Talking Agriculture with Mike Rowe

Last weekend Stacy and I had the privilege of meeting with Mike Rowe.  If you haven't heard of Mike you've probably been living under a rock for the past six or seven years.  He's practically become the face of the Discovery Channel with his hit show Dirty Jobs and along the way he's also become the face of the American worker. 

Through his experiences doing Dirty Jobs across the country he's come to realize and appreciate that everything we have is either grown or mined from the earth.  Along with that his appreciation for the people that do that work has grown.

Out of that the mikeroweWORKS.com website was born.  It's a site dedicated to educating people about the importance of skilled trade workers, including farmers and ranchers.  Through that Mike happened to find my youtube video where I dumped a bottle of Yellow Tail wine on the frozen ground to tell people that they had made a donation to the world's wealthiest animal rights group, the Humane Society of the United States. 

Our work with the Farm American project also caught Mike's eye and they featured a blog post of mine about the program on their site.  When it turned out that we were all going to be in Atlanta at the American Farm Bureau Federation meeting we were able to finally meet in person. 

Mike and his team were very interested to hear about our efforts to advocate for agriculture, including our work with the Farm American program.  Mike gets a lot of requests to be spokesman.  In fact he was the most sought after spokesman in the world in 2010.  His name has been thrown around many times in the world of agriculture as someone that would be a great spokesman for our industry.  But Mike can wisely see that we don't need a single spokesman, we need lots and lots of advocates for agriculture.  Mike isn't an expert in food production, not the way that farmers and ranchers are.  So while he is certainly willing to help share the story, ultimately we are the ones that need to be doing it. 

Mike also highlighted the efforts of the Farm American program as a great way for farming and ranching families to spread their message.  He was impressed by the unselfish efforts of Furniture Row to start the program because it was the right thing to do, not as a way to pay for a race team.  When you explain to someone all of the things we could do with Farm American to tell the story of agriculture it starts sounding too good to be true.  One look at the race car proves the intentions of Furniture Row though.  There's not a single mention of Furniture Row on the car.  That really caught the attention of Mike as it has with so many others. 

We are really looking forward to a continued partnership with Mike and his team at mikeroweWORKS.com to tell the story of agriculture.  Mike is a genuine guy who was a pleasure to meet and visit with.  He's certainly a friend of every hard working American and as he put it, a big fan of "chewing and swallowing".  It was a real pleasure to spend a few hours "chewing and swallowing" with him last week. 

You've heard me telling you to be an advocate for agriculture, now hear it from Mike Rowe.

Mike Rowe Takes on HSUS, Animal Rights

What is in America’s Future?
MikeRoweWorks.com

I’m really bugged about something and I’ve decided to throw it out there. Here’s my question – Are the American farmers heading towards the same fate as America’s auto industry? I know some of you are already thinking “What the heck is this guy talking about?” but just stay with me for a few minutes.

OK, OK, I’ll get to my original point. Maybe you haven’t read this article in the Wall Street Journal: Poachers Arrive at Egg Farms but I did and it hit me as to what’s bugging me. The article by Lauren Etter says in part: “A year after Californians approved stricter rules on the treatment of farm animals, Idaho and other states are trying to lure away the Golden State’s poultry and egg farmers with promises of friendlier regulations and lower costs.

I live in California and I’m one of those people who adopt abandoned dogs. I’ve sent my $25 checks to the Humane Society after watching particularly awful commercials on TV showing little pets horribly mistreated and suffering. I completely support spaying and neutering of animals in most instances and would adopt an abandoned pet before I’d ever get one from a breeder or pet store. I don’t eat veal but I’m not a vegetarian. I’m not the only one who doesn’t get a vegetarian who still wears leather belts, jackets or shoes or carry leather purses but that, too, is another story. Those are my choices and I’m not telling anyone else what to do – it’s a free country. I didn’t vote for the proposition they’re talking about because it didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t buy into the emotion of seeing animals in cages and using the worst examples of some unethical people as the end-all be-all for every farmer in the state – passing that measure would negatively affect our food sources and our farmers. Read More

Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame is certainly a friend of agriculture. It’s not often we have a celebrity that stands up for what is right and uses common sense. He isn’t concerned about what other celebrities think of him, instead he cares more about the working people. He knows who is responsible for putting the clothes on his back and the food on his table. The other great thing is that he is willing to go to work for the American farmer and rancher, we just need to put those wheels in motion. I don’t care what size or type of farm you have, we should be able to work together to make this happen. Our petty differences need to be put aside or else our children will be reading about US agriculture in the history books.

Mike Rowe's Lamb Castrating Story

In case you don't know, Mike Rowe hosts a show on the Discovery Channel called "Dirty Jobs". In this show he has been on a diverse group of agricultural operations. In this video, he talks about his experience at ranch in Colorado that runs sheep. He compares what PETA and HSUS told him prior to his visit with what he learned from the rancher and his own observations. This is a great video. It's a little long, but worth your time.