Many people love the latest gadgets and techno-goodies:  smart phones, robot vacuum cleaners, internet-linked DVD players, cars with cameras in the back, and of course, the ubiquitous IPod.  When six year olds send emails to their 66 year-old grandparents (and when Twitter and YouTube are used to document protests in an otherwise repressed and repressive Iran), you know the times have changed and a new normal has been established.

Isn’t it remarkable, then, that so many, or at least such a vocal group, of activists object to letting farmers use the latest technologies.  And no, I’m not talking about IPhones and GPS-targeted fertilizer application, but technologies that improve the efficiency of meat and milk production. 

The latest salvo in this anti-progress campaign has been launched, in coordinated fashion, by various pressure groups opposed to the use of antibiotics in livestock.  The Pew Commission on Human Health and Industrial Farming has a series of poster-sized ads up in the Washington area, targeting lawmakers and their staffs about the supposed ills of antimicrobials on farms. 

But of course, they say the problems aren’t with “farms,” as long as you farm like Old McDonald:  “here a pig, here a chick, here a cow.”  No, the problem is “industrial farms,” the ones not designed to accommodate a menagerie of anthropomorphized critters.  Never mind that any systemic use of livestock these days, even by technophobic Amish standards, basically qualifies as industrial farming, i.e. it’s a system designed to provide optimal care and maximal output of the animal’s potential.

Toward that end, some farms use some forms of pharmaceuticals that either prevent disease, or treat it.  In dairy, most of the use of antibiotics is to treat active infections, or the use of dry cow treatments that help prevent the recurrence of mastitis.  In other livestock sectors, antimicrobials are used to improve feed efficiencies.  It’s clear that these products reduce the environmental impact of food production, and benefit consumers with more affordable products.

The critics point to the spread of diseases like MRSA, and suggest that these bugs are the bastard lovechild of factory farming addicted to drugs.  There’s scant evidence of that, of course, but it makes for good headlines and compelling posters.

Like any other form of technology, products that treat and defend against disease are simply tools, that can either be used responsibility, or not.  The profligate and irresponsible use of any drug is not defensible, but neither is opposing the responsible use of approved products that have discernible benefits to people. 

Much of the gist of the claims by the anti-Pharm crowd has much less to do with medical science, and much more to do with social scientists trying to find new ways to regulate farming, food marketing, and the environment.  The anti- antibiotic campaign is just one more arrow in the quiver, but it’s not the only one, or the last one.

We’ve seen an eruption of marketing claims recently by companies that eschew the use of antibiotics and related products (although as I mentioned in one of my favorite posts from last year, such claims aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be).  Consumers will decide what foods they prefer, and the market will provide them.  But food marketing companies that use sophisticated technologies to track and market their products ought to be careful about denying otherwise useful tools to the farmers that supply those companies.

I had the opportunity earlier this week to participate in an exercise the pork industry does annually to forecast the challenges and opportunities that swine producers will face in the future.

Coordinated by the National Pork Board, the Informed Futurists Panel is a 24-hour meeting where a variety of people from other livestock sectors (which is why I was there), and others engaged in the production, processing and retailing components of the pork value chain, sit down to assess the future direction of hog production and the variety of factors influencing it.

The ironic part was that most of the issues, both from a challenge and an opportunity perspective, could easily have been the main topic of discussion at a dairy pow-wow.

The big concern right now is price:  farm-level hog prices are too low, inputs are too high, exports have taken a hit, and a year-long bath in red ink is going to cause a major reduction in the number of pork farms (Smithfield Foods itself just raised this issue).  In dairy we’re talking a 3% imbalance between supply and demand; in pork, it’s closer to 10%.

While the H1N1 flu has hurt pork sales and created some export roadblocks, my takeaway is that the larger issue for pork sales is the global recession, which is affecting demand domestically and globally for meat.  The same thing happened with dairy exports, and domestic dairy demand last year.  And the “new normal” of $4 corn, $13 soybeans, and $75 to $150 oil only deepens the wound.

The other big challenge that most of the porcine forecasters agreed on is that public concern about animal welfare, and pressure on legislators to do something about it, is only going to intensify.  While dairy is dealing with tail docking (and to a greater extent, though it’s not really a dairy issue, with veal crates), the pork guys have gestation stalls in the cross hairs.  We’re all on playing defense, and we’re not going to get the ball back anytime soon, it appears.  All livestock farmers are facing the loss of the freedom to operate in ways that farms and ranches have done in the past.  We face a new era of accountability and transparency, and have devised programs like Pork Quality Assurance and the National Dairy FARM not just to talk the talk, but also to walk the walk in terms of credibility and concrete actions to promote the health of farm animals, be they pigs or cows.

And one other topic of conversation in the hallways was the pork industry’s nascent Producer Retirement Program, wherein members of a new organization can contribute funds to help buy out the sow breeding capacity of other members.  This program is modeled after the dairy Cooperatives Working Together program (just as the potato industry has also done).  For all its critics, CWT has served as a model for how farmers, regardless of the commodity, can work together to do something about supply at times when prices drop.  It’s important not to lose sight of what everyone else in agriculture is doing, needs to do, and can do with you.

Even though President Obama has postponed the immigration summit meeting initially scheduled for next week, he and the rest of Congress know they’ve got to make some progress soon on one of the most pressing domestic policy challenges they – and the nation – face.

So it was good timing this week that NMPF unveiled an economic study a year in the making, outlining the labor and hiring practices on dairy farms across the country.  The bottom line: absent sane labor policies, including rational reform of our immigration laws, the jobs of not just foreign laborers, but of American-born workers as well, are at grave risk.

The survey was conducted by the Texas AgriLife Research center, a component of Texas A&M University.  You can download a copy of the survey here.

The analysis found that contrary to the notion that dairies pay piddling, under the table wages, they actually pay above-minimum wage rates, around $10/hr.  And when you factor in the series of common benefits (housing, food, transportation, insurance) that go with the base salary, our dairy workers average around $31k per year.  Not a huge amount, but not slave wages, either.

The real issue, though, is that farms all across the country employ immigrant workers.  Of the 138,000 full-time equivalent workers that were estimated to work on dairies in 2008, 57,000 – or 41% - were foreigners.  And if farms didn’t have those workers, those farms, and the everyone who depends economically on those farms, would be in jeopardy. 

So the question isn’t can we, or should we, purge every suspected illegal alien from working in the food business.  That was never a realistic possibility, if only for the logistical impossibility of sending 10 million people back to wherever they came from.  No, the real question is would we further damage our economy in the process of this kind of a pyrrhic, punitive purge.

I’ve heard many stories from dairy farmers about the difficulties of hiring dependable workers, and invariably, the story is the same:  I couldn't get the cows milked if I had to rely solely on the native-born local workforce.  It’s no secret the dairy farming is hard work – I blogged earlier this year about it being the second-hardest job in America.

Because of the perennial, all-weather nature of farming, many Americans don’t want to do it, even if they have to work for less money elsewhere.  But the work needs to be done by those who still want to work hard.  And if we get rid of them, a whole bunch of jobs tied to farming, from feed, to veterinary, to transportation, to processing…those jobs go away, too.  Such are the stakes when the White House does decide how to proceed with answering the question of how can we economically, legally and morally address the imbalance between the demand for the jobs we have, with the supply of workers we have…or don’t.