This is just dumb. Stop whining to your pals and start providing food safety information to tell your story.

Yuma County’s nearly $3 billion agriculture industry is responsible for a large percentage of its total prosperity, and local cities and businesses are working to further expand its influence with agritourism-based attractions and events.

But many industry figures said they’re worried about critical media coverage cutting into consumer demand for Yuma-grown crops at last week’s Southwest Arizona Futures Forum session about preserving the area’s water supplies.

A paragraph near the top of the “plan of action for Yuma” compiled at the end of the all-day meeting attended by more than 100 began with, “the community must directly address negative ads and comments regarding the agriculture industry with positive facts about regarding efficient food production and the importance of food safety.”

Attendees of the conference cited articles such as an August column in The Washington Post, “Why Salad is So Overrated,” by contributor Tamar Haspel, who said the dish which employs so many of the vegetable crops grown in the Yuma area “has almost nothing going for it. It occupies precious crop acreage, requires fossil fuels to be shipped, refrigerated, around the world, and adds nothing but crunch to the plate.”