“The pen is mightier than the sword” is a metonymic adage coined by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839 for his play Richelieu.

This one line has become more famous than the play because it is so true. Especially in today’s media saturated society, the pen or the sound bite wields extraordinary power.

In the past few decades, extreme attention has been paid to certain words and the connotation they have. Many of the hymns in my church’s hymnal have been re-written because one word carried a gender bias, at least according to some. Careers have been destroyed by the slip of one word.

Fear of using the wrong word has become so pervasive that extensive research or even focus group testing is done to gauge people’s reaction to a word before it is used in a speech, movie or advertisement.

Recently, delegates to the Indiana Farm Bureau policy resolutions meeting spent a considerable amount of time arguing over the right word to use.

So, what do we want to be called: farmers or producers? When the Washington Post prints a headline such as Rich Farmers get Millions in Farm Subsidies, we are not so keen to be called farmers. When HSUS calls our farms “factory farms,” we suddenly want to be called family farms.

Yet, when people think all farms are run by uneducated rednecks, we want to explain that our operations are modern production facilities. So, in the interest of political correctness, I would suggest we start calling farmers “bio-entrepreneurs.”

The “bio” denotes our involvement in the plant and animal life cycles, and the “entrepreneur” denotes that we are independent business entities taking risks that big corporations would never consider.

So, what is it that some bio-entrepreneurs produce: hogs or swine?
IFB delegates spent about 20 minutes debating this one. Swine had less negative connotations than hogs - that is until swine flu. Now raising swine has people worried about catching the virus, even though swine are not the cause of H1N1.

So to eliminate any disease concerns and minimize any animal welfare baggage, let’s call pigs “pork producing entities.” So a pork producer is now a “bio-entrepreneur managing pork producing entities.”

CAFO has been a word in the headlines. It stands for Confined Animal Feeding Operation. Those opposed to these facilities have vilified the term so that a new phrase has emerged: Sheltered Feeding Facilities. I would like to take this one step further and call them “Pampered Production Locations.”

Let’s face it; these animals live in climate-controlled comfort with catered meals and universal health care. Sounds pampered to me. During a policy discussion on when a landowner can shoot predators that come onto his property, the word predator became a stumbling block.

Many creatures that are predators are also protected species, and they cannot be shot. While I know lawmakers like to use lots of fancy words they learned in law school, I would suggest the law should say that landowners can shoot any “varmit” that comes onto their property.

The Urban Dictionary defines a “varmit” as “An awnry/ornery, pesky/pesty, grouchy, cantankerous, belligerent, tetchy, argumentative, crabby, unreasonable, or bad-tempered creature.” That should cover deer eating your corn or your neighbor’s dogs killing your chickens.

While it will be difficult, I am sure in time we will be able to work some of these phrases into our vocabulary. In a few years, Farm Bureau will change its name to the “Bio-entrepreneurs Guild.”
The Swine Barn at the State Fair will be named the “Pork Producing Entity Showcase.”

New names will not change everything, the EPA will still be releasing new “Pampered Production Location” regulations and sending out those state and federal “varmints” to check on compliance.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions for Gary Truitt may write to him in care of this publication.