Published: June 06, 2007 05:20 pm            

Land Minds: Just ‘doing’ it, caught on film

Originally published in the June 1, 2007, print edition.

My wife and I were out in the front yard tending to our lawn on a recent Sunday afternoon — me pushing the reel mower around, she raking up sticks — when a snazzy blue van pulled up right next to us along the boulevard. Out popped a pair of perky college kids sporting giant smiles.

“Congratulations on doing something!” said the gal, handing us a couple of water bottles.

“Can we take your picture?” asked the guy, directing us to pose together with our old-timey push mower.

And just like that they were gone, leaving us drive-by victims of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Minnesota’s “do” campaign.

You know the “do” campaign. How could you not? It has saturated the media — television, radio, billboards — for more than two years now, telling us that “by grooving your body for just 10 minutes, 3 times a day, you can improve your overall health and reduce your risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and other illnesses.”

(Most notable is the TV commercial set in a doctor’s office, in which a nerdy looking guy in a sweater vest gets up and starts dancing around the waiting room as the music implores “let me see you move!”)

We don’t dance much, certainly not in doctors’ offices, but my wife and I try to do little things like go for walks, park farther away from store entrances, take the stairs instead of the escalator at the mall, go for bicycle rides and, as I mentioned, push a lawnmower instead of riding one. (My awesome wife also does triathlons; something that would be difficult for me to do, what with that don’t-know-how-to-swim thing.)

I definitely got more exercise as a kid working on a farm than I do now sitting in an office chair all day. It’s probably a good thing I’m not being fed Mom’s giant meals of roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, corn, rolls and rootbeer floats anymore.

I don’t think there’s enough “do” left in me anymore to get rid of that many calories.

And just in case you didn’t know, Blue Cross came across the cash for the “do” campaign from joining in the big tobacco lawsuit settlement a few years back. It’s amazing what $461 million will buy you these days.

What do you do with 108 paint brushes?
Speaking of deals, we received a tool catalog at The Land the other day full of so many amazing bargains, I just had to share. Highlights included:

• 1,400-pound capacity jumbo wagon, $89.99 — Just like a little red wagon, but huge: two feet wide, four feet long, 13-inch pneumatic tires, steel construction, weighs 85 pounds. Who’s going to pull this behemoth?

• 30 hp diesel bulldozer/backhoe, $20,499.99 — Not sure I’d order from a catalog something that costs twice what I paid for my car. On the plus side, they don’t charge for shipping on this bad boy.

• 115-piece titanium drill bit set, $49.99 — One hundred and fifteen bits? Who in the world needs 115 different-sized bits?

• Solar-powered vibrational mole deterrent, $27.99 — This is basically a small green spike, with a tiny solar panel on top, that you stick in the ground and is supposed to emit a “vibrating sound” every 30 seconds to repel subterranean lawn critters. How many of these do you suppose they have to sell before they’ve accumulated enough cash to pay for the inevitable class action lawsuit charging that this thing is nothing more than a green plastic stick?

• 98-gallon steel tank, $265.99 — The text says the 14-gauge, 5-foot by 2-foot by foot-and-a-half steel tank “holds diesel fuel, fertilizer, water and more” but is “not to be used as a storage tank.” So it can hold stuff, but not store it.

• Simulated outdoor security camera, $44.99 — Forty-five dollars for a fake security camera. What do they charge for real ones?

• 108 paint brushes, $14.99 — You get six 3-inch, 12 2-inch, 18 1-inch, 24 1/2-inch and 48 1/4-inch brushes. For 15 bucks, you can’t afford not to buy ’em.

• 50 cc moped, $899.99 — Doesn’t 150 miles per gallon sound good right about now? It probably won’t pull your sickle mower, though.

• Post driver, $49.99; Post puller, $56.99 — That’s pretty much life in a nutshell: You’ve got to pay a lot more to get out of a situation than you do to get into it.

The farm bill and poverty
Kent Thiesse wasn’t kidding when he said in last issue’s “Farm Programs” column that all kinds of groups you wouldn’t think of are diving into the farm bill debate. In an e-mail I received titled “Give Poor Farmers a Fighting Chance,” the poverty relief group Oxfam asked that I send the following letter to my representative in Washington ...

Dear Congressman ________,

As your constituent, I feel very strongly that as you go to mark up, you should reform the 2007 farm bill.

Devised during the Great Depression, the farm bill was designed to give American farmers a safety net when the market bottomed out. Today’s farm bill gives out large government payments to producers of a small number of crops. Most American farmers get little or none of these commodity subsidies. Meanwhile, these subsidies don’t alleviate the biggest problems in rural communities: lack of medical services, poor schools, population loss and environmental degradation.

While the farm bill underperforms in the United States, it also hurts farmers in developing countries. By encouraging the overproduction of crops such as cotton and rice, commodity subsidies create a glut that drives down world prices, undermining the livelihoods of millions of small farmers around the world.

All in all, a revamped 2007 farm bill can help poor people and rural communities in the United States and abroad lift themselves out of poverty. As you begin marking up this legislation, I urge you to reduce trade distorting agriculture subsidies and redirect the money to the programs that need it most: conservation, nutrition, rural development and the research and development of renewable sources of energy.

Your vote could help Americans — and even poor farmers abroad. Thank you for your time.

Oxfam is a highly respected relief organization. In recent years, they’ve been deeply involved in disaster relief for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the ongoing conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan, among numerous “forgotten” tragedies.

Clearly Oxfam has made a connection between U.S. farm policy and the fate of impoverished people around the globe. As debate over the farm bill continues in 2007, it will be interesting to see if Congress makes the same connection.

        

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