A growing portion of society is so disconnected from the reality of how food is produced that they are susceptible to the misinformation and lies about farming and food spread by vested interest groups and amplified by the internet.
How else would an idiot like TV chef 'Paleo Pete' Evans find an audience for his ridiculous and dangerous fantasies, including this one: calcium-rich dairy products 'can remove the calcium from your bones'?
How else could anti-farmers like Mike Joy and Gareth Morgan get an open microphone to link the Hawkes Bay drinking water contamination problem to dairy farming without supplying a shred of evidence?
As Federated Farmers president William Rolleston said in response, the closest dairy farm to the Havelock North water supply was some 40km away.
The Feds have done the right thing trying to redress the balance in this case by calling for "good old common sense", but it will be viewed by cynics as a defensive statement from the farming establishment. It is also reactive and after the fact. By then, Joe Public had heard the knockers on the radio and in many cases believed them.
They didn't know any better. Nor did the Paleo Pete sympathisers. Maybe they should have, but the reality is they often don't. Still, no point grumbling about it. How best to fix the problem?
An Australian rural lobby group, AgForce, may be onto something by hiring one of Australia's most popular 'mummy bloggers', Jody Allen, who has nearly half a million online followers.
Her audience is mostly urban mums who make food buying decisions based, at least in part, on the trusted advice Jody gives on her The Stay-At-Home Mum Facebook page.
AgForce has bypassed the mire of daily media and gone straight to the consumer and, crucially, is utilising an independent voice with a huge urban audience to educate consumers about food production. Smart.