In an attempt to stem the tide of growing public concern, the industrial agricultural establishment has mounted a nationwide propaganda campaign designed to, in their words, ‘increase confidence and trust in today’s agriculture.’ The board members of one front group, the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance, include the American Farm Bureau Federation, John Deere as well as major agricultural commodity organizations. Board members Monsanto and DuPont have each pledged $500,000 per year to the campaign.

A recent study by Friends of the Earth, an international network of environmental organizations, documents similar ‘front groups’ that have been spending more than $25 million per year to polish the tarnished public image of industrial agriculture. This doesn’t include the campaigns of individual industrial agricultural apologists that are carried out through public schools, 4-H and Future Farmers of America, local civic clubs, and state and local mass media. That said, the agricultural establishment seems to consider their PR campaign as little more than a ‘holding action’ against growing public concerns. They are using their political power to establish legislative protections that would prevent effective regulation.

All 50 states already have some form of right-to-farm law, but they must be strengthend. The early laws, beginning in the 1980s, were enacted to minimize the threat to nuisance litigation and prohibitive state and local government regulation of ‘normal farming practices.’ Current political initiatives, however, allow the agricultural establishment to define ‘industrial farming practices’ as a legally protected economic right. Industrial agriculture’s advocates know it’s vulnerable to growing public concerns and they’re doing everything in their power to protect it. 

The agricultural establishment has essentially abandoned their earlier strategy for demanding that regulation of industrial agriculture be based on ‘sound science.’ They seem to understand that the scientific evidence supporting the growing public concerns is now clear, compelling, even overwhelming. I personally think it has become misleading to cite a few specific studies when there is so much scientific information documenting the environmental, social, economic, and public health problems associated with industrial agriculture. I have started relying on meta-studies, where scientists or teams of scientists review dozens or hundreds of credible studies and draw logical, generalizable conclusions.