Video claims animal abuse | Farmer says television show bowed to activists
Animal rights activists received a lot of free press and television time after W5’s episode criticizing welfare standards at a farm near Arborg, Man., farm became a national story.
However, the controversy also energized young, digitally literate farmers to leap into the fray and speak up for their industry.
Some say they now think it’s their duty to provide the farmers’ story, and not just when there are controversies.
“Just as much as it’s the consumer’s responsibility to be fully aware of both sides of the story, it’s our responsibility to tell our side,” said Debra Murphy, a young eastern Alberta grain and cattle farmer who uses Twitter on a daily basis to communicate with other farmers and talk to urban residents.
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Murphy, who tweets under the handle @AgDebra, responded immediately to the W5 episode and the animal rights activist video footage and interpretation when it was aired.
She didn’t rant or argue with people upset by images of piglet euthanasia or sow stalls.
“For me, it was personal, because I’m still learning a lot about farming and not everything is as black and white as they made it seem,” said Murphy. “As biased as that CTV thing was, it really brought a lot of attention to our industry and a created a lot of conversation.”
Stewart Skinner, a farmer from Listowel, Ont., who tweets as @modernfarmer, said he found it easy to respond to the controversy because tweeting is something he does all the time.
“We’re used to this,” said Skinner, a 28 year-old hog farmer.
“We’re used to the constant spread of information, people making rapid opinions, tweets with links.”
Twitter, with the power it gives to anybody to comment publicly on a subject, allowed many farmers to jump to the defence of farmers after the W5 episode aired. Some criticized practices on the Puratone farm but said most farms are better run.
Others said the activities on the farm were acceptable but were inaccurately portrayed and described.
Some condemned the practices and said they were a product of industrial-style agriculture.
Comments on Twitter aren’t just seen by people who choose to deliberately follow somebody’s tweets. They can also be seen by people who are following a certain topic using a specific hashtag. (A hashtag is a topic word preceded by the # symbol, such as #westcdnag for discussion of western Canadian agriculture.)
That happened with the #w5 hashtag Dec. 8, when farmers such as Skinner responded to the episode immediately after it aired.
“Farmers have no agenda,” Skinner tweeted. “We wake up and feed (people) every day while caring for our animals. #w5 failed tonight by bowing to activist pressure.”
Many of the comments in that hashtag space and ones related to the episode and the issue were soon from farmers discussing livestock production.
Neither Skinner nor Murphy decided to take on the role of defending the image of the contemporary farmer, but each realizes that that’s what they might have stumbled into simply because they are willing to engage the public.
“I guess I’m realizing that it might be my responsibility,” said Murphy, who has recently began blogging as The Effeminate Farmer and who quickly blogged about the controversy after it erupted.
She said she hopes to calmly describe the farmer’s perspective in her blog and as she tweets so that anybody concerned about farming practices can get a more balanced story.
“It’s the consumer that has the final decision, so if we start screaming at them, they’re probably not going to listen any more,” said Murphy.
Skinner said he stopped blogging in 2011 when he got married and became busy with farm and family life, but he’s begun again because of this controversy.
“I thought I’d better start doing it again because we need to have our perspectives up there too,” said Skinner, whose blog is called The Modernfarmer Project.
