Hoosier Ag Today
By Gary Truitt

In just a matter of days, the Indiana State Fair will open its gates and hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers will pour into the fairground eager to see the animals, ride the rides and eat the fair food.

Continuing a tradition started four years ago, the fair has chosen pigs as the theme of the fair. Corn, hardwoods, and tomatoes have also shared the spotlight. Indiana pork producers are hopeful that the year of pigs will not only give Hoosiers a hankering for pork but may help them understand the pork industry and the contribution it makes to the Indiana economy a little better. However, the decision by the State Fair to bring in a statue may undermine efforts to improve the image of agriculture.

A 25-foot statue has been placed just outside the 4-H complex on the northwest corner of the fairgrounds. The traveling sculpture was inspired by Grant Wood’s famous 1930 American Gothic painting. J. Seward Johnson gave his God Bless America work to the Sculpture Foundation, a private, California-based organization that has displayed it in several cities.

And, what is the point of having this at the Indiana State Fair? According to fair publicity director Andy Klotz, “It will remind visitors of the importance of agriculture in Indiana.”

Oh, please - give me a break.

The American Gothic image gets trotted out every time someone wants to depict agriculture or rural life. The truth is that this image has nothing to do with agriculture or rural life. The man and woman in the original were not farmers or even husband and wife. They were a dentist and his sister.

The artist chose these figures and the setting to represent a rural reality in 1930. In fact, he was not trying to represent agriculture but instead architecture. Wood, an American painter with European training, noticed a small white house built in the Carpenter Gothic architectural style in Eldon, Iowa.

While this painting is one of the most recognized images of the 20th Century, it is not a representation of agriculture either then or now.

What made the folks at the Indiana State Fair think that bringing this piece of art to the fair was going to make people understand the importance of agriculture, I cannot fathom. In fact, I would like to suggest this statue does more harm than good when it comes to helping consumers understand food, fiber and fuel production today. Furthermore, it reinforces a stereotype of rural residents that is outdated and unrealistic.

Research recently conducted by the Center for Food Integrity revealed that one of the reasons many consumers are opposed to GMOs, CAFOs and housing animals indoors is because they do not see that as farming. Most consumers picture a farmer in bib overalls riding on a small tractor across his 50-acre farm.

They see him milking cows by hand and his wife throwing grain on the ground to chickens that scamper around a barnyard.

So when they see images of large confinement operations or 2,000-acre fields with a large GPS-guided combine harvesting a crop, they think, “That isn’t farming.”

One of the recommendations of the Food Integrity research was that we need to make agriculture more transparent. We need to let people see what we do. This way they will begin to trust what we do. The American Gothic image is not what we need.

I am not the first person to complain about the misrepresentation the image gives to agriculture and rural life.

When photos of the painting were published in 1930 in Iowa newspapers, Iowans were furious at their depiction as “pinched, grim-faced, puritanical Bible-thumpers.” One farmwife threatened to bite Wood’s ear off.

The opening ceremonies of the fair are scheduled to be held in front of this thing. That will guarantee lots of TV coverage and lots of newspaper photos. If the fair had really wanted to show the important role agriculture plays in the lives of Hoosiers, in keeping with the theme of the year they should have brought in a 25-foot piggy bank.

That is the message we want to send to Hoosier consumers: that not only do farmers feed and fuel us, they create jobs and pump billions of dollars into the economy. In uncertain economic times with high unemployment, that would be a much timelier message than an image from the last Great Depression.

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