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October 24, 2017

Where do you want your food grown?

Topic: Education

October 24, 2017: Technology is embraced just about everywhere -- in our cars, in our phones, in our computers -- but not in our food. But we must embrace technology in farming if we are going to feed people, and make the environment better.

Download the Where do you want your food grown mp3.

Read the transcript:

Where do you want your food grown? Do you want it grown in the state of North Dakota? In the United States? Or do you want to depend on a foreign country for the health of your family, because yes, the food you eat is very import to your family and your family’s health.

We in the United States, we are very lucky. We have some of the lowest cost – actually the lowest cost, most abundant and safest food for our consumers. And yes, the farmers and ranchers who grow that food are also the consumers of what they grow.

We have a lot of noise in the background, the way it seems, in agriculture today. We have a very vocal few, and I say, very vocal few who think they know better how to grow the food, than those of us that are involved in growing that food day to day.

And so we have to ask the question if we’re going to limit the ability, if we’re going to restrict farmers and ranchers from being able to grow the food on their farms and ranches the way they need to for several different reasons. It may be to make a living for their family, which all of us need to do, the best for the natural resource that they’re utilizing, the health of their livestock, and ultimately the supply of the food that our nation so desperately needs for national security.

So you have to ask yourself, “Do we want to place a bunch of restrictions on everybody; what we see in our own minds as the way to do it?” Our do we want folks to be able to be creative, be adaptive, take advantage of the technology, which we have, and have allowed us to produce way more food, with way less inputs, for a growing population, not just here, but across the world.

To think that agriculture should be taken back in time to resemble Grant Wood’s American Gothic painting, the farmer and his wife, standing in his bib overalls and his pitchfork, is not practical for the needs of today. Just as technology has adapted everything in our life from cars, to phones, to computers, technology has made farming and ranching more efficient, more productive and safer for everyone involved, including all of us as consumers.


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