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Iowa farmer details experiences with checkoff programs, hails recent court pork decision (Monday, Nov. 4, 2002 -- CropChoice news) -- This piece comes from today's edition of The Agribusiness Examiner (http://www.ea1.com/CARP/), dedicated to monitoring corporate agribusiness from a public interest perspective.
GEORGE NAYLOR, CHURDAN IOWA, FARMER: The court ruling the pork checkoff
is a great victory for family farmers, whether they raise hogs or not.
The ruling inspires this farmer who chafes under the mandatory half
percent soybean checkoff to reflect on my checkoff experience.
I was a young farmer on the very first Iowa Corn Promotion Board in
1978. I got on the ballot by getting signatures on a petition whereas
everyone else was placed on the ballot by the Iowa Corn Growers
Association as per the law they passed instituting the checkoff. I got a
real education by getting signatures from older farmers who had farmed
during the Parity years before 1953. They were usually not Farm Bureau
members and thought "corn promotion" was a code word for having cheap
corn so we could export more. They were right, I found out.
At least that was the theory. Cheap corn was really the aim of the Corn
Growers and ADM who they often consulted. More exports never
materialized nor did higher corn prices. It just resulted in recurrent
crashes in livestock prices and ever bigger corporate control of
livestock production.
The second aim of the checkoff was to mislead farmers and the public
about agricultural markets. The promise of new exports and new uses was
to supplant the knowledge of those older farmers that the only time
farmers got a fair shake was when it was the law of the land that
farmers were guaranteed a share of the national market at a fair price.
That came about with the New Deal farm programs with the nonrecourse
loan --- farmers knew they could seal their grain, and if the grain
trade wasn't willing to pay the loan rate, the government reserve became
the market of last resort. A price floor was established for grain that
indirectly set a floor under livestock prices. Otherwise, cheap grain
led farmers to feed more and walk their corn to market on four hooves.
Another aspect of the subterfuge was that price supports cost the
government too much. The reality is that price supports cost the
government nothing. The grain trade pays the price to the farmer. The
cost of storing grain in the reserve along with any cost in
administering the program or land set-asides would be minimal compared
to all the income supports in the form of direct payments in the farm
bills that followed 1953.
Any grain brought back on the market at higher trigger prices could
actually bring in a
profit. Representative Wayne Cooley of North Carolina, chair of the
House Ag Committee in the 1950's testified that farmers received 100% of
parity from 1941 until 1953 and that farm programs from 1933 to 1953
actually did produce a small profit for the government.
When the Iowa Corn Promotion Board got together to figure out how to
spend the checkoff dollars, we always had experts from the grain export
council which was funded by Cargill, ADM, etc. Iowa State U. would
always be there to tell us how to invest in new research to increase
production. It turned out that well over half or even three quarters of
the money went straight to USDAÕs Foreign Agriculture Service which
funded joint projects with Cargill, ADM, and livestock feeding companies
in foreign countries. We really had nothing to deliberate about because
the law establishing the board forbid
any activity relating to politics.
When somebody got the brilliant idea that we should collect the checkoff
on sealed grain --- potentially getting the checkoff money twice on each
bushel of grain, I objected. A few other farmer members weren't too sure
either. But after the Chair expressed his opinion, the vote was taken
--- 19 to 1.
So it was an object of faith that corn promotion would be good for
farmers and everybody was supposed to preach that farm programs were no
good. This religion finally gained its ultimate prize in Freedom to
Farm. The only thing is that reality proved more complicated. If it
hadn't been for over 30 million acres of land in CRP, many acres idled
in the Europoean Union, and the billions of direct payments annually
dished out despite the rhetoric of Freedom to Farm, rural America would
have experienced the winter of 1933 again.
That's when my father hauled corn to town and found out that the price
of corn had been ten cents a bushel the day before, but on that day, the
elevator wasn't even buying. Tears always came to his eyes when he
recounted many of the neighbors losing their farms in the 1920's and
30's.
As long as the farmers and ranchers around the world are pitted against
each other and have no alternative but to increase production in the
face of lower prices, the only beneficiaries of checkoffs are the big
corporations who can increase their volume and margins. If the American
people really knew how they and farmers have been lied to, they would
wonder what has really happened to our country. Unfortunately, today's
campaign tactics and shallow, misleading news reporting leaves the
average citizen bewildered or numb.
The court finding the pork checkoff unconstitutional is a great victory.
I'm encouraged that we can end the similarly unfair mandatory soybean
checkoff. As the ruling pointed out, I could use the $50 collected on
2000 bushels of soybeans in many other ways, like paying dues for
membership in an organization that I truly support. Having the Bill of
Rights, written over 200 years ago, still offer its citizens some
protection from tyranny has to be some solid ground from which we can
move ahead and jump for joy.
George Naylor, is a board member of the National Family Farms Coalition
and a member of the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a group in
the Campaign For Family Farms.
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