CALF_News_August_September_2019

42 CALF News • August | September 2019 • www.calfnews.net By Blaine Davis Contributing Editor Beyond the Ranch Gate Ramblings From the Road and Reading Room(s) O ut the ranch gate again and on the road, several things have become quite evident. It has been wet across the far reaches of my home state. From northeast Kansas, rivers and lakes have been overcome with water to the point that most are considered to be at or beyond flood stage, to the extreme southwest where I haven’t seen the Cimarron National Grasslands this green in mid-summer. But, even more evident is something I have written of before – the overabundance of news, biased or not, spewing from my car radio. Combined with internet, televi- sion and print media, the round-the- clock reporting has created a necessity to fill more space and to fill it more quickly. News gathering has turned into news making. Back home and reclining in my living room, I reach for this past Sunday’s newspaper insert, Parade magazine, fea- turing as news, Ringo Starr celebrating his 79 th birthday. OHMY, has it been that long since my adolescent years when he and his bandmates, The Beatles, debuted on the Ed Sullivan Show ? While this quartet turned the music busi- ness on its ear and influenced the genre for several generations, I question his and the other surviving member, Paul McCartney’s, stance on diets and subse- quently agriculture practices. While McCartney promotes “meatless Mondays” which has been proven to have minimal effect on greenhouse gas emis- sions (see last issue’s Beyond the Ranch Gate column), Starr expounds his vegetar- ianism, but not veganism as he admits to eating goat cheese. Interviewer Jim Farber further questioned,“Was your move to vegetarianism an ethical decision?” “It’s always ethical,” Starr responded. “I can’t understand the breeding and kill- ing and eating of all of those animals. “But we know, as a fact, that you can grow more food on an acre of land than you can with some creature walking on it.” First, I find it odd that he professes to eating goat cheese – where does he think those creatures graze? Second, 70 percent of agricultural land is marginal, meaning it is unsuitable for crops, but still grazeable for cattle and goats. While I would consult my mechanic for troubles with my “iron steed,” I wouldn’t ask him for a second opinion on a hip replacement. I think the same applies here; I could value McCartney’s and Starr’s opinions on music, but not my diet or the ethics of my farming. Grabbing a new book and taking a post on my patio with a cold adult beverage in hand to observe the aromatic wisps rising from my smoker, I delve into Mark Levin’s Unfreedom of the Press . Levin professes that real news is infor- mation infused with progressive social theory. We are facing the possibility that independent news will be replaced by rumor and self-interested commercial- ism posing as news. With this left- leaning progressive social bias, American agriculture has yet another enemy as consumers take what the media pro- vides as the truth, but may just be mere propaganda. Laying the book aside, I check my chuck roast, soon to be delectable “burnt ends,” at half the cost of brisket (kudos to J.R. of John Ross and Co. Signature Catering for the tip). Closing the lid on the smoker and opening to Levin’s chap- ter five,“News, Propaganda and Pseudo- Events,” NBC’s Meet the Press and their host Chuck Todd proclaim manmade climate change is a scientific fact, and he would not allow the voices of “climate- deniers” to be heard now or in the future. Todd, who attended college majoring in political science but did not gradu- ate, has no credentials whatsoever in any climate-related sciences, now is a self-proclaimed expert in this field. These “climate-deniers” labeled such by Todd are actually legitimate, credentialed and seri- ous scientists and climate experts who are either skeptical of or outright reject the claims of manmade change. Some ques- tion the accuracy of certain research; or the sources of global warming; or whether global warming is occurring; or the role of mankind in global warming; or whether it actually matters; or whether a slight increase in warming is actually beneficial to the planet (as us in farming can relate to, it increases plant growth). This phenomenon of news making hasn’t just occurred in the recent digital age but can trace its roots to a half-cen- tury ago, as Levin cited a book by Daniel Boorstin. Published in 1961, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, “We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making