Many are being driven out of business or live on a knife's edge, squeezed by high costs of inputs they must purchase from capitalist monopolies and the low prices they receive for their grain, livestock, and other crops from the agribusiness conglomerates. In convention sessions and in informal discussion, farmers exchanged opinions and experiences on how to defend themselves in order to survive.

The NFU organizes lobbying and education, helps farmers set up cooperatives, and provides insurance, credit card, and auto club services. The organization has 260,000 members in 25 states, with the strongest presence in Oklahoma where there are more than 115,000 members.

Other strongholds are North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas, Colorado, and Montana. Of the nearly 500 people attending the conference, of whom 164 were delegates, many were small farmers who employ little or no labor. Others, such as farmers operating large dairy farms in California or Pennsylvania, or large potato and sugar beet operations in Idaho, employ half a dozen or more workers on a seasonal basis or year-round.

Many convention participants had joined the NFU-organized Rally for Rural America, in Washington, D.C., a year ago. The event, attended by 3,000 people, was endorsed by a broad coalition of labor, religious, and farm organizations, including the AFL-CIO, and had the backing of a number of Democratic Party politicians. About one-fourth of the convention delegates were women. Last year the NFU women's conference in Minneapolis attracted 100 members from eight states, and a regional women's meeting hosted by the Oklahoma Farmers Union drew 70 participants.  
 
'I don't want to give up'
Marcy Svenningsen, 39, from Valley City, North Dakota, farms 1,500 acres with her husband. They have 200 head of cattle and raise wheat and nine other crops. "We diversify to spread the risk," she said. "We're hanging in there, but we're not making it. Our equipment is old. We have a 20-year-old tractor." She has worked for years full-time as business manager of a company in Valley City to make ends meet. "I run the combine on my vacations and my son works after school," she said. "All I ever wanted to do is farm, but I can't because we can't afford it, even though 200 head of cattle and 1,500 acres is enough to keep both of us busy."

Cattle prices have risen enough to make some money, Svenningsen said, but grain prices are down, and the government has raised land taxes every year for the past decade. "Our cattle supports the rest," she said, "but you need $4.25 a bushel to make money on wheat, and it's $3.00 or $3.25 a bushel now. That's when I got started in the Farmers Union. I've noticed a lot of gloom among farmers over the last couple of years. People say, 'What can we do?' and some of them give up and sell. But I don't want to give up."

Wheat farmers in North Dakota and Minnesota have been hit hard by rainy weather, low prices, and scab, a disease that attacks the wheat plant, Svenningsen said.

Dairy farmer Gene Murtz runs the Skyline Dairy farm in Pennsylvania with his two brothers. He said it costs $14.00 per hundred pounds to produce milk but he is only receiving $12.00.

Joe Rankin, 52, a cotton farmer from Ralls, Texas, said cotton prices are at the lowest level since the 1940s. He and other farmers in the Lubbock, Texas, area, which with 2 million acres is one of the world's largest cotton patches, are receiving 40 cents a pound for cotton. "My cost of production is 75 cents a pound," Rankin said, "and the government has put the disaster payments under review, so payment is stalled." Rankin's costs are rising, especially fuel. "When I started farming, propane was six cents a gallon. Now it's $1.50."

Hog prices are now around 40 cents a pound, close to the cost of production for many farmers, but small hog producers are still staggering from several years of extremely low prices. Alvin Bauman, 87, drove to the convention from his home in Subetha, Kansas. "I got involved in the fight when my two sons, who are farmers, ran into problems. One had to sell hogs for 11 cents a pound. When he told me, it made my blood boil and I got active in the Farmers Union. The other is a dairy farmer, and milk dropped from $16 per hundredweight to $10."  
 
Farm income dropping
On the first full day of the convention, Gregory Pompelli, an official from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, ticked off the stark figures that document what every farmer attending the convention knew from direct experience. After several years of falling or flat prices, farm income is projected to be even lower next year, the lowest since 1995. While prices are up 5.4 percent this year, overall costs are up 5.9 percent, with the price of fuel up 18 percent and of fertilizer up 44 percent. Pompelli said that while average farm household income is slightly above the average of $58,842 for all U.S. households, without the off-farm income of one or more household members it would be far below the average.

In response to the pressure to keep costs down, some farmers who employ wage labor expressed opposition to efforts by farm workers to eliminate piecework pay, which often results in earning less than the minimum wage. Gary Turner, president of the Idaho Farmers Union and a potato and sugar beet farmer, spoke against the proposals, which he said would raise his labor costs. "We shouldn't lose the prerogative to ask them to work at a certain rate," he said of the farm workers who are generally not covered by minimum wage laws.

Central topics of discussion were the next farm bill, which NFU leaders expect will be adopted by Congress in 2002, and proposed cuts by U.S. president Bush in agriculture spending.

The last major farm bill, passed with bipartisan support and signed by President William Clinton in 1996, was called the Freedom to Farm Act. The law phased out price supports, land set-asides--payments for farmers to leave land fallow for a period of time--and other aid. The bill encouraged expanded production to meet projected growing markets in Asia and other parts of the world. But prices for nearly all farm commodities plummeted in the following year as the world capitalist crisis spread financial disasters from Asia to Latin America to Russia, resulting in a precipitous drop in food exports to those countries. Many working farmers now call the 1996 measure the "freedom to fail" act.

In response to farmers' demands and protests, the federal government has issued emergency direct payments to farmers totaling $23 billion in 1999, three times what the previous price supports provided. While the emergency payments help stave off bankruptcy for some small farmers, most are distributed on a per-acre or per-bushel basis with no cap, a policy that disproportionately benefits the wealthiest farmers. For example, the biggest 35,000 farms, or 16 percent, receive fully half of the government payments, Pompelli said. The USDA representative said that one-third of wheat farmers are expected to experience "cash flow problems" in 2001.  
 
Government backs big farmers
Chris Petersen, a delegate from Clear Lake, Iowa, who raises hogs and grows corn and soybeans, spoke about loan deficiency payments (LDPs), which are ostensibly aimed at closing the gap between what farmers receive for their crop and the amount they borrowed to produce it. He said the absence of caps on the total payments a farmer can receive works to the enrichment of the wealthy farmers and the detriment of small farmers like himself.

"Before 1996 we sometimes had a 'grain reserve,'" for periods of low prices, Petersen said. "Small farmers with up to 500 acres could put up to 30,000 bushels of corn in storage, and receive 26 cents a bushel" while they waited for better prices. "Now there is no grain reserve," Petersen said. "Instead we have loan deficiency payments when the price is below $1.79 a bushel for corn. Our government is in cahoots with agribusiness," he said, for promoting "a policy that the bigger you are, the more LDPs you get. I call them 'low damn price' or 'limited death payments' for family farmers."

Proposals for more protectionist measures and American nationalist themes were a part the keynote speeches by NFU leaders, guest speakers, and many members. NFU president Leland Swenson, participating in a "Farm Leaders Roundtable," said the NFU's major priorities are to engage in the debate on the failure of the "Freedom to Farm" bill and to "address the inadequacies of the current trade agreements."

Swensen and others urged adoption of government measures that would limit food imports to the United States and strengthen the competitive edge of U.S. farm exports, such as a weaker dollar. "If the dollar stays strong," he said, "we'll never get more than a dollar for [a bushel of] corn and $2.00 for soybeans." A strong currency, Swensen said, makes U.S. agricultural exports too costly for many overseas buyers. Other speakers blamed U.S. farmers' woes on Brazil and countries in the European Union.  
 
'Industrial concentration' in agriculture
Another theme was opposition to "industrial concentration" in agriculture, which was the topic of a workshop and the subject of many comments. Giant hog, cattle, dairy, and poultry farms, owned by or operated under direction of industrial giants, are a growing concern as nearby communities face pollution of various forms. A number of farmers are being driven out of business because they can't compete with these capitalist operations.

Convention participants watched a video that showed large quantities of liquid manure being sprayed onto already saturated land on farms owned by the agribusiness giant Smithfield corporation in North Carolina. The manure is also held in 10- to 20-acre "lagoons," some of them three stories deep and not watertight. These practices have led to contamination of streams and coastal waters by bacteria resulting in massive fish kills and toxic reactions in human beings.

Keynote speaker Robert Kennedy, Jr., an attorney and president of the clean-water group Water Keeper Alliance, attacked Smithfield for causing pollution. Kennedy, who received several standing ovations, sounded themes touched upon by other liberal Democrats that the problem facing farmers is conglomerates like Smithfield that violate the "free market economy" by monopolizing the entire chain of production.

Kennedy promoted the utopian notion of returning to an earlier stage of capitalism, pointing to Thomas Jefferson's idea of democracy "based on hundreds of thousands of yeoman farmers." While opposing some of Smithfield's practices, Kennedy said, "I love capitalism. But in a free market economy if you want to get rich, you've got to make a lot of others rich too."

Ted Leonard, a meat packer in Boston, contributed to this article.
 
 
Related article:
Livestock virus deepens farmers' crisis  
 
 
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