Monsanto does not have the right to dictate the value of my life
-Joel Greeno
While farmers were the star of the show at last Friday's antitrust hearing in Ankeny, Iowa, the debate over the monopolization of farming is one where all of our interests are squarely at stake.
Anyone who eats and has a brain should be downright terrified that just a few giant businesses control the vast majority of food available to us as consumers. Perhaps that explains why more than 15,000 people submitted comments in anticipation of the hearings - four more of which are scheduled this year as a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
To his credit, Attorney General Eric Holder seemed to be trying not to mince words in Iowa - always tough for an attorney - and particularly so for one under the right's atomic microscope. Noting that farming "has been at the core of the American economy ever since there was an American economy," he went on to say, "[W]e've learned the hard way that . . . long periods of reckless deregulation can foster practices that are anti-competitive and even illegal. . . . We know that a growing number of American farmers find it increasingly difficult to survive by doing what they've done for decades. And we've learned that some of them believe the competitive environment may be, at least in part, to blame."
Farmers who attended a pre-hearing meeting Thursday evening made the case for themselves. Noting that farming goes back "forever in my family," Todd Leake, who grows wheat, soybeans, sunflowers and navy beans in North Dakota, said, "The crops we grow are the basis of civilization. If anything belongs to the public domain, if anything belongs to the people of the world, it's the crops we grow for food."
Iowa hog farmer Larry Ginter, a long-time opponent of factory farms, also made the connection between the plight of American farmers and the struggles of so many people outside our borders, saying," "Labor, family farms, democratic rights are in a pitched battle against the dictatorship of capital. We've got to understand that this is an international struggle. Those Mexican workers coming up here are family farmers. Those Sudanese workers in the packing plants are family farmers and workers being driven off by the big dictatorship of capital. We have to understand that we are not alone in America." Urging his fellow farmers to action, Ginter concluded, "Nothing can happen on the farms unless farmers turn the wheel and plant the seed."
Wisconsin dairy farmer Joel Greeno, said "My parents' 29th wedding anniversary was a farm foreclosure. Their 30th anniversary was a sheriff's auction on the courthouse steps. My neighbor's farm was stolen from him that was owned since 1942 by his family. He came to ask how to get food stamps because he'd always lived off his farm, no longer had that, and said that his social security of $9,000 a year couldn't feed him. This has got to end. Washington has got to step up. DOJ is our only lifeboat. They have to fix this. They have to correct it. Monsanto does not have the right to dictate the value of my life, my work, and the food I produce. Kraft Food does not have the right to set the price of my milk, which they do without question."
Patrick Woodall, a research director for Food and Water Watch, and a panelist at the hearings said, "At the end of the day, farmers and activists could speak truth to power and delivered a tough message to the regulators that action was long overdue, it was time to bust the agribusiness trusts and level the playing field for farmers and consumers. Many audience members, like Marcia Ishii-Eiteman from Pesticide Action Network North America, also challenged the reliance on agrochemical inputs and the false hope of genetically modified crops."
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said, "This is not just about farmers and ranchers. It's really about the survival of rural America."
He's right, of course, but that's not just some romantic Rockwellesque notion; almost anyone who eats depends on a shrinking number of farmers struggling at the other end of our fork. If they disappear, our freedom to eat what we choose will vanish as well.
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Larry Ginter, one of the farmers quoted in this Huffpo article and featured on the youtube clip is an Iowa CCI member and leader.
Contact Congress, DOJ, and USDA and let them know that we want them to:
1) Bust up big ag, break up the large agribusinesses.
2) Restore fairness by enforcing and strengthening existing anti-monopoly and antitrust laws.
3) put people first during the workshop series by prioritizing public comments and input and adding more independent family farmers, consumers, workers, and everyday people to the panels.
Attorney General Eric Holder: (202)514.2001
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack: (202)720-3631
Public comments can also be submitted to the DOJ here: agriculturalworkshops@usdoj.gov
More info about the rest of the workshops, including the date and schedule of subsequent workshops in Alabama, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Washington DC can be found by going here: http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/workshops/ag2010/index.htm
David Goodner
Rural Community Organizer
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement
2001 Forest Avenue
Des Moines, Iowa 50311
david@iowacci.org
www.iowacci.org
515.282.0484 (office)
515.991.6357 (cell)
We Talk. We Act. We Get Things Done.
The average age of the North American farmer in now about 57.
50% of America's farmland will change hands in the next 15 years.
There won't be enough young farmers in most places to take over those farms.
Land will either be developed, go out of production or be bought by international Agribusiness.
I've seen leased farms burned out in a few years for quick profit.
Grocery stores are filled with produce and meat from around the world.
In China, a million farmers have been pushed off the land in the last few years.
The Amazon is being cleared to plant soybeans.
The United States will be dependent on food imports, the same way we are now dependent on energy imports and we will be told that it is because our farms are no longer profitable.
Just as we now realize that we don't produce our own energy, we don't make steel, we don't manufacture household goods, we will wake up one day
and realize that we can no longer feed ourselves.
To a man,in the course of conversations, farmers expressed a strong dislike for the agro giants who had jeopardized their livelihoods by monopolizing the market for products needed to get in a crop and stave off bankruptcy. Farmers were also aware of the environmental damage inflicted on their surroundings by the employment of GM crops and deadly insecticide seed treatments, but had no recourse but to play by Monsanto's and Bayer's rules. The new documentary,"Nicotine Bees" points directly to the use of neonicotinoids as a major factor contributing not only to the death of honeybees , but to all insects in general.
The mischief caused by these monopolies in the developing world is even more serious...for example, 100,000 farmer suicides in India alone, of debt ridden farmers.
The claim that the supply of the worlds future food can only be achieved with them in charge doesn't wash either. There is no evidence that crop yields increase but, to the contrary, become more expensive and cause social disruption due to hi-tech inputs.
Some like me hung on, and as a smaller producer I joined a marketing pool run by a feed company. Of course I had to feed their feed, but it was a fair trade because they helped negotiate with packers so us "little guys" could still sell hogs. We had meetings each year where we would go over the agreement with whatever packer we were dealing with. About 2000 or 2001 I began to realize just how screwed we were when we were given the terms of the agreement and told if we disclosed them we would be kicked out of the pool. So much for an open free market, and market transparency.
I hope Obama is serious about this, because he is going to face a battle just about as big as healthcare. If he can bust up the monopolies that are controlling the ag commodities trade(especially the livestock industry) he can count on my vote in 2012, and I am a Republican(although I am beginning to wonder why).
"Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independant, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to it's liberty and interests by the most lasting bands."
I have a lot of doubts about Holder, but what he said about ag is the absolute truth. I am watching this with a lot of interest, but note very little is being reported in the farm media. I get daily updates from several producer organizations, they aren't breathing a word about it...I wonder why??
Nearly all working in each of these sectors want NO government interference. Yet those working in these fields refuse to address their own rot. This applies to the financial sector, banking, home-mortgage, auto-industry, healthcare, education, etc,.
A decade ago, we were told about "Economies of Scale". So every enterprise grew claiming to be efficient with lower administrative overheads. Yet the overhead cost of various sectors grew to the region of 30%. And now the buzz-phrase is "Too Big to Fail."
We all expect the elected representatives in Washington, DC to come up with solutions. The problem, these elected representatives in Washington DC are bought and paid-for by the very individuals and institutions that created this mess. This applies to both chambers and both political parties. So the Fraud and the Hubris is widespread across the country.