-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.defenders.org/fbp02.html
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Farm Bureau vs. Nature
by Vicki Monks
Fall 1998
Part 2
Vicki Monks, a freelance writer in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reports
frequently on wildlife and environmental issues.
Ask any Farm Bureau official at the county, state or national level how
many actual farmers belong to the organization and it is likely you will not
get a straight answer. "We feel like we represent eight out of ten American
farmers," says Dick Newpher, executive director of AFBF's Washington, D.C.,
office. But in fact, Newpher says he has no idea whether that statement is true
because AFBF does not keep a central membership list that identifies who is a
farmer and who is not. AFBF bylaws clearly spell out two categories of
membership, however: voting members who are actively engaged in agriculture or
retired from farming and associate members who are not farmers. Newpher says
county and state farm bureaus keep separate records for the two member classes,
but queries to several state farm bureaus did not produce answers, either.
Texas Farm Bureau spokesman Gene Hall says TXFB membership records make no
distinction.
Because AFBF is a nonprofit organization (although some state affiliates
have set up for-profit companies) it pays no taxes on income from
membership dues. In 1993, the Internal Revenue Service ruled that dues
from nonfarming associate members - the customers of Farm Bureau insurance
companies and other businesses - should be taxed as business income. An
IRS survey of these associate members had found that only five percent
joined AFBF because of an interest in agriculture. The IRS ruling could
have cost AFBF an estimated $32 million in taxes each year. But a group of
members of Congress led by Representative David Camp (R-Michigan) came to
the rescue. Legislation reversing the IRS decision won approval in 1996 as
part of the tax-relief package under House Speaker Newt Gingrich's
"Contract With America." During 1995 and 1996, political action committees
affiliated with state farm bureaus contributed $109,824 to many of the 126
sponsors and cosponsors of the Tax Fairness for Agriculture Act -
including $16,480 to Camp. In recent years, AFBF and its state affiliates
have developed cozy alliances with other conservative political groups,
including many of the so-called wise- use organizations. AFBF works
closely with more than a dozen of these groups, including several
coalitions that are seeking to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act, roll
back wetlands protections, lower clean air and water standards and thwart
efforts to reduce global warming.
Although these issues may have some bearing on agriculture, AFBF also uses
its considerable clout to push policies that have no apparent connection
to farming. For example, the Montana Farm Bureau (MTFB) lobbied to require
that schools teach creationism on an equal basis with evolution. MTFB also
wanted the state to ship convicted criminals to Mexico and promoted a
resolution urging the United States to withdraw from the United Nations.
AFBF's 1998 policy book calls for repeal of the nation's basic civil
rights law, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and restoration of provisions
in the 1872 Mining Act "that guarantee the rights and freedom of
prospectors and miners." This law has allowed multinational corporations
to extract billions of dollars in precious metals from public lands
without paying royalties to the U.S. government. It contains no
requirements for land reclamation and elevates mining above all other
interests on public land, including wildlife habitat and clean water.
Newpher paints a far more benign picture of the Farm Bureau's agenda. "We
are probably the least selfish occupational group that there is in
America," he boasts. "I don't see us taking strong legislative positions
where we set out to be of harm to other parts of our society. I don't
think we take extreme positions that hurt other people. We try not to."
The Texas Farm Bureau apparently is not with the program. TXFB pushed for
repeal of the federal minimum wage and wanted the government to cut food
stamps for poor families whose children also got free lunches at school.
When the Texas Agriculture Department adopted regulations to prevent
growers from spraying pesticides while farm workers were in the fields,
TXFB nearly succeeded in getting the state legislature to revoke those
rules. "The new regs weren't anything major that would be a substantial
disruption or expense to employers, but you should have heard the
screaming and howling. You would have thought somebody had burned their
barns and run off their stock," says Texas Rural Legal Aid attorney David
Hall, who has represented farm workers injured by pesticides. Both TXFB
and AFBF advocate eliminating the Legal Services Corporation, a federally
funded organization that provides legal-aid attorneys like Hall for
low-income clients.
In North Carolina in 1983, the Farm Bureau opposed a proposal for
increased penalties against individuals who hold workers in involuntary
servitude - in other words, people who keep slaves. Ten people had been
convicted on slavery charges in North Carolina during the previous three
years. And in Ohio, the Farm Bureau worked to retain a National Labor
Relations Act exemption for large corporate farms. Because of this
exemption, workers at egg farms with millions of laying hens have no
protection from firing or harassment by their bosses if they try to
organize labor unions.
It should come as no surprise that the Farm Bureau defends big
agribusiness. The Farm Bureau itself is in big agribusiness. Growmark, a
Farm Bureau- controlled grain-marketing cooperative, chalked up $1.57
billion in sales last year. In 1985, Growmark merged its grain terminal
operations with agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). ADM took
over management of the terminals, and Growmark received ADM stock in
exchange. Other Farm Bureau companies own stock in big agribusiness. And
if those big agribusinesses prosper, Farm Bureau affiliate stock
portfolios stand to reap some of the benefits.
The Farm Bureau also uses its lobbying clout to take care of its other
financial partners. Seemingly odd policy positions are easier to
understand in the light of the Farm Bureau's insurance and other business
interests. For instance, AFBF lobbied against important health-care
legislation, including a bill guaranteeing minimum hospital stays for new
mothers. State farm bureaus have lobbied hard for limits on medical
malpractice damage awards, and AFBF is pushing for privatization of Social
Security. It is a far stretch to relate those issues to agriculture, but
they certainly affect Farm Bureau financial interests.
Another example: AFBF is a member of the Coalition for Vehicle Choice, a
group that helped defeat legislation that would have raised
fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles. FBL Financial Group, which
controls Farm Bureau insurance affiliates in 12 states, also owns stock in
Ford Motor Company, Texaco and other oil and gas producers, according to
FBL financial reports. The Iowa Farm Bureau owns 63 percent of FBL.
"If these people lose their prestige as the spokesmen for agriculture,
they're just another insurance lobby, and insurance lobbies are a dime a
dozen," Missouri farmer Scott Dye says. "That's why they don't like to
talk about how many of those members are actually farmers." Dye's family
has farmed in Missouri for 118 years. He has never belonged to the Farm
Bureau and says he never will. "They've sold me up the river as far as I'm
concerned," he says. Two Missouri controversies illustrate how out of step
the Farm Bureau can be with family farmers. Dye and other small farmers in
a three-county area in northern Missouri have been locked in what is so
far a losing battle over the presence of concentrated animal feeding
operations. These megafarms house as many as 140,000 animals. Rolf
Cristen's 600-acre farm is sandwiched between two of these operations. "It
stinks at our house continuously," he says. People who have worked around
livestock all their lives say they sometimes wake up in the middle of the
night and vomit because the stench is so bad.
In the 1980s, Missouri's Air Conservation Commission exempted farms from
laws that require other businesses to keep smells under control. Missouri
Attorney General Jay Nixon has petitioned the commission to revoke the
odor exemption for the largest livestock producers. Fewer than a dozen
huge corporate farms would be affected. The exemption for family farmers
would not change. Nevertheless, the Missouri Farm Bureau has attacked the
proposal, arguing that the odor regulations were not based on sound
science and would trample private property rights. Missouri Farm Bureau
spokesman Estil Fretwell says the bureau worries that if regulations are
imposed on the biggest farmers, they will soon trickle down to family
farms. "I think we've been very clearly on the side of concerns of the
average farmer in the state," he says.
AFBF has made property rights a national priority. The federation wants
the federal government to compensate farmers or others who lose money or
have to spend it in order to comply with environmental regulations. "When
society makes such demands, it is only fair that society share in the
cost," reads an AFBF release. At first blush, that policy may sound
entirely reasonable, but that is not how the property-rights issue played
out in Lincoln Township, Missouri. Before Premium Standard Foods built an
80,000-hog farm outside the town, community leaders tried to keep the
corporate farm away by adopting new zoning ordinances. Premium Standard
sued Lincoln Township for $7.9 million, alleging violations of property
rights. The property-rights issue was never settled - a state court ruled
that the township had no zoning authority to begin with, so the hogs moved
in.
Environmentalists fear that this kind of thing will occur more often if
Farm Bureau-sponsored policies become law. "The hog issue is a perfect
example of how this ideology can cause obvious and direct damage to rural
residents, including Farm Bureau members," says Ken Cook of the
Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy group based in
Washington, D.C. "Does the Farm Bureau seriously mean that communities
should pay corporations when towns adopt regulations to protect
themselves?" he asks. "Property rights stop at your fence line," Scott Dye
adds. "Just because you call yourself a farmer doesn't give you any right
to fog out your neighbor with the stink of hog manure and doesn't give you
any right to pollute the water. Believe me, you get a snout full of 80,000
hogs and it will clarify your thought processes real quick."
AFBF President Dean Kleckner owns a hog farm himself, and at the national
level AFBF is fighting EPA's current initiative to tighten Clean Water Act
regulations on large animal-feeding operations. The Maryland and Virginia
farm bureaus have worked to defeat manure-control legislation even though
scientists suspect that manure drainage into streams may be contributing
to outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida, a highly toxic microbe that can kill
fish and sicken people. Although AFBF says it is trying to protect small
farmers from burdensome regulations, Dye says his experience suggests that
farmers really have nothing to fear. "There's never been a farmer put out
of business by environmental laws," he declares. "They're put out of
business by factory farms that skew markets and deflate prices. We've lost
5,000 independent swine producers in Missouri in the last five years -
family farms - and they're gone forever. The Farm Bureau has stood on the
sidelines and let that happen."
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