BY TIM MAILHOT
SPRINGFIELD, Illinois - About 600 farmers and delegates from
throughout the Midwest and western states came here for the
97th annual convention of the National Farmers Union (NFU)
March 5-8. Many were eager to discuss the problems working
farmers face in staying on the land today. The views presented
by the Democratic Party government officials and others who
spoke from the platform offered no way to address these
concerns.
Farmers and rural communities are facing a deepening economic and social crisis. Farm income in the United States has dropped 18 percent from 1996, and is projected to continue to slide through 2001. In the weeks before the NFU convention, the government-set base price farmers are paid for milk dropped by 37 percent.
"We can't survive on that price of milk," said Janet Nelson in an interview. She farms 400 acres in Prairie Farm, Wisconsin, raising corn, oats and alfalfa, 125 cattle, and 60 milk cows. "You can drive for miles and miles now and not even see a dairy farm anymore."
Concerns about the possibility of surviving this current downturn boiled over the second day of the convention, following a talk by former secretary of agriculture Earl Butz. His talk extolled the virtues of the free market system, repeatedly noting the efficiency of the U.S. agriculture industry and supposed advantages of increasing corporate control from seed to store shelf. He summed this up saying, "We spend only 11 percent of our take home pay on food, the lowest in the world. Only 2 percent of the population is involved in production agriculture. That's good. The adjustment has been hard for some, but it's good they've gotten out. They've got good paying jobs now and we're more efficient." He downplayed concerns about food safety and increasing use of gene technology.
Farmer after farmer came to the microphone and challenged these views. A dairy farmer from Wisconsin said, "you learned to read, but can you see? The ones who still agree with you are from outside the farm and are investors. The family farmer who used to agree with you either changed his mind or is now out of business."
Gary Hoskey from Iowa explained the dangers of ground water pollution from leaking waste lagoons at large confinement hog farms. "You call us resources, but we're humans, men, women, and children with real problems, real lives.
Others took up the lack of access to markets dominated by conglomerates, the difficulties confronting young farmers trying to get started, and continued loss of farm land. "You talked a lot about how we spend 11 percent of our take home pay on food," said a farmer from Oklahoma. "When the future brings the full consolidation of corporate control, will we still spend only 11 percent?"
Leland Swenson, national president of the NFU, laid out the perspectives that the NFU would be organizing around in the coming year. He advocated lobbying efforts for a stronger "safety net" for farmers that included granting authority to the secretary of agriculture to set aside crop land from production to decrease overproduction, raising the cap on crop loans, mandatory price reporting for all processors for all their crop purchases, country of origin labeling, a federal property tax rebate, and more money for building crop storage facilities on farms to avoid spoilage. He closed by extending an invitation to all U.S. farm organizations and agriculture and commodity groups to join in a national agriculture summit to find common issues around which they can organize together.
On the final day of the convention, U.S. secretary of agriculture Daniel Glickman addressed the delegates. He encouraged farmers to follow the example the United Steelworkers of America officials, who have joined with the steel bosses to organize the "Stand Up for Steel" campaign.
This is a reactionary campaign organized by major U.S. steel companies that call for laws to be passed against the "dumping" of foreign steel in the U.S. market at what they claim to be unfair prices.
Tim Mailhot is a member of USWA Local 310 in Des Moines.