U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance once again brought up a hot topic in the agriculture and food industry for experts and industry leaders to discuss. Farm size was the topic for last week’s Boston Food Dialogues. And the man with maybe the toughest job for the day was Alan Bjerga, who’s role was moderator.
Alan is the author of “Endless Appetites: How the Commodities Casino Creates Hunger and Unrest” and agriculture policy reporter for Bloomberg News. After the dialogues concluded, Chuck picked his brain and asked for his insights into the farm size conversation.
“What’s striking is to take a look at how people with different perspectives on agriculture are all grasping towards solutions for the same problems. Where you see agriculture often depends on where you sit on both the value chain and nationwide. There are a lot of different structures to agriculture and agricultural operations within this country and as you see this evolution in consumer takes and marketplace demands everybody is coming at these problems from a different direction. Having a chance to get these different people on a platform to discuss these areas doesn’t necessarily lead to a solution, but it lets people exchange ideas and learn different options and thoughts that are out there. And that’s a key step.”
Alan emphasized how food matters to people and is very personal. What American farmers do is going to continue to be important because we are the leading food producer and exporter. Alan stated that unless you talk with the parties that are affected, than how are we suppose to understand there their concerns.
Listen to Chuck’s interview with Alan here: Interview with Alan Bjerga