This oversight was never clearer than in a recent panel hosted by U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), named American Health and Nutrition: A Second Opinion. According to a description of the panel, the discussion was meant to provide “a foundational and historical understanding of the changes that have occurred over the last century within agriculture, food processing, and healthcare industries which impact the current state of national health.”
A noble goal.
However, a quick scan of the panelists showed a glaring deficiency. The panel should have included at least one or two farmers and ranchers. Not a single person actively engaged in food production was invited.
Instead, the panel was filled with self-proclaimed “experts,” New York Times bestselling authors, podcast hosts, and food activists. In short: people who make a living demonizing farmers.
The panelists claimed we need to stop “poisoning” our food supply with conventional produce. They implied farmers who used products purchased from Bayer Crop Science were no better than Nazi sympathizers. They suggested the only path to success and happiness was to be “slim” and “athletic.” There was no acknowledgement of the fact that the many ways in which we discuss food are privileges of wealth. Wealth, in turn, allows many Americans to ignore practical solutions to problems like hunger and food insecurity.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, every county in the United States has some level of food insecurity. When people are hungry, our priority as a nation should be in ending that hunger. Ending hunger might be as simple as ensuring that farmers with excess crops are paid at cost to provide that excess to food pantries in their counties. It may also be as complex as teaching people to cook meals utilizing the most cost-effective produce available in the marketplace – fresh, frozen, or canned.
During the panel, Dr. Casey Means testified she did not learn in medical school that “one billion pounds of synthetic pesticides are being sprayed on our foods every single year,” nor that “these invisible, tasteless chemicals” are “hurting our metabolic health.”
Every peer-reviewed study comparing conventional and organic produce has come to the same conclusion: both forms of produce are nutritionally equivalent. Pushing people to purchase organic produce rather than conventional produce comes down to a matter of income and preference. Organic produce and other products demand a premium because of the relatively small market share they still command compared to conventional counterparts. Additionally, the input costs for labor, fertilizer, various herbicides and insecticides, crop rotations, and more are considerably higher, all demanding a higher market cost.
When panels of social media influencers and podcast hosts discuss organic options as the only “real,” “clean” or “healthy” source of food for people to consume, consumers feel shame about purchasing conventionally grown foods, leading to a downturn in the purchase of produce.
If a low- or moderate-income household is choosing not to purchase vegetables and other produce because they fear it is “dirty” or “unhealthy” based on the advice of influencers, where is the benefit to those households?
What many food activists lose sight of is that farmers and their families often consume what they grow. Farmers often step between the rows of their own crops to pluck a pea pod, dig up a potato plant, or keep half a cow in the freezer, which came from their own efforts. If farmers are colluding with chemical companies to create a worsening food supply, consuming their own products seems like a poor way to do it.
Panelist, Courtney Swan, founder of “Realfoodology,” noted Bayer Crop Science was previously owned by I.G. Farben in her testimony. Farben, which closed in 1952, was a German chemical conglomerate. One of its subsidiaries was the maker of nerve agents used in Nazi gas chambers during World War II. Swan stated:
Monsanto began marketing glyphosate with the catchy name Roundup. They claimed that these chemicals were harmless and that they safeguarded our crops from pests. So, farmers started spraying these supposedly safe chemicals on our farmland. They solved the bug problem, but they also killed the crops. Monsanto offered a solution with the creation of genetically modified, otherwise known as GMO, crops that resisted the glyphosate in the Roundup they were spraying. These Roundup ready crops allow farmers to spray entire fields with glyphosate to kill off pests without harming the plants, but our food is left covered in toxic chemical residue that doesn’t wash, dry, or cook off. … You can assume if it’s not organic, it is likely contaminated with glyphosate. In America, organic food, by law, cannot contain GMOs or glyphosate and they are more expensive than conventionally grown options. Americans are being forced to pay more for food that isn’t poisoned.
Not only was her testimony filled with scientific inaccuracies, it is an absurd leap of logic that would also apply to every doctor that has ever recommended children’s aspirin.
There was, in general, little consideration given to the potential effects of the comments made by the panel. One of the early testimonies from Dr. Jordan Peterson, a psychologist, who regularly lectures on mythology, psychology, and personal development, stated:
American children are fat, diabetic and increasingly miserable as they progress towards middle age. Those not yet captured in childhood by obesity, insulin resistance, high blood sugar and inflammatory disfunction are likely to suffer it then with a near certainty of a declining old age and expensively so. What might we aim for instead? Slim, healthy, athletic, optimistic, and courageous children. … What do all fat, sick, unhappy people have in common? At least this: they all eat.
Peterson goes on to suggest medical interventions should consider diets in which all carbohydrates are eliminated as a means by which to combat “fat, diabetic, increasingly miserable” lives because while the eating routine might be repetitive and boring, at least the person won’t be hungry or fat. Peterson noted people can live with “zero carbohydrates,” and posited for the panel that a “carnivorous” or “plant-free ketogenic” diet is an inexpensive and accessible food-based intervention that should be further studied.
When Congressional panels are convened, there should be a tacit understanding that they can be informative and reliable; that the people given a platform to share their views on the stated topic should have some genuine expertise in what they are discussing.
As a nation we have become too comfortable getting our information from “personalities” who share opinion as fact and rhetoric as experience. Given that a mere one-half of one percent of the U.S. population are farmers, one might be able to excuse a Senate panel for being light on agricultural experience but to have none is inexcusable. One half of one percent still works about to be 1.9 million people and there is absolute certainty that Senate panel planners did not receive 1.9 million “no’s” when offering the chance to participate. I would have said, “yes” if I had gotten a phone call.
Pam Lewison is the Director of Agriculture Research at the Washington Policy Center and a Pacific Research Institute fellow. She co-owns and operates a family farm in Eastern Washington state.
