Bonus: Farmer and researcher share energy and label of processing concern - USB

On this bonus episode,  Carla Schultz, owner of Eight Plates Farm in Michigan and a United Soybean Board farmer-leader and Mark Messina, director of nutrition science and research at Soy Nutrition Institute, share their future concerns on the future of land and energy use and the nutrition content of food. If the guests sparked your interest, check out Carla and Mark's episode on the health behind soy for humans and animals.

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Transcript

Joanna Guza:
Welcome to Farm Food Facts. I'm your host, Joanna Guza. And while we have our experts on the line, we'd like to get their insight on the future of agriculture, whether that might be something that's positive or a challenge that we might face. We talked with Carla Schultz, she's the owner of Eight Plates Farms in Michigan and a United Soybean Board farmer leader and also Mark Messina. He's the director of nutrition science and research at Soy Nutrition Institute. And we talked about the health behind soy for humans and animals, but in this bonus episode we asked them what topics are they keeping an eye on that will have a positive and or negative impact on agriculture. Here's Carla Schultz's thoughts.

Carla Schultz:
The one topic that really comes to mind is the energy sector in my mind as a farmer, right? So there's some positive to that. When I think of the soybean, I think of the renewable fuel that's out there. I think of the biodiesel that's being used possibly in planes. We have the aviation fuel that is being researched and developed and actually it's, it's it's for use right now and I think that's really positive to commodities. At the same time, when I think of energy, when I think of solar energy, when I think of wind energy, I think of that land use change. And I think of putting solar panels on land that's highly productable. And I think in states and policy that's made, there's some confusion, there's some maybe education that needs to be there for our policy makers that we're not putting energy uses like wind turbines and solar panels on land that could be highly productive for commodities. And so I think we really have to think about, alright, what impact is this gonna have for the whole future? Because we cannot use this land for productivity if we're going to put some type of new energy implementation on there, if that makes sense, Joanna? So that's really high in my mind that commodities can have a really great positive impact for the energy in the future. At the same time, there's also negative impacts that may come for farmers,

 Joanna Guza:
Right? Making the best use of our land 'cause agriculture and energy are so important, but let's make sure that we're not butting heads that we could be working together. Let's jump to Mark. Let's have you answer this question. What topics are you keeping an eye on that will have a positive and or negative impacts on agriculture?

 Mark Messina:
Yeah. Thank you for that question because there is something that I've been focused on quite a bit over the last couple of years, and that's this increased interest within the nutrition community on the effect processing has on the healthfulness of foods. There is this tendency now to consider all foods that have undergone varying degrees of processing to consider them to be perhaps less beneficial than foods have, that have undergone less processing. And I think that's not an appropriate way to look at the value of foods. I think you should really look at the nutrient composition more than anything else, the nutrient content. And for example, if you take a fruit smoothie and add a protein powder to it, like you often get asked to do at some health food stores, if you add that protein powder to it, it actually becomes an ultra processed food, even though I consider the fruit smoothie with protein to be a much more healthful choice than a fruit smoothie without protein.

So I think we really need to focus on the nutrient content of foods. And even though some foods, some soy foods are considered to be relatively highly processed, like maybe a soy burger, they provide a, they're a great source of protein and other vitamins and minerals, they can make an important contribution to the diet. Even though under some nutrition nutrient profiling models, they are actually classified as an ultra processed food and in the same category as a snack food or a junk food like Twinkies. So I think we really need to do a better job explaining to the public that you should focus on nutrient content rather than the degree to which a food has been processed.

 Joanna Guza:
That was Mark Macina. He's the director of nutrition science and research at the Soy Nutrition Institute. We also had the answer from Carla Schultz. She's the owner of Eight Plates Farm in Michigan and a United Soybean Board farmer leader. You can listen to their full episode talking about the health behind soy for humans and animals. Well, the mission of US farmers and ranchers in action is to bring all of American agriculture together with farmers and ranchers at the center, to collectively identify and tackle critical long-term issues. We are proud to bring you leading experts on Farm Food Facts, and we hope that you tune in. Again, I'm your host Joanna Guza for Farm Food Facts.