BY NANCY ROSENSTOCK
NEW YORK - Eighty people attended a lively Militant Labor
Forum here August 28 titled "The Crisis Facing Family Farmers
Today." The panel of speakers featured Gary Grant, president of
the Black Farmers and Agriculturists Association in Tillery,
North Carolina; John Bender, a vegetable farmer from upstate New
York and a member of the Empire State Family Farm Coalition; Ken
Dibbell, a dairy farmer from upstate New York and a member of the
National Family Farm Coalition; Ira Dworkin, a young farm
solidarity activist; and Wendy Lyons, Socialist Workers candidate
for New York attorney general and a member of the Union of
Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.
Dibbell stated that the problems facing dairy farmers in upstate New York stem in large part from what he called "a failed and flawed Federal pricing system." He circulated a letter to the audience that he wrote to the speaker of the New York State Assembly, which says that "in excess of 11,000 dairy farms in this state have been idled since 1980 and most of them are sitting idle to this day."
The letter urged the state legislature to sign on to the Northeast Interstate Compact, a regional trade pact he argued is needed to "put a floor on the farm-gate milk price." Dibbell said in his presentation at the forum that the compact would prevent total collapse for family farmers. Over the last 15 years, milk prices to consumers have continued to go up while the price to the family farmer has gone down, Dibbell said, and the processors are "patting their pockets."
Common actions, including protests and lawsuits, have helped galvanize Black farmers in Tillery, North Carolina, in the fight to defend their land, along with others throughout the South, Grant said in his presentation. He urged participants in the meeting to take literature from the Black Farmers and Agriculturists Association to help get out the word on the plight of Black farmers.
The statistics speak for themselves: between 1920 and 1992, the number of Black farmers in the United States declined from 925,710 to 18,816. In 1984-85 the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) lent $1.3 billion to farmers nationwide to buy land. Of the almost 16,000 farmers who received those funds, only 209 were Black.
Grant explained that Black farmers are involved in a $2.5- billion class action lawsuit against the USDA for stolen land. He announced a September 10 prayer vigil in Washington, D.C. in support of this fight.
Dworkin, a young activist from New York who spent time working in Tillery with Black farmers, outlined the discriminatory loan policies in effect for Black farmers.
John Bender spoke in solidarity with the Black farmers. Making the point that all farmers are in the same boat and need to support each other, he compared the plight of all farmers, Blacks in particular, to a sinking vessel. A trap for white farmers is thinking, "I'm glad I'm not on that side of the ship," he said.
The capitalist system is in real crisis, said socialist candidate Lyons, and that is what is fueling the crisis facing family farmers. The true nature of capitalism is revealed as people go hungry while farmers are being driven off the land. She pointed to the favorable conditions today to begin forging an alliance between workers and farmers, as the labor movement begins to fight after years of taking concessions.
Industrial and other workers have a great interest in preventing working farmers from being driven off the land and in ending racist discrimination against Black farmers, Lyons said. An action program that could unite working people is needed, which would include demands for a moratorium on farm foreclosures, immediate disaster relief, guaranteed use of the land, low-interest credit with preference for those who need it most, and price committees that would be made up of workers and farmers. Supporting legislation that pits farmers in one part of the country against another, as the dairy compact does, is not a solution that advances the interests of working people.
An animated question and answer period followed the presentations. Several of the forum participants attended the meeting after hearing an announcement on a local radio station.
Nancy Rosenstock is a member of the International Association of Machinists.