BY MAGGIE TROWE AND JOE SWANSON
TAMA, Iowa - Sixty people - most of them working
farmers - gathered at a meeting sponsored by the Iowa Farmers
Union to hear National Farmers Union president Lee Swensen and
to discuss how to solve the deep crisis that threatens their
ability to stay in farming. Two union packinghouse workers
also attended. The meeting took place at the American Legion
hall in this town, located in the heart of hog, cattle, corn,
and soybean country, down the road from the IBP-owned Tama
Packing plant and a large cattle auction facility.
The meeting was chaired by IFU president Gary Hoskey. Speakers in addition to Swensen included representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and from the farm division of the Iowa Attorney General's office. The USDA representative explained how the government's paltry $5-a-head relief to hog farmers will be distributed. Hog farmers have been getting prices between $8 and $30 per hundredweight in the last three months, well below the cost of production.
Swensen attacked the growing concentration of the capitalist enterprises that process and distribute agricultural commodities. He pointed to acquisitions in progress that will give one company control of 85 percent of cotton. "In beef production, four big firms control 80 percent of beef processing, and in pork four firms control 60 percent. Smithfield [one of the big four in pork] bought one plant in South Dakota and shut it down, because they own a big plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota," Swensen said.
This concentration allows processors to buy low and sell high, Swensen said. "Why did Iowa Beef make a 400 percent increase in profit when beef producers increased their debt by 400 percent?" Swensen asked. "This is a violation of America's trust in the capitalist system."
Swensen invited participants to attend the National Farmers Union convention in Springfield, Illinois March 5-8 where the farm crisis will be discussed. The NFU is demanding that Congress declare a moratorium on all pending mergers and acquisitions until a review and economic impact survey can be carried out. The NFU is also calling for "a full investigation of price-rigging and monitoring at a state level," Swensen said, "which the Farm Bureau and the Pork Producers Council now support." The NFU also calls for country-of-origin labels on food products, a protectionist measure that pits farmers in the United States against those in other countries. "Our country is a dumping ground for imports," said Swensen, arguing for this demand.
The speakers' presentations were followed by a lively and sometimes heated discussion. Rhodes, Iowa, hog farmer Larry Ginter said, "The federal and state governments have sold their souls to agribusiness." Ginter recalled the activism of farmers who fought against foreclosures during the crisis of the 1980s, and said, "We ought to be marching on the capitol here and in Washington, D.C. Martin Luther King did that, and we can too."
While most of the participants were in their 40s and older, several younger farmers were in attendance. One young farmer called for all elected officials to come forward, "so we can put you on the hot seat."
A packinghouse worker who spoke for an international alliance of workers and farmers against the common capitalist enemy received applause.
This meeting was one of many that are happening in the Midwest. Six hundred farmers and others attended a meeting in Sioux City, Iowa in December. More than 600 people attended the Four State Farm Price Crisis Forum in Sioux City January 30. This meeting, organized by capitalist politicians from Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Minnesota, was attended by hundreds of livestock and grain farmers from the region.
At that meeting, Sen. Paul Wellstone from Minnesota demagogically attacked the big agribusiness capitalists. "The Cargills of the world and the Hormels of this world have the power, but we are on the side of right," Wellstone said, to applause. Wellstone and others had prepared resolutions calling for the U.S. Congress and state legislatures to pass reform measures including providing for mandatory price reporting for all sales of livestock within the United States, barring processors of meat from owning and operating livestock feedlots. The resolutions also called for enforcement of the 1921 federal Packers and Stockyards Act "to preserve competition and open markets in the Midwestern grain and livestock industries."
Not all farmers had confidence in the rhetoric. Michael Erickson, 41, a hog farmer from Marshall, Minnesota, said, "The resolution sounded good, but the question is can it get done in time or even at all. I am now looking for an industrial job and I'm about to lose my farm. I don't have much faith in these politicians who always seem to take the side of the big business packers, no matter how radical they sound today."
Supporters of incipient fascist Lyndon LaRouche had a table at the meeting and were distributing their newspaper, The New Federalist. Their placards read "Stop the Impeachment! Stop the coup by Albert Gore!" and they were publicizing a meeting later in the day with a South Dakota farmer as the featured speaker.