Recently, I attended a rural-urban picnic that has been in existence for more than 50 years. A neighborhood farmer, Richard Godfrey, invites several businessmen, area farmers, a couple of service clubs and local elected officials to his farm for a meal and great fellowship.

The idea of the picnic is for both groups, rural and urban, to visit with each other – and, moreover, for the ag industry to enjoy some time in the spotlight.

Floating from table to table, you’ll find a plethora of politicians shaking hands and bellied up to the buffet line to enjoy a special home cooked meal, especially during an election year. They are all given podium time, but Richard runs a tight ship and I think this year he must have had shock collars on all of them because none exceeded their allotted time.

The headlining speaker of the event is usually some bigwig or someone who is running for an influential office of government. One year he had the president of Michigan State University, and one year former governor John Engler spent an evening on the farm.

This year the speaker was Mike Cox, the attorney general of Michigan, who is running for governor in 2010.

In my official capacity as a member of the media, I intended to grill the government officials. The lone Democrat in the bunch sent his assistants, as he was in Washington, D.C., for a vote.
I made a beeline for his three groupies and my first question was about HSUS. They had no clue who the Humane Society of the United States was and, like most, they affiliated them with the local animal shelter. I clued them in.

I began my spiel about HSUS. I was on a roll, the passion for the animal ag industry was pouring out of me and I was at the pinnacle of my “Never, ever, ever, ever side with HSUS” speech – when all of a sudden I could tell they were disinterested in my soapbox stance and wanted to prove they were not all that uninformed about agriculture.

So, they changed the subject to something they thought they knew something about. The woman representative told me that as a farmer I was doing a great job producing a wholesome product, but it was too bad the processors do such a bad job and ruin the food the farmers produce.

I said to myself, Okay Martha Stewart, you asked for it, and I replied by telling her that the United States produces the highest quality, highest quantity, cheapest food in the world. In addition, we have the safest food supply and the American farmer produces that food more efficiently than anyone else, thanks to research and technology.

With that, she looked for someone else to talk to and was relieved when the host called everyone’s attention to the approaching color guard. It was time to sing the National Anthem and say the Pledge of Allegiance. I thanked her for listening to me, took her name down and searched for the next politician.

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 Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.