Another year has come to an end; do you have any resolutions? I recently learned the term “quitters Friday”, the 2nd Friday of January when most people have already quit their New Years resolutions. With that in mind I will hereby resolve the following:
I will quit baling hay and straw. I will quit taking fun vacations. I will quit being friendly to all the health care professionals, cashiers, bank tellers and wait staff that I encounter when I leave the farm. I will also quit caring about the environment, my weight and physical shape, ditch the Sox for the Cubs, the Bears for the Packers and start to call dinner, supper, to appease my farm friends.
I also resolve to never drive my farm equipment at 16 mph on two lane roads during your morning commute, wish for rain on a weekend during a drought when my city friends have a BBQ or pool party planned and never let fly’s or the smell of livestock manure waft from my farm. Now, onto a serious topic.
Losing weight is a common theme for resolutions. It has always been my goal as a farmer to grow commodities and make money. Many of the crops I grow are indeed responsible for being used to produce many of the highly processed foods that we all consume that can cause weight gain. We love them, they taste good and can be addictive. I have a guilty conscious knowing that I’m an enabler of obesity.
My corn is used in sugary cereals and snacks, let’s not forget high fructose corn syrup is added to almost every product. My soybeans would be healthy if eaten whole; but who does that? I suspect most people would throw tofu or edamame at me if I tried to serve them it. And we all know wheat is in bread, the most dreadful of carbohydrates! I even take the healthy vegetable of sweet corn and ruin it now that I like to smother it with mayonnaise and parmesan cheese to become Elote. I better not even mention alcohol!
Now that I am married to a pharmacist, I have become a bit more educated in the world of medicine. People do not need to visit the gym for their New Years resolution of weight loss. Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjauro, (I also resolve to not spellcheck tricky words like monjauro in future articles), are quite the craze now. These drugs have a proven record of weight loss. What does this mean for the farmers and the food industry?
I have read several accounts of how the food industry is fearful of the GLP-1 agonist drugs. For many, their business model is to sell more goods at highest possible revenue to increase profits. Do they care how much is wasted or if what you buy and eat is healthy? How much less food will the grocers sell and how many restaurant visits will never happen if a significant percentage of the population is taking these drugs for weight loss?
I make a living growing crops that are processed into many unhealthy options. My wife makes a living selling many drugs that counteract the effects of the foods we all know we should not eat. If I only grew vegetables, I could sleep with a clearer conscious about my role of feeding the world. After a lifetime of poor diet, the pharmacies profit by selling the statins, beta and calcium blockers, NSAID’s, insulin and now we can add the GLP-1’s.
I wish everyone success with their new year’s resolutions, even if it means your resolution to lose weight means farmers make less money. My profitability should not be incumbent on your health suffering. And if I do suffer an emotional effect from not making sufficient income, they probably have a pill at the pharmacy to help me with that, too.
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