When Charlie Arnot, the CEO for the Center for Food Integrity, began speaking, it was with the deep, rolling cadence of an auctioneer, and as he went on it never once gave way to a stutter or a stammer.  This, along with his short cropped haircut atop a near perfect posture, all served to suggest he had nothing to hide.  It was fitting.  He was addressing the 2015 Iowa Farm Bureau President’s Conference on the topic of transparency in food production.

His message was simple.  “In 5 years transparency will be where sustainability is today.  Transparency is no longer optional.”

The Center for Food Integrity has a mission:  “To build consumer trust and confidence in today’s food system by sharing accurate, balanced information, correcting misinformation, highlighting best practices that build trust and engaging stakeholders to address issues that are important to consumers.”  Its members range from Costco to Tyson, from Monsanto to the World Wildlife Fund.  In order for the group to realize their mission, Arnot argued it is essential that we recognize the shift that has occurred in how institutions are viewed over the last 45-50 years.

According to Arnot, confidence in our institutions has eroded since the social upheaval of the late 60s, partly due to frequent violations of the public’s trust.  Once authority was simply granted by office.  This isn’t so today.

Social consensus was primarily driven by white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant men.  Now there is no single social consensus.  Instead we have tremendous diversity with many voices offering to guide us, and we are left to wonder which voices should.  Communication used to be done by mass means.  It was formal but indirect.  Everyone got the same paper and heard the same newscast.  Today we have masses of communicators, informal but direct, and we tend to listen to the ones who share our world view.

Arnot singled out one institution:  the US military.  Up to the Vietnam War the military was largely in control of its images and messages.  Television in the 1960s changed the conversation.  The military struggled to adapt, and initially worked even harder to try and maintain control.  Over the subsequent years it finally realized control was no longer possible.  It was then that they began to understand the importance of transparency.  Today they embed journalists with the troops themselves.

During this same period agriculture has seen increased industrialization, consolidation, and integration.  Arnot argued that today agriculture itself is seen as an institution, with social media now functioning as television once did.  While farmers still maintain great public trust, the consumer sees agriculture as becoming increasingly grey.

The consumer’s turn to social media is an effort to find transparency.  There, they find many voices, all begging for the consumer’s attention.  In agriculture we are largely unsure of how to handle this.  Frequently it makes us reactive and even less transparent, offering an opportunity for others (many with inaccurate information) to step in and fill the void.

We try to counter the misinformation with facts and expertise.  In doing so, we miss a key component of how trust is built.  While facts and expertise are certainly part of the equation, the foundation of trust rests on the concept of mutually shared values.  CFI has found that shared values are 3 to 5 times more important to us than facts or  expertise.

Herein lies the success of the Food Babe.  She offers few facts.  She offers little expertise.  Her success lies in the claim that she shares the same values as her followers.

According to Arnot when the consumer asks “Should we raise GMOs?”  We make our argument from a scientific and economic standpoint, as though they asked “Can we raise GMOs?”  Instead, what the consumer is really asking is “Do we share the same values?”  In missing the question agriculture gives up the moral high ground which is rightfully its own.

Instead of arguing GMOs are scientifically proven safe, that we need them to feed the world, or that they are crucial to maintaining our bottom line, what would happen if we said “We raise GMO crops because we have the same concerns as you.  We use GMOs to farm more sustainably, using less pesticides, and to help keep healthy food affordable.”  At the end of the day, what is there to hide in that?

Why does the fear of drowning exist only with water?  The earth has to have swallowed a million times more souls than the sea has ever dreamed of.  Perhaps our fear of water is nothing more than our fear of being the exception.

M.H. King was my grandmother’s grandfather.  He was a dirt man.  I seem to come from a long line of them.  There are two types of dirt men.  You’ve got the farmer, who scratches it in order to grow something from it, and you got the contractor, who moves and digs it by the yard for building.  History would show the diver and the swimmer are in equal danger of going under.  King would.

For his first contracting job he had to come up with some money to operate with.  He got it by mortgaging his house.  Over time the contracts grew, his business grew, and so did his houses.  He worked on numerous street projects around the city of Des Moines, moved 50,000 yards of dirt excavating and grading the site of the present Iowa State Capitol, moved 700,000 yards building 17 miles of levee near Burlington, but his main specialty would be railroads.

He used a mule drawn scraper, which raised and deposited dirt in trip-bottom carts also pulled by mules.  He became well known for his innovative process and rail companies sought him out to work in many of the surrounding states.  Eventually he would be one of a handful of contractors the Union Pacific selected to bring out to Portland, Oregon to see about building a railroad to Seattle.

When his mules were idle, he housed them right south of downtown.  While they were idle, he was busy serving as the longtime alderman of Des Moines’ then 6th Ward.  He was often rumored to run for Mayor.  He never did.  Any other spare time was devoted to civic projects, such as being one of the founders of present day Mercy Hospital.  In it all he gained both admirers and detractors, and several political cartoons of the day featured King and his famous mules.  Some papers were fond of him.  Some, like the Register, he seemed to battle.

Before his death he had the city’s first steam shovel, which was estimated to displace the work of 50 men.  The papers noted he kept it guarded at all times for fear of sabotage.  At his death the same papers noted he had been the city’s largest employer.  After his death they noted the complaint of a laborer, lamenting that everyone had always had work when old Mike King was around.

King flirted with disaster twice.  The first time a railroad went defunct while he was in the middle of a large project for them.  Eventually the court would make sure the wealthy individuals behind the project paid.  Years later a second railroad would go defunct.  Evidently this time the individuals which had been backing it were no longer wealthy either.

King mortgaged the family home in order to pay his help.  On Memorial Day of 1902 he died.  The bank subsequently foreclosed on the property, and the family eventually moved over to 31st street.

On giving notice of his death, one paper concluded by saying, “He was generous to a fault and had he been as good to himself as he was kind to his friends he would have attained to a comfortable competence.”  A more friendly one concluded he died “leaving no heritage to his family but….a public spirited citizen, a friend of the poor, an honest, well spent life.”

My grandmother’s mother was the only one of four girls to have married.  She had one child.  It would seem M.H’s meager heritage grew smaller, but not without his daughters’ best efforts.  During their lifetime they concerned themselves with their father’s legacy, and some managed to carve out their own.

Someone else’s legacy can be an ocean we lose ourselves into, trying to lay claim on the exception we fear to be, before we too someday drown in the dirt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmVNswlLDgc