Cooperation Times
Volume 14, No. 4 ~ Oct.-Nov. 2000

• Friends of the Independent Family Farmer

• Civil Rights Advocate Morris Dees to Speak in Topeka

• Benefit Concert by Yard Art

• Kansans in Action to Shut Down the School of Americas

Friends of the Independent Family Farmer
by Bill Beachy, Executive Director

"The independent family farmer is an endangered species. Over the last few decades, agriculture has changed drastically. Consolidation and incorporation has taken over. Since 1980, the number of hog farms in Kansas has fallen from 15,100 to 1600, while the number of dairies has declined from 6000 to less than 1000. With the changes of Kansas corporate farm law in 1994, 40 very large hog farms now sell two-thirds of all Kansas hogs, and large confined dairies are recruited to Kansas. Less than 20% of Kansas’ 61,000 farms are self-sufficient with no outside income. If we want an independent agriculture that is fair to the farmer, the environment, the rural community, and the consumer, Kansas needs to ensure that we have a fair marketplace, and promote a decentralized, value-added food system."

So reads the preamble to an agenda adopted recently by a new Kansas coalition, "Friends of the Independent Family Farmer." The agenda, endorsed by the Topeka Center for Peace and Justice in September, calls for establishing a contract growers bill of rights, prohibiting anti-competitive practices of packer ownership, strengthening Kansas’ antitrust laws, the restoration of county home rule, active state support for value added programs for farmers, and enhancement of state loan programs for Kansas farmers.

The new coalition is a nonpartisan, community education effort working for statewide policies that support independent family farms. It was inspired by the work begun during the 2000 legislative session by a bipartisan coalition of legislators. It will involve Kansas farmers and rural residents and those who no longer live on the farm or outside of the state’s growing urban areas, but who eat, and are concerned about Kansas’ diminishing rural economy and way of life.

The coalition's initial agenda is summarized below:

1) ESTABLISH A CONTRACT GROWER BILL OF RIGHTS. This bill of rights would establish a fair market for both the farmer and the processor. This bill of rights would establish guidelines for contract termination, the duration of the contract, procedures to renegotiate contract terms, dispute resolution mechanisms, capital construction requirements and responsibility for environmental damages. The poultry industry has 86% of its production under contract and other sectors of agriculture are rapidly moving in this direction. Several states are now compiling model legislation which Kansas lawmakers should debate and implement.

2) PROHIBIT ANTI-COMPETITIVE PRACTICES OF PACKER OWNERSHIP. Over the last few years, large livestock meat packers have begun a practice called "captive supplies," which is either direct ownership of livestock by the packer or forward contracting with livestock producers. We need action to prohibit packers from procuring cattle for slaughter through the use of a forward contract, unless the contract contains a firm base price that can be equated to a fixed dollar amount on the day the contract is signed, and the forward contract is offered or bid in an open and public manner. We need to prohibit packers from owning and feeding cattle, unless the cattle are sold for slaughter in an open public market. Price reporting for all packer livestock transactions should be mandatory.

3) ENFORCE AND STRENGTHEN THE KANSAS RESTRAINT OF TRADE ACT (ANTITRUST POWERS). HB 2855, passed in the 2000 legislative session, established the Kansas Restraint of Trade Act, which amended the antitrust laws in Kansas. The Attorney General now has sole antitrust enforcement powers. Those powers were expanded to investigation of announcements of large (over $500 million) mergers if the effect will substantially lessen competition, tend to create a monopoly or otherwise violate the act. The threshold of $500 million is too large, and should be lowered. The Attorney General has to be given adequate resources to enforce this act and work with other States to enforce antitrust law.

4) RESTORE HOME RULE AND LOCAL CONTROL FOR KANSAS COUNTIES. When Kansas lawmakers passed HB 2950 in 1998 regulating large confined animal feeding facilities, the authority of counties to regulate the siting of such facilities was taken away from them. That authority to protect the health and safety of the local community should be restored to Kansas counties, that had such authority for decades prior to 1998.

5) SUPPORT THE CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND ALTERNATIVE CROPS AT KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY. The Center, which was established by the 2000 legislature, will provide research, education, and outreach focused on production and marketing for independent family owned farms. The Center will collect and analyze information on the Kansas food system and on opportunities for production of new crops, value-added processing, and direct marketing. It will develop and distribute a guide of all state services for small farms and value-added agriculture. It will determine what resources are needed for adequate research, credit, and marketing programs to promote sustainable agriculture for independent family farms. We need to ensure that the Center receives a fair share of tax-funded public research, credit, and marketing resources.

6) EXPAND THE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION LOAN DEPOSIT PROGRAM. In 2000 Kansas lawmakers established a $50 million subsidized interest loan program for Kansas farmers. This program's funds were depleted three days after the program started in July, with 28 of the 59 participating banks submitting 300 loan applications on the first day. There are hundreds of loan applications on a waiting list, hoping that the program will be expanded next year. The cost to the State to subsidize the interest for this first $50 million is $1 million. The loan limit per farm is $250,000, and the farm must have a debt to asset ratio of at least 40% to qualify. This bill also establishes tax credits to financial institutions that make farm loans within very specific guidelines. We need to ensure that this program is expanded.

7) ESTABLISH VALUE-ADDED PROGRAMS ASSIST-ING FAMILY FARMERS. Several states have established loan and grant programs to help farmers and rural communities gain a greater share of the consumer food dollar. These programs support self-employment and small-scale entrepreneurship. Nebraska just passed the "Agricultural Opportunities and Value-Added Partnership Act," which will make grants available to support small rural enterprises and innovative cooperative efforts. Missouri recently passed legislation establishing value-added grants, value-added loan guarantees, new generation cooperative tax credits, and sustainable agriculture demonstration awards. Kansas should leverage such grant and loan programs with available federal and private resources, giving special attention to assisting smaller locker plants, establishing independent milk processors and developing regional produce cooler and warehouse facilities.

While the coalition is brand new, the following organizations have already endorsed the agenda: Kansas Cattlemans Association, Kansas Ecumenical Ministries, Kansas Farmers Union, Kansas Rural Center, Kansas National Farmers Organization and the Topeka Center for Peace and Justice. Other groups are invited. For more information on the coalition call 785-232-4388.

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Civil Rights Advocate Morris Dees to Speak in Topeka

Civil Rights advocate Morris Dees will present a lecture, "Voices of Hope and Tolerance for the New Millennium" at 8 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 17, at the Topeka Performing Arts Center. No admission will be charged and the public is invited to attend. A reception for Mr. Dees hosted by Concerned Citizens for Topeka will follow the lecture in the TPAC Fleming Room. For more information, call 785-232-8808.

An Alabama lawyer, Dees, his law partner Joseph Levin Jr. and civil rights leader Julian Bond founded the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in 1971 in their mission to uphold the laws that had been passed in response to the Civil Rights Act. SPLC is known for waging battles against segregation and hate groups by taking high impact, high risk cases few lawyers have the resources to tackle.

In response to a resurgence in organized racist activity during the 1980s, the SPLC developed KlanWatch and the Intelligence Report, which serve the law enforcement community with up to date information on hate groups. Their newest program, "Teaching Tolerance," is designed to educate youngsters about the civil rights movement. This violence prevention program serves 77,000 schools in the United States and stresses avoidance of conflict.

Dees is associated with several of the nation’s most celebrated civil rights cases: He won a $7 million case against the White Aryan Resistance and organizer Tom Metzger. This group had been the primary organizing body of Skinhead groups in the U.S. He won a $6 million case against William Pierce, head of the National Alliance, a Neo-Nazi organization, and author of "Turner Diaries," the blueprint used by Timothy McVeigh in bombing the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Dees currently is prosecuting a $14 million case against the neo-Nazi organization, Aryan Nations, which is linked to the attack on the Los Angeles Jewish Day Care Center in 1999.

Dees is the author of Hate on Trial: The Case Against America’s Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi, published in 1993, chronicling the trial and $12.5 million judgment against white supremacist Tom Metzger and his White Aryan Resistance group for their responsibility in the beating death by Skinheads of an Ethiopian student in Portland, Oregon. He also authored Gathering Storm: America’s Militia Threat, in 1996.

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Benefit Concert for Topeka Center for Peace and Justice

Yard Art is a newly formed band with a sound that is unmatched in the Topeka area. The group’s members are experienced, talented musicians who play folk, vintage rock, rhythm and blues, and children's music.

$8 ($15 for a family) at the door

For more information call 785-232-4388.

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Kansans in Action to Shut Down the School of the Americas
by Markus Weyel

"Let those who have a voice speak for the voiceless!" Those were the words of El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero, shortly before he was assassinated in 1980, for speaking out for the poor. Two of the three Salvadoran officers responsible for this atrocity were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), located at Ft. Benning, Georgia. Every year the SOA trains 1,500 Latin American soldiers in combat skills, counter-insurgency, psychological warfare, etc. Many of the SOA graduates go back to their homes and use the "skills" gained here in the U.S. to commit some of the worst human rights abuses throughout Latin America.

Being "the voice for the voiceless" has become the motto of the SOA Watch, which was started in 1990 by the Maryknoll priest Fr. Roy Bourgeois. Since then it has grown into a large movement with thousands of supporters across the nation and beyond. Having an SOA Watch in Kansas, established in August, is especially important, since only one of Kansas’ U.S. Representatives (Rep. Dennis Moore) voted in May to close down the "School of Assassins." After Fr. Bourgeois visit to Kansas in September, many joined the SOA Watch movement.

The most powerful tool in the struggle to close the SOA, besides lobbying legislators, has been the annual nonviolent vigil and civil disobedience at the gates of Ft. Benning. Last year 12,000 gathered in November to call for the school’s closure. The organizers expect even more people to come to this year’s protest on November 18 and 19. SOA Watch Kansas will provide nonviolence training and information to those interested in going to Ft. Benning in November. Local solidarity actions for those who won’t be able to go all the way to Georgia are being planned.

If you want to receive updates on what is going on in the movement, especially in Kansas, go to http://soawatchks.listbot.com and subscribe online to Kansas’ free mailing list, or contact Markus Weyel at the CENTER (785-232-4388) for more information.

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