“The greens aren’t large in numbers but they’re loud,” he said.
“They keep telling the story because we’ve been quiet. We have every right to be as loud as the greens but we haven’t exercised it enough. There’s a major success story to be told so get involved in the process.”
Loos, dressed in best cowboy attire, is based in Nebraska, but his radio show, Loos Tales, plays on 100 US stations. Fourteen years ago the self-described rancher who farms 100 cattle, 40 pigs, 70 meat goats and 40 horses, said he realised his fellow countrymen didn’t know enough about where their food came from.
“The problem is that too much of what they know isn’t so,” he said.
“If they’re not involved in land and livestock they don’t have a clue.”
Loss said a US butcher’s shop had recently had to stop hanging carcasses because of complaints from the public.
“They didn’t understand the first thing about the cycle of life,” he said.
“Everything lives, everything dies and death with purpose gives meaning to life.”
He described the cow as the original ethanol factory improving human lives and the planet. But milk consumption in the US had dropped from 45 gallons a person in 1945 to just eight gallons now. Consumption of cheese had also fallen as people reduced fat in their diet.
“But consumption of fat doesn’t make people fat,” he said.
Good fats came from animal fat so human nutrition had to be better explained to people who avoided these in their diet. US residents had the poorest bone health ever “because they’re drinking more soda than milk”.
Loos said while everyone loves the farmer, they often thought about how farming used to be, with these romantic legends not meaning anything unless they told a story.
Many urban people got their idea of what happened onfarm by googling the word farming and being led to websites about factory farming.
“The images aren’t pretty,” he said.
“They should get images of the most important thing about farming – people.”
Many people who had no connection to agriculture wanted to define sustainability which Loos said was “a family producing more with less”.
Animal welfare was very simple.
“It’s allowing an animal to do what it does naturally.”
True experts needed to step up to the plate, as a cottage industry had developed around a negative story about agriculture. Much of this came from not understanding basic science.
Loss said not only did farmers need to be good listeners when they heard these views expressed, “when you hear a person misspeak, put them right”.
“The erosion between food producers and consumers can work its way closer but it can only be accomplished one day at a time.”
