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Journalists tour Missouri farms
More than a dozen people were hosted by Missouri Farmers Care on grain, hog and cattle farms Friday in an effort to help them understand food and farm issues.
“Well, it’s very important to get the urban population to understand agriculture,” said Rick Rehmeier, a farmer from Augusta, Missouri, who allowed access to his hog barns and fielded questions concerning how he raises the animals.
“We’ve hosted several lunch and learns where we had some politicians out, and local leaders, and it’s very important to get our message out to the people to make them understand that we try to raise a good, safe, nutritional product in an environmentally friendly manner,” he said, as he was leading his visitors around his farm.
Until Friday, St. Louis blogger Danyelle Little’s exposure to agriculture had been a couple of visits to produce farms, but she concedes to taking food for granted.
“Well, I think have more appreciation for the food that we get, I mean it’s easy to go the grocery store and take for granted what’s there,” Little told Brownfield following the tour. “I never really got to see the behind-the-scenes and all the hard work that goes into producing what we eat, so for me it’s a greater appreciation for all the hard work that goes into it.”
Her blog readers will see how the tour changed her perception of farming, she said.
“I want to stress the importance of the fact that a lot of these farms and farmers go through a lot to get their food to where we get it,” said Little.
Near Pacific, Missouri, Bill McClaren characterized to those on the tour that they were seeing what would be considered a typical Missouri cattle farm.
“I’m 57-years-old, I’m just a few years younger than the average beef producer. There’s 26 cows on that farm, which would put us right in average,” said McClaren. “Between both farms we have a little over 100 cows, so we’re a little above average, but we’re probably close to what the average commercial producer is.”
McClaren made sure that everyone visiting his cow/calf operation had an up close view of how his cattle are cared for and handled.
“You know everybody is our potential customer and we need to do the very best to show and explain and be open about what we do,” he said.
Dairy farmer Rick Scheer of New Haven, Missouri, gets frustrated with the amount of material gleaned from the internet that is taken as fact. He told Brownfield after addressing those on the tour that it’s important to be sure that people know that it’s not all true.
“So I think it’s important to show that we are families on the farm, taking care of the cows, doing everything we can to put a high-quality product consistently in the grocery store, in the restaurants for them to consume every day,” he said.
Missouri Farmers Care is made up of several commodity organizations in the state.
AUDIO: Rick Rehmeier (2 min. MP3)
AUDIO: Rick Scheer (2 min. MP3)
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