There are plenty of people who don’t like any form of animal agriculture. Joel Leftwich, chief strategy officer for the Kansas Farm Bureau, says it’s time for animal agriculture to start pushing back.

“The voices out there who are opposed to animal agriculture are strong, are well funded, and are finding new ways to challenge the system, and we as an industry need to look to new ways of fighting back against them. State ballot initiatives and county ballot initiatives are where we are seeing a lot of these policy challenges play out. We need to make sure that as an industry, as an organization, we’re partnering with the right voices at the local level to help fight in those jurisdictions where the other side is bringing the fight to us.”

Despite the large amount of money getting poured into anti-animal ag groups, he says farmers have a big advantage on their side.

“It certainly is a lot of money that’s being poured into them. But regardless of the money, the thing that food and agriculture have for themselves is the trust that voters have with farmers and ranchers, knowing that our goal, our life’s work, is to produce safe, affordable, and delicious food.”

He says agriculture likely didn’t handle the Prop 12 discussion as effectively as possible.

“There’s probably a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking that can be done about what we did as an industry in regards to Prop 12 since we lost at the ballot, and we had a Supreme Court case that went against us, even though it was a split decision. You know, there’s a lot that we can do to look back, but we have to look forward about, all right, how do we avoid this situation in the future? Do we have the right tools in place to win the next time around, and what can we be doing now to help reverse that decision?”

It’s time to put that credibility to work and push back against the activism.

“We have the credibility of the voters, the vast majority of voters, out there, so let’s engage with those vast majority of voters who are not farmers and ranchers. Let’s work with consumers across the country and in these micro-targeted races to ensure that we’re advocating for the same thing because we know we share values, and again, those shared values are the affordability and availability of food.”