“I don’t want anyone to have to go through what we went through,” said David Fuhrmann, the president of Foremost Farms, the largest dairy cooperative in Wisconsin, to an audience of dairy cooperative members in Seattle, Washington, just a few weeks ago.

Last week I attended an event hosted by the New America Foundation where speakers including Wayne Pacelle, Christopher Leonard (author of the new book "The Meat Racket"), members of HSUS’ new "agriculture councils" and others were speakers on the agenda. No subject was off the table: From confinement to painful procedures, even the beef and pork Checkoffs. It was like a firing squad, and agriculture was guilty in the eyes of the panelists – and the audience – from the get-go.

Almost a year ago, we watched in amazement as Dodge Ram shocked the ag world with their “So God Made a Farmer” Super Bowl commercial. As many times as I’ve watched that commercial, I still get chills.

This weekend, the Huffington Post posted a blog entitled “Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy.” It’s a pretty ridiculous title for a blog, but the article is well-written, thought-provoking and spot-on. The blog discusses how millennials – the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s which is also called Generation Y – are generally discontented with life. The author coined a new term for a certain segment of the millennial group: Gen Y Protagonists and Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story.

Growing up in Wisconsin, one of my favorite summer activities was hitting up the Wisconsin State Fair when it came to Milwaukee. Long before the craze of “fried things on a stick” took hold, my parents and I would wander through the livestock barns, admiring the beautiful animals, take a visit to the milking parlor, watch a parade featuring majestic Clydesdales and snack on a Wisconsin State Fair tradition – the cream puff.

For me, one of my favorite guilty pleasure shows on Friday nights is "Kitchen Nightmares," hosted by acclaimed chef Gordon Ramsey. On May 10, Chef Ramsey visited Amy’s Baking Company (ABC) in Scottsdale, Arizona. The owners of ABC, a husband and wife team, were catapulted into the spotlight after the airing of the episode where they were shown yelling expletives at customers, taking tips left for servers and refusing to take any criticism from Ramsey.

Victimless agriculture? Quite a title, right? Fear not, dedicated Progressive Dairyman readers, I didn’t suddenly wake up a vegan today; there’s no veggie burgers or tofu-dogs in this agvocate’s future. Contrary to first glance, I’m not even talking about animals in this column. The “victims” to whom I’m referring in the title are us in the industry.

For generations, hard-working mothers have been committed to making smart food choices for their families. Fifty years ago, those choices were made after consultations with the family doctor, age-old “wives tales” and advice from grandmothers or great-grandmothers. Today, we live in a very different world. Modern mothers are booting up their laptops and typing questions into search engines like Google and Bing. Those search engines are churning out results – in the forms of blogs from other seasoned mothers.