Analysis

By JOE BEACH

Capital Press

Last week the Capital Press ran a front page story by Washington correspondent Jerry Hagstrom entitled "Survey: Seed signs baffle many urbanites."

The story came from a speech and a subsequent interview with Mary Kay Thatcher, the American Farm Bureau's Washington lobbyist. In a speech to the Sugar Alliance International Sweetener Symposium, Thatcher said an Illinois Farm Bureau survey of 2,000 Chicagoans found that more than 50 percent of respondents think that farms are owned by corporations. Many reached that conclusion, according to Thatcher, because they assumed the seed signs displayed in front of farm fields throughout Illinois meant those seed companies own the farms.

It's a great story that illustrates the huge gulf between farmers and city people. It validates the fears every farmer has about the context urbanites draw upon when they flex their political muscle to influence policies that have big impacts on agriculture. It's the kind of story every editor knows will be devoured by readers and shared with friends and family who will have a good laugh at the expense of ill-informed city folk.

Unfortunately, it's also not true. At least it isn't true as it has now widely been reported.

John Hawkins, farm information Web editor for the Illinois Farm Bureau, said he had to do a quick Internet search to figure out what everyone was talking about when he began getting calls shortly after the story broke on ag news sites last week.

He wasn't aware of any research showing his upstate cousins widely equated seed signs with corporate ownership of individual farms.

By then Hagstrom's story was already getting pretty wide play. It was featured on regional news sites, and was being passed along and referenced through Twitter and other Internet social media. In short order, the seed sign story had reached near rural legend status.

At this point, the late radio personality Paul Harvey -- himself a proud Chicagoan and friend of agriculture -- would deliver "the rest of the story."

The Illinois Farm Bureau, in partnership with other ag organizations in the state, is involved in a farm image campaign. Similar to efforts in the Northwest, the campaign is trying to educate non-farmers in the Land of Lincoln about the realities of modern agriculture.

Part of that outreach included a series of focus groups and one-on-one interviews designed to gauge urban and suburban attitudes about Illinois agriculture. A survey of around 1,100 Chicago-area residents followed.

One of the things that came out is that the attitudes of city people are formed, at least in part, by what they observe when driving past farms along the highway. Pressed to explain what he had gleaned from his drive-by inspections, one respondent said that seed signs are an indication of corporate ownership.

The theory is out there, but it was only expressed by one person, Hawkins said.

The Illinois survey did show that 55 percent of respondents think most farmland is corporate owned. The USDA says less than 5 percent of farmland is corporate owned.

Findings from the focus groups, interviews and the survey were discussed at a recent campaign meeting. Hawkins said the seed sign story was relayed during an informal after-session discussion between an Illinois Farm Bureau staffer and someone in the American Farm Bureau Federation's Washington office.

Hawkins compared what happened next to "telephone," the game many of us played as children. As it was told and retold, the story changed and grew. By the time Thatcher gave her speech, one guy's opinion had become the majority view.

The IFB and its partners plan a press conference at the Illinois State Fair to discuss the survey results. Hawkins, with detectable chagrin, said he expects to field a lot of questions about the seed sign story. Too bad, because it would have been a good story if it were true.

It is true that many Americans, often two or more generations removed from the farm, are out of touch with modern agriculture. Some are affected by an extreme sense of nostalgia, but many are influenced by misperceptions spread by the popular press and the Internet.

Last week, to everyone's embarrassment, modern agriculture became a bit more out of touch with many non-farm Americans by the same means.