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Free food to meet a farmer?

Photo

Allan T. Arndt

JANESVILLE — All they want, they say, is for people to know their farmers better.

As motivation, they’re offering a year’s worth of free food.

From now until Oct. 3, Wisconsin residents can win one of two grand prizes of free groceries for a year at farmersfeedus.org.

Consumers register for the prize by “meeting” a Wisconsin farmer in a short video that shows how they “produce safe, nutritious and affordable food,” according to a press release from Wisconsin Farmers Feed US.

Allan Arndt, Janesville, is one of the eight farmers featured on the site.

“The goal is to instill some confidence in the food you’re eating,” Arndt said. “Most of us know very little about the products we consume.”

Arndt, 46, farms with his brothers David and Bob; their mother, Donna; and his nephew Austin Arndt. Their family has been farming in La Prairie Township since the middle of the 1800s.

They raise about 1,600 beef cattle a year and also grow peppermint, soybeans, corn, sweet corn and seed corn, alfalfa and vegetables.

For many people, the website videos are as “close to a farm as they’re going to get,” Arndt said.

Farmers all over the country are struggling to combat the efforts of groups such as PETA and the Humane Soceity of United States, which has begun campaigning against large farms.

“There’s so much negative misinformation and disinformation out there,” Arndt said. “As an industry, we decided that if we don’t stand up for ourselves, nobody will.”

The goal is to show the public that the majority of food grown and produced in Wisconsin comes from family farms run by people with established ties to their communities.

But they weren’t shy about size.

The Rehms, a trio of brothers from Lake Mills, are egg farmers with 2 million hens at two locations. Their family has been egg farming in the area since the first part 20th century.

Daphne Holterman, a dairy farmer from Watertown, helps run a farm with 750 cows.

In each case, the producers stressed the importance of animal care, land stewardship and their commitment to their communities.

The website and giveaway are sponsored by 12 farm advocacy groups including the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, the Wisconsin Cattlemen’s Association and the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board.

They worked with The Center for Food Integrity, an organization that has run “Farmers Feed Us” giveaways in other states.

The Center for Food Integrity, in turn, is supported by a variety of industry groups including Monsanto, American Farm Bureau Federation and the Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin. Purdue and Michigan State universities are also listed as supporters.

Mark Crouser, a program facilitator for Wisconsin Farmers Feed Us and spokesperson for The Center for Food Integrity, said they just want to put a human face on agriculture.

“Most people are generally and geographically removed from the farm,” Crouser said. “We want to show that these are great people doing an honest day’s work.”