Hat Chat

With positive conservation program developments in recent days, like the expansion of the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, one of this year’s new Indiana Master Farmers has to be smiling. Ray McCormick of Knox County is devoted to conservation issues.

“It’s an honor to receive this award. Hopefully I can use this to promote conservation,” he told HAT. “That’s my real passion, to work for conservation at the district level, the county, the state level, and nationally. And I always love to be able to get in front of an audience and tout all the positive things we can do as farmers to help conserve our natural resources.”

McCormick says a number one issue statewide and nationally is water quality, and that tops his list of concerns for the future. Ray talks more about that in the HAT interview here:

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The third Indiana National Guard Agriculture Development Team to Afghanistan deploys in a little under a month, and among its ranks is a familiar face to Indiana agriculture. Lt. Bart Lomont is the policy director for Lt. Governor Becky Skillman. But for the next year he will be in Khost Province focusing on ag marketing. Lomont tells HAT it’s “more of a public affairs role, but also from ag broadcasting and providing them where they can find markets and discovering prices. Where we’ll be is only three to four hours from Kabul but they have no clue what wheat should be going for in the major cities or the markets there.”

Lomont is originally from near New Haven in Allen County where his father still operates a grain farm. He graduated from Purdue with an agricultural economics degree.

His career in state government got its start when he approached Skillman at the Purdue Ag Alumni Fish Fry. “I just went up to her, kind of cold calling her, thanking her for all she and the governor did for agriculture. They’re a great team for Indiana agriculture.

In the HAT interview during training at Purdue in July Lomont talks more about Afghanistan and his plans upon returning to Indiana next year:

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The queen reigning over the Indiana State Fair has proven to be a real natural, whether she is speaking in front of large groups, waving the queen wave, or in the ring with livestock and exhibitors. Denae Pyle, a Purdue University junior is from Kosciusko County, and grew up on a hog farm. So it is quite fitting that the 10 year 4-H member exhibiting pigs all those years is queen during the Year of Pigs.

The most memorable part of traveling nearly 8200 miles across the Hoosier state during her year-long reign has been seeing Indiana’s diversity. “When you don’t have the chance to travel across Indiana you aren’t able to see that, and I have been so lucky and blessed that I have been able to see the diversity of landscape, the diversity of crops that we have here, the diversity of agriculture, and also the diversity of people that we have across Indiana.

Listen to the Denae Pyle interview here to learn more about this year’s queen:

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The “God Bless American” statue is hard to miss at the Indiana State Fair. But what it is doing there is a bit of a controversy. Fair officials say it is to start a conversation about agriculture. “This piece of public art is a great opportunity for our visitors to capture a unique moment at the fair,” Cindy Hoye, the State Fair’s Executive Director, said. “We’re also hopeful that it will inspire conversation about the evolution of contemporary production agriculture.”

“One key purpose for public art is to initiate dialogue within communities,” said The Sculpture Foundation’s Director Paula Stoeke. “Seward Johnson’s work is provocative in its very presence, and should turn heads as well as start conversations.” This statement was released after HAT published a story that criticized the statue and its placement at the fair.

Around the base of the statue are plaques with facts about agriculture and food production. While this is very nice, I am not sure it really sparks a conversation about agriculture. While I have no problem with the statue being one of many novelties at the Fair, to hang an agricultural tag on it and suggest it will help consumers understand modern agriculture and the contribution it makes to our state, is ludicrous.

State Fair Statue Not Good for Agriculture

By Gary Truitt

In just a matter of days, the Indiana State Fair will open its gates and hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers will pour into the fairground eager to see the animals, ride the rides, and eat the fair food. Continuing a tradition started 4 years ago, the fair has chosen pigs as the theme of the fair. Corn, hardwoods, and tomatoes have also shared the spotlight. Indiana pork producers are hopeful that the year of pigs will not only give Hoosiers a hankering for pork but may help them understand the pork industry and the contribution it makes to the Indiana economy a little better. However, the decision by the State Fair to bring in a statue may undermine efforts to improve the image of agriculture.

A 25 foot statue has been placed just outside the 4H complex on the Northwest corner of the fairgrounds. The traveling sculpture was inspired by Grant Wood’s famous 1930 “American Gothic” painting. J. Seward Johnson gave his “God Bless America” work to the Sculpture Foundation, a private, California-based organization that has displayed it in several cities. And, what is the point of having this at the Indiana State Fair? According to fair publicity director Andy Klotz, “It will remind visitors of the importance of agriculture in Indiana.” Oh, please - give me a break. The American Gothic image gets trotted out every time someone wants to depict agriculture or rural life. The truth is that this image has nothing to do with agriculture or rural life. The man and woman in the original were not farmers or even husband and wife. They were a dentist and his sister. The artist chose these figures and the setting to represent a rural reality in 1930. In fact, he was not trying to represent agriculture but instead architecture. Wood, an American painter with European training, noticed a small white house built in the Carpenter Gothic architectural style in Eldon, Iowa. While this painting is one of the most recognized images of the 20th Century, it is not a representation of agriculture either then or now.

What made the folks at the Indiana State Fair think that bringing this piece of art to the fair was going to make people understand the importance of agriculture, I cannot fathom. In fact, I would like to suggest this statue does more harm than good when it comes to helping consumers understand food, fiber, and fuel production today. Furthermore, it reinforces a stereotype of rural residents that is outdated and unrealistic.

Research recently conducted by the Center for Food Integrity revealed that one of the reasons many consumers are opposed to GMOs, CAFOs, and housing animals indoors is because they do not see that as farming. Most consumers picture a farmer in bib overalls riding on a small tractor across his 50 acre farm. They see him milking cows by hand and his wife throwing grain on the ground to chickens that scamper around a barnyard. So when they see images of large confinement operations or 2000 acre fields with a large GPS guided combine harvesting a crop, they think, “That isn’t farming.”

One of the recommendations of the Food Integrity research was that we need to make agriculture more transparent. We need to let people see what we do. This way they will begin to trust what we do. The American Gothic image is not what we need.

I am not the first person to complain about the misrepresentation the image gives to agriculture and rural life. When photos of the painting were published in 1930 in Iowa newspapers, Iowans were furious at their depiction as “pinched, grim-faced, puritanical Bible-thumpers.” One farmwife threatened to bite Wood‘s ear off. The opening ceremonies of the fair are scheduled to be held in front of this thing. That will guarantee lots of TV coverage and lots of newspaper photos. If the fair had really wanted to show the important role agriculture plays in the lives of Hoosiers, in keeping with the theme of the year they should have bought in a 25 foot piggy bank. That is the message we want to send to Hoosier consumers: that not only do farmers feed and fuel us, they create jobs and pump billions of dollars into the economy. In uncertain economic times with high unemployment, that would be a much timelier message than an image from the last great depression.

The Indiana Hardwood Lumbermen’s Association will again be actively involved in the Indiana State Fair, which begins Friday. IHLA is excited for fairgoers to see the brand new Boy Scouts of America Bridge. The groupcoordinated the donation of all of the Indiana hardwood lumber used to construct the bridge, and Ray Moistner, Executive Director of IHLA, loves the results, “thanks to the coming together of a lot of people. It’s just an absolutely beautiful bridge, and it well serve as a lasting dedication to the Boy Scouts and another great example of premium Indiana hardwoods.”

The 71-foot long bridge commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts and marks the new, year-round gathering site for Scout Groups.  The dedication of the bridge will take place north of the Speed Barns on August 15th at 2 p.m.

IHLA will again be promoting Premium Indiana Forest Products and the indianawoodisgood.com website at their Pioneer Our Land Pavilion booth, and they are also a participant in the Habitat for Humanity Ag House Build.

Moistner said, “You know there are some things you do for yourselves and some things you do for the benefit of other organizations, but I don’t think that anything that we’ve been involved in as a group has been more fulfilling than our work here this year than our work building the house for Tamika Allen and her family out there at the fairgrounds. The neat thing about that is it’s not just hardwoods. It’s all of agriculture coming together to do this.”

Indiana’s hardwood industry is the state’s largest agricultural industry. Moistner said the membership has taken a bit of a hit from the current economic state of affairs. What they would like to see is a real life stimulus in the form of consumers taking advantage of low interest rates to help get housing back on its feet. He said the industry looks forward to a time when hardwood production levels can return to 2006/07 levels.

Listen to the Moistner interview here:

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Training at Purdue University for the third Indiana National Guard agribusiness development team is wrapping up Friday. The team will deploy to Afghanistan in October and will work as the equivalent of extension agents in the country for nearly a year.

The educational liaison for the team is the superintendent of Monroe Central School Corporation, Major Shane Robbins. He told HAT, “The very base foundation of what we’re trying to accomplish is we’re trying to assist the Afghans with becoming more efficient with their agricultural practices so that they can hopefully build a little better economy for themselves and be become more self sustaining, therefore gaining some independence in how they operated and maneuver in their own country.”

Listen to the full interview and learn more about Robbins and the team:

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Keith Berry is a former president of both Indiana Pork (1996) and the National Pork Producers Council (2004.) The Greencastle producer joined the ag trade mission to China early this month and told HAT the country holds a tremendous opportunity for the U.S. as long as their government doesn’t repeat actions of the Japanese government by trying “to be self sufficient in food when they don’t have the land mass to be self sufficient in food. There were 400 million people leave the farm within the last ten years, and it will be another 400 million people move to the city and get manufacturing jobs in the next ten years. So that’s a huge labor force that they’re losing on the farm to be able to produce food. Yes they will get more mechanized and they will utilize technology to produce food. Will they ever be self sufficient in food? I truly doubt it.”

During the China trip Berry met with a meat importer who is already doing what Berry expects to see much more of. “She’s importing 30 to 40 containers of product, meats, per month, which is not a huge operation but it’s the beginning of the Chinese food industry. I call her the real people of China because she understands the concept of where the Chinese people are going to be fed; a lot of it is going to be imported into China.

Listen to all of Berry’s observations here:

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Berry is pictured with Amanda Larkin, Executive Director of Larkin Trade Consultants based in Beijing.

This blog post from the 2010 China Ag Trade Mission is sponsored by Indiana Hardwood Lumbermen’s Association, Indiana Pork, and Ice Miller LLP. The original post date is June 14, 2010.

Warning: Portions of the following posting may make your mouth water….

Since our China trip centered on agriculture it makes sense to reflect on what it took to feed our delegation during our trip as well as what it’s going to take to feed future generations of Chinese people.

Each day started with breakfast at our hotel – served buffet style.  Since travelers from around the globe were dining in these same hotels, the buffets truly were international.  From American to Mediterranean to Asian offerings, one could enjoy bacon, eggs and ham, grilled vegetables, cheeses and yogurts, and sushi, poached fish, dim sum and miso soup, all before 8:00 A.M.  Fresh fruits and juices – watermelon and carrot were my favorites – were available as were a variety of pastries and breads.  Tea, of course, was served, brewed in pots with strainers, not in bags.  Coffee was offered  - although the java was not nearly as strong as in the U.S.; for that option one only needed to cross the street to find one of China’s numerous Starbucks.

We were welcomed at numerous meals – both at lunch and dinner – by officials and trip sponsors.  These “banquets” were delectable affairs, allowing the Chinese to showcase their wide-ranging cuisine and attention to detail.  Seated at round tables fitted with a large lazy-susan centerpiece and holding as many as 20 people, members of our delegation and our hosts enjoyed course after course of traditional dishes, typically self-served “home style” from the lazy-susan.  A typical banquet featured 10-12 such courses and ran the gamut from cold appetizer plates to cups of soups to platters of  entrees and vegetables.  I tried everything offered, including duck tongue – it’s tough and tastes like duck!  Each meal included dishes featuring fish, pork, poultry and beef.  Although rice dishes typically were served at each banquet they did not dominate the menu.  Dessert courses consisted mainly of small¸ sweet cakes and large platters of fresh fruit.  A papaya hollowed out and filled with a glutinous filling was a pretty unusual dessert.  Using chopsticks aided portion control;  I never left a banquet table hungry.  In spite of the number of courses, the banquets were finished in under two hours.

Our schedule kept us from venturing too far into the streets of Hangzhou and Beijing to experience food sold by street vendors, although we did happen upon a block of stands on a side street next to our hotel in Hangzhou.  These vendors offered typical street items – beef, pork and chicken on skewers – but the most interesting choices in the stalls featured tanks filled with live fish, seafood, eels and scorpions.  We passed.

In between meals our days were filled with meetings having to do with getting Indiana products to China or how to partner Indiana companies and universities with research institutions to help China grow more of its own food to help feed its 1.3 billion people.  We visited dairy and pork farms on the outskirts of Beijing and learned about the production obstacles their workers face, some of it centered around needing better equipment and better food supply for pork, beef and poultry products.  At several of these meetings we proudly were offered fruits and vegetables and dairy products including yogurt and ice cream.

It seems as though Indiana and regions of China are poised to partner to bring quality products to a country that will see the population of its rural communities moving to urban areas in mind-boggling numbers, leaving small farmers without markets for their crops and challenging the infrastructure and basic daily needs of the new urbanites who must be absorbed by cities already bursting at their seams.

Our farewell dinner in Beijing featured a trip to a restaurant known for serving one of China’s delicacies, Peking Duck.  We were accompanied there by a young Hoosier, who is studying to be a chef in Beijing, having arrived not long ago with little command of the language and a giant desire to make it in the kitchens of China’s third largest city.  He arranged for us to visit the roasting room, where the ducks are carefully prepared, and then took us to the kitchens to watch the legions of cooks who turned out delicious fare for our delegation – braised pork, marinated beef, kung pao chicken and whole fish.  The crowning entrée – a succulent duck presented with all the “fixins’” reminded us how flat our world really is:  Indiana is the largest producer of ducks sold to China!

So, if reading this column (most of it, anyway!) made you hungry, thank yours truly.

If you’re not hungry because you’ve just finished yet another meal made from food that is affordable, nutritious, safe and delicious, thank a Hoosier farmer.

Last Wednesday Purdue University’s Chuck Hibberd, Director of Extension and Associate Dean of Agriculture, recorded his second and final audio blog with HAT, highlighting some of the China agriculture trade mission visits. During the second week of the mission there was a briefing at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing along with visits to the China Animal Agriculture Association, a meat importer, Syngenta’s R & D facility, and China Agricultural University. Dr. Hibberd describes the visits and facilities and adds some final thoughts on the trade mission.

Listen here:

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Sometimes you never appreciate what you have until you’re halfway around the world.

In Indiana we have been blessed to have leaders who have moved our state forward during tough times, and who knew our state needed to reach far beyond its borders to grow the Hoosier economy.

Our delegation had the chance to honor two former governors during our stay in Hangzhou. On Friday evening, following the Indiana Banquet Lt Gov Skillman hosted for Hangzhou officials, we visited the site of a sculpture Governor Frank O’Bannon presented to officials during a trade mission to Hangzhou in the early 90’s.  The “Spirit of Man” sculpture is made of fine Indiana limestone and was a reminder to  us of Governor O’Bannon’s leadership

Prior to departing Hangzhou for Beijing, we began our weekend the next morning with a boat ride on the lovely West Lake and a brief trip to the Hangzhou Zoo. Families and tourists alike were taking boat rides on the Lake, while on the road surrounding the water people were enjoying their morning walks and flying kites.

After the boat ride we stopped for a delegation photo and headed to the Hangzhou Zoo. Our destination:  a statue presented as a gift to the Zoo by our own Governor Bob Orr 23 years ago to salute the sister province relationship between Indiana and Zhejiang that still exists today.

The statue of a proud Indiana bison, made of Bedford (Lt Gov Skillman’s hometown) limestone, is a very popular feature of the Zoo, and several local children joined us for another delegation photo as we crowded around the beast.

As we departed the statue for a quick peak at the Zoo’s Giant Pandas, a darling local girl about 4 years old, who had been hoisted atop the bison, turned and smiled for our cameras and flashed us the peace sign to send us on our way.

With our time in Hangzhou drawing to a close it was time to reflect on the relationships renewed and new key contacts made, including the important MOU signed by the Lt Governor during the first part of our China trip.  The opportunities presented to us no doubt were made possible not only by previous administrations but have been prioritized to a whole new level by Governor Daniels and Lt Gov Skillman through their focus on Asia and its vast markets for agriculture, trade and economic development import and export opportunities.