If you want your freedom to operate, you must be willing to do the hard things every day to make that happen, says seventh-generation pig farmer Maddie Hokanson.
“We need to have hard conversations and be willing to set aside our own really strong opinions,” Hokanson says. “We’re passionate in agriculture. We’re passionate in the pork industry. That is wonderful, but we can’t let that be our blind spot that stops us from getting where we want to be in the long run.”
That’s why Hokanson joined National Pork Board chief sustainability officer Jamie Burr to have some of those hard conversations at the Conference of Parties (COP) in Brazil. Each year, about 200 countries convene at COP to develop global climate policy. https://unfccc.int/cop30
Some of the attendees are anti-ag, others are anti-meat, and this year, one was a U.S. pig farmer. For all their differences, the perspectives gathered at this event provide a window into what the world thinks, Burr says.
Time to Play Offense
Burr and Hokanson set out for Brazil with a goal to play offense and not defense.
“There’s never been a baseball team win the World Series by playing defense alone,” Burr says. “It’s so important we stand in that batter’s box and play offense. I know that’s very nerve-wracking to have all eyes on you. But to win the game, we’re going to have to be in that position. We’re going to have to continue to share our story and we need to do it with our own data.”
Hokanson says the opportunity to tell her story and have conversations with people opposed to animal agriculture is why she said yes.
“We all want to have a sustainable, healthy world to live in together,” she says. “Eighty percent of the things we talked about at COP are things we all agree on. It’s all those extra pieces on the periphery that seem to be what get focused on instead of the things we agree on.”
Whether farmers are there or not, conversations take place at COP about livestock production practices and things we do on our farms, Hokanson explains.
“If we’re not willing to be there and share our story, then we’re being left out of the equation,” she says. “As new practices and new commitments are put into place by other countries, I believe COP allows us to change the narrative from livestock agriculture being part of the problem to livestock agriculture being part of the solution.”
Show Me the Data
The on-farm sustainability reports are a great way to show that, she says. One of the key messages she shared is what she calls the three-legged stool of sustainability: environmental, economic and social sustainability.
“On our farm, we have generations before us that continued to look for improvement and ways to do better,” Hokanson says. “That’s something we must continue to do. We don’t want to be the generation that screws it up. We want to make sure it continues for another seven generations. However, that can only happen if we are environmentally, economically and socially sustainable.”
Hokanson has always thought of sustainability as stewardship.
“I see them very much as the same word,” she says. “We’re stewards of our land. We want to do more with less. That means taking good care of our land, environment and water because we live there, too. We drink the same water, breathe the same air, and live on the same land as our neighbors. It’s important that we take good care of it. That has been the posture and the position of our farm for 140 years.”
When You Know Better, You Do Better
She found some historic paperwork from her farm in the 1940s, after the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. These papers showed how several farmers, including her great-great-grandfather, met and asked a hard question of themselves: What do we need to change to make sure that we don’t have another Dust Bowl?
“They decided they needed to make some changes, and not because a regulation was coming down on them,” Hokanson says. “They saw change was needed, so they improved. That doesn’t mean that what they did before was wrong. They did the best they could with the information they had. Then, when they knew better, they did better.”
She says that’s what agriculture is all about.
“When you know better, you do better,” Hokanson says. “But you’re always doing the best that you can for your animals, for your land and for your people. At the end of the day, when you put all those things together, continuous improvement is the name of the game. That’s the only way for a farm to transition from one generation to the next in a long-term capacity.”
What Made the Trip to Brazil a Win
Hokanson was a coveted panelist, but she says it was the side conversations that stood out to her.
“The conversations before and after panels, where some people disagreed with our beliefs, truly made it worthwhile to travel all the way down to Brazil,” she says.
During one panel focused on minimizing animal protein and shifting to a more plant-based diet, Hokanson was intrigued about how often they brought up the need to “involve farmers in these conversations.”
“The ironic thing was that there wasn’t a single farmer on that panel or another farmer in the room,” she says. “Toward the end of the panel, the moderator said, ‘It’s great to see so many friends in the room, and I see we’ve got a couple of people from the animal protein sector, too. So, if you have opinions on this, we’d be happy to hear them.’”
Hokanson stood up and took the opportunity to share her opinion. She thanked the panel for saying farmers should be involved in these conversations and pointed out that she would be happy to do something like that in the future.
“I told them, ‘If you want to have a farmer be part of the conversation, then make sure you really make an effort to do so,’” she adds. “Then I followed it up with a question about differences in topography and geography. On our farm we raise pigs and cattle, and cattle work really well in areas where crops can’t be grown. Then, one of the panelists who wants to minimize animal production, said, ‘Well, I will say there’s plenty of ground in the world that isn’t well-suited for crop production, and that probably is meant to be livestock focused.’ For him to say that – in a crowd of people who are meat minimizers – was a big win.”
There is no question there are a lot of individuals who make local, state, national and global policy who have never had their boots on a farm, Burr adds.
“It’s so important for us to be open enough to have those conversations with them and invite them to our farm to form their own opinion,” he says. “There’s a lot that goes on inside of those four walls, and those four walls, they don’t raise pork – people do. The more that we can connect with those individuals to understand their perspective and then share ours, the more middle ground we will find.”
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Listen to Maddie share more of her story on The PORK Podcast.
