Farmers are the 1 percent we need

Agriculture in Hawaii is under attack.

At a time when our interest in food is extremely high, some people are choosing to demonize farmers and ranchers.

Agricultural producers make up about 1 percent of the population while producing nearly all of the food. So unless the other 99 percent of us are willing and able to toil in the soil, common sense requires that we respect and appreciate those who work to grow food for the rest of us.

Over time we have engineered our world for efficiency and convenience. This is the nature of humanity. Since we picked up our first tools, throughout the invention of the hammer, the wheel, harnessing electricity, mastering ground, air and ocean travel, and the advent of the digital age, we have changed our world to suit us, often to the limits of our technology. It’s who we are. And we are part of the natural world.

Historically, families were bound to the farm because it was required for survival. Today we are free to choose among a vast array of career paths and lifestyle choices. This is possible because there is a farmer somewhere growing your food. And they are doing it with less land and less water and more efficiently than at any point in our history.

Modern air and ocean transportation move species around the world faster than Mother Nature intended. She cannot adapt quickly enough to balance introduced pests and diseases. Modern problems require modern solutions. Despite advancements that make our lives healthier, safer and more comfortable, some would like for us to return to a utopian place in history that never existed. If it was so great then, why did we progress here? Because humanity did what it does best: evolve, adapt and innovate.

The ongoing debate about GMO (genetically modified organism) and pesticide use is important because it represents an opportunity to showcase farmers and ranchers and how they produce our agricultural bounty. Agricultural policy is best when rooted in science, verifiable facts and tempered with experience, not when blown by political winds.

Our food system is among the safest in the world. It’s federally regulated by the EPA, FDA and USDA, locally by Hawaii’s departments of Agriculture and Health, and globally by the marketplace. This system has evolved over millennia to its current, highly functioning state. Piling more regulations on farmers and ranchers stokes uncertainty, increases risk and suffocates investment in agriculture. Would-be farmers and ranchers will choose other careers. This is bad news for everyone.

Because of modern advances in crop production, our food is relatively inexpensive; on average only 10 percent of our paychecks. Rejecting tools and technologies that help farmers will increase food costs. Low food costs allow you to allocate more of your budget toward everything else in your life.

For some, it has become fashionable to be anti-business, anti-modern agriculture. They cite science to support one crisis, and ignore it while conjuring another. We need to walk the talk. We must respect centuries of improvements in tools and methods researched, developed and tested by agriculturalists across the ages.

Farmers will produce food if they can feed their families, pay their bills and send their kids to college. They fulfill their lives while fueling yours. While activists lurch between the crises and cause du jour, the real heroes — today’s farmers and ranchers — put on their boots, saddle up or climb their tractors and soldier on as real, true heroes; to provide you with safe, nutritious and reasonably priced food so you can be free to pursue your individual freedoms.