Help! how do you talk to your Waldorf 8th grader about "Food, Inc."?

[As I sat and tried to collect a few thoughts before writing this posting, I began to wonder whether there is something of Horace's "The City Mouse and The Country Mouse" underlying the American debate about food and agriculture].

Last week my 8th grade Waldorf educated daughter, Isabella, and her class sat through Food, Inc. As it's viewing did for so many adult audiences, the movie hit a nerve with her and her classmates. And, as I try to sift through her questions and emotional reaction to the questions raised by the book, I am forced to re-examine certain questions and decisions I have made myself.

I had spent the last year researching the emotional fall-out, and rising criticism that has pummeled the GMO movement (Monsanto in particular), the poultry, cattle, and hog industries. I thought I could sit with my 13 year old and learn a lot from that conversation.

Her first 3 remarks were along the lines of "I'm never eating chicken again" and "why does Monsanto fight with farmers" and "what if Monsanto has it wrong"?

I have written about how destructive the rhetoric and "the noise of the special-interest groups", calling for a return to civility, for using "words that work", and for creating metaphors that move us towards civility once again. My personal library has grown to include numerous studies about seeds, the climate, soil use, tillage practices, and the future. Every author has an answer or a gripe, or some combination of both.

Sadly, I do not have "the answer".

Perhaps there is not one, single answer. In fact, how could there be just one answer!?

I have come to realize, however, that the underlying complexity of safe food production and of how American Agriculture feeds, clothes, and supplies the world is not as widely understood as we Americans need. Moreover, i've also come to realize that this subject matter: feeding and clothing the world safely - will only grow in importance as the planet races to embrace 9 Billion people by 2050. We need to talk about food production and future without all the rancor that controlled the health care debate.

To begin to grasp the complexity of the questions surrounding food production, safety, and availability, I encourage everyone to adopt Peter Senge's view of systems (c.f., Fifth Discipline) so as to begin to understand that whatever changes we make in one area necessarily have an impact on another area of the system.

Tonight is Jamie Oliver night at my house: my daughters' choice of programming!

So : what did you tell your teenager after s/he saw Food Inc. ?

Did, in fact, s/he see it? Did it cause a visceral reaction?

an education challenge for all in agriculture

Like many of us, I am deeply bothered by the current public debate about food, food production and safety. The traditional, and newer "social" medias have taken this very, very complex issue and lumped together factoids about "feeding the world", "clean air", "global warming", "genetically modified crops", and the very sustainability of our planet. Doing so only made things worse and certainly more confusing for most listeners. A great deal of positioning; a good deal of shouting; not much listening and working together going on there, so far, in this public debate.

Agribusiness cannot allow itself to be dragged into a public brawl such as the one we've recently watched - and still are watching - about Health Care Reform and The Public Option.

These issues surrounding agribusiness and farmers, are among the most important topics of today because we all are involved in food and clothing and environmental issues. Yet, journalists such as Michael Pollan, Paul Roberts, and notable world citizens, such as Vandana Shiva, are inciting their audiences and special interest groups, mostly through fear and "adjustment" of the facts. In contrast to these divisive voices, Peter Senge, of Fifth Discipline fame, offers a much more tempered approach, deeper and more thoughtful and quite a bit more challenging to each of us in his newest book, The Necessary Revolution.

Crafting a sustainable solution - just to guide the public debate - can, and will, not result from singularly slanted, or otherwise distorted preaching. These interrelated problems can only be corrected through a creative learning process. Rather than creating an atmosphere in which a true long-lasting solution can be crafted, these activists see only one way: their own. Instead we need to work together. Education and communications will play a huge role in shaping the outcome for many of us. It will take hard work.

We lose all chance to shape the future, however, if we allow those outside agribusiness to shape the public debate or if we yell and/or complain about what they are doing.

We need to listen. We need to practice what Stephen Covey suggests: "seek first to understand, then to be understood". We also need to build a dictionary that guides this conversation and mutual learning. All of us need to shape the language and use words that work and metaphors that reach across the gap between sides, pulling them into our conversation.

Keep this truism on a Post-It: "...those who define the debate will determine the outcome" (c.f., Frank Luntz,What Americans really want ... really).

It's time to re-tell, or to tell anew, the story of farming, of how the world is fed and clothed - and what it will require when there are 9 Billion people on earth. It is time for us to educate the rest of the world about farming, agriculture, tillage practices, land and water conservation, seeds and chemicals. If we shape the conversation, without rancour and with a complete and easy-to-comprehend story, which helps reveal the truth in its complexity, everyone will come out ahead. Then we can move ahead proud of our stewardship and assured of a sustainable future. But remember, "It's not what you say; it's what they hear" that matters

If agribusiness addresses these same sometimes-difficult-and-admitedly- complex subjects through education and communication - the ones the extremists have distortedly made visible - so that our fellow citizens of the planet can help better understand the reality, the rancorous, drama can subside; constructive conversation, dialogue and trust can be built; and, we can craft a sustainable future together.

That future will renew the social contract. Then we can walk our talk proudly.

- old consultant adage, however: easy to say, harder to accomplish.