Noise can be a beautiful thing
In nearly 20 years I don’t believe I have ever included song lyrics in my writing but with the current situation around us, I hear that song by Kenny Chesney playing over and over in my head.
I realize that when we wean the calves there is a tremendous amount of noise but it subsides in a week or so. The noise I’m referring to just keeps getting louder. Yes, I am talking about what is happening in our country as “the establishment” continues to be threatened by President Donald Trump.
Last week, I was fortunate to have Sam Clovis join me on the radio to help break through all of the noise. Clovis was appointed but eventually withdrew his name from consideration for Under-Secretary for Research, Education and Economics in the U.S. Department of Agriculture because the establishment was worried this conservative would streamline the system and get rid of the excess.
Clovis knows more about the noise today than he ever wanted to but when he joined me on the radio he did not whine or complain once about that. He simply spent 40 minutes talking about what “we” need to accomplish. Clovis serves as chairman of the Trump Ag Advisory Committee that I proudly sit on and has been on the Trump team since the transition started. He will continue to be involved at whatever level the president and Secretary Sonny Perdue want him to be.
He went to great lengths explaining that President Trump will stay the course no matter the noise. Clearly unnecessary hurdles for farmers, ranchers and loggers are currently the primary job at hand. The other conversation that really needs to come back into the national discussion, according to Clovis, is the need for human capital.
No matter how much technology is available, we still need stewards of land and livestock to maintain our status as the premiere global food producer. I feel like there has been a shift back toward more interest from our young people in pursuing hands-on education and technical training as opposed to the bachelor’s degrees their parents once insisted they achieve. We need more people than ever who are not afraid to roll up their sleeves, get their hands dirty and make it happen.
Honestly, I cannot begin to tell you how much of a breath of fresh air I have gotten from the folks that the Trump administration has placed in the correct positions. On the USDA side of the equation, President Trump has chosen individuals from the land to run a department that has been so far away from reality for more than just one administration.
I don’t know how long the noise will continue but I am now convinced that folks in the correct positions in all agencies and departments must be able to ignore the noise and stay focused on the job at hand. We can “make America great again” by getting back into the lead as producers of all products. I don’t mind importing wood from Canada but why let our forests burn, destroying habitat, wildlife, homes and humans when we could be properly managing them and harvesting timber? Millions of tax dollars are spent fighting these unnecessary fires. Why let federal lands be overgrazed by an out-of-control wild horse population when real ranchers could manage those resources with cattle and sheep that would produce food for a growing population?
Proper management of our God-given resources, not only caring for the land and water but producing human-consumable products, will help not just farmers and ranchers but ultimately every single person that eats, wears clothes, drives a vehicle, takes medicine or pays taxes.
Napoleon Bonaparte once said “Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.” While I don’t encourage you to become a part of this noise, there will come a time when our voices need to be heard just like they were in November 2016. Let’s be prepared to make some noise of our own that will be heard worldwide.
Editor’s note: Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.LoosTales.com, or email Trent at [email protected].
