Testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee
Field Hearing
Worthington, Minnesota
August 4, 2001

My name is Monica Kahout. I farm with my husband and our kids near Olivia, Minnesota. I am here representing the Land Stewardship Project. I understand I have three minutes to speak. I'd like to make three points.

First - we are on a terrible path in American agriculture. For too long too many farmers and too many elected officials have followed the lead of the checkoff-funded commodity groups and corporate agribusiness. These groups gave us the terrible "Freedom to Farm" policy, helping to drive prices down for most of us farmers while shelling out major payments of our tax money to the largest producers. Earlier this year, the president of the National Pork Producers Council testified in Washington for a 20 percent reduction in the soybean loan rate! That means lower soybean prices, cheaper feed for the largest hog factories, and ultimately, fewer farmers on the land and further extraction of wealth from rural communities. We must change policies, and we must reject the self-anointed leadership of the commodity groups. As a hog farmer, I am proud to say that I am part of the majority in the swine industry that has rejected the NPPC and the mandatory pork checkoff tax! And as a farmer I say now for many in this crowd YOU DON'T SPEAK FOR US! We believe in democracy and in family farms and prosperous rural communities and a healthy environment. YOU DON'T SPEAK FOR US!

Second - we must recognize that farming America's land is about more than maximizing production of raw materials for corporate America. Farming in a free and strong country is about producing food, feed, and fiber, yes, but it is also about caring for the land, contributing to the community with time and money, and holding our nation's most precious asset-our land - in trust for future generations of Americans. There is no better way-let me say it again -there is no better way to do this than through family farms. We need policies that recognize all the benefits that farm families bring to their communities and the nation. We cannot continue our current policies that feed the expansion of agribusiness consolidation and factory farming-we cannot continue, that is, and remain strong and free. We need conservation policies on working lands such as the Conservation Security Act, and we need economic policies that stop rewarding industrial agriculture and start supporting the family farm system of agriculture that America needs and wants.

Third-and this is key-we must take a lesson from history. It is our turn to stand up for economic justice in America. Many of our forebears settled this land in the 1800s through the provisions of the Homestead Act, a far-reaching federal policy to distribute the land to families who would farm it and care for it. Many of our grandparents remember the passing of the Packers and Stockyards Act, or New Deal legislation aimed at getting higher prices for farmers. Let me tell you, we have slipped. When Tiger Woods gets 10 cents for every box of Wheaties with his picture, and the farmer gets 3 cents for the wheat in that same box, something is seriously wrong. When Smithfield can buy up John Morrell, then Dakota Pork, and shut them down, then buy the services of the head of the antitrust division of the United States Department of Justice just weeks after he stepped down, SOMETHING IS RADICALLY WRONG!

We need policies to curb the expanding greed of Corporate Agribusiness, greed which is damaging our livelihoods and our land with equal rapacity. First and foremost, we need a moratorium on large corporate mergers and acquisitions in agriculture, whether its Smithfield, Land O' Lakes, or Monsanto. We need it now. Don't you agree? Then let's do it!