across the nation, and said, “To those who expect to just roll over America’s farm and ranch families, my only message is this: The circumstances have changed.”