National Wildlife Federation
Mékell Mikell

American farmers provide food, fuel and fiber for a growing nation. In the face of challenges including tight budgets, increasing threats to natural systems, climate change and extreme weather, farmers can implement strategies that assure yields and farm income while helping to address these challenges. A new report from the National Wildlife Federation, Future Friendly Farming: Seven Agricultural Practices to Sustain People and the Environment, offers techniques that farmers and ranchers can use to increase profits, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and protect soil, water and wildlife habitat.

The report also highlights case studies of successful future friendly farming practices from across the nation in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.

“These practices offer readily-available and highly cost-effective opportunities for farmers and land managers to reduce costs and maintain or increase yields while addressing water quality, wildlife habitat concerns and reduce emissions that fuel climate change,” said Ryan Stockwell, Ph.D., report co-author and agricultural manager for the National Wildlife Federation.

“Farmers and ranchers using future friendly farming practices now are already reaping the rewards with greater profits, better soil and a stronger legacy for the next generation of American farmers,” said Eliav Bitan, report co-author and agricultural advisor for the National Wildlife Federation.

Through case studies, the report demonstrates how using cover crops can increase profits through reduced fertilizer needs, improved soil fertility and easier weed control. Some of the other techniques highlighted in the report that can benefit farmers, ranchers, local communities and ecosystems include:

• Improving grazing practices to boost soil fertility, biodiversity, and grassland ecosystem health.
• Using anaerobic digesters to reduce threats to water quality and provide local renewable electric and thermal energy.
• Carbon offsets opportunities through agricultural and land management.

Download the full report

Wal-Mart China has apologized for selling ordinary pork as organic in three stores in the southwest city of Chongqing, the eighth time this year the local industry watchdog has uncovered illegal practices at the global retailer.

The Chongqing Industry and Commerce Administration launched an investigation into the supermarket chain after receiving complaints that ordinary pork was sold as organic at higher price, Chongqing Evening News reported yesterday.

Officials found the organic pork sold in three Wal-Mart stores in Chongqing had no organic seal.

The three stores made extra profits of more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,565) from sales of 1,179 kilograms falsely labeled pork, pricing it at 10 yuan per kilogram more than it should be, from January to August.

Tang Chuan, an official with the Chongqing Industry and Commerce Administration, told the newspaper the three were guilty of false promotion and fraud. He said Wal-Mart would be punished for illegal business practices.

Wal-Mart China said it is cooperating with the investigation and has set up a task force to make a thorough check on all pork products in Chong-qing stores and has pledged to tighten internal management to prevent such things happening again.

Wal-Mart’s Chongqing stores have repeatedly been found selling out-of-date food and making false claims for its products. The administration has sanctioned Wal-Mart stores 20 times since 2006, eight times from January to August.

One store was fined 340,000 yuan in April for selling out-of-date smoked duck. A total of 208 kilograms of the meat, refried after the expiry of its shelf life, was sold by the store during February.

Note from Cornucopia: Quite frankly, based on our past research, we do not trust Wal-Mart’s approach to sourcing organics and we do not trust China as a supplier for ingredients in our dog and cat food let alone in food we are feeding to our families.

Should an organic chicken be allowed to scratch outside in the native earth?

Federal farm experts meeting in Seattle this week are expected to consider this question, and the outcome could impact one of Sonoma County’s two main egg producers.

Petaluma Farms is a longtime supplier of organic and conventional eggs, all produced “cage free,” that is, without the small wire cages that confine most of the nation’s laying hens. Critics recently filed a federal complaint involving the company, saying the U.S. Department of Agriculture should require Petaluma Farms to give its organic hens access to soil outdoors, rather than limit their outside space to raised, screened porches.

Petaluma Farms owner Steve Mahrt, a cage-free farmer for almost three decades, defends his methods as superior, and he notes that his chicken houses have passed muster with both a private organic certifier and a leading organic farm cooperative that sells some of his eggs. Moreover, he suggests the public’s image of organic farms often fails to take into account the reality of large-scale operations that provide the food sold in supermarkets and natural food stores.

“People have the expectation that all the chickens are outside,” said Mahrt, standing beside a screened, barracks-like building containing 13,000 hens. “That doesn’t happen. That doesn’t happen anywhere.”

Organic food amounts to a $29 billion industry in the U.S., according to the Organic Trade Association. While it constitutes less than 4 percent of all food and beverage sales, the organic segment grew nearly 8 percent last year, while overall sales grew less than 1 percent.

Congress passed the nation’s organic food law in 1990, and the last two decades have featured regular fights over requirements for the treatment of farm animals. Last year the USDA mandated that organic dairy cows must obtain a significant amount of their feed from grazing in pastures, a move intended to stop the practice of keeping thousands of cows confined in dirt lots.

Now watchdog groups are urging stronger rules on outdoor access for poultry, including near Petaluma, once touted as the Egg Capital of the World. The critics say the tougher requirements are needed because “factory farms” are benefitting from the organic label without letting the birds outdoors in ways the federal law requires.

“This is what we call gaming the system,” said Mark Kastel, a senior farm policy analyst with the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm advocacy group.

The institute recently filed a federal complaint against Organic Valley, the nation’s leading organic egg brand, because it buys eggs from Petaluma Farms.

Kastel said organic consumers believe they’re not only buying superior food but also a more humane type of animal husbandry.

“They’re not just buying those eggs,” he said. “They’re buying the story behind those eggs.”

What sets Mahrt’s chicken houses apart are their open, screened sides. Walls of his former turkey houses have been removed and fitted plastic curtains, which are lowered by day and raised by night. In contrast, most chicken houses are completely enclosed and use giant fans for ventilation.

Mahrt’s system was key to gaining approval from the 1,600-member cooperative that controls Organic Valley. A committee of farmers toured his operation, said George Siemon, the Wisconsin-based co-op’s chief executive officer.

“What impressed us was Steve provides excellent living conditions for his chickens, lots of sunlight, lots of fresh air,” Siemon said.

The co-op made an exception in granting membership to Mahrt even though his hens don’t ever touch outdoor soil and his raised, roofless porches fall far short of the minimum outside space required of the co-op’s other egg farmers — 5 square feet per bird.

Mahrt insists such systems increase the risk of rodent contact and salmonella outbreaks, such as the ones that rattled the conventional egg industry last summer. As well, Organic Valley wrote on its website that “state veterinarians and the California Department of Agriculture strongly advocate that birds not have free-range outdoor access because of the risk of Avian Influenza transmission.”

However, other organic poultry farmers in Sonoma County and elsewhere in the state provide their birds access to outdoor soil. Some private companies that certify the farms require such access if the farmers want the organic designation.

This week in Seattle the National Organics Standards Board, an advisory group to the USDA, is slated to consider a committee recommendation that all organic poultry receive outdoor access to soil. The final decision rests with the agriculture department.

Siemon acknowledged that his group supports such a rule change, even though it would prohibit Mahrt’s system. Nonetheless, he suggested the change in itself isn’t a magic bullet. He said some large organic poultry farms might meet the rule but their outside areas are nothing but “moonscapes” — the ground so hard that the hens can’t really scratch or peck.

“It’s not as simple as you just have a piece of land out there and a door,” Siemon said.

If the USDA eventually requires access to outdoor soil, Mahrt said he will adapt, but not because he thinks the change would amount to an improvement.

“What I’m doing is what I think is the safest system for our consumers and for our hens,” he said.

In an unprecedented partnership that demonstrates the growing power of Long Island’s local food movement, three organizations representing the diversity of the local food movement – Slow Food Huntington, Sustainable Long Island and the Long Island Chapter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY) – have united to launch a grassroots campaign to raise awareness of local food.

The goal of the campaign is to connect Long Island’s diverse food communities at the LI Small Farm Summit on April 15th at SUNY Old Westbury. The campaign seeks to unite in all of the co-producers of Long Island’s sustainable food system including farmers and fishermen, gardeners and homesteaders, chefs and restaurateurs, food distributors and food retailers, beekeepers and chicken-keepers, land owners and land seekers, local foodies and food justice advocates, community organizers and elected leaders.

The campaign seeks volunteers committed to growing the Long Island local food movement and who are able to volunteer for one week to one month on the grassroots campaign. Organizers also seek to partner with the local business and nonprofit community to extend the reach of its campaign. The campaign will officially launch on March 15th and culminate at the April 15th LI Small Farm Summit. The campaign headquarters will be based out of Nick Martielli’s Aquarian Acre Homestead, a 1-acre suburban property in Huntington featuring an extensive garden with vegetables, herb, berries, fruit, and flowers, 6 laying hens, honey bees, and a solar-powered house. Campaign Manager Lisa Mitten of NOFA-NY will coordinate the volunteer-driven campaign and forge partnerships with local business and nonprofit leaders. The campaign will work closely with the staff of the North Shore Land Alliance, a local land trust serving as lead sponsor and organizer of the Small Farm Summit. To join the campaign as a volunteer or partner, contact Lisa Mitten at LisaMitten@gmail.com or call 631-678-2195 .

The campaign is one of many that seek to unite Long Island’s diverse food communities at the First Annual Long Island Small Farm Summit on April 15, 2011. The summit will include workshops and panels featuring organic farmers, food entrepreneurs, community organizers, nonprofit leaders, elected officials, and civil servants. The keynote speaker will be Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms in Virginia, a pastured-based, “beyond organic” livestock operation. Salatin has become a national spokesperson for the local food movement and has been featured in documentaries such as Food, Inc. and Fresh and the best-seller Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

The First Long Island Small Farm Summit will be held on Friday April 15, 2011 at SUNY Old Westbury from 8:30 to 5:30. Tickets for adults are $25 each, including breakfast and lunch. Students are free, excluding meals. To register for the conference, contact Andrea at the North Shore Land Alliance at 516-626-0908 or visit www.longislandsmallfarmcentral.com

Public health officials closed the books this month on an outbreak of salmonella illness that had sickened more than 1,900 people since May and led to the largest recall of eggs in U.S. history.

Two Iowa egg farms drew most of the blame, triggering a congressional investigation, a federal criminal probe and several lawsuits filed by victims.

What has not drawn much scrutiny is the role of the federal government, which recognized 20 years ago that salmonella in eggs posed a public health threat. Although federal inspectors have closely monitored meat and poultry production for the better part of a century, they have largely ignored eggs, another staple of the American diet. It was not until July, well after the recent outbreak was underway, that the government’s first rules on safe egg production took effect.

Unlike other regulatory efforts, this one did not sputter under lobbying pressure by business. In fact, the $4.4 billion egg industry had been seeking mandatory rules for years, despite the red tape and extra costs. Consumer groups wanted the regulation, and public health experts supported it, along with economists who said the benefits would far outweigh the costs.

But the proposal was thwarted by government itself – philosophical resistance to regulating business as well as rivalries and dysfunction at two federal agencies that share responsibility for keeping egg production safe.

Fractured oversight remains a problem today. There are more than 15 federal agencies and 71 interagency agreements dealing with food safety. Experts in public health and government accountability say that fragmentation weakens oversight, wastes tax dollars through redundancy and creates dangerous gaps.

Balkanization was a key factor in the government’s failure to regulate eggs over the past two decades. The push for federal rules on egg production stalled in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations as the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture dug into their own silos. It collapsed when the George W. Bush administration brought a renewed skepticism about regulation to the executive branch.

“The system certainly was at its worst,” said Lester Crawford, a former FDA commissioner whose own bout with salmonella in 1986 turned the issue into a personal battle.

Crawford pushed for egg regulation while running the food safety program at the USDA from 1987 to 1991, and he said he was stunned by the lack of progress when he joined FDA as acting deputy commissioner in 2002.

“I went nuts. I was told it was ready to go and all we needed to do was say yes, so I said yes,” Crawford said. He kept up the fight through 2005, when he left the agency.

Mark McClellan, who was FDA commissioner from 2002 to 2004, also supported egg regulation, but he said the proposal moved slowly because of its complexity and competing priorities.

“It was farm-to-table regulation, so there was lots to consider,” he said. “It was going to affect the trucking industry, storage, food production, and small and large farms. . . . Then there was the issue of priorities. . . . It’s not like one particular public health issue is unimportant, but with limited resources, you have to focus effort.”

The regulations that took effect this year require farmers to buy chickens that are certified free of salmonella, test those chickens while they are laying eggs and, if there is a positive test, stop selling whole eggs.

But the rules were too late to prevent the outbreak this summer, when Shannon Sutton ate a contaminated egg at an omelet restaurant in July. Two days later, she was in a hospital bed counting the minutes between morphine injections to dull the abdominal cramps that racked her body.

“You just feel like you’re dying,” said Sutton, a 25-year-old mother of two from Salt Lake City, who was hospitalized for four days with severe diarrhea and vomiting. “It was so bad I couldn’t talk or move or think of anything.”

With medical costs estimated at $25,000, Sutton has filed a legal claim against Wright County Egg, one of the nation’s largest egg producers and the farm at the center of the outbreak.

When FDA inspectors paid their first visit to Wright County Egg after the outbreak, they found henhouses bulging with manure, mice and other hazards that can spread disease.

The company has defended its practices and said in a statement at the time that “the vast majority of the concerns identified in the FDA report already have been addressed through repairs or other corrective measures.”

On Dec. 1, the FDA allowed Wright County Egg to resume selling eggs produced in two of its 73 henhouses, saying they were cleared of contamination. Hinda Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the company, expressed sympathy for the victims but declined to comment on the lawsuits.

An emerging threat

The threat of salmonella-tainted eggs did not exist a generation ago. But in the early 1980s, public health officials noticed an uptick in food poisoning cases linked to a particular strain of salmonella bacteria, which they traced to eggs.

By 1988, scientists had discovered that although other salmonella strains could be washed off egg shells, one type – Salmonella enteritidis – lived inside eggs.

Scientists think that this type, one of about 2,500 strains of salmonella, pass from the ovaries of an infected chicken into the eggs. It can be detected only through a laboratory test, and its discovery prompted new government warnings about the risks.

New Jersey health officials, for example, enacted a “runny egg rule” in 1992, banning restaurants from preparing dishes with raw or undercooked eggs. The goal was straightforward: to kill salmonella and prevent illness. But the response was visceral.

Diners across the state openly scoffed at the rule. Johnny Carson turned it into material for his late-night routine. And then-Gov. Jim Florio, a Democrat, invited the media to a New Jersey diner where he defiantly ordered eggs over easy. Within months, the rule was rescinded.

For egg farmers, however, the problem was not so easily dismissed. Faced with bad publicity and multimillion-dollar liability claims, they voluntarily began testing for the bacteria, disinfecting henhouses, refrigerating eggs, removing manure and controlling rodents. But those farmers soon came to think that they were at an economic disadvantage against competitors who weren’t spending money on prevention.

In the absence of federal regulation, some states began in the 1990s to enact their own rules, many focused on refrigeration. But the varying requirements created headaches for producers selling nationwide.

At the same time, public health officials and consumer groups were pushing for mandatory federal regulations. President Clinton ramped up the pressure when he devoted a 1999 radio address to contaminated eggs and announced that the FDA would lead efforts to eradicate salmonella in eggs over the next decade.

By the end of the Clinton administration, the United Egg Producers, a trade group representing 95 percent of the country’s egg farmers, had come to the conclusion that the rules would create a consistent, level field.

“Nobody wants more regulation. That’s just a fact of life. . . . I was resisting,” said Ken Klippen, then the chief lobbyist for the United Egg Producers. But eventually, he said, he realized that new rules were coming and that his best bet was to negotiate fair terms for the farmers. “We were going to be regulated. This was going to happen, and the industry had to respond.”

In the spring of 2000, a deal was struck. The egg industry agreed that the federal government would for the first time set rules for egg farms.

At a private meeting on the eighth floor of a sleek office building overlooking Washington’s Union Station, Klippen, representing the egg farmers, shook hands with Richard Wood of Farm Animals Care Trust, who was negotiating on behalf of consumer groups. The regulators looked on, approvingly.

“This is how government and industry are supposed to work together,” Judy Riggins, a policymaker at the USDA, whispered to Klippen.

And then, nothing.

For the next nine years, the government failed to deliver the rules.

A fractured bureaucracy

From the time scientists recognized the dangers of salmonella, regulators were unsure which federal agency should respond. Responsibility for safeguarding food is spread among multiple agencies. And when it comes to eggs, the roles get especially complicated.

The health of chickens falls under the USDA, but the FDA oversees the safety of whole eggs. Once an egg is broken and made into an “egg product,” responsibility for its safety switches back to the USDA.

The USDA also oversees transportation of whole eggs, but the FDA dictates how they should be stored once they reach restaurants or stores.

Because salmonella wasn’t making chickens sick, the USDA initially decided not to intervene. USDA inspectors are in packing facilities, but henhouses normally are the purview of the FDA. And the FDA rarely inspected henhouses.

The FDA has not routinely inspected egg farms because it has not established rules or standards, Deputy Commissioner Joshua M. Sharfstein said.

Over the past five years, the FDA has sent inspectors to just a handful of more than 4,000 egg farms in the country, according to agency records. In the case of one Ohio farm that recently detected salmonella in its henhouses and eggs, the only FDA inspection in the past five years took place in 2007, when inspectors visited the farm’s office and not its henhouses, according to an FDA inspection report.

Early in the salmonella crisis, the USDA and FDA initiated the first of several failed efforts to collaborate on a solution.

“The government dysfunction over the salmonella problem really started with the turf issues,” said Caroline Smith DuWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Federal officials met with industry representatives, scientists and state public health officials and launched a consumer education campaign, stressing the safest ways to handle and prepare eggs. But the USDA and the FDA disagreed on the path forward and ended up working on separate strategies for handling eggs. Each deployed economists, scientists, lawyers and policymakers as the agencies shaped dueling proposals. Their rivalry to become the top agency for food safety was so intense, they refused to share their plans with each other until they were made public.

Despite formal agreements pledging to share information and work together, the FDA and the USDA were still not communicating as recently as this spring and summer.

From May to August this year, USDA officials did not pass along to the FDA concerns about sanitation problems that they had noted repeatedly in the packing houses at Wright County Egg, where they were grading eggs that were being packed in cartons. On daily reports, the egg graders noted dirty equipment, unsanitary cooler and storage areas, eggs left unrefrigerated overnight and the presence of bugs, among other deficiencies.

Wright County Egg and the USDA noted that, in each case, the problems were corrected by farm employees in time for the day’s egg packing and grading. “If anything rose to the level indicating that we were going to withdraw grading services, we would tell the FDA,” said Caleb Weaver, a USDA spokesman. “But nothing rose to that level.”

But some of the eggs that the USDA graders were judging carried salmonella. The eggs were shipped by the thousands to retailers and restaurants across the country.

Skepticism about rules

Bureaucratic infighting was one obstacle to egg regulation. But another formidable barrier permeated the debate for years: a strong philosophical bias against government intrusion into kitchens, businesses and farms.

That was particularly true during the George W. Bush administration, when officials repeatedly expressed concern that the rules could hurt small businesses and end up dictating how Americans should eat their eggs.

It took the FDA until 2004 to get proposed rules through the Department of Health and Human Services and to the Office of Management and Budget, which has final say over new regulations. There, the FDA faced a new set of old questions.

“Essentially, they said, ‘Show us how many people are sick, dying and hospitalized, and show us your rule is worth the cost,’ ” said William Hubbard, associate FDA commissioner from 1991 to 2005.

The FDA thought it had a compelling case. The rules would cost farmers $82 million a year but could save $1.4 billion in medical costs and lost productivity by preventing 79,000 illnesses and 30 deaths a year. Still, OMB “didn’t think there were enough bodies in the street,” Hubbard said.

Several former FDA officials interviewed said senior officials in the Bush administration, still reeling from the terror attacks of 2001, were most concerned about the threat of bioterrorism and mass casualties. Eggs seemed almost quaint and certainly not urgent.

“We’d get blank stares,” said Steve Roach of Farm Animals Care Trust, which represented consumer groups in briefings with OMB. “We would go in and say, ‘There’s still a lot of people getting sick.’ They’d just say, ‘Thank you for presenting.’ ”

Susan E. Dudley, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at OMB from 2007 to 2009, said when it came to egg regulation, her agency was following a cost-benefit approach that had been embraced by every administration since Ronald Reagan.

The fact that the egg industry was on board didn’t sway Dudley. “One needs to be skeptical when an industry seeks regulation, because it often confers competitive advantage. It could be over other companies or over international firms,” she said. “And it often raises costs and it’s consumers who get hurt.”

She also said the White House was concerned that federal rules would devastate small farmers without substantially reducing illnesses.

In 2008, the United Egg Producers wrote to OMB, reiterating support for federal action and lobbying to shape any impending rules.

But later that year, the industry and others were surprised when the FDA suddenly withdrew the rule that it had proposed four years earlier.

David Acheson, former associate commissioner of foods at the FDA, said OMB officials insisted that the rules be reworked to prevent harm to small businesses that prepare food, such as nursing homes. FDA already had included exemptions for small farmers.

“The feeling was: Take it off the fire altogether, fix it and then bring it back,” Acheson said. “It wasn’t going to fly under the current administration, which was a waning administration.”

Howard Maguire, who was the egg industry’s main lobbyist in 2008, said OMB had pushed FDA officials to take the proposal off the table.

“People inside the FDA said it was purely politics and they were told to back off,” he said. “It wasn’t relief for us. It was frustration because this thing just kept hanging over our heads.”

Several months later, Obama administration officials arrived at the FDA to find a package of egg regulations, endorsed by industry and consumer groups, awaiting action. The administration published the standards, which took effect in July.

This fall – armed with the new regulations and acting in the wake of the most recent outbreak – FDA inspectors began visiting the nation’s 600 biggest egg farms. Among the first farms were those with ties to Wright County Eggs, including Ohio Fresh Eggs.

Under the new rules, Ohio Fresh had tested and found Salmonella enteriditis in a henhouse and in eggs. FDA inspectors reviewing the farm’s paperwork discovered that the company had mistakenly shipped nearly 300,000 eggs to Cal-Maine Eggs, the country’s largest egg producer and distributor, which recalled them Nov. 5.

In a statement, Ohio Fresh Eggs apologized for the mistake and said, “We are redoubling our efforts to ensure thorough and ongoing training of our workers so that this situation is not repeated.”

Despite the error, FDA officials were satisfied. The problem had been caught early. And no one became sick.

But even with the regulations in place, FDA officials said, after the outbreak this year, they recognized a problem of poor communication between agencies. The FDA is now training USDA inspectors to spot food-safety problems and report them to the FDA. And officials have pledged yet again to try to bridge the gaps between agencies.

Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last night, U.S. Senator Kay R. Hagan (D-NC) and Jon Tester (D-MT) successfully fought for small farmers. An agreement was reached on the Tester-Hagan amendment to the Food Safety Modernization Act, which is currently being considered by the U.S. Senate. The amendment protects small producers from excessive government regulations in the bill. Yesterday, the Food Safety Bill passed a key procedural hurdle by a vote of 74 to 25. The final version of the bill is likely to be voted on in the Senate by the end of the week.

“This amendment is a critical change to the food safety legislation and will protect our small producers from excessive government red tape,” Hagan said. “Senator Tester and I worked with our colleagues to ensure this amendment’s inclusion in the final food safety bill, and this protection will benefit small farmers across North Carolina. Agriculture is our state’s largest industry, and I am working in the Senate to ensure we can grow jobs in this tough economy.”

Update: View Senator Jon Tester’s amazing speech on the Senate floor concerning the importance of family-scale food producers and processors. Click here.

Under the Tester-Hagan amendment, small producers will continue to be regulated at the state and local level. The amendment applies to small producers who sell most of their food directly to consumers, local restaurants and retailers within a 275 mile radius, and producers that earn $500,000 or less in annual sales

Hagan also included a provision in the bill to help farmers who suffer losses due to erroneous recalls. For instance, North Carolina tomato growers suffered when the Food and Drug Administration mistakenly cited tomatoes following a salmonella outbreak when the problem turned out to be a pepper farm in Mexico. Consumer demand for tomatoes dropped 50 to 60 percent. Hagan’s provision will require the government to evaluate ways to appropriately compensate farmers when a recall is determined to be erroneous.

Agriculture is North Carolina’s largest industry, generating $74 billion in economic activity and employing nearly one-fifth of the state’s workers.

Once again rural America stands on the Edge of Hope

Ankeny, IA – There are moments in a nation’s history that define it. For America’s remaining 2 million farmers (less than 1% of the population) and the more than 300 million eaters, the recent joint Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture workshop on lack of competition in the food and agricultural sectors held in Ankeny, Iowa is potentially one of those moments.

With concentration at record levels in agriculture today, well past levels that encourage or even allow fair prices or competition, the Obama administration’s call for public workshops is an historic event. While agribusiness continues to deny any problem, a simple look at the facts shows that the playing field for family farmers and American consumers is distorted beyond anything resembling a free or competitive market.

Even though these statistics have been widely published lately, I will include them here again just to illustrate the point: 1 company (Monsanto) controls the genetics of 93% of soybeans and 80% of the corn grown in the U.S; 4 companies (Tyson, Cargill, Swift & National Beef Packing Co.) control 85% of the beef packing industry; 4 companies (Smithfield, Tyson, Swift & Cargill) control 66% of the pork packing industry.
For farmers trying to get a fair price for seeds or livestock, such concentration places a crushing burden on their bottom line.

This past Friday nearly 800 individuals from across the country gathered in a small community college auditorium to hear top officials in the Obama administration, including cabinet members Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack (former governor of Iowa) and Attorney General Eric Holder, address the issue of how such excessive market concentration and food monopolies have negatively impacted the lives and livelihoods of family farmers, consumers and rural America. Over the course of eight hours, the audience, made up mostly of farmers, labor workers and farm advocates, some of whom traveled from as far as Montana, Texas, Arkansas and North Carolina, listened as academics, economists, agribusiness giants, commodity groups and a few farmers detailed specific areas of concern regarding the lack of competition in agricultural markets or, in the case of a several industry representatives, denied outright the existence of any problem.

The gravity of this meeting and its outcome could be felt by all attendees as Vilsack, Holder, DOJ antitrust chief Christine Varney, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley and others took the stage for the first panel. A sense of anticipation and restlessness filled the crowd as the panel was announced, which included Iowa’s attorney general, Tom Miller, Congressman Leonard Boswell, Lt. Governor Patty Judge and Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey. The inclusion of the last three panelists, while expected, caused some dismay by longtime Iowa farm activists. Having two Democrats (Boswell and Judge) and a Republican (Northey) at the podium with a long history of supporting industrial agriculture was not what many had hoped for when the workshops were first announced.

Workshop #1 Begins: Vilsack, Holder and Varney

After a round of pleasantries, saying he was glad to be back in Iowa, Secretary Vilsack opened the hearing sharing his concern about the loss of family farmers over his lifetime and the shrinking of rural communities, which he has seen as a small town lawyer, mayor, state senator, governor in Iowa and now as Secretary of Agriculture.

“Looking at the statistics regarding rural America and farms, I have a lot of concern,” said Secretary Vilsack.
He then went on to detail how the rising age of the average farmer, now 57 as reported in the 2007 Ag census, the higher and more prolonged rates of unemployment in rural America and the loss of economic opportunity in rural areas across the country were all issues that he planned to address by improving programs at the USDA.

No matter what one believes about Vilsack’s agricultural biases, favoring biotech, ethanol and exports while still increasing opportunities for beginning farmers, organics and nutrition programs like farm to school, it was evident that he realizes that agriculture and rural America are at a serious crossroads under his watch.
“This is not just about farmers and ranchers,” Vilsack said. “It’s really about the survival of rural America.”
In a USDA press release issued later that day, Vilsack drove that point home even further.

“In my travels across the country, I hear a consistent theme: producers are worried whether there is a future for them or their children in agriculture, and a viable market is an important factor in what that future looks like,” said Vilsack. “These issues are difficult and complex, which is why this workshop today is so important and long overdue.”

Attorney General Holder called the public workshop “a milestone” event.

Many in the audience, especially family farmers concerned that the workshop would be another dog and pony show that promises change, but only returns agribusiness as usual, were encouraged by Holder’s attendance, which was only announced late last week.

For leading industrial ag companies, Holder’s appearance in Ankeny, was a sign of how serious the Obama administration is intent on taking the issue.

During his opening statement, Holder said that the DOJ was committed to vigorous protection of competition, noting how “reckless deregulation has restricted competition in agriculture.”

Holder went on to say, “We all know that one of the greatest threats to our economy is the erosion of free competition in our markets. And we’ve learned the hard way that recessions and long periods of reckless deregulation can foster practices that are anti-competitive and even illegal.”

These were stern warnings for agribusiness’s minions in the audience.

Closing out the first panel was DOJ antitrust chief, Christine Varney, who was widely recognized as the driving force behind the antitrust hearings. Speaking about the realities of U.S. antitrust law and realalistic enforcement expectations, Varney promised a tough stance from her office and a clear signal that a new sheriff is in town.

“Big companies aren’t necessarily bad,” Varney said. “But they have a responsibility to act responsibly. Patents have in the past been used to maintain or extend monopolies — and that’s illegal.”

For those family farmers and proponents of sustainable agriculture who have long seen Monsanto as the 800-pound agribusiness bully in the room, Varney’s comments were applauded.

Farmers Unite: Call on Obama to “Bust up Big Ag”

Even so, while issues of lack of competition and enforcement of antitrust laws have been on the agenda for family farmers and rural advocates for decades, the rest of the day’s lineup did not live up to what many had hoped for. When originally announced, the first workshop had been proposed to focus on seed concentration, only to get watered down to include hogs, livestock, transparency and buyer power.

For weeks leading up to the workshop, farm groups and rural advocates had been quietly pushing the USDA to find more inclusive voices and more progressive farmers, those who had been most negatively impacted by excessive ag concentration, to be included on the panels.

The resistance that DOJ and USDA officials met from family farm groups led to a delay by several days of the official farmer panel lineup being released publicly and led Sectary Vilsack to allow more farmer comment during the lunch break.

As a result of the delay, leading farm, labor and consumer groups held a townhall meeting the evening before to make sure that real farmer voices were heard on these important issues.

On the eve of what may have been the most historic day in agriculture in the 21st century, more than 250 farmers, their friends and families, union workers and farm advocates gathered in a hotel in Ankeny, just down the road from the official DOJ/USDA event to bring attention to their plight and call for the administration to “Bust up Big Ag”.

During the open forum period, when more than 40 individuals from the audience had one minute to address the crowd, the sense of urgency for farmers and rural Americans was palpable.

Jerry Harvey, a 4th generation southern Iowa dairy farmer described the recent plight of America’s dairy farmers, who have experienced a record crisis this past year as prices have dropped more than 50% at times from 2008 levels, stranding farmers with thousands of dollars of debt to carry each month for more than a year.

“What turned out to be the American dream, turned out to be the American nightmare for the past 15 months,” Harvey said, detailing his interactions with Iowa’s political leaders, including Senator Harkin and Grassley and Congressman Boswell’s offices to find some solution to the current dairy crisis.

After Harvey, fellow Iowa dairyman, Scott Cruise addressed the crowd, telling them that he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to pass on his farm to his 15 year old son, who desperately wanted to become the 5th generation to farm and milk cows in Iowa.

Unfortunately for the audience, the story was all too familiar.

For many dairy farmers, like the chicken farmers and hog farmers before them, who have all been forced out of production because of the false efficiencies of excessive concentration, the Obama administration’s announcement of an antitrust lawsuit against Dean Foods, which controls more than 40% of the fluid milk market in the U.S., it may be too late.

Even as farmers in the audience the next day clapped when Varney mentioned the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit against Dean Foods, many realized the debt levels these family dairy farmers have been forced to endure the past year has reached a crisis point.

While many have waited a lifetime to hear government officials address lack of competition in agriculture and enforce antitrust laws, the only question that remains is: How fast will the wheels of justice turn?