The gathering drew several hundred farmers. The larger capitalist farmers who prevail in the leadership of the National Farmers Union (NFU) dominated the proceedings. At the same time, a layer of working farmers, who are largely dependent on the labor of themselves and family members, also attended.

The NFU has 300,000 members in 26 states. It concentrates on lobbying efforts, and on assisting farmers to take measures to protect their incomes from the fluctuations of markets and weather. NFU assistance to farmers include obtaining insurance and setting up cooperatives. The organization is most strongly based in Oklahoma, the Rocky Mountain region, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana.

The California Farmers Union, which hosted the convention, was formed by activists in the California Dairy Campaign, which organized several milk dumps in the past to protest the low prices they receive from milk processors.  
 
Increasing concentration of capital
Statistics made available at the convention show the increasing concentration of capital in the countryside.

While farms with annual sales of more than $100,000 are only 16.2 percent of all units, they account for more than 57 percent of total farm acreage.

Small-scale cattle and hog producers are under pressure from large corporations and their factory farms. Cattle feedlots with a capacity of 1,000 or more head account for 83 percent of the U.S. total.

The number of hog farms "has fallen steadily since 1980," reported a bulletin of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Some 75 percent of hogs are now held in farms of 2,000 or more animals, it added.

USDA statistics show that while the average prices received by farmers for their outputs have slightly decreased over the last decade, the average prices paid by farmers for their inputs during the same time period have increased by more than 25 percent.

Farmers who produce different commodities, including dairy, raisins, livestock, poultry, corn, and wheat, used most of the formal and--especially--the informal sessions to discuss the worsening conditions they face. Many described living and working on a razor’s edge, threatened by the loss of their land as they are squeezed between the high cost of inputs they must purchase from capitalist monopolies, and the low prices they receive for their produce from processors and marketers.  
 
Farm crisis in California
Scott Magneson, a dairy farmer from Merced County, California, said, "The price I get for cheese has fallen below a dollar--that’s about $8 per hundredweight. A few years ago we were receiving $16 per hundredweight. My full cost of production is $13 per hundredweight."

Magneson said that western dairy farmers are forming a new organization, the American Dairyman’s Federation, to try to get more control over processing and marketing. The new organization will not allow processors on the board of directors, he said.

"The governor of California should declare a state of emergency in Fresno County, to allow federal loan programs for raisin growers," said a raisin farmer from the San Joaquin Valley, who asked that his name not be used. "One-third of the state’s 5,500 raisin growers have gone out of business, and another third will go under within two years.

"Our income is less than $1,175 an acre, down from a high of $3,500 an acre and less than half the cost of production," he said. "What growers need is protection from creditors and lenders until we can work this through."

"Four thousand agricultural workers have lost their jobs," he added.

Herman Coleman, a retired Black farmer from Arkansas, whose family still farms cotton, rice and soybeans, said that the government’s Farm Bill, signed by President Bush on May 13 last year, "benefits the largest farms, run not by family farmers but by business interests. The government is deliberately forcing not only Black farmers out of business, but also white farmers," he said. "All farmers must unite, or the biggest corporations will pick us off. Black farmers have just been the easiest targets."

Proposals for protectionist measures and American nationalist themes were prominent topics in the convention agenda and in speeches by NFU leaders. The convention called for the implementation of "country-of-origin" labeling of food.

Another resolution advocated restrictions on the import and use of milk protein concentrate (MPC), a powdered milk product that is often used as a substitute for fresh milk by large food processing companies.

According to the NFU, "imported MPC displaces the domestic milk market and depresses milk prices."

Wendy Lyons is a meat packer in Vernon, California. Bill Kalman works in a meat processing plant in San Lorenzo, California, and is a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 120.  
 
 
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