BY DOUG JENNESS AND HEATHER WOOD
SAUK CENTRE, Minnesota - "Farmers can't get a price to
meet the cost of production!" This was the refrain echoed by
speaker after speaker at a public hearing held here August 27
to hear testimony from farmers and others on the crisis facing
rural communities in Minnesota. Nearly 100 people, mostly
working farmers, participated in the meeting called by the
Agriculture Committee of the Minnesota House of
Representatives.
The farmers came from throughout the state and included dairy producers, turkey growers, and hog farmers, as well as corn, wheat, barley, and soybean growers.
Many speakers presented statistics showing the general downward trend of commodity prices in the past eight years. Jeff Kunstleben, a dairy farmer from Albany and president of the Minnesota Dairy Producers Board, offered one of the most telling figures. He reported that for every dollar a consumer pays for dairy products in the supermarket, the farmer gets 23 cents today, compared to 37 cents in 1980. He attributed this to the "unfair practices of big food companies" and to "farmers not having direct access to grocery store shelves." The consumer pays more and we get paid less, he said. The problem is the "middlemen."
Kunstleben explained that the cooperatives, to which many dairy farmers belong, are not working in the interests of the producers. "Where's the democracy in the co-ops?" he asked.
Mike Kliber from the Minnesota Farmers Union said that every time farmers find a responsive voice in the co-op boards "a change in personnel is made to make the board more remote from farmers."
Kunstleben said that the federal procedures and restrictions on pricing milk are so complicated that few dairy farmers can understand them. One thing they do know, he said, is the price differences for different parts of the country based on how far they are from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, is unfair to Minnesota dairy farmers today.
Representative Steve Wenzel, chair of the Agriculture Committee, suggested that farmers lobby their congressmen to get a pricing compact like the one in New England, that sets milk prices above federally determined levels.
Delores Swoboda, a hog farmer from Redwood Falls and a veteran activist from the farm protest movement of the 1980s, testified, "I thought I saw the worst farmers could see in the '80s - until now." She said that Groundswell, an organization that tries to help working farmers, receives 8-16 phone calls a day on its hot line from farmers seeking assistance. She has been a board member of Groundswell since 1985.
Swoboda also described the damage this year to farmland and crops as the result of tornadoes, hail, and heavy rain. "And this comes on top of the millions of dollars of damage done a year ago by the flood in the Northwest," she said. Several participants addressed the inadequacy of the disaster relief that had been provided so far. When farmers work on such tight margins, aid that only pays a portion, even 80 percent, of the damage won't stop them from going under. In northwestern Minnesota, for example, thousands of farmers are going under as a result of wheat scab and the damage done by last year's flooding of the Red River. A report in the Minneapolis Star Tribune estimated that last year 20 percent of the farmers in that region went under.
Minnesota is a major producer of turkeys. According to Calvin Jackson, a turkey farmer from Little Falls, turkey producers are having an increasingly difficult time making enough to live on. "Many turkey farmers," he said, "are afraid to speak out for fear of losing contracts with Jenny-O," a processor owned by Hormel. He said, "I've reached the point where I don't care any more. I'm going under anyway unless something is done."
A grievance of many participants was that the 1996 "Freedom to Farm Act" removed subsidy payments, which, as one speaker explained "served as a safety-belt." As a transition from the previous price support system, the federal government is making annual transition payments for five years. The USDA has announced that it will make 1999 payments this year. As one farmer explained, that "may help cash flow this year, but it will leave us worse off next year."
Wenzel and other state legislators present said they are pressing the governor to call a special session of the state legislature to discuss the farm crisis.
From the floor one farmer stated, "By the time you get around to supporting a fair price, half of us will have lost our farms."
Several activists who are working to organize a speaking tour for a Black farmer involved in the $2.5 billion class action suit filed last year against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for racial discrimination also attended the hearing. They distributed some fliers on the suit, and Arrin Hawkins, a student at the University of Minnesota, made an announcement about the plans for the tour.
Several candidates or representatives of candidates in the 1998 elections spoke during the hearings. Tom Fiske, Socialist Workers candidate for governor of Minnesota, participated and submitted a series of proposals for organizing a fight to protect farmers from the accelerating crisis of capitalism. He explained: "The worsening conditions in the countryside coincide with deep attacks on wage workers in the country's factories, mills, mines, and transportation centers." Fiske pointed to the growing resistance of working people in response to these conditions and to the solidarity needed between workers and farmers.