The National Catholic Rural Life Conference (NCRLC) has for 77 years worked for justice for rural America. Following the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, NCRLC has worked to support family farms and a healthy environment. In order to do this well, especially in the light of the need for a new farm bill, NCRLC has entered into a collaborative partnership with the National Family Farm Coalition and the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture. The goal of this two year project is to encourage, facilitate, and support grassroots efforts that result in the enactment of a new farm bill in 2002 that includes fair prices and conservation/ sustainable agriculture programs that work for family farmers and rural communities. This will be accomplished through the enhancement of existing campaign efforts and a values-based collaboration with the National Catholic Rural Life Conference. A major objective will be to build solidarity and more effective cooperation among local, regional and national organizations. A Quick Review of the Problems: 1. Family farms continue to disappear at the rate of 500 per week nationwide. 2. Nearly every food product - from cattle and poultry to wheat and corn - is controlled by a handful of powerful corporations. This corporate concentration in production, processing and marketing denies family farmers fair and competitive access to markets, directly threatening their survival. 3. Farm commodity programs including farm income and grain reserve programs were replaced in 1996 with a declining fixed payment program to farmers, resulting in record low prices paid to family farmers. The fixed payment program favors very large farms and corporate agribusiness over smaller, family farms. 4. Conservation of marginal farmland suffers as most farmers plant from fencerow to fencerow, trying to make up in volume for the low prices they receive. 5. Factory farms threaten the economy and the environment. Water resources are under severe threat in many places, especially in the Great Plains, Western, and Southern states. 6. Beyond highly vulnerable farmland and specific water issues, current governmental policies create general disincentives to the protection of our land, water, air, and genetic resources. 7. Sustainable Agriculture has been provided only minimal government resources and most federal funding has gone to promote industrialized agriculture. 8. Production contracts, especially in poultry, pork and grains, are one-sided and detrimental to small and moderately-sized family farms. 9. Minority – owned farms have virtually disappeared, many as a direct result of government policies and practices including blatant discrimination that has limited minority access to and participation in government programs. 10. Genetically engineered crops and livestock are increasingly being raised in the U.S. with little government commitment to the issues of liability for contamination and environmental damage or consumers right to know where and how their food is produced. The issues that brought farmers and rural citizens together in 1986 in the midst of the worst financial crisis in the nation’s countryside were a failed farm policy resulting in record foreclosures, bankruptcies, and a broken financial credit system. Now, in 2000, we face an even more serious crisis. The Freedom to Farm Bill of 1996 has placed our food system in great jeopardy. The control of the food system is at stake due to the increasing concentration and globalization of our food supply. The taxpayer-financed bailout has kept some farmers on the land but neither the government/taxpayer response nor the economic hardship being imposed on our farmers and rural communities can continue. The $30 billion in government farm and emergency payments in 2000 covers only a small amount of a farmer’s actual losses while it fuels the profits of the buyers of farm commodities - the grain traders and exporters. Brother David G. Andrews,
CSC, is the executive director of the National Catholic Rural Life
Conference. Brother David
brings over 20 years of experience to his rural life work. He has
presented over 100 workshops throughout the United States and Canada on
a variety of rural life topics, produced videos on rural life, edited
books on rural ministry, and taught rural ministry courses in several
seminaries across the United States. Brother David completed
his law degree from Loyola University in New Orleans in 1994. |
