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The following is my response to the wonderfully written article by @justfarmers:
Agvocate or Agtivist?
Most of my reach is other farmers; I suppose by that definition, I am an agtivist. I sometimes play devils advocate on issues because I want people to think about the issues for themselves rather than going with the status quo. I'm not preachy as your chart suggests, but I do suppose that my methods seem as if I'm "preaching to the choir". I realize that there are many viewpoints in agriculture...that some modern farming methods are seen as unreasonable by some and revolutionary by others. But should I be attacked by these "advocates" because I don't reach as big of a crowd as they do and because my message is geared towards farmers rather than consumers? I agree wholeheartedly with your blogpost. People who take the attitude that "either you're with me or you're against me" are no better than PETA, because they are closed minded and cannot see past their own agenda. This is where their message becomes propaganda rather than actually doing any good.
But back to me, I still am trying to get "advocates" to see that there are more than one side to a story, and they should not be so paranoid and angry when one person's story is different than their own. For example, one person has the opinion that factory farming is not a good method of raising pigs. But the mainstream agvocates advocate that it's very efficient, safe, and effective. The agvocate should not get so angry with an agtivist who's against factory farming. It's just another side to the story, right? The whole reason everyone was angry with Chipotle's was because they expanded their audience to the consumer. To an agvocate, this is unacceptable, because it puts a part of the agriculture story in a bad light. But should agvocates be the police on what consumers think and believe? They will say that the agtivist is lying and saying untrue things because of the negativity they've been put in. Sometimes, rightly so, because it IS untrue. However, not all things are said under false pretenses. Yet, the ag community still gets the knee jerk reaction when someone in the world of ag takes the opposite side of the fence.
I'm sorry for my long response. Next time I'll try to keep it down to a few sentences. I think your blogpost is a wonderfully written, and I agree with everything you say. But not all agtivists are as closed minded as PETA, and not all agvocates have the whole story.
Later that evening, we separated him from his mother. It caused a little stress on mama cow, but not as much as I expected. I've separated kid goats from their mothers before and they cry aaallll night long. But Caramel is experienced in calving and the separation stress was minimal. We remove the calves from the cows because we want control of the milk. If little guy stayed in the field, he would nurse all of the milk and by evening, we would not get any milk for ourselves. So we become the new mommy and feed little guy a ration of his mother's milk through a bottle or bucket. We can devote time to working with him to grow him into a big, strong, healthy steer.
