The official newsletter of the Land Stewardship Project
April/May 1999 VOL. 17, NO. 2
SELLING THE FARM DOWN CONTRACT CREEK
Why should corporations buy land when on paper they can own everything it produces?
By Brian DeVore
Talk about a rude awakening. As a staff attorney for Farmers? Legal Action Group (FLAG), Lynn Hayes has analyzed countless contracts between farmers and agribusinesses over the years. These are legal documents that outline the parameters of a "50-50" partnership, one where the farmer will produce some commodity according to a company's specifications and in return receive a guaranteed price. Farmers have people like Hayes look at these contracts because they are often full of fathomless legalese. But one particular agreement between a group of turkey growers and a processor stands out in her mind for its degree of technical difficulty.
"The turkey growers thought they owned the birds," she recalls. "Well, according to the contract, they didn't."
Contract nation
Such unpleasant surprises are increasingly popping up in farm country these days as contracts become a staple of the production and marketing system. There have long been fears that the American family farm would cease to exist someday as an independent entity. The concern is that large corporations will physically take over the land, buildings and production capacity of these operations, consolidate them, and have paid employees run the show.
That's still a real threat. But recent trends indicate such a takeover may not always be so cut and dried. Contracting is using paper to take over some sectors of farming at an astonishing rate. In all, almost one-third of the crops and livestock produced in 1997 were contracted, according to the latest statistics available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That's more than double the amount of commodities produced under such agreements just a decade before.
A scenario beginning to emerge is one where individual family farmers do stay in existence, but as contract laborers for large agribusiness firms. These firms provide the raw material (baby pigs, seed, etc.), and the farmer supplies the labor, land and buildings. Everything is plugged into the system by the corporation: it prescribes what feed, chemicals, antibiotics and even management practices are used. Agricultural law expert Neil Hamilton puts it succinctly: "Why own the farm if you can own the farmer?"
That's a sharp contrast to the way food has been produced in this country throughout most of our history: A farmer raises corn or cattle with the assumption that when those commodities are ready to sell the local elevator or stockyard will pay the going market price. If the farmer doesn't like what one buyer is paying, he or she can shop around, or, in the case of field crops, use storage until prices get better. Such a system means farmers take all the risk if prices plummet. But it also means they are free to take advantage of any upswings in the market.
Contracts are nothing new to agriculture; they've been around for commodities like chickens since at least the 1950s.
Under a "marketing contract," a price is set for the commodity before it is produced. The farmer retains ownership of the commodity and any resources it takes to produce it right up until delivery. Forward price contracting of grain is an example of this ("I agree on this day, March 1, 1999, to deliver 5,000 bushels of number two yellow corn at $2.50 per bushel on Dec. 1, 1999). In most cases, it's up to the farmer how that commodity is raised. The way the predetermined price is set varies. With crops like corn, the Chicago Board of Trade's futures market plays a big part. In commodities such as hogs, a formula may be developed by packers that takes into account everything from the cash price of hogs to the cost of feed.
In a "production contract," the processor maintains more control of the product from beginning to end. For example, in a hog production contract, the company owns the animals and specifies what feed, medications and housing will be used to produce them. The farmer is responsible for the housing and manure handling facilities.
What is new is the astonishing rate at which these agreements are becoming the only way to market commodities off the farm. More than 90 percent of poultry is already produced under contract, and it's pretty much been that way since the 1970s. Hogs are fast headed down the same loading chute. In fact, the pork industry is currently in such a volatile state that it's difficult for government and land grant economists to get a bead on the exact number of pigs being contracted. USDA researchers estimated a few years ago that by now almost 38 percent of the hog market would be in a "captive" situation: either contracted or owned directly by packers. That proved to be a gross underestimate. In January, University of Missouri economist Glenn Grimes estimated that 64 percent of the hogs slaughtered that month were captive. Mike Erwin, a Meat Reporter for the USDA, told the Land Stewardship Letter in April that more like 70 percent of hogs are sold in captive markets.
Forty percent of U.S. fruit and vegetable production is done under contract. A smaller percentage - under 10 percent - of commodities such as corn, soybeans and wheat are contracted. However, one of the fastest growing segments of contracting is in "identity preserved" crops. These commodities have particular, high-value characteristics (more oil, for example) that have been inserted using traditional breeding or genetic engineering. Because of their unique traits, these crops have to be separated from the other commodities out there through special contracts.
Contracting, predict some experts, will change entirely the way we view the American farmer.
"I do see a future in family farming," says Michael Boehlje, a Purdue University economist who likes to make predictions about the long-term future of agriculture. "Do I see a future in independent family farming? That's tricky when you add that word. In 10, 15, 25 years, we will have family farms, but not independent like we know them now."
Beyond the fine print
Such predictions are bad news for anyone who believes creating a sustainable food system relies on farm operations that have the freedom to be innovative. One way farmers can be stripped of independence is to be put in a situation where a contract portrayed as a "risk sharing" document in fact becomes a way for risk to be "shifted," with the momentum tilted against the farmer side of the equation, says Hayes.
The complicated nature of contracts alone raises suspicions about just how much of a 50-50 deal they really are. It's natural for a packer, large hog producer, grain processor, or seed company to write a contract that protects their interests first, but often they use a maze of legal language to transport the agreement into the realm of unfairness, she says. The attorney once spent five or six hours examining a single contract. It ran six to seven pages single spaced; the calculation for determining how much the farmers would get paid alone ran several pages.
"I never did figure it out. With some of these contracts, we don't know what the relationship is between the grower and the company," says Hayes, adding that not even attorneys can always figure out whether a contract is giving the farmer a square deal. "I would like to say have a lawyer review the contract but...."
A recent example of this confusion came to light in April, when Cargill was charged by the USDA with "unfair and deceptive pricing practices." This was based on the discovery that in 1997 Cargill's meat division, Excel, had changed the formula it used to pay for hogs. The formula was so complicated that farmers didn't even know the payment calculation had been altered. The change cost the affected farmers about $1 per hog sold in lost revenues.
But labyrinthine contracts aren't unique to meat production. A FLAG analysis of Monsanto's 1996 Roundup Ready Gene Agreement for soybeans shows that farmers are put at a disadvantage in a number of instances when they buy these genetically modified soybeans. For one thing, the farmer who holds one of these contracts agrees to allow Monsanto to inspect and test all fields planted to soybeans for three years, even if the Roundup Ready variety is only planted one year. Why? The seeds from genetically engineered crops can be saved and replanted in subsequent years. Monsanto wants to make sure farmers aren't paying for the seed once and then replanting Roundup Ready varieties. But what if farmers? Conventional soybeans get pollinated by genetically modified plants growing in the area (a study published in the scientific journal Nature last year found that transgenic traits were 20 times more likely to pass to other plants by cross-pollination)? Are farmers then in violation of the contract? A farmer is considered in violation of the contract if any herbicide other than, no surprise here, Roundup, is used on the crop.
The contract makes no concrete references to how the soybeans will perform in the field - whether they will provide specific levels of yield output or weed control. And if you find yourself in court because of Roundup Ready soybeans, be prepared to hit the road. Lawsuits related to the product have to be litigated before a judge in Missouri (Monsanto is based in St. Louis). This contract is no mere paper intimidation. Since 1997 Monsanto has investigated more than 500 farmers for "seed piracy" involving Roundup Ready soybeans, cotton, canola and other seeds. Some of these farmers have been fined tens of thousands of dollars. That number is likely to climb: at least half of this country's 70-million-acre soybean crop is Roundup Ready.
Legal and economic journals, as well as farm country coffee shops, are full of horror stories about contracts with hidden trip-wires. For example, some contracts make it impossible for a farmer to turn down shipments of sick feeder animals. A particularly sticky risk being foisted upon farmers by large livestock producers these days is liability for any manure produced by a contracting facility. When Minnesota's largest documented manure-caused fish kill occurred in 1997, the farmer running the guilty operation got jail time and a fine. Meanwhile, the company he was raising the pigs for-Christensen Farms & Feedlots, Inc.- continued to climb the charts as one of the nation's largest pork producers.
Legal experts say farmers should be extremely cautious of provisions that allow the writer of a contract to basically take over operation of the farm. Consider this passage from a production contract summarized by Hayes: "If the integrator feels that the grower is in default, the grower may 'at its sole discretion enter the premises, remove the [animals], or take over the operation of the facility.'"
Some hog contracts involve the keeping of a financial ledger, complete with debits and credits. When hog prices are below a predetermined price, the farmer is charged a penalty. When prices are above that amount, the packer owes the farmer. The thinking is that during a market slump the packer could have made more money buying hogs on the open market than adhering to the contract, so it must recoup its losses. In theory, it should all balance out - with prices periodically swinging back in favor of the producer when the cash market for hogs rises above the contract price. But in an uncompetitive system increasingly controlled by a handful of packers (four firms control almost 60 percent of hog slaughter), it doesn't work out that way.
Hog prices are in a long-term slump not seen in decades. Farmers are running up large debits in favor of the packers and are wondering if they will ever get out of the hole. Packers now have enough control, thanks to contracts, to flood the market with cheap hogs whenever the cash price creeps up, say some economists. Ending a contract while still in debt to a packer is considered in violation of the contract. So what happens? The farmer must continue to raise hogs until the debt is rectified. In short, such a system locks them into a kind of servitude with no end in sight.
"I guess I've got to hand it to the packers, they must have some smart lawyers," says one southeast Minnesota pork producer who has seen a neighbor's hog contract. That neighbor is seriously concerned that he may never get out of debt with the backer.
That kind of financial obligation has some in the legal profession concerned. Jim McPeak, a large Minnesota-based swine breeder, had a pair of attorneys take a look at a ledger-type contract, also called a "matrix contract." The lawyers - one is former Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice A.M. "Sandy" Keith - didn't like what they saw. They concluded that these kinds of contracts in effect violated the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, which was created to restrict "unfair" and "uncompetitive" packer practices.
In a letter dated April 13, the attorneys wrote that these contracts "... appear to violate the Packers and Stockyards Act because there has been a significant reduction in producers who do not have long term contracts. It also appears a significant reduction in hog prices can be traced, at least in part, to the use of long term contracts. In large part, the tying of agricultural financing to the use of matrix contracts to collateralize the loans has flooded the market with producers who would otherwise have been unable to finance a hog production operation. If you look at the substance of the contracts, however, it is essentially the packers who are in the hog production business. The putative 'producers' simply disguise the transaction."
Chicken grit
Pick up any issue of Feedstuffs, a weekly magazine covering agribusiness, and it will become clear the chicken industry serves as the template for how companies would like to "integrate" agriculture via contracts. To farmers, the chicken business is a warning sign of what road not to head down. Companies like Tyson Foods and Perdue contract with farmers for the production of virtually all their broilers. It has not been a marriage made in heaven. Numerous lawsuits have been brought by producers against large poultry integrators. The farmers have charged them with everything from purposely mis-weighing birds to arbitrarily pulling contracts with no prior notice. In general, the farmers have found their own political leaders to be little help in their fight to attain any degree of market fairness. In Mississippi, for example, the governor vetoed a 1996 bill that would have given greater protection to poultry producers. The law was not exactly radical policy reform. It would have stopped corporations from requiring producers to sign a contract under threat of coercion or the termination of an existing contract. It would also have allowed farmers to watch their birds being weighed and required forward notice of intent to terminate a contract.
As the problems in poultry have shown, part of the rub with contracting is that it ties a farmer to single-use facilities - expensive ones at that. For example, in 1997 Campbell Soup Co. closed its chicken processing plant in Worthington, Minn. That left 36 area contract farmers holding the bag in the form of large barns that could produce broilers and nothing else. Many of the farmers had contracts that guaranteed the company would buy chickens for up to eight or 10 years. Under the contract, the farmers assumed they would make little money at first, but expected to make more once the buildings were paid off (a single poultry barn can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build). Campbell left town before the farmers' facilities were paid off.
In December, about a dozen hog farmers were told their Murphy Family Farms contracts would be yanked because of the sagging hog market. The company's own promotional literature makes it clear that it takes at least 10 years to pay off the high-tech facilities required by the contract.
And many multiple-year contracts fail to recognize that animals like hogs are hard on facilities. Often the farmer will get a building paid off at the end of a 10-year contract, only to find that it's too worn-out to use without extensive repairs.
"There is nothing that makes the next generation feel more confined than inheriting single-use buildings and machinery," says Joel Salatin, a pioneering sustainable livestock producer from Virginia. "If we're going to romance the next generation into agriculture, we must give them flexibility."
Acting on contracting
Despite all these problems, there are still waiting lists of farmers wanting to sign a contact with a large agribusiness firm. That's because contracts have become so prevalent that they are becoming the only way to be involved in production agriculture. One prediction is that within 10 years there will be no market for traditional crop varieties that don't have special traits inserted by seed companies. And all that contracting is having a serious negative effect on that portion of the cash market still in existence. That became crystal clear this past winter, when hog prices dipped to lows not seen in decades as packing plants became bloated with too many contract hogs. According to the USDA's Economic Research Service, packers made up for having to buy all those contracted hogs they were legally bound to purchase by paying less for pigs on the open market. This sent more farmers rushing to attain a contract-secured price, helping to perpetuate the cycle.
As a recent report released by the Land Stewardship Project (see sidebar) shows, all these contracts are making an open, competitive market almost impossible to attain and sustain.
Hayes, the FLAG attorney, isn't ready to dismiss contract farming out of hand. After all, contracts in theory can help farmers obtain some sort of price security in a very unsecure business. But these agreements will not consistently share the risk of food and fiber production until farmers can figure out a way to negotiate from a position of strength.
"Right now these contracts are written so that farmers have to either take them or leave them," says Hayes. Maybe it's time for farmers as a group to take the second option, she adds." Farmers could just say no to contracting in general until they can get the power to negotiate better agreements."
BEFORE YOU SIGN THE DOTTED LINE
Agricultural law expert Neil Hamilton did the American farmer a great service when he penned A Farmer's Legal Guide to Production Contracts a few years ago. This 174-page publication provides practical, how-to information on just about every aspect of grain, livestock and vegetable production contracts.
It has chapters called "Contract law 101," "Walking through a production contract," "Getting paid" and "Resolving disputes." Sprinkled throughout the book are short summaries of legal cases involving disputes between farmers and firms they've contracted production with. When taken as a whole, these summaries make it clear contract farming can be a risky business indeed. Both farmers and legal eagles have found this publication useful.
For a copy, send $16.95 to: Agricultural Law Center, Drake University Law School, Des Moines, IA 50311; phone: 515-271-2947.
The Farmers' Legal Action Group (FLAG) works extensively in the area of agricultural contracts. Contact: FLAG, 1301 Minnesota Building, 46 E. 4th St., St. Paul, MN 55101-1109; phone: 651-223-5400; fax: 651-223-5335; e-mail: lawyers@flaginc.org
A series of 15 publications on legal issues in farming is now available from the University of Minnesota Extension Service.
Topics include agricultural production contracts, financing farm operations, farm leases, mortgages and mortgage foreclosures, tax considerations in liquidations and reorganizations, and bankruptcy.
To order copies of individual publications or the entire series, contact your county Minnesota Extension office, or call 1-800-876-8636. These publications are also available at http://www.extension.umn.edu/Documents/D/F/DF7291.html.
CONTRACTS, CAPTIVE SUPPLIES, ARE KILLING COMPETITION
LSP report finds independent hog farmers are being pushed out of the market while USDA does nothing
Meat packers are robbing the pork industry of its competitiveness through the use of exclusive contracts, formula pricing and other "captive supply" arrangements, according to a new report released by the Land Stewardship Project in April.
The report, Killing Competition With Captive Supplies, also found that the federal government has failed to implement its legal authority to prevent meat packers from shutting independent farmers out of the market. This is particularly troubling considering that between 64 and 70 percent of all hogs sold are no longer part of the open market, and almost 60 percent of the pork slaughter is controlled by four firms (Smithfield Foods, IBP, ConAgra and Cargill), concluded the report.
The report is based on interviews with hog farmers from Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota, as well as an extensive review of the economic literature. LSP was assisted in the interviews by Dakota Rural Action and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. The report also includes a legal analysis of the Packers and Stockyards Act.
The main findings of Killing Competition With Captive Supplies include:
Packers' practice of acquiring captive supplies through contracts and direct ownership is reducing the number of opportunities for small- and medium-sized farmers to sell their hogs.
With fewer buyers and more captive supply, there is less competition for independent farmers? hogs and insufficient market information regarding price. Lower prices result.
Packer control of the market is pervasive.
Farmers reported facing daily what they call a mind game, which they describe as pressure from agricultural leaders to conform to the new factory farm system of hog production.
Despite some recent indications of growing interest in addressing the impact of packer concentration and vertical coordination in the livestock markets, the USDA has taken no significant action to reform its trade practices regulations.
This last point is particularly troubling to Lynn Hayes, an attorney with Farmers' Legal Action Group (FLAG) who wrote the report's legal analysis. For almost three-quarters of a century, the USDA's Grain Inspection and Packers and Stockyards Administration, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, have had the authority to prevent industries like pork from becoming controlled by a handful of packers, she says.
"We don't need new laws on the books. We already have ones that address this issue," says Hayes. "But the government's failure to use them is making antitrust enforcement a joke."
In recent years, Sacred Heart, Minn., hog farmer Rodney Skalbeck has run into the "mind game" described in the report by other independent producers. For example, in 1994 he received $30 per hundred pounds for a load of hogs he had sold to a local buying station.
"The manager of the buying station told me that a particular mega-hog operation in the ounty was receiving $42 per hundredweight at that same time," says Skalbeck." My hogs graded 90 percent number ones, the rest number twos. The manager said some of their hogs graded number threes. They wouldn't even buy number threes from me."
Paul Sobocinski, a Wabasso, Minn., farmer who conducted interviews for the study, says he was amazed at the amount of market access independent farmers reported losing just within the past few years.
"I heard story after story of buying stations being closed without notice and packing plants narrowing the time frame within which they would accept hogs from independent producers," said Sobocinski. "Contract hogs from large corporations are filling more
and more of the kill slots at these plants."
Based on the report's findings, the authors make several recommendations, including:
The USDA and the Department of Justice should immediately develop and make public a coordinated plan for consultation, communication, investigation and enforcement of all antitrust laws in the livestock packing and production industries.
Regulations should be issued that identify the circumstances under which volume premiums, inconsistent application of grade and yield, use of captive supply contracts and other terms of purchase violate Section 202 of the Packers and Stockyards.
The USDA should require packers to report all packer purchases of hogs, including all details of those purchases.
USDA and land grant researchers should increase investigation of the impact captive supply procurement has on family farmers.
State policy makers should specifically prohibit packers from owning hogs or hog operations in the state.
"The big packers are using every means at their disposal to take absolute control of the U.S. hog industry," says Mark Schultz, LSP's Policy Program Director. "The USDA, under the Clinton-Gore administration, has left the door wide open for this to happen. This has got to change."
For a copy of the 47-page Killing Competition With Captive Supplies, send a check or money order for $6 (Minnesota residents add 6.5% for sales tax; LSP members receive a 10% discount) to: LSP, 2200 4th Street, White Bear Lake, MN 55110; phone: 651-653-0618. That price covers shipping and handling; make checks payable to LSP.
RURAL RAMBLINGS: What's around your corner?
By Fran Bockenhauer
Having grown up in a secluded Wisconsin coulee, I spent a great amount of time turning corners with my siblings and friends as we walked to our rural school two miles from home. I remember often wondering what was around the next turn or over the bluffs. When you live between towering hills, one?s scope can be narrow indeed, unless wonder and curiosity prod the mind.
For us the lay of the land was slopes of 45 degrees and more. It was paradise for us as kids. Nearly every warm Sunday afternoon would find us combing the hillsides, climbing through the woods, past our fence line, onto a neighbor's open pasture atop the hill where a magnificent vista of farmland spread before us unlike anything we could imagine. Even the Mississippi River was visible in the distance.
I remember running barefoot on the pasture slopes where cattle carved smooth paths for us to roam, and vegetation was well manicured because of the Jersey's appetite for the lush grasses. Dust would puff between our toes during the dry spells, and we waded in puddles when it rained. We had to always be alert for "rattlers." My big brother Bob liked to hunt rattlesnakes as a teenager, but I never wanted to get any closer than necessary.
For kids, one great advantage of a hilly farm was the super sledding run we could establish when snow cover was just right. Our path would encompass several city blocks. We had two sleds. Two of us lay one on top of the other on the front sled. We would then grab onto the rope of the handmade, unsteerable wooden sled that was pulled behind, carrying one or two more siblings or friends. We whizzed down the run at breakneck speed, laughing at the top of our voices, gulping in fresh winter air. The bad part always came with the long hike back up.
Our kids didn't enjoy the great sledding slopes we did. Our modern society allowed for them to go to area ski slopes with their friends where they enjoyed another favorite winter port.
Our natural advantage we enjoyed in the valley was protection from harsh winds. But from the farmers' viewpoint our hilly acreage was not a feasible operation. Access to fields was difficult and the small strip-cropped acres required more time because of all the turns and more trips due to smaller loads. Grazing was a big part of our small operation, but it wasn't done with the paddocks of the graziers of the '90s.
That magnificent 40 acres has since become woodland which has been properly harvested.
Today I live on a level farm in southeast Minnesota, with a gentle roll to the land that allows for nearly ideal drainage. The panoramic views we enjoy every day are aesthetics for the soul. But the winds howl and ravage both the crops and buildings when nature releases its fury.
I have learned that it matters not so much where you live, how many corners you travel around, or what your view of the scenery around you is like, but rather it is how you view life itself that is important. Being grateful for what you have is a key that leads to the joy, contentment and peace that make life satisfying.
Fran Bockenhauer is an office manager in the Land Stewardship Project's southeast Minnesota office.
FRENETIC GENETIC TAMPERING:
The Terminator threatens to sterilize more than seeds
By Elizabeth Wheeler
I grow plants for a living. From the first tiny wildflower seeds sown in November to the last pumpkin I proudly carry to the pickup truck in October, my hands are perpetually stained by the soil. There are many days this time of year when I rush into work to see which of the tiny brown seeds has split in the night to send out a chubby white root and delicate green leaves. After years of witnessing this miracle, I never cease to be amazed. You plant seeds, they grow.
Thanks to the latest advances in genetic engineering, however, there is now a break in this elegant cycle that beautifies and feeds our planet. The folks at USDA have invested almost a quarter-million dollars of taxpayers? money over the last few years figuring out how to kill seeds. Working with Delta & Pine Land Co., the world's largest cotton seed producer, they applied for a patent about a year ago on the technology they call the Varietal Crop Protection System. It's known to the public as the "Terminator Gene" or "Suicide Gene." Quite simply, this technology renders seeds sterile, thereby eliminating the possibility of growers saving their own seeds. A relatively simple matter of recombining proteins and splicing in some bacteria genes, the technology results in seeds that kill their own embryos when germination is attempted. You can save the seeds and plant them, but they won't grow.
Most American gardeners are now a few generations removed from the seed selection skills our grandparents honed each harvest season, but their heirlooms are still with us. You think you don't eat food from homemade seeds? Check out the dazzling cornucopia of eggplants and chili peppers displayed at many farmers' markets in August. These growers are using skills passed down through the generations, selecting the finest fruits off the best plants, and saving their seeds for the next year's crop.
In this country, we seldom have to save seeds to feed our families, but a quarter of the world's population depends on home-saved seeds for their food.
Monsanto, which bought Delta & Pine shortly after the Terminator patent was applied for, proposes to take away that safety net, applying for patents in over 80 nations. It is targeting developing nations and the countries of the former Soviet Union, areas where many farmers still grow traditional varieties rather than modern hybrids. Although the developers expect the Terminator will work in almost any plant species, they are initially putting it in food grains from which growers have traditionally saved their own seed, especially rice and wheat.
Little research money had previously gone into such crops because the plant breeders couldn't recoup it; growers could buy an expensive "improved" variety one year and begin saving their own seeds at the next harvest, never having to visit the seed store again. With the Terminator technology, annual purchases of seed will be required because home-saved seeds are sterile. Monsanto claims that now that it can protect its investments, it will be profitable to breed many strains of crops like wheat, rice and soybeans, targeting them for specific climatic regions.
But a look back at the recent history of consolidation within the seed industry shows that 10 corporations control more than 30 percent of the world seed trade, with Monsanto being one of the largest. As corporations merge and drop items that are regionally specific in favor of varieties that produce marginally well over a wide variety of climatic conditions, fewer and fewer varieties of vegetables and grains are available to growers every year. It's so much more profitable to grow and sell a lot of one item, rather than smaller amounts of many different ones.
This begs the question of biodiversity. If everyone in your part of the world begins growing a new Monsanto strain of rice because they can't save their own seeds anymore, then all of that rice is identically vulnerable to the same problems with pests, weather and disease. My ancestors ended up in this country because of the potato famine in Ireland in the mid-19th century. This famine was in large part caused by the fact that almost everybody grew the same type of potato; there was very little genetic diversity. Variety is more than just the spice of life; it is a genetic necessity for survival.
Monsanto is promoting the Terminator technology as a way to make biotechnology safer and keep bioengineered organisms from escaping into the environment. Yet bioengineered traits are being passed from altered plants to related seeds not by seed, but by pollen. Even Terminator crops will flower and produce pollen, and the wind and insects will distribute that pollen far and wide. Genetically engineered crops have only been out in the environment for three growing seasons; it's far too soon to tell what and how characteristics will be transferred to other plants.
I'm not a scientist; I'm a grower. I wear bib overalls to work, not a white lab coat, but it's obvious to me that this technology is not about increasing yields or improving a variety. Whether or not you think genetic engineering is a good idea, most patents issued so far have been along the lines of growing more plants, not figuring out ways to kill them. The only yields being increased by the Terminator technology are the profits to Monsanto and the USDA.
There hasn't been much media information on the Terminator method yet, but all you really need to know is this: It makes seeds sterile and other bioengineered traits have spread into the environment. Genetic engineering has opened a Pandora's box these past few years, and the Terminator technology may prevent us from ever closing it again.
Land Stewardship Project member Elizabeth Wheeler is a farmer and founder of Upstart Seed Project, a Minnesota seed company specializing in heirloom vegetables and native prairie medicinal plants. If you want to learn more about the Terminator technology, Wheeler suggests the following web site: www.rafi.org
| WHAT'S ON YOUR MIND?
Got an opinion? Comments? Criticisms? We'd like to hear from you. Contact: Brian DeVore, Land Stewardship Letter, 2200 4th St., White Bear Lake, MN 55110; phone: 651-653-0618; fax: 651-653-0589; e-mail: Brian.A.Devore-1@tc.umn.edu |
PORK CHECKOFF HEADED FOR A VOTE
Enough signatures have been collected to put the mandatory pork checkoff up for a referendum vote. Some 16,500 signatures have been collected from this nation's hog farmers since the petition drive was launched on April 29, 1998. The Campaign for Family Farms had until the end of April 1999 to collect signatures from 15 percent of the total hog producers in the country. The required number were in hand a good two weeks before the deadline. More than 2,000 Minnesota hog farmers signed the petition.
The Campaign for Family Farms is a coalition of farm and rural groups representing seven states. The Land Stewardship Project is the Minnesota affiliate of the Campaign.
Early in the petition drive, USDA estimated that there were 122,000 hog producers and importers. Since then, the USDA discovered there were fewer hog farmers than originally thought. The number of producers has been lowered to 99,909.
Members of the Campaign for Family Farms plan to deliver the petitions to the USDA this spring. Agriculture officials are already saying that it may be more than a year before any vote is taken. However, because of the dire financial situation many independent hog farmers face, Campaign members are asking that the USDA hold the referendum to end the mandatory pork checkoff within 60 to 90 days.
The mandatory pork checkoff program was started in 1986 and collects a portion of the market price when each hog is sold. A farmer who markets 1,000 hogs annually pays about $450 into the checkoff fund (assuming 250-pound hogs at $.40 per pound). During the past 12 years, the National Pork Board has collected $480 million in checkoff dollars. Meanwhile over 244,000 hog farmers have gone out of business.
Money collected from this program was originally intended to benefit farmers through promotional efforts. In fact, the average annual price paid to farmers for hogs has been lower in eight out of 12 years. In 1986, hog prices were $49.30 per hundredweight. In December, hog prices dropped to $8 per hundredweight.
"Since the checkoff has been mandatory, I've paid in nearly $5,000. What did I get for my money? The lowest hog prices ever and a drastically lower share of the retail dollar," says Paul Sobocinski, a Wabasso, Minn., hog farmer and an LSP organizer.
Hog farmers say the National Pork Board (NPB) and National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), which, respectively, collect and spend the checkoff money, are part of the problem and have promoted overexpansion through checkoff-funded research projects that support factory farms. Both the NPPC and NPB are based in Des Moines, Iowa.
A recent audit conducted by the USDA's Office of Inspector General shows there is a lack of accountability and control over the NPPC and its use of checkoff funds. It also shows that the NPPC has not been required to track and report how checkoff funds have been spent on each project. The combined annual salaries of NPPC CEO Al Tank and NPB Executive Director Mike Simpson, alone, total over a quarter of million dollars.
COMPANY LOOKING FOR HOGS
Niman Ranch, a meat company based in San Francisco, Cal., needs hogs for June, July and August, says Land Stewardship Project member Dave Serfling of Preston, Minn. Niman pays a premium for hogs that are, among other things, raised in humane conditions on straw and without antibiotics.
Serfling, along with LSP members Dwight Ault and Tom Frantzen, has been marketing hogs to Niman for the past year or so. He says the premium has made a real financial difference at a time when pork prices in the conventional market are in the tank.
If you are raising hogs in such a system, or know someone who is, call Serfling, 507-765-2797.
HEARD OF ANY MANURE SPILLS?
The Land Stewardship Project and award-winning film company Blue Moon Productions need your help. We are making a documentary on the environmental, social and economic impacts of large-scale manure spills.
This film project, tentatively titled Hog Wash, will examine the factory livestock production system which is at the root of the epidemic of manure spills in recent years. It will also feature sustainable livestock farming systems that do not threaten our rural waterways and communities. We are hoping a film like this will show the public and policy makers that dead streams and empty farmsteads do not have to be an inevitable part of modern livestock production.
One key component of this documentary will be footage showing the immediate impacts of manure spills. In order to do that, we need to be on the scene of a spill as soon as possible. That's where you come in: If you know of any major manure spill that has occurred in Minnesota, northern Iowa or western Wisconsin, notify us as soon as possible. LSP and Blue Moon are also welcoming any financial contributions people would like to make to this film project. Contact: Brian DeVore, 2200 4th Street, White Bear Lake, MN 55110; 651-653-0618; bdevore@landstewardshipproject.org
S.E. GATHERING A SUCCESS
More than 100 Land Stewardship Project members attended the southeast Minnesota office's annual membership gathering in Lewiston on March 4.
They ate locally produced food, won raffle prizes and listened to a presentation by William Heffernan, a rural sociologist at the University of Missouri. Heffernan spoke about the consolidation in agriculture and ways farmers and consumers can create their own sustainable food systems. For a free copy of Heffernan's report, Consolidation in the Food and Agriculture System, log onto www.nfu.org , or call 1-800-347-1961, extension 2525.
ANGRY FARMERS DEMAND ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT
Nearly 800 farmers from 13 states joined the Land Stewardship Project (LSP) in South St. Paul on April 18 in calling for immediate enforcement of agricultural antitrust laws. The farmers presented a list of seven "action" steps to Joel Klein, head of the U.S. Justice
Department's antitrust division, and Michael Dunn, the USDA Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs.
Farmers attending the "Taking Action on Concentration and Monopoly in Agriculture" town meeting were extremely angry with the reluctance of the officials to commit to enforcing current laws, some of which have been on the books since 1921. Each of the demands are steps the Department of Justice and USDA have the authority to implement now, says Lynn Hayes, an attorney with Farmers' Legal Action Group.
"Dunn in particular did not come to this meeting prepared to act on the concerns of farmers," says Paul Sobocinski, a Wabasso, Minn., farmer and LSP organizer. "He tried every trick in the book to get out of making a commitment. Dunn even tried to tell us he hadn't seen the demands. That's bull. We know for a fact he had them in hand on the Thursday before the meeting."
Farmers at the meeting were able to get Dunn to agree to issue a special order that would require meat packers to report the prices paid for cash market and contract purchases of livestock, as well as the levels of captive supplies (animals either owned by packers or controlled by them through contracting). However, Dunn declined to commit to:
The USDA has agreed to meet with LSP, other grassroots organizations and lawmakers on June 19 in Iowa to evaluate the Department's progress toward enforcing antitrust laws.
"We are going to hold them to that meeting deadline," says Monica Kahout, an Olivia, Minn., farmer and LSP member. "This is just the beginning, and I think Clinton-Gore Administration officials got a real education in just how committed we farmers are to pressuring them into doing their jobs."
BLADE EXAMINES AG LAND LOSS
A new book on how agricultural land is being destroyed by sprawling development features a chapter by a former Land Stewardship Project staffer Michael Pressman. Under the Blade: The Conversion of Agricultural Landscapes, features essays and case studies on farmland loss and what is being done to preserve this valuable resource. Pressman's chapter is entitled ¬¡Protecting Minnesota's Farmland: Lessons from the Fields."
For a copy of the book, contact Westview Press, 5500 Central Ave., Boulder, CO 80301-2877. Pressman, who now works for the newly formed 1000 Friends of Minnesota organization, can be reached at 651-312-1000.
NEW LSP INTERN
Kira Pascoe has recently joined the Land Stewardship Project's western Minnesota office as an intern. Pascoe is a student at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. She is majoring in environmental studies and history, with a minor in sociology and an emphasis in agriculture.
Pascoe has worked as an environmental educator and helped develop a "Prairie Curriculum" for grade school children. Pascoe also co-founded the Macalester Ecological Society as well as a nature-writing journal called Meadowlark. Last year she helped organize a forum on genetic engineering in the Twin Cities. Pascoe will be based in Montevideo.
EQIP PROVIDES GRAZING HELP
When it was first developed a few years ago, the USDA's Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) was threatening to become a financial windfall for large factory farm operators hoping to construct lagoons and other "manure handling facilities. But hard lobbying on the part of Land Stewardship Project members and staff, as well as other member-organizations of the Midwest Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, has helped make the program more family-farmer friendly. In fact, the way EQIP is set up now, it can help management intensive graziers with fencing, seeding, composting, lane construction and watering systems.
Last year, La Crescent, Minn., dairy grazier Art Thicke used EQIP cost share money to build cow lanes and construct diversions on his land. He says one advantage of the program is that he was able to spread the spending of the money out over multiple years.
"If I had to pay the whole cost it's something I wouldn't have done with milk prices the way they are. But with the assistance I couldn't hardly afford not to do it, "says Thicke, an LSP member." I think it's really a valuable thing for graziers."
EQIP can cover up to 75 percent of the cost of the improvement. USDA can cost share up to $10,000 per individual every year for up to five years. Environmentally sensitive regions like southeast Minnesota are priority areas for receiving EQIP money and farmers who apply for funds have a good opportunity to qualify.
For information on applying for EQIP funding, farmers can look in their local telephone book's government section for the number of an area USDA Ag Service Center.
WANT TO GO TO A FIELD DAY?
It's field day season in the Upper Midwest. These on-farm events offer an excellent opportunity to see sustainable agriculture in action. Turn to the back of the LSL for a listing of field days in Minnesota. You can also contact the Minnesota Department of Agriculture?s Energy and Sustainable Agriculture Program, 651-296-7673, or the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota, 218-445-5475.
MEMBERS HELP SCORE POLICY COUPS
By Mark Schultz
The old saying "When it rains, it pours," can certainly be applied to grassroots organizing. For the Land Stewardship Project's Policy Program, it certainly has been pouring of late. Between factory farm issues, federal farm policy and the pork checkoff, we've been running crazy in recent months.
But all that rain is starting to sprout some seeds. For example, in mid-April it was announced that the Campaign for Family Farms, a nine-state coalition to which LSP belongs, had collected more than 16,500 signatures from hog farmers. That's more than enough to hold a referendum on the mandatory pork checkoff tax.
We still have a lot of work ahead of us on this issue, as we push for a quick vote on the checkoff so U.S. hog farmers can get their voice heard on this issue. But for now, this is a great victory. Lots of LSP members and volunteers gave their time and money to win a critical victory against one of our most powerful targets. Many LSP members spent hours on the phone talking to hog farmers about the checkoff. They also wrote letters to local and regional newspapers as well as gave media interviews.
Another recent success for the policy program was the great turnout we had for the April 18 meeting, "Taking Action on Concentration and Monopoly in Agriculture." More than 800 farmers from 13 states turned out at the Drover's Inn in South St. Paul, Minn. LSP members turned out people for the meeting, ran the sign-in tables, spoke from the podium and the open mike, made signs, put pressure on federal officials to answer our questions by yelling and clapping and sent a strong message that we want action to stop the corporate takeover in agriculture and we won't take no for an answer.
Finally, the Policy Program has been working with Prairie Farmers Co-op, whose board includes several LSP members. This group of western Minnesota farmers is trying to set up a pork processing facility. It would process hogs raised without antibiotics by independent family farmers. The co-op has run into an incredible amount of bureaucratic red tape on the local, state and federal level. LSP has been trying to help them through all those hurdles. In fact, Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura awarded Prairie Farmers Co-op the Governor's Citizenship Award during his recent State of the State Address. Unfortunately, USDA continues to place obstacles in these farmers' path, despite agency rhetoric of assisting farmers in getting their income from the marketplace.
During the coming summer, fall and winter, LSP will continue to work at the local, state and national level for an agriculture that makes sense for people, and that preserves the land. Our power comes from the values and concerted actions of LSP members. For more information, contact me (612-823-5221), Mike McMahon (651-653-0618), or Paul Sobocinski (507-342-2323).
Mark Schultz is LSP?s Policy Program Director.
THE VIEW FROM THE CANOE
By Terry Van Der Pol
Clean Up our River Environment (CURE), is a grassroots organization fostered by the western office of the Land Stewardship Project. CURE is dedicated to focusing public awareness on the Upper Minnesota River. As part of this mission, every spring CURE brings hundreds of area residents together to canoe the tributaries of the Upper Minnesota River. Many participants camp out in Watson Lion?s Park over the weekend and others join the gathering Saturday night for an evening of food, song, and companionship under the prairie sky.
The 8th Annual Spring Observation Trip was held on May 22 and 23 (as always, the weekend after the fishing opener). Groups of canoeists took guided tours down stretches of the Pomme de Terra, the Lac qui Parle, the Chippewa, the Yellow Medicine, Hawk Creek and the main channel of the Minnesota. Each trip had a slightly different style depending on the nature of the river and the inclinations of the trip guides. One of the trips celebrated the removal of a dam on the Pomme de Terre, and the "wild ride" on the Yellow Medicine included a birder from the Audubon Society.
There was a special trip included on the weekend's slate this year. The Chippewa River Whole Farm Planning and Monitoring Team (see Nov. 1998 LSL), in conjunction with the Chippewa River Watershed Project, led a trip down the Chippewa River through an area that is farmed by several Team members. The trip included a couple of stops along the river for "sandbar education," lead by Team farmers, Watershed Project citizen monitors, county commissioners and Joe Magner, a senior hydrologist with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
These canoe trips have varied meanings for people. An artist will see the river differently than an ornithologist. A hydrologist will experience the same river differently than a novice canoeist learning a new skill. Someone who makes their living on the land will have a unique experience of the river to share.
Farmers are under a great deal of stress during these changing times. Sometimes, when everything is changing so rapidly around us, we cling to continuing to do what's familiar. One can often hear the comment in rural areas, "Farmers are environmentalists. It's just that we have to be realistic about how far we can afford to go with protecting the environment." This position seems to be as comfortable as an old shoe--the environment versus economics. The Chippewa River Whole Farm Planning and Monitoring Team represents farmers and others who are trying to find answers that work by asking better questions. A healthy farm (a healthy river, a healthy backyard, a healthy prairie, a healthy rural community) is absolutely dependent upon how well the ecosystem processes are functioning on the farm (river, backyards, prairie, community). And, for better or for worse, we humans are part of those processes.
Terry Van Der Pol is an LSP organizer and beef farmer near Granite Falls, Minn. She can be contacted at 320-269-2105, tlvdp@aol.com
AGAINST THE GRAIN:
Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food
By Marc Lappe & Britt Bailey
1998
175 pages
$14.95
Common Courage Press
Box 702, Monroe, ME 04951
Reviewed by Tim King
"We are on the cusp of a major revolution in the way we grow our crops, a revolution fueled by biotechnology and driven by multinational corporations. This revolution is unique because it entails the first major agricultural transformation of food crops based entirely on genetic engineering. It is also remarkable from a sociological perspective. Many of the key innovations have occurred behind academic and corporate doors with little public input."
So begins the brave and well written Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food.
As a journalist and a reader I found this small book a pleasure to read. As an organic market gardener, an eater and a citizen it served well to fuel my already significant anxiety on this complicated subject. And activists should thank the publisher, Common Courage Press. In May 1998, the book's original publisher, Vital Health Publishing, dropped Against the Grain after receiving a threatening letter from Monsanto. Common Courage, true to its name, stepped in and made it possible for us to read what Monsanto didn't want us to.
If you have an opinion, pro or con, on the subject of genetically engineered food, I suggest you read this book. It will sharpen and clarify your thinking. In short, Against the Grain is an empowering, politicizing and well-researched good read.
Consider the complicated story of BXN Cotton, for example. You may be wearing clothing made from it. This genetically manipulated crop was fabricated by Calgene in 1995. Seed from these cotton plants contains a gene from a bacteria that detoxifies the herbicide bromoxynil, which is marketed by Rhone-Poulenc under the brand name Buctril. Normally bromoxynil stops photosynthesis in plants. Not on BXN Cotton. The bacteria gene reduces bromoxynil to relatively benign carbolic acid and something called DBHA.
"DBHA has been found by Rhone-Poulenc's toxicity testing to carry comparable toxicity to its parent compound," Lappe and Bailey's review of USDA documents found.
So what, you say. It's just cotton. Nobody eats the stuff.
"Cotton slash, gin mill leavings and related cotton detritus are widely used in animal foodstuffs, making up to 50 percent of traditional silage. Cotton seed oil is also widely used as a direct human food and cooking additive. In all three forms, we believe residual toxicity from DBHA poses a substantial and largely unmeasured risk," the authors write.
In a chapter on the labeling of genetically engineered food crops, the authors make it clear that, at least for the time being, government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration have no interest in alerting you that you are eating DBHA laced food.
Another agency that has dropped the ball on behalf of American citizens and is carrying water for international agri-conglomerates is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
"More subtly, cotton dust generated from processing of BXN cotton bolls--a major cause of the occupational lung disease known as byssinosis--will be contaminated with residues of bromoxynil and DBHA. The resulting toxicity of cotton dust by this novel form of contamination and any accompanying illness may be exacerbated by toxins in the dust. Neither the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) nor the EPA appear to have
weighed this possibility in making their safety determinations."
The authors establish that genetically manipulated crops are a food safety concern. In chapter four, "Are We Ready for Roundup Ready Foods?", they acknowledge that glyphosate, the main ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, may be environmentally benign as its manufacturers suggest. But one of the inert ingredients of the herbicide is POEA. POEA has been successfully used for suicide in Taiwan, the authors note.
Additionally, they cite research that shows that high levels of glyphosate fed to lab animals harmed their livers, thereby likely reducing the livers' detoxifying capacity. Finally, the authors suggest that the ubiquitousness of Roundup Ready technology in corn, soybeans and cotton may bring about an increase in the already long list of debilitating food allergies. Roundup Ready, like BXN cotton, relies on, in part, a gene from a bacteria.
Food safety is not the authors' only concern. Against the Grain addresses broader cological and social issues as well. It is a resounding condemnation of the careless greed of the companies so rashly pursuing the highly profitable technology. And it takes to task the corporate handmaidens: government and academia.
There are two criticisms. Their chapter on Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn, "Destroying a Miracle," asserts that the careless rush toward genetically engineered food production will wreck naturally occurring Bt for organic farmers, who use it for chemical-free pest control. Even the corporations developing the genetically manipulated corn/bacteria "plant" acknowledge it will only be a few years before corn predator larva will develop immunity. That, the authors argue, will eliminate Bt from the pantheon of organic controls. That's true for corn, or any other species that is Bt manipulated. But for this season at least, crops like broccoli--which Bt is used extensively on--are safe from corporate rapacities.
Secondly, Lappe and Bailey assert that the development of genetically manipulated food technologies behind the closed doors of academic and corporate America is somehow unique. If only that were true. Unfortunately, keeping Americans in the dark about technologies that would be rejected in an open and informed referendum is as American as apple pie.
Tim King is a journalist and organic vegetable farmer based in Long
Prairie, Minn. He also coordinates the Whole Farm. Co-op, an initiative that markets. sustainably produced food directly to consumers. For more information, contact.King at 320-732-6203,. timking@maroon.tc.umn.edu
THE WITNESS OF COMBINES
By Kent Meyers
1998
248 pages
$16.95
University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Ave. S., Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
Reviewed by Pat Deninger
Kent Meyers knows farming; like most children raised on a farm, agriculture seems nearly intertwined in his DNA. Although he hasn't farmed for more than a quarter-century, since he was a teenager on the home farm in southwestern Minnesota, he can still hear the cattle bawling, still feel his muscles straining, still hear his late father's words, as if he'd never left.
But the farm no longer is in the family, and his father died long ago, when Meyers was just 16. They were together on that Palm Sunday, welding farm equipment. His father handed him the welding torch and stumbled away, having suffered the first of two strokes that would kill him within weeks.
Meyers finds symbolism in that passing, and much of what his father taught and he learned. He chronicles those in his first collection of essays, The Witness of Combines. Meyers had two books published last year--the essay collection and a first novel, The River Warren. The novel has been moderately well received but most reviewers have lavished praise on the resonant essays and Meyers' keen eye for detail. In fact, Witness of Combines recently garnered him a prestigious Minnesota Book Award as the year's best memoir.
It's certainly true: When you've finished The Witness of Combines, you'll know his father and his perseverance. You'll understand the thunderclap of tragedy in the spring of 1972 when the family patriarch died at 56. You'll understand why the family carried on through the summer. And you'll realize their neighbors' powerful, almost mythic, response come fall when their combines lumbered onto the Meyers' farm and harvested their crops.
Dust-to-dust
Meyers youthful farm life, like all farm lives, was involved and busy, with numerous responsibilities to the cattle, the land, the farm and each other. It would be too much without Meyers' father, so the family decided they would have to sell the cattle and land.
But both needed tending to throughout the spring and summer, so they stayed on the farm and the sons took over the operation. At harvest time, no one in the family made calls to neighbors asking for help, but help came, as they knew, somehow, that it would.
"Communities on the northern plains are made manifest by disaster. Thus it is that an individual or family can be graced by loss ... and the people who have chosen to live upon it must make the ritual responses ... . In the moment of disaster for one of their members, these prairie communities draw into themselves, out of their rich substrate of tradition, out of the deepest sources of their culture, all the quiet charities and powerful stories."
The title essay is the most powerful, as its cuts most closely to Meyers' life. Many others are finely crafted, too, especially "Black Snow."
Meyers and his father once paused in autumn after plowing the fields. The son realized his father wasn't sharing his appreciation for all that turned-up soil. To his father, it represented "a coming, long-term poverty, the loss of the farm itself to the wind--lost to him, lost to his family, lost to the future--the most enduring and stable thing I knew turned to air and dust, and turned that way through cause, by something he could prevent."
What his father (and other farmers) felt powerless to counteract was the overwhelming pressure to use unsustainable agricultural practices, to embrace newer technologies without question, to grow larger and larger, and to divorce themselves from those seasonal rituals that brought meaning to their lives and kept their land healthy and sustainable.
Meyers' father also held fast to his Catholic faith and the seasonal religious rituals--very much like farming rituals--that had a "positive, transforming presence in his life." These two aspects of his childhood, Meyers writes, are key if we are to have a future where family farms exist.
"We need a definition of family that resists, at the basic level, the financial imperative to growth and consumption. We need communities that actively support land ethics and live within their environments quietly. Finally, we need our spiritual institutions ... to move beyond the simple tragedy of morality they have always dealt with, and grow to confront the immense tragedy of environmental and communal degradation."
The essays in The Witness of Combines are meant as a step in that direction, he concludes near the collection's end. His stories, all stories, are meant to "shape us, form us, ground us, identify us as physical and spiritual beings who live in time but know timelessness, and who are connected to all that we see."
Meyers concludes the collection with a quiet essay, "Going Back," and it's not hard from the title to guess his destination. He walks around the farm yard and the outbuildings but doesn't bother to go into the house. He tells himself to linger, but feels the insistent thrust of time pushing him down the farm lane.
"Is it possible that all those years I spent treading this spot of land, working it, sweating on it, dripping blood upon it time and time again ... is it possible that all those years have washed away? I look up at the trees, the elms and maples that have grown so large, and think: It's possible. The place may be in me far more than I in it. We'd like the Earth to regret our passing, but we have no proof that it does."
But Meyers has not let go, and will never let go, no matter how uninterested the land is in who resides upon it. His dedication to the land, the family farming life, and commitment to chronicling it all is what makes The Witness of Combines a worthy book.
Land Stewardship Project member Pat.Deninger writes from his home in. Trempealeau, Wis.
CHALLENGING MEMBERSHIP
By Cathy Eberhart
In January, the Land Stewardship Project Board of Directors was asked the following questions about membership.
If the membership program is successful:
How would members be changed by their participation in LSP?
How would the world be changed?
Their responses were challenging but inspiring:
Members would become more aware of the broader connections between food and stewardship of the land.
Members would become more knowledgeable and better informed about issues of sustainable agriculture, so that they in turn could educate others.
Members would broaden their relationships and develop friendships with people who share their values of stewardship of the land.
Members would become more involved in the policy making process and be more faithful in their responsibility to the public process.
Members would make major changes in how they farm or in how they spend their food dollars.
Farmers would get out of the "commodity business" and into the "food business."
Connections would be created and strengthened between urban and rural communities.
Sustainable producers would have more customers.
Rural economies would be revitalized.
As these responses show, membership in LSP is not simply about collecting $30 in dues. It is about transformation--sometimes difficult transformation. How have you been changed since becoming a member of LSP? What changes (small or big) have you seen in your corner of the world that are the result of the values that LSP promotes? What changes would you like to see?
We'd like to know your stories of change and your visions for the future. Jot us a note by mail at 2200 4th St., White Bear Lake, MN 55110 or by e-mail at cathye@landstewardshipproject.org . Or if you don't have the time to write, give us a call at 651-653-0618. If you call after hours, you can leave your answer on our voice mail. We'll collect your responses and share them in an upcoming newsletter.
Cathy Eberhart is LSP's Membership Coordinator.
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LSPer INTERACTIVE An informational column for LSP members who want to get more involved. Local food banquet In October, LSP is planning to hold a banquet in the Twin Cities featuring locally grown, sustainable food. It promises to be a fun and educational event and we hope it will become an annual affair. Are you interested in helping us organize such a gathering? Do you have ideas about what issues should be covered? Do you produce food you'd be willing to donate? Are you willing to help prepare food? Web heads alert! LSP is in the process of putting together a volunteer committee that will help determine future directions for our web site. Our goal is to eventually develop a site that better serves our members, as well as others who are interested in learning more about the issues we work on. Do you have expertise or interest in the worldwide web? Do you have ideas on what a good web site should consist of in terms of content, design and special features? If you are interested in helping out in either of these areas, contact Cathy Eberhart, 651-653-0618; cathye@landstewardshipproject.org . |
Chemical free milk
Organic Dairy Farming is packed with practical, how-to information on making the transition to chemical free milk production. This 87-page guide has chapters on: obstacles to conversion, herd health issues, organic cropping systems, rotational grazing, marketing and certification. The book is based on extensive research, including interviews with numerous organic dairy farmers, and was produced in the heart of organic dairy country: the Coulee Region of southwest Wisconsin.
Copies can be ordered by sending $6 (add $2 for shipping) to: Community Conservation Consultants, Rt. 1, Box 96, Gays Mills, WI 54631; phone: 608-735-4717; e-mail: ccc@mwt.net .
Organic Directory
The 16th annual National Organic Directory is now available. This 384-page publication contains detailed listings of organic farmers, manufacturers/processors, retailers and wholesalers. It also lists cross-referenced indexes of organic commodities bought and sold as well as organic certifiers and organizational resources. It also covers state and federal laws pertaining to organic production and handling.
For a copy, send $47.95 (plus $3 for shipping; California residents add another $3.48 for sales tax) to: CAFF, P.O. Box 363, Davis, CA 95617. For credit card orders, call 1-800-852-3832.
Organic meat marketer needed
An organic marketing cooperative in southwest Iowa is looking for someone to help develop and implement a marketing strategy for organic meat products.
Responsibilities include meeting with retail and wholesale markets and consumer groups interested in purchasing organically grown meat. The cooperative is looking for someone who can research and develop processing, packaging, labeling and delivery systems, and who is willing to assist in developing production standards and support materials. The position is part time, with possibility of full time in the future.
Send resumes to: Heartland Organic Marketing Cooperative 1240 Ironwood Road, Harlan, IA 51537.
Intercropping guide
Intercropping Principles and Production Practices is a 14-page guide that describes mixed intercropping, strip cropping and traditional intercropping arrangements.
For a free copy, call Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas (ATTRA), 1-800-346-9140.
Sustainable yard
Want to learn how to make your backyard more sustainable? The Natural Resources Conservation Service has several new fact sheets available on their web site: http://www.nhq.nrcs.usda.gov/CCS/Backyard.html . These fact sheets cover backyard ponds and wetlands, as well as composting, mulching, tree planting and wildlife habitat.
In addition, a new interactive web site offers information on ways to make yards, gardens and other landscapes more sustainable. Type in: www.sustland.umn.edu/
Biodiversity report
Benefits of Biodiversity is a new report that outlines in scientific terms the importance of greater ecological and genetic diversity if agriculture is to thrive in the long-term. The 33-page publication was written by a team put together by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST). Leading that team were David Tilman, a respected ecologist, and Donald Duvick, who is equally respected in the field of plant breeding.
The report is available on the web at: www.cast-science.org .For a hard copy, send $15 (add $3 for shipping) to: CAST, 4420 West Lincoln Way, Ames, IA 50014-3447; phone: 1-800-374-CAST; e-mail: cast@cast-science.org A free, interpretive summary is also available at the above address.
Snow peas, anyone?
The Winter-Harvest Manual is exactly what its name implies. This 57-page publication tells how Maine organic farmer Eliot Coleman has been able to extend his market garden production through the winter "without supplementary heating."
Coleman, who is widely known for his 1995 book, The New Organic Grower, covers everything from greenhouse construction to "biological details" and sowing dates. Farmers from the Upper Midwest who have read the guide say it is very applicable to regions outside of New England.
For a copy, send $15 (that covers shipping and handling) to: Four Season Farm, RR Box 14, Harborside, ME 04642.
Photogenic farm?
Jim Moore, a Land Stewardship Project member from Rochester, Minn., is looking for old farm structures to photograph in Minnesota and northern Iowa. He does black and white as well as color photography, and as a courtesy will provide a print to the owner of the structure. He says he would also be happy to photograph the farms or barns of LSP members.
Contact Moore at: 507-288-3046; moore@sparc.isl.net
Pulped facts get Monsanto's goat
Last September, a British printer pulped the entire 14,000 run of The Ecologist, an environmental magazine based in that country. Why? The printer was concerned the issue's topic would bring down the legal wrath of Monsanto. The Ecologist had devoted its September/October issue to the firm, which has been struggling to make genetically modified food acceptable in the United Kingdom, as well as Europe.
The issue takes a critical look at several Monsanto flagship products, including bovine growth hormone, Terminator technology and Roundup herbicide. The Ecologist also examines the close ties between Monsanto and government regulators, as well as the corporation's public relations campaigns. These campaigns can sometimes take on the whiff of information suppression and strong-arm tactics, according to journalists, farmers and activists who have dared to challenge the firm. An article entitled "Why Biotechnology and High-Tech Agriculture Cannot Feed the World" is of particular interest to those questioning the industrialization of ag.
The Ecologist has since found a braver printer and copies of the Monsanto issue are available in the U.S. To order it, send a check for $8.50 (that covers shipping and handling, make checks payable to The Ecologist) to: 1920 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley, CA 94704. For more information, call 510-548-2032. Many of the articles that appear in this special issue can be found on the web at http://www.gn.apc.org/ecologist/SeptOct/index.htm
JUNE 19--Follow-up to the April 18 "Taking Action on Concentration & Monopoly in Agriculture" town meeting, Iowa; Contact: Paul Sobocinski, LSP, 507-342-2323Montevideo, Minn., farmers' market opens; Contact: LSP, 320-269-2105
JUNE 18-20--Midwest Renewable Energy Fair, Portage County Fairgrounds, Amherst, Wis.; Contact: 715-592-6595; http://www.the-mrea.org
JUNE 21-24--LSP's Dana Jackson will serve as a Distinguished Dialogue Chair at the Orion Society Conference, "Fire & Grit: Working for Nature in Community," Shepherdstown, W. Virg.; Contact:413-528-4422; http://www.orionsociety.org
JUNE 24--Field day on applying manure to corn at agronomic rates, Dakota County, Minn.; Contact: 651-480-7704
JUNE 26--Sand Creek Watershed Team-hosted field day on manure composting, plus pasture walk to learn about beneficial insects, Riesgraf farm, Scott County, Minn.; Contact: Caroline van Schaik, LSP 651-653-0618; email: caroline@landstewardshipproject.org
JUNE 27--Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society Summer Symposium, Hensler, N. Dak.; Contact: 701-883-4304
JUNE 28-JULY 16--Minnesota River School, in conjunction with CURE, will sponsor a educational canoe trip down the Minnesota River for high school students; Contact: Lynn Lokken, LSP, 320-269-2105
JULY 8--Workshop sponsored by Lac Qui Parle Prairie Preservation and Chippewa River Whole Farm Planning & Monitoring Team on managing a prairie with livestock, Chippewa County; Contact: Terry Van Der Pol or Lynn Lokken, LSP, 320-269-2105
JULY 9--Field day on attracting parasitic wasps to control cabbage worms, Riverbend Farm, Delano, Minn.; Contact: Uli Koester, Midwest Food Connection, 612-874-7275
JULY 13--Field day on managing dairy manure in a recycling compost program, Volkmann farm, Janesville, Minn.; Contact: 507-234-5846
JULY 17--Field day on grass & forage based finishing of beef & pork, Malone farm, Sturgeon Lake, Minn.; Contact: Lake Superior. Meats Cooperative, 218-727-1414
JULY 19--Organic beef farm tour, Bihl farm, Clearwater, Minn.; Contact: 218-445-5475 Field day on introduction of feed peas & feed barley into whole farm planning, Winsel farm, Woodstock, Minn.; Contact: 507-777-4262
JULY 20--Field day on reducing chemical usage with soy oil on corn and soybeans, Wheeler farm, Balaton, Minn.; Contact: 507-734-5433
JULY 22--Field day on using a living mulch for weed suppression in strawberry establishment, Riehle farm, Aitkin, Minn.; Contact: 218-297-2521
JULY 29--Southwest Minnesota Research & Outreach Center's Organic Field Day, Lamberton, Minn.; Contact: Paul Porter, 507-752-7372
JULY 29-AUG. 1--Midwest Sustainable Agriculture Working Group meeting, South Dakota. (details to be announced); Contact: Dana Jackson, LSP 651-653-618; danaj@maroon.tc.umn.edu
AUG. 5-8--1999 Midwest Environmental Education Conference,Stillwater, Minn.; Contact: 218-243-2685; http://www.seek.state.mn.us/cal/calendar.cfm
AUG. 8--Field day on establishing grazing lands, Struxness farm, Milan, Minn., Contact: Terry Van Der Pol, LSP, 320-269-2105
SEPT. 11--Bayfront Harvest Festival, Duluth, Minn.; Contact: Northeast Minnesota SFA, 218-727-1414
Check the Calendar for the latest on upcoming LSP events.
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