Greetings from Grand Rapids, Mich. I’m attending and speaking at the 2009 Great Lakes Regional Dairy Conference, a conference that has been serving the needs of dairy producers since 2003. The conference center is packed with producers who are seeking solutions to the rising challenges facing them in 2009. I’m happy to be a part of the equation, and I hope I bring some fresh ideas to the table over the next couple of days.

Today, my speech was titled, “CSI: Activist Chants, Mythical Media and Confused Consumers.” I spoke to the farm partners about how these three groups will cause us to change our production practices in the future. I shared stories, and I challenged them to take an active role by serving as dairy advocates. I told them that I understand that the daily worries of food production: paying the feed bill, maintaining low input costs, getting the heifers bred, fighting the poor markets and battling winter storms, were much BIGGER issues on an everyday basis than worrying about animal rights groups, the falsified information in the media and the disconnect between pasture and plate. However, I told the group that these weren’t problems we could ignore, and I dared them to do more about it on a daily basis.

By the way, I’m thinking about starting a support group on this very idea. It will be called the Food Mafia, and it will be tailor-made for people that truly care about the integrity and the future of food production. Members of the Food Mafia would actively work together to discover exciting and original ways to share the food production story with the world. So, how about it? Do you want to be the pilot members? How could we market this to the appropriate audience? Let me know what you think?