Recently I attended the State of NOW conference in New York City, an annual forum about healthcare, personal empowerment, and technology. The meeting had a stellar line-up of renowned holistic doctors—including the popular Dr. Mark Hyman—as well as health writers, IT mavens and fitness facilitators, and promised a well-guided tour of the interface between medicine and media.

State of NOW is the brainchild of Jeff Pulver, an IT entrepreneur, co-founder of Vonage and early investor in Twitter, who found his own wellness path after losing his father and struggling for years with obesity. Now a nearly fit 50-something, Mr. Pulver founded a new organization, #140You, “to help accelerate serendipity and synchronicity.”

The name stands for the 140-character limit set by Twitter, the sine qua non of social media, combined with the idea that health, wellness and media are really “all about you.” Mr. Pulver’s co-producer is Mallika Chopra, daughter of Dr. Deepak Chopra, and herself a noted author (100 Promises to My Baby (Rodale)) and health media entrepreneur (www.Intent.com).

Together, they hosted two days of rapid-fire TED style talks by dozens of experts on fitness, food and Facebooking. 

Unfortunately, there was a big worm at the center of Mr. Pulver’s apple: a publicist from a biotech giant using this health forum to promote a corporate agenda many would deem anything but healthy.

Janice Person is the social media & public affairs director for Monsanto—the company that makes Roundup herbicide, and sells “Roundup Ready” seeds that farmers must buy, but never share. The company that put the “GM” in GMO, and that spends vigorously to oppose GMO labeling. The company that millions march against, and European governments have banned.

At State of NOW, Ms. Person led a panel titled, “Have No Fear, Empower Yourself,” which was intended to dispel “a lot of fear about food and farm that distracts people from getting solid information that can be beneficial to making choices about personal health.”
A lively and down-to-earth gal, Ms. Person’s surname suits her well. She seems genuinely passionate about farms and farmers and eager to turn people on to the world of agriculture—especially cotton farming.

Google’s at Fault
She led off the 15-minute, no-questions session (the format for all State of NOW talks), by noting that, “When I lived in the (NYC) metro area…people used to be blown away that I knew cotton farmers or cattlemen.” She then added that, “I also work for a business that maybe gets a different level of interest in a city like New York. I work for Monsanto Company. And I know for a lot of people that brings up specific images, and it may not be what people like.”

This led to a rambling, not entirely coherent discussion on stereotypes and how “people” have misconceptions about farmers that are divisive and not based on “full truth.” These stereotypes, she noted, are perpetuated because said people rely on Google and Bing for their food and farm info.

“It’s a great thing. But what that also does, is it starts to limit the amount of information that you’re really gonna see. So if it’s a topic that your friends are very incredibly interested in, that may overwhelm some of the other things,” she told the audience. “We get caught by the headlines a lot. And a lot of the question for us is—we don’t get to see real people that do the real work.”

Ms. Person went on to say, “All of us who participate in that space…we notice there’s a lot of polarization and farmers don’t have their voices heard.”

She never mentioned what, specifically, this “polarization” is about—it could be anything: GMOs? Climate Change? Labeling? Something that happened on “American Idol”? Who knows! She wasn’t saying; we couldn’t ask.

City Mouse vs. Country Mouse
Whatever it’s about, this “polarization” is not good, said Ms. Person, who’s all about consensus and “shared values.” It did, however, provide a convenient way to introduce panelist Debbie Lyons-Blythe, a rancher and mother of five from a different Manhattan. Ms. Lyons-Blythe writes a blog called “Life on a Kansas Cattle Ranch.”

Asked what sort of polarization she has felt, Ms. Lyons-Blyth answered: “One of the biggest reasons I started blogging is that I have a family member who lives in a metropolitan area and she visits the farm with her family, and she’s feeling a real pull to make certain food choices because of her friends and because of where she lives. She does have a tie to the farm, so she’s really blessed that she’s able to kind of figure out the true answers and see for herself what happens on a farm.”

What “certain food choices” are we talking about here? Dunno. Ms. Lyons-Blythe didn’t say. We audience-members didn’t get to ask.

And what of this “Metropolitan area” business? That’s code for “city slickers” isn’t it? Y’know, us urban dwellers who don’t know squat about farming but have the chutzpah (that’s urban for  “gall”) to want our fruits and vegetables to be free of pesticides or genetic modifications. 

Ms. Lyons-Blythe went on: “I feel like then she goes back to the city, and they want to know from her what happens on the farm, and they ask those questions of her. And I think that’s a real positive thing. But without that farmer tie, for our family member, she probably would not feel like she is fully informed to make those decisions.”

What are “those questions”? What “decisions” are those city dwellers trying to make? What is this Issue That Dare Not Speak It’s Name? The panelists are leaving it up to us to fill in the blanks.

Ms. Lyons-Blythe, who handles the cattle while her husband works at the bank “in town,” is concerned that, “There’s a lot of information out there, a lot of studies in the media, and a lot of, you know, push that you have to do things this way, or whatever. I really appreciate the previous speaker saying, “get fully informed.” And that is the point. If all you do is Google or Bing, and it continues to bring up the same information for you, you’re never getting the other side of the story. You’re never following the truth.”

Oh, those lyin’ rascals Google and Bing, again!

‘Some of My Best Friends Eat Organic’
Ms. Person said social media provides “Ag people” like herself with tools to remedy stereotypes.

“Social media has allowed me to put a real face on who I am. People assume because I work for Monsanto I think that everything should be GMO everywhere. And people are really shocked to know my brother has an organic co-op, and that I was really supportive of that, and that that’s the way he spends his summers. He’s great. He’s got a job where he has that kind of time. He’s a professor. And we have organic farmers that are customers as well. It’s not an either-or.”

Did you catch that? Her brother has an organic co-op! That’s the eco-wars version of,  “Some of my best friends are Black.”
So, now we’re getting down to what all these “decisions” and “pushes” and “polarizations” are about!

Of course, her brother has that luxury because he’s a professor with summers off. The implication here is that organic farming’s a lovely vacation hobby for the gentleman, but for “real people who do real work?” Not so much.

Pesky stereotypes can really ruin a good time, said Ms. Person. “It’s really problematic for me. I mean last night, I loved dinner at the Hu Kitchen,” she said, referring to the State of NOW reception at Manhattan’s latest green eatery.

“I mean, that was awesome! The bowl with the quinoa and the spicy beef and everything? It was a fantastic meal! I think there’s a lot more of that shared value than when people throw up a specific label and kind of pull you away, so that they assume a lot of information based on that.”

You mean it’s possible to work for Monsanto and also enjoy organic vegetables? Who knew!

The First Environmentalists?
No doubt many of us urbanites—and suburbanites—do hold misconceptions about farming. It’s true that most of us don’t really understand from where our food comes or know who produces it.

Panelist Ulla Kjarval (http://goldilocksfindsmanhattan.com), who grew up on a sheep farm, now helps her family market their grass-fed lamb (http://springlakefarmny.com). As a farm girl now living in NYC, she tries to bridge the gulf between city dwellers and rural farmers. She agreed with Ms. Lyons-Blythe that the web is a powerful ally, allowing farm families to “connect with people and show people that we’re regular people like you, we’re hardworking and we’re trying to make a profit.”

Glad to know Ms. Kjarval recognizes that we non-farmers also work hard.

Ms. Lyons-Blythe stressed that farmers and ranchers are “the first environmentalists. We absolutely, positively have to work very hard to take care of the land.” She feels, “a responsibility to the land, and to those animals to make sure that its there for our kids. Not just there for the world, but what matters to me directly is it’s there for the kids. And if it’s good for the land it’s good for all of us.”

Tell that to the Native Americans.

Feigning Consensus, Fostering Discord
My objective here is not to debate the complex issues around organic vs. conventional farming, use of pesticides, GMO crops, labeling, land management or anything of the sort. It’s certainly not about vilifying farmers or people who work in biotech.

The issue here is the role of industry spin on public discourse about vital issues—like food.

At a forum allegedly about health and empowerment—one for which attendees spent $1,300—we got a dose of high-potency corporate spin from a spokeswoman for the world’s largest Ag/Biotech company, who made an appeal for shared values while actually fostering discord. And that, my friends, is how they play it in the Big Leagues of opinion mongering.

Ms. Person’s insinuations about effete, misinformed urbanites putting unnamed pressures on hardworking American farmers didn’t feel like a step toward common ground!

The session’s take-homes?

• “Metropolitan” people are out of touch with reality, getting questionable info from Google, and putting inappropriate pressure on “real” Americans just doing the best they can to protect their land.
• Organic farming—and presumably organic eating—is elitist and best suited to professors with a lot of time off in the summer.
• “Real people doing real work” on farms are only 2% of the entire population—but we won’t talk about why most independent family farms cannot survive, or how the overwhelming majority of farmlands came to be owned by a handful of conglomerates.
• A PR officer for one of the most profitable agri-businesses is qualified to speak for the nation’s farmers, but feels really misunderstood and needs to let the wellness world know that she, too, likes well-cooked veggies.

If the intention was really to help non-aggies understand the what’s and why’s of farming, then why not actually state the issues? Why the vague intimations about “polarizations” and “pushes to do things a certain way”? Why the Sarah Palin-esque invocation of  “real people” and “real work”?

If this panel was about the full truth about American agriculture, why not include a certified organic farmer? It can’t be that hard to find one who also works hard, cares about her kids, protects the land and feels misunderstood.

But I don’t think the intention was to have a real dialogue. The session was about establishing Monsanto as the voice of real American farmers, and about marginalizing people concerned about pesticides and GMOs as fussy, misinformed worrywarts.

I requested comments from #140You organizers, hoping they would share their reasons for including Monsanto and Ms. Person on a program about health and empowerment. Not surprisingly, they ignored my request—a silence that speaks louder than any words.   

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Erik Goldman is co-founder and editor of Holistic Primary Care: News for Health & Healing, a quarterly medical publication reaching about 60,000 physicians and other healthcare professionals nationwide. He is also co-producer, with Greg Stephens of Windrose Partners, of the Health Practitioner Marketing Forum. Mr. Goldman and Holistic Primary Care recently conducted a survey involving 2,000 primary care doctors, exploring their engagement with and use of nutraceuticals and natural products. The survey report, and proceedings from the Practitioner Marketing Forum are available at www.HPMForum.com.