Better engagement would mean better outcome for Utah farmers

By Brice Wallace

“Connect” was the theme of the recent Utah Farm Bureau Federation convention, and the event’s general session featured several calls for better engagement.

Leaders of the federation, the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food and the Utah Department of Natural Resources (DNR) stressed that communication among those agencies, and with federal and state lawmakers and others, can be better and could lead to improved outcomes for Utah’s farmers and ranchers.{mprestriction ids="1,3"}

Regarding issues at the national level, Brian Steed, executive director of the DNR, told the crowd that “you guys are getting out-voiced by people who don’t have your best interests at heart” and called for better communication with members of Congress.

“Engage with them,” Steed said during the convention, held in Layton. “You all wear the white hats in the story of America. Everyone understands that agriculture is an extraordinary part of American history, but people are forgetting that it’s a very important part of the nation’s future, so please be engaged.”

That same approach also should happen at the state level, he said, noting that at one time, the majority of Utah state legislators attended the farm convention to be informed about issues important to farmers and ranchers. “That’s no longer the case,” he said.

As for the DNR, he said it does communicate well with the farm bureau and added that individuals should also contact him about issues.

“I can’t fix what I don’t know about. I can’t,” Steed said. “If you have an issue, I may not be able to fix it, but I can certainly try. And I can assure you that I won’t be able to do anything if I don’t know what’s going on, so that level of engagement is very, very helpful.”

Kerry Gibson, commissioner of the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, joined in the call for a better relationship with the DNR. “We cannot afford to make enemies out of our natural friends,” he said. “There are people out there in this whole kind of scheme of things that want us to not exist … that [think] they don’t need what we do, but they want us to not exist.

“We have to figure out how to work together,” he said of sportsmen and agricultural producers. “We have to be allies in this thing. We share more in common than we have as differences.”

Already, the two departments have made progress toward better communication, he said. “I am proud to say that today we’re talking in a positive way and are communicating in a way that is productive, even though we don’t agree on everything.”

Gibson stressed that “we do have to be louder” when spelling out the priorities important to farmers.

“We are being out-voiced, even in this state. It’s natural, because so many of us are so busy trying to make a living that we don’t have the time to advocate like we think we’d like to. We have to be loud in a respectful way, but we have to develop those skills that allow us to communicate with them and be more effective. I feel like we’re making progress but we have a lot to do,” he said.

Steed suggested a calm approach works better than one that is too aggressive.

“Going up and yelling and kicking people in the shins, it makes you feel a lot better, but it may not help the problem,” Steed said. “So approach it in a way that you’re going to win people over rather than turn people off.”

Gibson also said there is a gap between agricultural producers and consumers that has widened, and that communication can help close that gap.

“I think I’m starting to understand even more so that we’re not only an agricultural organization, but part of our mission and part of our goal is to help educate each and every person in the state of Utah to why agriculture is important to them, and it generally reflects back to the fact that they all like to eat food, they need to eat food. So it connects producers to consumers in a way that is very important.

“One of the challenges with that is that … that gap is further apart than it has ever been. People don’t understand why we as agriculture producers do what we do. They don’t really care.”

People on each side of the issues need to better understand the other, he said.

“I’m proud to be one of the people standing on the soapbox, trying to talk to our urban population about why agriculture is important to us in our daily lives,” Gibson said. “And frankly, I’m not going to rest until every man, woman and child in this state hears why you matter to them, because you matter to them whether they know it or not.”{/mprestriction}