The following article was sent to me by a friend. Tarah, can you put this on
Iowa Topics?
 
Wally Taylor
 
This fall, Monsanto and the American Farm Bureau Federation (with additional
funding from the American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers
Association, National Cotton Council, United Soybean Board and U.S. Grains
Council) have teamed up to produce a piece of propaganda designed to
whitewash the true story of industrial agribusiness in the United States.  
 
America's Heartland is a weekly television series that these shills of
industrial agriculture intend to offer to more than 300 public television
stations for airing in September.  The 20 half-hour episodes claim to help
"raise awareness of the significant contribution American agriculture makes
to the quality of life here and abroad."  However, the failure to include
any group representing America's traditional family farmers raises
suspicions that the series is nothing more than a public relations ploy by
corporate agriculture interests. 
 
We have drafted a letter (below) to alert public television station managers
to the bias behind this rogue gallery of corporate players presuming to
represent the state of agriculture in rural America.  It is critical that
those who make programming decisions for America's public television
stations understand that there is another, more destructive side to
industrial agriculture.  
 
Please join us in this effort by having your organization sign on to this
letter.  Also, pass it along to other organizations that might want to join
in.   A final letter, signed by all supporting groups, will be distributed
to every public television station manager in mid-July.
 
Please RSVP your support to Chris Cooper at GRACE (
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask])
 
Thank you!
 
GRACE (Global Resource Action Center for the Environment)
 
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<GreetingLine>



In the next few weeks you will be solicited to carry a television program
produced by KVIE Public Television entitled America's Heartland.  Contrary
to the producers' press release, this program is not a celebration of our
nation's agriculture.  Instead, it is a piece of bald-faced propaganda from
those who make their money from corporate agriculture - -the Monsanto
Company, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Soybean
Association, National Corn Growers Association, National Cotton Council,
United Soybean Board and U.S. Grains Council.

The destruction of America's rural communities and the disappearance of its
small farmers is an important story that needs to be told.  This story, one
of rural depopulation, dwindling economic opportunities, industrial levels
of pollution and their attendant health and social concerns, is the ugly
reality of the excesses that come from the unregulated large-scale
industrialized agricultural system promoted by corporate America. America's
Heartland is being produced to put a friendly face on the very forces that
are causing these problems.

Policies promoted by Monsanto and the American Farm Bureau, if successful,
will place the US food supply into the hands of a few major corporations.
This would devastate independent family farmers who will be priced out of
the market not because they can't compete, but because corporate farms are
specifically structured to capture government subsidies.

Lobbyists for corporate agriculture and the Farm Bureau use political
pressure to direct federal subsidies to corporate farms where a significant
part of these subsidies then flows directly to Monsanto from the purchase of
genetically modified seed and artificial hormones (to increase milk
production at mega dairies) that put small farmers out of business.  The
American Farm Bureau, which sells insurance, supports this strategy by
investing its assets in corporate agriculture while claiming for lobbying
purposes that its 5 million insurance policyholders are active Farm Bureau
members. (There are less than 2 million actual farmers in the US and many
don't belong to the Farm Bureau).

There is a growing backlash in both rural areas and urban and consumer
markets against the practices advocated by Monsanto, the Farm Bureau and the
owners of factory farms.  Shoppers are flocking to organic products in an
effort to escape the health consequences of the kind of agriculture these
groups promote.  Traditional family farmers are working to expose the
corporate whitewashing of industrial agriculture.  The program you are being
asked to show is an important part of a strategy to silence this backlash by
making American consumers think that corporate farming practices are
harmless and inevitable.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

We ask you to please make a fully informed decision about America's
Heartland and either not air it or, if you elect to show it, schedule it
alongside a program presenting the alternative point of view as you would
for any other piece of propaganda.  There is another side to this story and
the public deserves to hear it.


Sincerely,
[NAMES OF SIGNATORIES]
 


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