FFD President’s Message · FFD Mission Family Farm Defenders is a tax-deductible non-profit...

pg 2 Family Farm Defenders WINTER 2019

Family Farm Defenders

President Joel Greeno

Vice PresidentsAnthony Pahnke & Marlene Rojas

SecretaryPatty Lovera

TreasurerRebecca Goodman

Farmer DirectorsBernard BarnaudBen BurkettJim & Rebecca GoodmanJoel GreenoPeter KinsmanGeorge & Patti Naylor

Consumer DirectorsFrances BarteltStephen Bartlett Lisa GriffithPatty LoveraAnthony PahnkeMarlene RojasErnesto Velez-Bustos

Executive DirectorJohn E. Peck BookkeeperMary Lippert Newsletter EditorFrances Bartelt

Mailing AddressPO Box 1772 Madison,WI 53701Office Address:30 W. Mifflin #702 Madison,WI 53703Phone/fax608-260-0900email: familyfarmdefenders@yahoo.comWebsite: familyfarmdefenders.orgList servefamilyfarmdefenders@yahoogroups.com

FFD MissionFamily Farm Defenders is a tax-deductiblenon-profit activist organization made up offarmers and concerned consumers.We areseeking ways to bring fair prices back to farm-ers and to insure a safe and sustainably pro-duced food for consumers.

FFD President’s MessageBy: Joel Greeno, Kendall,WI

President of Family Farm Defenders

WINTER 2019 Family Farm Defenders pg 3

The endless cycle of farm crises continues.Why is it that we can’tescape these cycles of bad news? Why is it that we can’t returnto the “glory days” of the 1970s? Is it happenstance? Just the way

it is? Or - even worse – is the current crisis facing US agriculture bydesign? Some of the answers may lie in history. And, if we forget histo-ry, history may repeat itself even worse. So how has politics shaped USagriculture? Maybe a walk through history could shed some light onhow things have gotten so bad and so out of control.

Capper-Volstead Capper-Volstead came into play in 1922. This is the law that allowedour co-ops to form, and gave farmers a way to insure adequate farm-gate prices. And let’s be clear - this did not come easy. A lot of a farm-ers got their noggins thumped, creating the first co-ops and findingmarkets for their products. It took a lot of intestinal fortitude anddogged determination to get this done. As a result over time agricul-ture flourished in the United States through until about the 1970s. Sowhat happened? Where did things go wrong? I'm going to start in theearly 1960s as to when things began to go seriously wrong – or at leastthe thought process that began to take us off the rails.

Commission on Economic Development - 1960sIn the early 1960s a wonky think tank called the Commission onEconomic Development published a paper. The commission's primaryfocus was on labor organizing and unions, but with implications forfarmers and agriculture. The commission was concerned about thegrowing strength of workers. They felt that the best way to slow theirprogress was to start to flood the labor market and the best way to dothat was to force farmers off the land. (Continued on pg. 3)

Like a tube of toothpaste, the paperargued that you shouldn’t have tosqueeze too hard, but if farmers resis-ted more extreme pressure might beneeded. So began the process of driv-ing farmers off the land - the“Unsettling of America” that WendellBerry wrote about.

1970s Nixon AdministrationThen in the 1970s, along came theNixon administration with AgricultureSecretary Earl Butz and aide PeterFlanagan, and their courtship of largescale corporate farming. Earl Butzcoined the phrase " Get big or GetOut" and pushed the notion of“Cheap Food to Feed the World.” PeterFlanagan, a Wall Street banker, wrotehis own policy paper, supporting cor-porate agribusiness.The theme of theFlanagan report was to starve NewDeal farm programs and try to drivesmaller “inefficient” family farms intobankruptcy – essentially, stacking thedeck for “Get Big or Get Out.”Despite this tilt of the scales againstthem, many farmers persisted until

the late 1970s when high interestrates and declining commodity pricesbegan to take their toll. A little sidenote is that during the tail end ofNixon's Presidency,AMPI cooperativeout of Texas had given $2 million incampaign contributions to both theDemocratic and Republican Parties.Though it was not part of Watergateper say, the shenanigans surroundingthis money helped expose the scan-dal – the crazy role of agriculture inU.S. politics..

Federal Parity At least the remnants of federal paritykept many farmers afloat – paritybeing the principle that farmersshould receive a fair market pricecovering their cost of production,adjusted for inflation. But then Reaganwas elected and set us on the path ofdestruction and chaos. Reagan proba-bly did the most to create the condi-tions leading to the massive farm loss-es we now see in the U.S. Reagan'sfirst major act as President was to cutthe size of the Dept. of Justice to 1/8

of its former size, thus DoJ's lack ofoversight in corporate America andU.S. agriculture to date. Reagan's sec-ond major act was to end parity forfarmers.

No More Pay AdjustmentsSo no more pay adjustments at therate of inflation. Now with rapid pricedrops and extremely high rates ofinterest, farmers went out of businessat a rapid pace. Every sector of agri-culture lost half of its farm's duringthe 1980s farm crisis. The rapiddecline of farms has not stoppedsince this era. Then came the 1996Freedom to Farm bill, nicknamed theFreedom to Fail bill. This bill wasmeant to just let farmers farm with-out price supports or any otherrestrictions or assistance. Just milkmore cows, raise more cattle andpigs, and grow corn and beans fromfence row to fence row.Well, needlessto say farmers failed.

(Continued pg. 4)

The Endless Cycle of Farm Crisis Continues

2018 - The Long Ongoing Fight for A Fair Price for Milk