Agriculture and the environment

"They're coming to get you," jokes a man teasing his girlfriend in the opening scene of the classic 1968 horror movie, Night of the Living Dead.

Predictably, a few minutes later, the zombies get him. He should have known better. So too should our friends in the business of agriculture. The signs are everywhere that "they" are coming to get them, too.

In Oklahoma, as well as across America, so-called environmental groups, some with few members, are rapidly and effectively advancing their agenda and status, especially in the media. In some cases, their status is being advanced by victims' own negligence. Most disturbingly, it appears that these anti-business, anti-growth groups, who are expert at hiding their extremist agenda, are about to be aided by another group of media-savvy folk: the entrepreneurial plaintiff's bar.

Several prominent law firms with tobacco suit ties, including Jan Schlichtmann of A Civil Action fame, have formed a cartel to begin class actions against agricultural producers. While most Americans still regard crime, health care and drug use as larger concerns, the environment still evokes emotional responses, and the extremist left groups are expert at inflaming passions, especially since they are not hindered by truth.

It should be clear to everyone by now that because of the extremist environmental movement, we are reaping the whirlwind insofar as energy is concerned. The radicals' influence has resulted in very little new drilling, very few new power plants and no new refineries. It has been 20 years since a new refinery was built in America, yet a glut of goofy EPA rules that have resulted in mandates for at least 50 different blends for different parts of the country.

Energy advocates simply must do a better job of explaining who is responsible.

There are others to blame as well. It's time for the mainstream press to drop the phony mantel of virtue they have hung on the extremists. Besides retarding economic development, they are bilking the taxpayers: more than $31 million in attorney's fees for 434 environmental cases in the 1990s alone.

One long-running lawsuit in Texas involving an endangered salamander netted lawyers for the Sierra Club and other plaintiffs more than $3.5 million in taxpayers' funds. All this information is scarcely reported as the politicians and the press go about demonizing the oil companies.

The agricultural sector is particularly vulnerable. The agriculture groups' inexperience in dealing with these reckless and unpredictable (yet skillful) practitioners of media spin will be costly.

Incredibly, Oklahoma is one of the few states where crackpot environmental groups are regarded as mainstream. In Oklahoma, the environmental groups are being allowed to win hearts and minds, while farm groups allow themselves to be painted as anti-environment. Case in point: The Sierra Club and other fringe groups routinely clobber the pork industry, whose state advocacy group, with its huge but poorly targeted Pork Checkoff Dollars, flounders in such fundamentals as media relations and community affairs.

The agricultural sector is allowing the environmental groups to define them as anti-environment. On its face, this is a preposterous argument.

Throughout history, no group has been better stewards of the land than America's farmers have. Despite this fact, the extremist groups' fabrications go virtually unchallenged.

Peaceful co-existence with these groups, which are lavishly funded by such groups as the Pew Charitable Trust and the (Ted) Turner Foundation, is to no avail. The extremist environmentalists have absolutely no stake in peaceful co-existence with agricultural groups. Recently, noted public relations pro Nick Nichols, during a speech at the National Pork Producers Council annual meeting, spoke frankly to those who advocate "getting along" with these extremist environmentalists.

"Corporate America must go into full-throttle attack mode when threatened by activist groups. Activists want industry scalps so they can further their own political agendas, and create the buzz required to raise money," said the veteran crisis manager and Nichols- Dezenhall CEO. Nichols adds the salient point that too many other interest groups have an interest in the extremists' agenda, such as reporters who get to write about a controversy, trial lawyers who get clients, regulators who get to regulate and lawmakers who get to legislate. Nichols recommended gathering as much information about activist groups and launching guerrilla campaigns to destroy their credibility.

Across the board, the agricultural industry's political and public relations cast lacks the type of experience forged from big time political and public relations battles. It's time to do what other besieged industries have done: bring in the pros, which is precisely what the health insurance industry did in 1993 when the Clintons targeted the industry for extinction.

The Goddard-Claussen firm's "Harry & Louise" campaign helped save the industry.

The Oklahoma petroleum industry's brilliant OERB sight cleanup program is an example of how industry can take pre-emptive steps.

There are positive signs from time to time: Just last week, the Legislature sent to the governor House Bill 1237, a bill that amended legislation passed three years ago stating any new or expanding licensed managed hog farm cannot be established within three miles of a nonprofit camp or recreational site.

Environmental groups corrupted the intent of that law -- 62 "recreational sites" sprang up after the passage of the original bill. The new law, if signed by the governor, would set forth guidelines for the Water Resources Board as it decides on whether to issue or amend a water use permit for any feeding operation located three miles of a camp or recreational site.

The good news was that during debate on the bill, both sides distanced themselves from the fanatical environmentalist groups who were the chief opponents. The bill, which passed overwhelmingly in both chambers, was a remarkable win for pro-business forces as most lawmakers were fearful of being identified ideologically with the extremists, whose vile personal attacks on house author Jack Begley backfired.

But that is only one, small bright spot. For agriculture, the sky is darkening. It's time to face the music: with wacky environmentalists and major league tobacco lawyers nipping at their heels, it's time for a frank evaluation of the situation. Meanwhile, agriculture should listen to what the experts say, stop trying to be nice and attack the attackers. Talk to the public about their twisted agenda and their vulnerabilities. Take the fight (and it is a fight) to the enemy.

Al Capone used to say, "You can get more with a smile, a kind word and a gun than with a smile and a kind word." That's good advice for agriculture from a "businessman" from the 1920s who knew a thing or two about public relations. The public will support agriculture if only agriculture would ask, and because the motives and tactics of the environmentalist have become fanatical. As one of Al's famous contemporaries might have put it if he could observe the conflict today, "I never met an extremist environmental group."

Scott Mitchell, a native of Lindsay, Okla., is president of Scott Mitchell & Associates Strategic Communications Consultants of Oklahoma City.

2001Copyright
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