"The American farmer is flat broke," NFO president Paul Olson told the gathering. "We don't have one generation [of farmers] left. Corporate America is putting us on the other side of the fence. They won't help us. I have lost all confidence in Washington. The last farm bill was written by the Farm Bureau and Cargill," he stated. The Farm Bureau on the whole represents the interests of large capitalist farmers and Cargill is one of the handful of grain monopolies.

In his talk, Olson reviewed the squeeze farmers face as the prices they receive for the commodities they produce are going down as cost of inputs necessary for production are increasing. A few speakers compared the crisis facing producers on the land to that facing working people. Some discussion was also raised at the convention about the reasons for these deteriorating economic conditions.

The NFO evolved from a farm protest movement in 1955 into a producer-owned organization of farmers that today negotiates contracts and terms of sale for the products worth hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of its family-farmer members in 37 states.

In an interview with the Militant, Leonard Vandenburg, vice president of the NFO, said the group is talking to other farm organizations about "raising our common concerns with the government" when Congress begins discussing the 2002 farm bill.

In his address to the convention, Vandenburg said, "Low wages and big exports equal a lower standard of living, especially for wage earners and farmers," he said. "Wage earners and farmers in every country are being pitted against those in every other country."

"There is a hidden term they use--'the new world order.' Class is set against class," he said, "farmer against farmer, nation against nation. Something is wrong when more is spent on subsidies for agriculture than on paying dignified prices. Our goal is for farmers to be able to pay for their cost of production, plus a profit."

Many speakers at the conference raised the need for farmers to stand together to demand processing companies pay them more for their product.

There was a range of views expressed on trade questions. For example Corey Ollikka, president of the Canadian Farmers Union, said, "Canadian exports have gone up over the last 20 years as farm income is going lower." He explained that he had joined the protests last year in Seattle against the World Trade Organization. These actions were dominated by the AFL-CIO officialdom and other organizations who pushed reactionary proposals for the U.S. government to adopt stronger protectionist trade measures and punitive restrictions on other nations to limit imports to the United States.

This point of view was also reflected in a letter read by NFO president Olson to the convention from Teamsters president James Hoffa. "The Teamsters share a number of your concerns," the letter read, such as "fighting free trade, NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement], and relations with China."

Bernard Brommer, president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, addressed the convention, supporting the farm organization's goals. He said, "For both the AFL and NFO a long-standing goal has been organizing and collective bargaining." The convention coincided with the inauguration of U.S. president George Bush, and Brommer spoke out against the "crude intimidation of African Americans and the invalidation of ballots of Blacks and the elderly" during the election. "From now on we need to make sure voting rights are respected and that Bush is only a one-term president."

"Labor has a lot in common with farmers and the system we have to deal with," said Keith Deittrich, a Nebraska corn and soybean producer and president of the American Corn Growers Association. "Farmers must band together collectively for a fair price in the market place." Deittrich also pointed to the two-year-old strike by members of the United Steelworkers of America against Titan Tire. The company "has 90 percent of the agricultural wheel market," he said. Union members "asked us to talk about this and to consider not buying Titan Tires until they resolve this conflict."

Arlen Hanson, a hog farmer from Brown County, South Dakota, explained in an interview how his family lost most of its land to a bank. In 1988, the bank first divided up his family's land into thirds and then negotiated with each of the brothers separately. "We had good land, we fertilized it and had good yields. We were efficient," Hanson explained. "One brother lost it all. He had 300 head of cattle, but they forced him to pay off his debts. When the bank calls the note, you have to sell at whatever price you can get. He sold cows for $500 a piece that were worth $1,000."

Leland Townsend, a livestock and grain farmer from Ingham County, Michigan, who participated in the national milk strike by dairy farmers last year, was at the convention. Locally, "fifty farmers participated in the action in which 12 individuals dumped 6,000 gallons of milk," he said. "Some of the milk was donated to a Michigan food bank, which picked it up and distributed it.

An individual NFO member who works at the Crooked Creek Dairy processed the milk for them. He also explained that the only sugar beet processor in the state of Michigan has filed bankruptcy and sugar beets are piling up. Truck drivers who haul sugar beets from the storage area to the processor had not been paid for two weeks.

Mark Rohr, a dairy farmer from Bluffton, Minnesota, began dumping milk to protest the low prices to farmers in April 1999. "I dumped milk in 1999 in front of the State Capitol building in St. Paul," he said. "The media and TV covered it. Dozens of people called and commented on it. It got a discussion going." Rohr said he also dumped milk on his farm as part of the national milk strikes last July and September. "The prices we get won't pay expenses," said Rohr.

The NFO convention next year will be in Springfield, Missouri.

Deborah Liatos is a meat packer and a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 120. Leslie Dork contributed to this article.  
 
 
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