This Cattle Farmer Shares the Pain of Soybean Farmers
Imagine this: “Dumping #romaine today that was harvested Wednesday and had no association whatsoever with the current EColi #outbreak. Will the next fields get harvested? Wish we could have at least taken it to the #FoodBank. Almost $0.20/lb and 6 months of hard work invested.”
John Boelts, a good friend of mine from Yuma, Arizona, tweeted this the day after Thanksgiving, and it went viral. I wish it were fiction, but the sad truth is this is the second E. Coli outbreak in six months he’s had to weather as a leafy greens farmer. The first outbreak over the summer was in fact sourced back to the Yuma area. Luckily my friend had already wrapped up most of his lettuce harvest by the time that recall took effect. Many of his leafy-greens-growing peers across the country weren’t as fortunate.
As Thanksgiving was quickly approaching, consumers were alerted to a national recall of all romaine lettuce. Headlines read that 32 people across 11 states had become ill. The explanation for the all-encompassing reach was that the FDA had not yet isolated the source of the contamination as either aerobic or mechanical. Hence the broad scale of the recall, and the subsequent mass chaos and concern from consumers ahead of their Thanksgiving feasts. Meanwhile, John was harvesting and dumping his romaine by the 40,000-pound truckload. As the FDA and CDC were able to narrow the source, in turn some areas of the country such as California’s Imperial Valley, Florida and Yuma, Arizona were cleared to resume harvest.
I share this with you for two reasons. First, the actual chances of someone getting E. Coli in this sort of outbreak are incredibly slim. One acre of romaine lettuce produces approximately 350,000 servings. John has about 20-30 acres of romaine ready to harvest each week, which equates to nearly 9 million servings he harvests per week. Furthermore, the Yuma area alone produces 130 million servings of leafy greens each day. One has a better chance of winning the mega powerball drawing than getting pathogenic E. Coli from leafy greens.
The second reason I share this story with you is John’s reaction and response to both of these outbreaks. John signed on to Twitter for the first time less than two years ago, with no prior social media presence. Thanks largely to his involvement in producer organizations, and in part to his Twitter response, John has had an active farmer voice in the face of these detrimental recalls. He appeared on Dr. Oz’s episode asking “Is Salad Safe to Eat Again?” in September. The above tweet has had over 200,000 impressions (times people saw the tweet) and over 38,000 engagements (times people engaged with the tweet). Why should I care about his tweet, you ask? You should because members of the FDA and CDC also saw the tweet, and responded! In fact, he’s participated in subsequent meetings with the FDA in attempts to address some of the inspection, trace-back and recall shortcomings.
We’re in a time and society in which there are fewer and fewer farmers, exponentially more consumers who largely do not understand our daily chores and challenges, and a marketplace with several middle-points from our fields to our consumers’ plates. Despite the calamity John was facing on his own farm, he took the time and attention to engage with the public and the national media to discuss and accurately portray the devastation to his own farm and his industry. I commend John for his bravery to step into the national media spotlight. But one doesn’t need to get on television to make an impact. Most of John’s impact was made simply by answering genuine questions honestly. Remember, most of our society no longer knows a farmer, let alone their farmer.