N&O Serves Up More Attacks on Hog Farms--Suggests Crickets Should Replace Bacon on the Menu

Imagine it’s Christmas morning and the children have unwrapped their gifts and emptied the stockings.Everyone sits down for a breakfast of bacon, sausage and eggs … but you serve them a plate of crickets instead.

This isn’t some cruel new form of punishment from Santa. It’s an idea that was floated in The News & Observer last week.

Sound odd? We thought so, but The N&O editors deemed it an idea worthy of print. It published a guest column with this headline: “North Carolina should switch from hog farms to cricket farms.” (They later changed it to read, “For a healthier N.C., let’s eat crickets.”)

The column was written by a UNC student and originally appeared in The Daily Tar Heel. We won’t judge what students choose to write about, but why would the state’s major newspapers reprint such a column?

Well, it fits The N&O’s long-running and misguided attack on North Carolina’s farm families. The column repeats falsehoods about hog farming in North Carolina – and then makes a quantum leap to suggest that we should start eating crickets instead of bacon.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Can you imagine eating crickets for Easter lunch? Tailgating with cricket biscuits from Bojangles? Chowing down on crickets and hushpuppies at your favorite BBQ spot?

Ask a roomful of people if they want to go for that and you’ll likely hear… crickets.

One Farmer's Story

Fake news isn’t just a political phenomenon. If you click on the internet you’ll also find dozens of stories by the groups who are set on tarring and feathering hog farmers. Those stories say a lot of unfair things. One story I read said a woman couldn’t go outside and was a prisoner in her own home due to the odor from the hog farm next door. The problem was the lady was sitting on her front porch, outside, when she said it. Another political-type story – creating more fake news – used a long-discredited ‘study’ to say that hog farmers discriminate against people of color.But, every now and then, you’ll find a story that wasn’t written by a group with an axe to grind. Here’s one from a local newspaper, about a third-generation farmer who raises hogs on his 66 acre farm near Clarkton.

Jobs & Wages: How do Farm Families of NC Impact Your Community?

22.8 million jobs. $763 billion in wages. $146 billion in exports.That’s what the food and agriculture sectors mean to our economy, according to the latest study.And what about North Carolina? 677,000 jobs. $20.4 billion in wages. $2.69 billion in exports.N.C. Farm Families: Feeding America. Providing jobs.