I was in the grocery store last night and just happened to find myself in the cracker isle when a box caught my eye. It was the new branding for Triscuits. What struck me was that NabiscoWorld is now promoting “home gardening” on the box. When you look at the back of the box there are instructions on how to plant your own garden as well as some seed. On this package it was dill but there are four different packages with four different seeds.

What initially upset me was not so much that NabiscoWorld is promoting growing your own garden. What upset me is that there are so many companies and organizations engaging in campaigns against production farming. Ironically, at the same time, there are companies and organizations trying to end organic farming as well, such as the Grocery Manufacturing Association, because organic farming is cutting into their profits.

What alarms me with these organized smear campaigns is that not only does all type of farming have its place – your own garden, organic gardening or production farming–but that you’re being giving a pack of lies on all sides to get you to quit eating a carrot that wasn’t (or was) organically grown. If you eat organic, you’ll die because the food supply isn’t safe; if you eat a carrot commercially produced, you’ll die because of the pesticides used in the growing process.

I believe in choice. Each person should have the choice to eat food that is grown in a way that corresponds to his or her own belief system. However, what I don’t believe in, is how people are vilifying production farmers for the safe food they produce to feed us here in America and around the world. And maybe most amazing is that each year they do this on less land with less inputs.

The real issue that consumers should be concerned about is how America is going to take the lead to feed more than 9 billion people between 2040-2050. If you end production farming as we know it, then you remove the only viable way to feed to world in the future. So let’s quit bickering and rally to support ALL American farmers.