There are times when you have to not only consider the message, but who is delivering it and why.
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Case in point, I get a lot of requests from PR firms asking me to interview this or that client. Usually it's a client who recently has a book out or has just written a report for some think tank or other, sometimes left wing, sometimes right.... but almost never one that has started looking at a situation because they simply wanted to find the answer. Peel away the layers and they usually had an agenda when they started looking.
The latest example came a few weeks ago when I got pitched to do an interview with someone who was going to tell me, and through me, you, the listeners everything that is wrong with the lower Great Lakes and what causes the problems.
Well everything that is wrong with the lower lakes is of huge interest to farm audiences, or at least it should be, because they get blamed very often.
Algae blooms? blame fertilizer run off. Tiny particles of plastics? Well it's harder to blame farmers for that when most of them come from exfoliating shampoos and body lotions but I'm sure someone will try and find a link at some point.
So I paid attention to the interview pitch until they actually admitted the point of what the great enlightened one was going to tell me.
All of the problems on the lower lakes are apparently the fault of dredging the shipping channels through lower Lake Huron, the St. Clair River and Lake St. Clair, and a water bottling company.
I have to admit I had to spend a few minutes pondering that, then it hit me. The great enlightened person I was supposed to talk to has just written a report that is working under an assumption that is four years old. Low water levels.
The fact that water levels have been rising for the past three years, and seem poised to rise again this year, seems to be beside the point.
So I ignored that particular request for an interview, because, it seems rather pointless to discuss the causes for low water levels during seasons of high water levels, and to discuss water levels at all, without having a look at what sorts of precipitation we've been getting.
But it does give one pause to wonder because I'm sure someone somewhere grabbed that interview and ran with it.
I guess if it suits your point of view, or your political leaning you can imaging that a four year rise in lake levels is a temporary phenomenom but a two year low is a long term problem. Don't worry about weather cycles.
The point is there are lots of experts out there who are willing to spout off opinions about what is right about agriculture and the environment and how to fix what is wrong, and some of them have as little knowledge about the subject as the person who doesn't seem clear on what lake levels are doing.
I guess that's why people who do actually, you know, research keep asked the so called experts to back up their claims with verifiable side-by-side plot studies.
Most farmers of course are aware that there's research and then there's research. We just all have to realise who is talking and why, and what they stand to gain.
And for the record, My weekly ramblings are my own opinions, and the time and space for them is made available by my employer. I get no kick-back if I mention a particular company in a good light, and wouldn't accept it if offered.
Perhaps in a truly enlightened world all columnists and commentators should be asked to make the same statement.
