Way back before the decade turned, I received a media announcement and an invitation. It was for an event for organic farmers and it featured — wait for it — a presentation by Bernie Sanders. The talk was sponsored by Rodale, perhaps the inventor of the term “organic,” and an organization I’ve admired since its beginnings. Would Sanders talk about the incursion of factory farming into organics? Would he mention the erosion of organic standards under pressure from industry? As a citizen journalist, not part of the big media, the opportunity was irresistible.
My sweetie said he could take care of things here, and to make it even better, he’d finance the trip as a birthday present. So off I went, to Story City, Iowa, to hear what candidates say when they have more than a sound-bite opportunity. I had planned to come back after one night, but while in Story City I heard that the very next evening there were six, count ’em, six candidates speaking in nearby Grinnell. A couple of emails later, I was promised a media seat. I figure if I lived in Iowa, I’d never be at home. I’d be darting from this town to that, checking on the candidates.
Understand, dear reader, that my excitement was sincere and authentic. For years, I’ve been waiting for presidential candidates to say one of the four-letter F-words: Food and Farm. And it has never happened. Let the Supreme Court rule that the checkoff is “government speech.” Let the industry consolidate to the point that a few companies own all the meat processing on the planet. Let the Farm Bill declare that country-of-origin labeling is only necessary for “lamb, chicken, goat, wild and farm-raised fish and shellfish, perishable agricultural commodities, peanuts, pecans, ginseng, and macadamia nuts.”
Let farmers be foreclosed on and their lives destroyed. The news hasn’t made it to the Beltway that their politics has an on-the-ground effect. And why would it? Rural Americans don’t understand the issues ourselves! We keep playing the game, taking our products to the rigged commodity markets and buying our food at the Drive-Thrus and the Big-Box stores, just like the families we see on T.V. Our spending: That’s how JBS (a Brazilian company) and three other food companies control about 85% of beef production. JBS and Tyson Foods control about 40% of the poultry market. And JBS and three other companies including Smithfield, a Chinese company, control nearly 70% of the pork market.
But I digress. Back to Story City and Bernie’s speech. Getting to the venue at the beginning of the meeting, I was able to connect with a few longtime farming friends and snag a good seat in the Press section. I had time to look at the crowd and yes, the organic crowd is younger and more well-groomed than farmers I see at most farm meetings. That’s good news and bad. They’re younger, yes, and we need the kids to carry on. But have their ideals been compromised? Do they simply accept the rules as USDA allows them? For example, without the history, they’ve grown up thinking that farms should be thousands of acres, that food should be cheap and that organics require manure from CAFOs to fertilize their crops.
Yes, he covered all that farmers and consumers advocating for a sustainable system could wish for. He came out, for example, against the expansion of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and promised he would call a moratorium. He came out for Country of Origin Labeling. It turned out, I learned later, that he had connected with longtime activists and educated himself on the subject, visiting with people who have been involved with the food consolidation struggles in Iowa towns and country. He had learned that industry had trashed lives of neighbors who found their homes inundated with the gases (methane, ammonia) from giant pits of feces and manure. And he had talked to urban folks from Des Moines where the waterworks company just spent $2.5 million on a new system to clean nitrates from water after it picks up effluent from farm fields and confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
The next afternoon, in Grinnell, I heard Bernie again, with a slightly different message—no promise of a moratorium on CAFOs—but messages from candidates Klobuchar, Buttagieg, and Booker, were similar. Two other candidates—Delaney and Steyer—spoke well but didn’t convince.
Home again, I made podcasts of the four speeches you’re most likely to enjoy: Bernie, Amy, Cory and Pete. You can find them at farmandfiddle.transistor.fm/episodes. But, remember, friend, that these are just campaign promises, made in a rural state that’s suffering after years of industrialization. The real work comes after someone is sifted out of the DNC mush and anointed as the real candidate. Then we have to roll up our sleeves and continue to show up and to ask the hard questions.
Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. She also is a co-founder of CAFOZone.com, a website for people who are affected by concentrated animal feeding operations. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History”. Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2020
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