Oregon Rancher Sparks Conversation with Washington Post Article

Last month there was a Opinion Editorial in the Washington Post by Oregon Rancher Keith Nantz. He was interviewed by a Post reporter and then was able to edit the article prior to it being printed. Nantz says that the more than 4,000 comments to his article were a bit overwhelming at first especially since many comments were negative and misinformed but he shares what he learned from the opportunity
Nantz: “But what that allowed me — of course the first couple of days I was pretty — took the wind out of my sails a little bit. But once I was able to step back and looked at it objectively, I learned. I took education from it, so I could get an idea of where our society is at and what they truly perceive us as and how we do things. So it gave me an opportunity to education myself and now I can engage them better because having an understanding of where they are at. So I think in the long run it has been educating for all involved. My purpose and part of what I wanted to accomplish with the article was opening the conversation and opening dialogue to how we do things and why we do things, the importance of food production and the importance of conservation. In the article I said if we don’t things right ecologically we will die by our own hand. I”m a firm believer that ranchers are the first-line environmentalists in the country. If we don’t do things right, then we will go out of business and we won’t have an industry and we won’t be able to produce food for a growing population. We’ve got to double to our production for that growing population on less land with more technology, with more regulations and more politics driving us out of business. It is a constant challenge and we need to continue to have a open conversation and need to find some balance in these conversations.”