Agriculture beat journalism has been in slow and steady decline for the past four decades, leaving a handful of pros (like Philip Brasher, Chris Clayton, Jerry Hagstrom and Charles Abbott, all of whom I read regularly) reporting on policy issues from Washington, DC. This is absolutely necessary work, but the audience for food stories is expanding and changing rapidly. Rather than being a mostly rural farm population, readers are eaters, mom and dads, policy wonks of all stripes–and they are shifting the focus of the beat. They want to understand the process by which food gets to their plate, who the farmers that are growing it are and why they make the decisions that they do, how food is regulated for safety, the effect regionalized food systems have on local economies and job creation, how agricultural land is being stewarded, and more.

Bringing it to the table

Traditional agriculture journalism and the bloggers and reporters covering this new food territory are not at odds with each other. In fact, much of my work on Civil Eats is bolstered by the reporting being done by those embedded in DC. And if I had to guess, agriculture journalists are interested in our coverage, too.

The same can be said about battles stoked between industrial and organic agriculture. The media love to pit two sides against each other to move papers. Of course, there are legitimate reasons that both feel frustrated and even threatened by each other, but at the end of the day there are no easy choices in farming. Getting caught up in the black and white debates when it comes to food is easy because we’ve been critically uninformed by the media on food issues for so long. But this is changing. And as it does, corporations will have to alter their practices, critical misuse of resources will have to be addressed, and better access to healthier food choices will become a priority.

In fact, it is when corporations intervene on the discussion between farmers and eaters that the truth gets muddied and lines get drawn in the sand. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

We must therefore bring farmers and eaters to tables all across the country and get them talking to each other. Journalism can be the facilitator for that conversation–as it delivers facts about what is out there, and what is working and what isn’t working, and lays them in the sunlight.

At the end of the day, reporting on food is all about what we get to eat, and that is an exciting prospect. It’s why I am so optimistic about the future of our food system–when you bring people together at one table and feed them well, there are always things that they can agree on.