http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles.html <p>Somewhere in my parent’s home exists a photograph of them standing stiffly on either side of my oldest brother, Rich, in front of a flaming yellow, full-bloom forsythia bush outside the big, brick Lutheran church of my youth. <br><br> My mother (I think I’m remembering this correctly) wears a stylish dress she likely made herself and a round, white hat that, if turned upside down and used as a bucket, could easily hold a half-gallon of wild raspberries. Dad wears his Sunday uniform: suit, tie, easy smile. <br><br> The occasion for the photo is telegraphed by what Rich wears. Dark trouser legs peek out from an angel-like gown whose yards of whiteness are broken only by his folded hands holding a black hymnal. It’s Confirmation Sunday—either Palm Sunday or Easter Sunday—1965 and Rich is a newly-minted communicant. <br><br> The formality of the photo shows just how important this day is for them. He’s firstborn, the pathfinder for the following five; likewise, their firstborn is moving toward high school and manhood. Together they stand atop one of life’s important peaks and the pride of getting there comes through. <br><br> I also recall a tiny glint of satisfaction in Rich’s eyes. It’s a knowing sparkle, perhaps, to the fact that he survived eight years of Lutheran grade school and Luther’s Small Catechism and now can shake the dust of both off his shoes forever. <br><br> It’s a look you see only in youth, though, because none of us—Rich then, Peggy in 1966, David in 1967, me in 1969, Perry in 1971, and Christian in, ah, 1979?—ever did. Each may have thought Confirmation Sunday as parole day from catechism purgatory but (as our gray-haired elders predicted back then) it would become the first step on a journey of deeper understanding and deeper commitment. <br><br> (As one of those gray-haired elders now, I confidently told a minute’s old confirmand last year that this day would become very important to him. Like me 40 years earlier, the young man looked briefly at me as though I had one eye in the middle of my forehead and said, “Yeah, sure.”) <br><br> I remember more of that big day. I remember walking to our grandparent’s house, just three blocks from the church, to a big party in Rich’s honor. Grandma, apron already on, was stirring a roaster of gravy; Grandpa, suit coat already off, was stirring a whiskey sour for the gravy maker. <br><br> Aunts and uncles were everywhere and all slowly wandered into the living room where Rich, like a newly-crowned Saxon prince, held court. All told him “how proud you must be” while revealing how proud they were (of what, I wondered, they hadn’t done anything) and then handed him an envelope. <br><br> At dinner, of course, heaven’s newest heir ate with the adults in the dining room while the rest of us unwashed whelps were sent to Siberia, the back room off the kitchen. It had no guards so, later, we snuck out the back door to enjoy spring. Rich, however, was trapped by another hour of dessert, coffee and adult chatter. <br><br> I remember, too, Pastor Gross, our stony-faced minister and Grandpa’s Missouri Synod soul mate, at the party. Every time I had seen him in church or at school he was the stiff-collared, thunder-and-lightening voice of fear. That day, however, I saw and heard him laugh. Gee, pastors laughed? <br><br> Four years later, a photo was snapped of Mom, Dad and me in front of that same flaming forsythia. I wear a flowing white gown, a black hymnal and big smile; they, tired smiles and no hats. They had changed and I was about to. They knew it; I didn’t.</p> http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/farm-and-food-file-the-path.html Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:16:46 GMT <p>Of all the political hot rocks farm groups are juggling now in Washington, D.C.—cap-and-trade, cuts in crop insurance, shrinking farm program budgets—I’ll bet you a cup of coffee you cannot name the issue that recently united ag heavyweights as diverse as the American Farm Bureau and National Farmers Union. <br><br> That issue (cream and sugar, please) is the proposed changes in governance at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association that will give it a virtual lock on the tens of millions of dollars spent each year by the mandatory beef checkoff. <br><br> The move didn’t go unnoticed by several farm groups. On March 18 they sent a toughly-worded, four-page letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack that suggested NCBA’s grab “will further erode the separation between the check-off side and the policy side” and “will move the checkoff towards more exclusivity rather than inclusivity.” <br><br> What that means west of the Potomac, explains Nancy Robinson, vice president of government and industry affairs at the Livestock Marketing Association, is that checkoff- paying producers who are not members of NCBA—and 32 out of every 33 American cattle owners are not—need to be heard in checkoff issues. <br><br> “There’s a real sense that the proposed NCBA changes leave no strong role for state beef councils and non-NCBA members,” says Robinson. (LMA signed the March 18 letter.) “Who speaks for them if these changes are adopted?” <br><br> It’s a question the ag powerhouses privately posed to NCBA months ago. Getting no clear answer, they asked the Secretary for one. USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, after all, has oversight of all federally-chartered commodity checkoffs. <br><br> Importantly, too, recent Supreme Court decisions clearly labeled checkoffs “government speech,” which, say several checkoff observers, makes USDA the first among equals in how checkoff dollars are collected, budgeted and spent. <br><br> Which is exactly the point the farm groups’ letter makes: “There are currently 18 active research and promotion programs for agricultural products. These programs are overseen by the Agricultural Marketing Service of USDA, but are run by producers for the benefit of all producers who invest in the programs.” <br><br> In fact, the letter continues, “In every program, except the beef checkoff, the checkoff boards USDA appoints have complete control over the expenditure of the funds. In the case of the beef checkoff, NCBA currently controls the budgeting and spending of a large portion of checkoff funds.” <br><br> So what gives? Why is NCBA now reaching for all beef checkoff bucks it can grab? <br><br> According to long-time NCBA critic, Bill Bullard, ceo of R-CALF USA, an 8,000-member cattle group based in Billings, Montana, NCBA needs the money. <br><br> “The proposed changes will give it more access to checkoff dollars and without those extra dollars NCBA probably can’t exist,” says Bullard. “This is all about the future of NCBA, not the future of the checkoff.” <br><br> As might be expected, NCBA didn’t take kindly to the farm groups’ letter. On March 22, it fired back with its own five-page letter to the Secretary “to correct several errors” it claimed the farm groups made in theirs. <br><br> The closing sentence of the NCBA letter, however, confirms what the farm groups and Bullard say is behind the proposed changes: “We are convinced,” wrote the cowboys, “these improvements will enable NCBA to better serve the checkoff-paying cattle farmers and ranchers of America.” <br><br> Good grief, it’s not about what’s best for NCBA. It’s about what’s best for the more than 800,000 U.S. cattle owners and beef importers who pay nearly $80 million per year to the checkoff. <br><br> Had it been more about cattle owners than cattle groups maybe beef demand would have risen, not fallen, in 17 of the beef checkoff’s 23-year, nearly $1.8 billion life.</p> http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/farm-and-food-file-cowboy-checkoff.html Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:14:26 GMT <p>While the White House, Congress and the shouters, doubters and pouters tie themselves in knots over health insurance reform, our good friends at the banks aren’t even breaking a sweat in their effort to buy a non-reform banking bill. <br><br> And here’s the sweet part of this non-reform reform purchase: they’re using our money to do it. <br><br> In 2009, the year after the biggest global bank meltdown since the 1930s and the $700 billion bank bailout, America’s finance, insurance and real estate sectors spent $463.8 million on 2,653 lobbyists to buy favors from Congress, according to the non-partisan website opensecrets.org. <br><br> Of that grease, Wall Street supplied $93.3 million while commercial banks tossed in $50.8 million. <br><br> What they got for their—our—money was nothing, which is exactly what they wanted. Not one new rule, not one new regulation and not one new knuckle-rapping regulator was created in 2009 to rein in the knuckle-draggers that traded an estimated $592 trillion, or 12 times the world’s total economic output, in over-the-counter, in-the-dark derivatives last year. <br><br> That’s right. The same unregulated, opaque derivatives, swaps and futures trading that all but busted the big banks, drained the U.S. Treasury and now is sawing into your state, county, and local school district budgets continues to thrive despite the havoc all caused since 2000. <br><br> Why? Because, as one observant blogger noted after a recent call by Senator Ted Kaufman (D., DE) for financial reform again fell on Capitol Hill ears too-stuffed with banker cash to hear, most Americans are “just sheep with money.” <br><br> The jab is, well, true. You and I and most of the bleating public go where we’re herded, counting on regulators to guard us from wolves. The “too-big-to-fail” bunch know this so they push banking boundaries wider and wider—forcing regulators to guard more ground—because, literally, they have nothing to lose. <br><br> We do. In 2008, 25 U.S. banks failed. In 2009, failures ballooned to 140 and, so far this year, the total is 30.  Not one was on Wall Street; most were on Main Street and many were on the very quiet main streets of rural America. <br><br> One regulator, Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, knows that derivative reform is critical if banks are to be saved from themselves. <br><br> As a former rainmaker at Goldman Sachs and a Clinton Administration market deregulator, Gensler both created and profited from market loopholes. Now he wants them closed because they have grown big enough to pull whole nations—Greece comes to mind—through them. <br><br> “Wall Street’s interest is not always the same as the public’s interest,” Gensler explained to the New York Times March 10. “Wall Street thrives and makes money in inefficient markets, and I am creating efficiencies in the market.” <br><br> Not yet, although Gensler is pushing hard for tough new rules that would force the banks and global business to do their derivative dealing and swap swapping in daylight—in open markets—and “clear” them through third party clearinghouses like futures traders must at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Board of Trade. <br><br> Gensler’s message only got partly through to House rule writers who, in December, passed a financial services reform bill that keeps nearly half of all derivative trades in the dark. That effort, says Steve Suppan, a policy analyst with the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy (www.iatp.org) in Minneapolis, isn’t good enough. <br><br> “Both agriculture and energy markets,” he explains, “are highly vulnerable to the actions of Wall Street speculators. The CFTC needs to set a strong regulatory standard for all to follow.” <br><br> Gensler must have ag’s support to succeed. The farm groups must step up before we sheep get fleeced again.</p> http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/farm-and-food-file-sheep-with.html Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:01:42 GMT       <p>Like Henny "Take my wife—please" Youngman, Steven Wright has built a comedy career on one-line jokes. A classic Wright one-liner unblinkingly and unsmilingly asks: "Twenty-four hours in a day, 24 beers in a case—coincidence?"</p> <p>       The question is clever and rhetorical; laughter is its only answer.</p> <p>       January seemed to brim with coincidences that, while perhaps not worthy of the full Wright deadpan treatment, somebody somewhere has to be laughing over these you've –got-to-be-kidding moments.</p> <p>       For example, at 10:28 AM, Tues., Jan. 26, the U.S. Department of Agriculture emailed journalists a list of 70 U.S. trade organizations that would split $234.5 million under USDA's Market Access Program (MAP) and Foreign Market Development Cooperator Program (FMD) this year. The two programs, noted USDA, "help promote American food and agricultural products overseas."</p> <p>       One big winner of export cash was the U.S. Grains Council, a self-described "private, non-profit partnership of farmers and agribusinesses committed to building and expanding international markets…" This year, according to USDA's accounting, the Council will receive $4,033,859 to do just that.</p> <p>       Well, one can hope anyway. Exactly two hours after the USDA notice arrived that day, the Grain Council emailed a press release to announce the keynote speaker for its "7th International Marketing Conference and 50th Annual Membership Meeting Feb. 12-17, 2010" in sunny, warm Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.</p> <p>       Or, as Steven Wright might say, $4 million in taxpayer money headed your way at 10:30 and by 12:30 you're headed to a plush, Mexican beach playground for a five-day "marketing conference" in the middle of the Midwestern winter.</p> <p>       Coincidence?</p> <p>       The White House has experienced many moments of comic coincidence in its first year of herding finicky, navel-gazing Democrats wandering around Capitol Hill. The latest is a presidential plan to tax "fat cat" bankers $9 billion a year for the next 10 years so taxpayers might get a spoonful of the bonus pudding the bankers enjoy every January.</p> <p>       Fat though they may be those city cats know the pluck DC canary. After giving the Prez's friends on the Hill a week to pick apart the "bonus tax" idea, the bankers quietly noted in late January that industry-wide bonuses for 2009 would total $150 billion, or 16-times what the White House wanted to nick ‘em for this year.</p> <p>       Coincidence?</p> <p>       Definitely not. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, commercial banks, investment banks and Wall Street securities firms have, since 2008, paved Capitol Hill with $234.1 million in campaign cash. That, er, investment—$234 million to save $9 billion—now carries a 3,846 percent return for 2010 alone.</p> <p>       A bonus coincidence is that Congress has yet to pass meaningful banking reforms and likely won't in an election year.</p> <p>       The triple-gainer with a half-twist coincidence award for January, 2010, however, goes to our great friends in the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.</p> <p>       Even before last week's column—on the behind-the-scenes fight between NCBA and the beef checkoff over proposed NCBA rule changes to make off-limits checkoff cash more accessible while seeking to double the current $1 per head checkoff—saw print, NCBA officials were selling both ideas to West Coast cattlemen.</p> <p>       In a lengthy, Jan. 25 story published by the Baker City (OR) Herald, NCBA chief executive Forrest Roberts told a group of more than 400 Oregon cattlemen Sat. Jan. 25, "…that ranchers attending the NCBA's annual convention this week [Jan. 27-31 in San Antonio] may be asked to consider doubling the beef checkoff to $2 a head…"</p> <p>       Wow, coincidence?</p> <p>       Even more incredible, the day before the cattlemen rode into that beautiful city a headline on page A3 of the Jan. 26 Wall Street Journal—cross my heart—announced: "Soil Shifts Beneath San Antonio."</p> <p>       Coincidence?</p> http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/farm-and-food-file.html Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:29:12 GMT <p>When the cowboys of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association ride into San Antonio for the Cattle Industry Annual Convention and NCBA Trade Show Jan. 27, the hottest topic of the four-day meeting won’t be stale markets, packer shenanigans or another ground beef recall. </p><p> No, the biggest bone to chew will be NCBA’s plan to put a big bite on the $80-million-per-year beef checkoff. </p><p> How big? </p><p> NCBA is angling to swallow every penny of checkoff cash it can reach, suggest documents that outline its new “governance” plan and letters commenting on the plan from the Cattlemen’s Beef Board (CBB), the USDA-appointed, 106-person group that administers the checkoff. </p><p> NCBA wants it all, says one CBB member familiar with NCBA’s plan. If it succeeds in San Antonio, he reckons, then expect NCBA to push to double today’s $1-per-head checkoff to $2. </p><p> It’s an audacious plan for the commodity group whose membership does not include 97 percent of American cattlemen and dairy farmers who, by law, must pay the non-refundable, federal checkoff. </p><p> (While NCBA keeps membership numbers tight to its suede vest, industry analysts estimate it at about 30,000. They quickly add, however, that 6,000 or so are “industry” affiliates—staff, academics and meatpacker, animal drug and equipment reps—who do not pay checkoff fees because they sell no cattle.) </p><p> But skinny numbers—and it doesn’t get much skinnier when 32 out of every 33 checkoff-paying cowboys refuse to join your group—has never bothered NCBA. In 1996 it muscled through a merger of its predecessor, the National Cattlemen’s Association, and the Beef Industry Council. That deal was to “unify all segments of the beef industry.” It didn’t. </p><p> Now, as recent correspondence between NCBA and CBB clearly suggests, the new plan looks more like a hostile takeover of the checkoff than a “reorganization” of beef industry groups. </p><p> “Your current proposal,” warned CBB officials in an Oct. 31 letter to NCBA, “results in more of a takeover… than a merger, which is a 180-degree reversal of the structure previously embraced by the state beef councils.” </p><p> The letter also noted CBB’s strong objections to NCBA’s plans to redraw industry power lines to give NCBA at least 60 percent of the juice—cattle group votes—on most cattle issues, including the checkoff budget process. </p><p> “As such,” cautioned the CBB executive committee, “we feel compelled to tell you that we believe the proposed structure will create a conflict of interest so significant that it could ultimately cause the demise of the beef checkoff program…” </p><p> NCBA’s reply? </p><p> It removed a silly, 1950s-like loyalty oath it intended to impose on members of its new regime. It did not, however, according to a Dec. 8 letter from checkoff officials, address key concerns of potential conflicts of interest, the need for a stronger firewall between the checkoff and its contractors, and the proposed voting structure that essentially makes NCBA king of the cattle world. </p><p> The core of this debate, however, is not beef politics or checkoff policy; it’s millions in checkoff money. NCBA wants—needs, say cattle insiders—more checkoff money to survive. Already it is the checkoff’s biggest contractor, touching an estimated $50 million per year. </p><p> But, say critics, the group lives beyond its means both in cattle country and Washington, D.C. where, despite its thin membership rolls, it claims to represent the majority of the nation’s cattle. </p><p> Trouble is, cattle don’t vote; people do and 97 out of every 100 checkoff-paying cattle owners in America have voted to stay out of NCBA by not joining. </p><p> On that principle alone the new plan should be voted down in San Antonio: only the prime rib boys of NCBA want it and they have more hat than friends.</p> http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/farm-and-food-file-ncba-reaches.html Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:48:08 GMT <p>It was more a wavering non-waiver than another government oldie-but-goodie, a non-denial denial. <p> Still nothing in the Environmental Protection Agency's Dec. 1 delay to grant the ethanol industry's request to boost the current 10 percent ethanol limit in gasoline to 15 percent suggested it won't happen - and soon. <p> "It is vitally important that the country increase the use of renewable fuels," began the Nov. 30 letter from EPA's Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy denying the request. (<a href="http://www.epa.gov/otaq/regs/fuels/additive/lettertogrowthenergy11-30-09.pdf">http://www.epa.gov/otaq/regs/fuels/additive/lettertogrowthenergy11-30-09.pdf</a>) <p> After all, "... a common theme we've heard" in the 14,148 public comments on the 50 percent rise in the "blend wall" she went on, is "that the federal government and other stakeholders are looking to have a successful, long-term introduction of more renewable fuels into the transportation sector." <p> In short, McCarthy added, after the EPA completes some more "necessary science to make the right decision...we should be in position to approve E15 for 2001 and newer vehicles in the mid-year (2010) timeframe." <p> If that clear peek at EPA's tea leaves was too subtle, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack quickly jumped up to read 'em for the politically-impaired. <p> "This commitment,"Vilsack tut-tutted in a press release shortly after the EPA non-announcement announcement, "reflects the Obama Administration's support for a strong biofuels industry helping to increase income for farmers and jobs in rural America." <p> One of the many things done by EPA in not doing anything is the reaffirmation of a lesson your mother tried to teach you long ago: If you don't ask, you'll never know. Growth Energy, the new Washington, D.C. ethanol powerhouse, asked for the blend wall to be raised last March before the newly-arrived Obama Administration even knew where most walls in Washington were. <p> And, smartly, the consortium of ethanol makers, commodity groups and industry players tied the request to the politically salable idea that the bigger blend would quickly deliver $13.3 billion in new plant construction, 12,000 new construction jobs and $24.3 billion in mostly rural, primary and secondary spending. <p> That jobs first-ethanol second approach reflects the political savvy of the barely year-old Growth Energy. Co-chairmen are ethanol executive Jeff Broin and former presidential candidate, retired Army general Wesley Clark. Its CEO is long-time Senate ag staffer and, until last spring, National Farmers Union president Tom Buis. <p> The group's broad rural base and swift, almost undeniable request of EPA also represents a shift in the old biofuel game. Big Agbiz-Cargill, ADM, et.al. - aren't the only ethanol gorillas on Capitol Hill anymore; they've got company, the more democratic and more Democratic Growth Energy. <p> And, too, no longer will biofuels have a face composed mostly of corn. Indeed, for the new, 36 billion gallons renewable fuels mandate to be met by 2022, argued Growth in its bigger blend request, biofuel feedstocks must come in all forms - grass, cobs, algae, wood chips, whatever - and all colors. <p> Those colors, Growth cleverly repeated, were pretty much red, white and blue. <p> It wasn't new to wrap the request in the flag; wrapping it tightly to green jobs in flag-waving America, however, was. From the start, the push was designed to hand the Obama White House a freebie: new jobs, new investment, new homegrown fuels, more greenness and a fast, clean way to fulfill a campaign promise without having to go hat-in-hand to that bothersome bunch on Capitol Hill. <p> Think home run without leaving home or running. <p> Ethanol critics, however, see raising the blend wall as pouring gasoline on an already unsustainable fire - food vs. fuel, poor vs. rich, consumption vs. conservation. <p> But, friend or foe, EPA's wavering non-waiver means the blend boost is all but a done deal. Take it to the (non-bank) bank. http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/farm-and-food-file-take-it.html Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:18:24 GMT Agricultural Production http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/will-meeting-food-needs-in-2050.html Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:51:06 GMT Food Security http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/report--food-security-is-ultimately.html Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:44:14 GMT <p>With the summer already two-thirds over and the dog days of August about to seep in, I'll bet you didn't notice that... <p> About the time troubled New York lender CIT Group started coughing up blood two weeks ago, a trustee for one of its former clients, Meadowbrook Farms Cooperative, was alerting a federal bankruptcy judge in East St. Louis, IL, of an offer to dump most of the busted Illinois pork packer. <p> Recall that Meadowbrook took the Chapter 7 swim in mid-March, pulling nearly 200 Midwestern hog farmers underwater with it. At the time, it listed $28 million in assets and $44 million in red ink; $6 million of it owed to CIT. <p> On July 10 the Meadowbrook's bankruptcy trustee filed notice that she intends to sell "certain of the Debtor's real estate"-the land and kill plant near Rantoul, IL-and much of the coop's "machinery, equipment, and fixtures" for nearly $14.9 million. <p> The buyer is the bank , Stearns Bank, N.A., St. Cloud, MN, that Meadowbrook owes-surprise!-$14,862,536.78. <p> So while Stearns gets a slightly used Illinois pork plant and Meadowbrook sees its largest asset dropped from its unbalanced balance sheet, CIT and the coop's members will get a fat thumb in their eyes. <p> Another story you might have missed was Greg Burns' July 16, Chicago Tribune column on "The Informant," the about-to-be released, Hollywood movie on the 1990s price-fixing scandal at Archer Daniels Midland. Scheduled for general distribution Oct. 9, the movie, centering on ADM wonderboy-turned-FBI mole Mark Whitacre, features mega-star Matt Damon in the lead role. <p> The movie trailer-viewable on web but, interestingly, best at Mark Whitacre's personal website, <a href="http://www.markwhitacre.com">http://www.markwhitacre.com</a> - has a cartoonish story line (black comedy, claims Tinsel Town buzz) about a bumbling informant who, despite himself, giftwraps and hands the FBI its biggest corporate criminal ever. <p> Whitacre, recall, later went to prison after admitting the embezzlement of millions from the ag processor even as he was audio and video taping the price fixers at work. <p> Reached by telephone July 22, Whitacre noted that both he and wife Ginger recently screened the completed film and "both thought it very entertaining." <p> My view, based on the movie trailer only, is less generous. I don't remember anything remotely comical or entertaining about those dark days and months as the ADM story evolved. Every week brought new revelations from government, industry and company sources, most of whom refused to go on the record. Between them, truth seemed to be a work in progress. <p> It still is. For proof go to Whitacre's website and view, back-to-back, both the movie trailer and the video excerpt from the Discovery Channel's film on Whitacre. Two more stark pictures of one man never existed. <p> Stark, too, is a fact I buried in last week's column on the crack-up in dairy. That fact, that 70 percent of all U.S. dairy farms have debt-likely the most highly leveraged sector in American agriculture-came courtesy of July 14 House Ag Committee testimony by James Miller, USDA's under secretary of farm and foreign ag service. <p> Miller went on to say that "(a)cross all sectors in agriculture, dairy ranks third in the average debt-to-asset ratio, behind poultry and hogs." <p> Holy cow, the three enterprises that every farm family, especially the overworked farm wife, depended on to deliver cash income year-in, year-out-egg and butter money, "mortgage lifters" hogs-for a century are now the three most indebted in all of agriculture? <p> And folks wonder if in our never-ending pursuit of efficiency-and, in the case of Meadowbrook and ADM, profit-we've lost our soul. <p> Heart and soul is more like it. http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/farm-and-food-file-stories-you.html Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:45:38 GMT <p> Maybe this is what Willie and Waylon were thinking when they warned American "mommas" to not let their "babies to grow up to be cowboys:" Anyone with a dairy cow this year will lose, on average, $70 per month feeding and milking it; more if the cow is also packin' debt. <p> That means, in the Great White Washout of 2009, a moderately-sized dairy farm - say, a family operation with 200 cows - will lose nearly $170,000 making milk. If the family has a banker as a partner, as 70 percent of all U.S. dairymen do, the family will likely lose more $1,000 per cow, or $200,000, this year. <p> The catastrophic losses mean people and cows are running, not walking, out milking parlors nationwide. Vermont, where cows are as hallowed as their owners' flintiness, has already lost 40 of its 1,000 dairies with hundreds more at risk. Pennsylvania officials estimate the state will lose 25 percent of its 7,400 dairy farmers before prices turn. <p> All of this calamity comes just two short years after farm milk prices made record highs, over $21 per one hundred pounds, or cwt., the farm unit all milk is sold by. Today, prices are half that. <p> In fact, in July 14 testimony before the House Ag Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry, Jim Miller, under secretary of agriculture for Farm and Foreign Ag Services, estimated this year's on-farm milk price will average just $12.15 per cwt., the "lowest annual price received by farmers for milk since 1979." <p> Contrast the price received for milk to the prices paid for making it. In his House testimony, Miller reported that feed costs alone - mind you, no labor, energy, insurance, land or taxes - in California, the nation's largest milk producer, in May were $12.19 per cwt. That makes dairying a less-than-zero profession. <p> More importantly, says dairyman John Bunting, the folks exiting dairying because of today's absurdly low prices are its younger, more-likely-to-be-indebted generation. <p> "In short," he opines from his New York dairy barn July 15, "this nation currently seems to have public policy that favors dairy farmers over age 70 than those younger than 50. How do you think that's going to work out in the coming years?" <p> It will be a disaster - "an absolute calamity," is how Bunting describes it - for consumers, processors and farmers because today's sustained crushing prices will force younger farmers and older bankers alike to leave the dairying forever. <p> Miller, despite his bleak House testimony, believes milk prices will rebound to an average $15.60 in 2010. <p> In the meantime, he suggests, USDA's current tools - government purchases of butter, cheese, and non-fat dry milk to boost support prices and fatten food aid programs, and MILC, the Milk Income Loss Contract program that will pay farmers an estimated $900 million this year - will, hopefully, give many farmers enough cash to make it through 2009's train wreck. <p> Bunting, who maintains a lively blog at http://johnbuntingsjournal.blogspot.com/ and writes for The Milkweed, a Wisconsin-based monthly dairy newspaper, ain't buying it. This crack-up's swiftness and severity, he says, shows U.S. milk policy for what it is: totally inadequate and completely opaque. <p> "No one in Washington knows how milk is priced anymore," he says, "or how easily those prices are manipulated by the very few, very big dairy coops and processors. And because they don't know, they can't fix it." <p> Under the present policy, Bunting notes, dairy farmers have only two avenues when low prices strike - leave dairying or get more cows. The former is usually unacceptable, the latter "certainly shortsighted." <p> He's right; dairymen like him "got milk;" too much, in fact. What they have a shortage of, however, is leadership. <p> © 2009 ag comm http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/farm--food-file-dairys-sour.html Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:49:00 GMT <p>All truth passes through three stages, German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once explained. "First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." <p> That line came to mind June 18 when I heard a nationally-known ag radio reader report that, the day before, the National Farmers Union had publicly called on the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to investigate "the extreme futures price volatility and lack of convergence in the hog, grain, dairy and cattle markets." <p> Hah, hah, noted the golden-throated farm broadcaster in a sarcastic tone, it's not officially summer until the NFU complains about those market scoundrels in Chicago. <p> Funny, right? I mean F-U-N-N-Y. <p> Even funnier is that in the seven trading days from June 11 to June 22, the July corn futures contract fell 15 percent, or 67-cents per bushel, from $4.47 to $3.80. <p> Another knee-slapper is that during that same, seven-trading-day period, July soybean futures fell $1.16 per bu., or 9 per cent, from $12.67 to $11.51. <p> Hilarious, right? But wait, there's more. <p> From June 1 through June 22, July hard red winter wheat futures in Kansas City dropped 17 percent! Wow, a dollar-seventeen-screaming-cents in just 15 trading days! <p> And the funniest thing - this just cracks me up every time I think of it - is that there wasn't one, solid fundamental reason for any of the plunges. No big government reports. No perfect corn- or soybean-growing days. No huge increase in the anticipated wheat harvest. No... nothing. <p> Which just goes to prove, at least according to the message I got from the radio reader June 18, that comedian Mel Brooks was right: Tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when you fall into sewer and die. <p> You want more funny? I'll give you more funny. <p> On June 23, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released a 247-page report on last year's monkey-wrenching by commodity index traders in the nation's wheat futures markets. <p> Subcommittee Chairman Carl Levin of Michigan summarized the thorough investigation by noting "that excessive speculation in commodity indexes has created great losers through the wheat industry, from wheat farmers to grain elevators, grain merchants, grain processors and grain users..." <p> And - ready for this? - the report was issued two days after the official start of summer! Bada bing! <p> Mas? No problema! <p> On Friday, June 26, two days past this column's deadline, South Dakota cattleman Herman Schumacher will be standing at his home's front door in tiny Herreid to answer questions about why that door sports two signs labeling him a deadbeat. Both were placed there June 11 by federal marshals enforcing a class action lawsuit settlement between the four meatpacking giants and Great Plains cattlemen. <p> Here's the funny part: Schumacher, and his fellow litigants who agreed to put their names on the class lawsuit, Mike Callicrate of Kansas and Roger Koch of Nebraska, won. That's right; a jury unanimously awarded the class $9.25 million when it said the big packers had knowingly used U.S. Department of Agriculture mistakes under the mandatory price reporting law to drive cash cattle prices lower. <p> The packers, however, appealed and got the jury decision and award tossed. That permitted them to go after the cowboys for $43,300 in court-determined attorney fees. Schumacher's share is $15,881.38 and one packer, Tyson Foods, wants every penny now. <p> Funny, isn't it? Stand up to power and win, then lose on some legal technicality and end up owing a $27 billion-a-year company $15k which then posts a giant "No Trespassing" sign on your front door.<p> http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/farm-and-food-file-you-want.html Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:43:25 GMT <p>When the international trade portion of your resume is as thin as Ron Kirk's - you do remember that Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas, is now U.S. Trade Representative, don't you - likely you'd stress personal ideals over professional accomplishments when talking about your new job. <p> Kirk did just that in a May 22 speech to the U.S. Meat Export Federation. As Barack Obama's trade ambassador, Kirk explained, he'd be guided by "raging sense of pragmatism and a practical sense of urgency." <p> Golly, I'm pretty familiar with the English language but I have no idea what that gibberish means. Maybe it's Texican for Hey, I'm two months into this job so don't complain until I actually do something. <p> If so, fair enough because Kirk is stepping into one of the darkest, most unexplored corners of the Obama White House where few even talk about trade let alone promote it. <p> And for good reason; trade policy -and, specifically, the North American Free Trade Agreement -was one of the few banana peels Obama slipped on during his otherwise textbook-perfect 2008 presidential race. <p> More importantly, since taking office the job-crushing recession has pushed trade even farther down the Administration's to-do list. <p> Events, however, keep trying to raise it back up. The H1N1 swine flu outbreak clobbered U.S. pork exports and, in turn, U.S. hog markets, despite no known link between pigs, their meat and the disease. <p> The global flu reaction did give Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack another chance to promote a proposed - and still going nowhere after five years and $130 million of federal promotion - mandatory, national animal identification program as a way to quickly counter regional and global market concerns. <p> Just as the scare was building, April 29, a U.S. Department of Agriculture report sternly warned American ranchers and farmers that the continued lack of a national livestock tracking system might soon cost the beef sector $13.2 billion a year in lost sales to other nations, like Canada and Australia, who already have trace-back programs. <p> Most U.S. producers, however, see mandatory livestock ID as a costly, unnecessary government intrusion into their business. USDA admits that only 510,000 of 1.4 million U.S. livestock farms have voluntarily signed on to the current premise ID program. <p> Indeed, NAIS, the acronym for USDA's ailing National Animal Identification effort, is an almost perfect example of what Kirk and his band of raging pragmatists face. NAIS, say trade experts, is an imperative for future growth of U.S. meat exports and yet there aren't 10 cowboys west of the Potomac - let alone the Pecos - in any state that support it. <p> Can Kirk and his "practical sense of urgency" - or more truthfully, anyone -solve the dilemma? Not likely; NAIS is headed to the back burner to simmer for the summer. <p> It will have plenty of company. Already there are the pending free trade deals with Peru... and Panama... and Columbia... and (yawn) Korea and no one in Congress wants to stir any of 'em. Then there's that messy stew called Doha. <p> The front burners warm a few kettles of fish, too. One has our NAFTA partners, Canada and Mexico, claiming America's finally-implemented country of origin labeling law is trade restrictive; both want the World Trade Organization to broaden it or boot it. <p> And that's just Kirk's crowded starting point. Just how confusing is it for this former mayor? The last ag trade press release posted on the trade rep's website (http://www.ustr.gov/) is dated Nov. 1, 2008, three days before his boss's election. <p> Then again, maybe Kirk's urgent inaction simply means that the Boss prefers no trade deal over a bad trade deal. How, ah, pragmatic. <p> © 2009 ag comm http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/farm-and-food-file-take-free.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:33:44 GMT <p>&nbsp;The biggest maker or breaker of business in rural America is not Washington rulemakers, state environmental agencies or local taxing bodies. Instead, it&rsquo;s usually the local bank. A bank&rsquo;s collective fairness and wisdom can be seen from Main Street to&nbsp; surrounding farms.<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Not so with the money center and Wall Street banks. Citibank, Bank of America and the 17 other financial giants the U.S. Treasury Department has deemed &ldquo;too big to fail&rdquo; are more casinos than banks. They use your money to roll their dice in risky games no one fully understands and only few can ever win.<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Golly, they don&rsquo;t even call themselves banks; they&rsquo;re &ldquo;financial service providers.&rdquo; Given how Will Rogers famously explained the service industry (&ldquo;Service is what the bull did to the heifer behind the barn.&rdquo;) little wonder you and I got stuck holding their empty bag.<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Other American banks, however, are going broke. So far this year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has closed 29 banks. Most were immediately sold to nearby institutions to instill confidence and ensure continuity. A handful were small, rural banks like Sherman County Bank in Loup City, NE and Corn Belt Bank of Pittsfield, IL.<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;I call these banks &lsquo;too small to save,&rsquo;&rdquo; says Mark Scanlan, vice president of ag and rural policy at the Washington, D.C.-based Independent Community Bankers of America. &ldquo;They competed, and 8,400 other community banks still compete, everyday with the big banks and none asked for help.&rdquo;<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Why? Because no bank should be too big to fail, Scanlan suggests.<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;If they&rsquo;re too big to fail then they&rsquo;re simply too big,&rdquo; he notes. &ldquo;Right now, eight banks control 64 percent of all U.S. deposits. No bank should be so big that it can threaten the entire banking system. The large institutions should be broken up.&rdquo;<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; His counterpart at the American Banking Association&rsquo;s Center for Agricultural and Rural Banking, John Blanchfield, concurs. &ldquo;The concept of too big to fail is unequal and unfair and is proving too costly to taxpayers as well as banks,&rdquo; he says.<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In fact, if you&rsquo;re a bank that is making money&mdash;and most rural and ag banks fall into that category, say both&mdash;the FDIC plans to issue a special assessment on banks (20 basis points for every dollar on deposit) to finance others&rsquo; losses.<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There&rsquo;s a better, more equitable plan, explains Blanchfield: a special, 10-basis point assessment and have Congress expand FDIC&rsquo;s current borrowing authority from $30 billion to $100 billion.<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;That would be much fairer for community and rural banks and, at the same time, not threaten their futures by having to pay for others&rsquo; past mistakes,&rdquo; he says.<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Also, he adds, another helpful tool Congress could give rural banks would make permanent today&rsquo;s temporary, higher deposit insurance guarantee. As part of the overall bank bailout plan, FDIC raised its deposit guarantee from $100,000 per account to $250,000. That boost, however, expires Dec. 31.<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very important to all banks, and especially to rural and ag banks, to have that $250,000 guarantee made permanent,&rdquo; he advises,&nbsp; &ldquo;because, first, the increase has boosted bank liquidity; it&rsquo;s made them more safe. That safety has attracted more deposits.&rdquo;<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In turn, Blanchfield explains, more liquidity means more equity and more equity means more loans. &ldquo;And more local loans mean more local business for the community. Everyone&rsquo;s a winner.&rdquo;<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a return to good, straightforward banking policy, says Scanlan, after a decade where &ldquo;a lot of bad policy led to a lot of bad banking.&rdquo;<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Tomorrow&rsquo;s policy should be equally simple: No one is too big to fail.<br /><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Some, however, will always be too greedy or too stupid to succeed.<br /><br />&nbsp;<br /><br />&copy; 2009 ag comm</p> http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/farm-and-food-file-too-small.html Thu, 14 May 2009 01:09:34 GMT <p>Throughout rural America, there are nearly 50 million people who face challenges in accessing health care. The past several decades have consistently shown higher rates of poverty, mortality, uninsurance, and limited access to a primary health care provider in rural areas. With the recent economic downturn, there is potential for an increase in many of the health disparities and access concerns that are already elevated in rural communities. <em><strong>Hard Times in the Heartland</em></strong> provides insight into the current state of health care in rural areas and the critical need for health care reform. </p> http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/report-hard-times-in-the-heartland.html Wed, 13 May 2009 20:01:28 GMT <em>By Alan Guebert</em> <p> When David Chicoine explains his new, part-time job—one of eleven members of the board of directors at seed giant Monsanto Co.—it all sounds very smart, very modern, very… good. <p> “Big companies like Monsanto,” related Chicoine in an April 21 telephone interview, “have contacts anywhere they find talent. Their only interest is high quality work.” <p> Chicoine’s anywhere and talent, however, are very uncommon; he’s president of South Dakota State University (SDSU), the state’s Land Grant university and its premier research and teaching institution. That makes him one of an elite group whose entire membership is fewer than that of the U.S. Senate. <p> It also makes him, by anyone’s recollection, the first Land Grant president to sit on the board an agriculture-based, transnational corporation that contributes millions to fund ag research and infrastructure at Land Grant universities around the U.S. <p> The directorship, which became effective April 15 and is subject to shareholder approval in 2010, carries a fat paycheck for the slim work. As Monsanto’s Form 8-K, filed April 20 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, wordily notes, Chicoine will pocket “an annual base retainer having a value of $195,000.” <p> Sweet, but there’s more. <p> “The Plan”—the non-employee pay package from Monsanto—“also provides that each non-employee director will receive a grant of restricted stock upon commencement of service… equal to the annual base retainer divided by the closing price of a share of the Company’s common stock on the commencement date.” <p> If my gobbleygook knife is as sharp as my math skills, that means each director knocks down an additional $195k in stock for taking on the rugged task of serving as a Monsanto director. <p> The almost-$400,000 Monsanto will pay Chicoine in 2009 is a hundred grand taller than his reported $300,000-per-year salary as SDSU prez, according to a state employee salary database maintained by the Sioux Falls (SD) Argus Leader. <p> More than just the pay, however, is Monsanto’s current and future ties to SDSU. The April 20 SEC filing explains that “In the ordinary course of its business, the Company has engaged in certain transactions with SDSU that were, or may be, related person transactions with respect to Dr. Chicoine.” <p> The meaning of “related person transactions” is made clear in the next sentence. For fiscal years 2008 and “to-date” fiscal 2009, Monsanto has paid SDSU “approximately” $54,000 for “services,” donated around $367,000 in “research grants,” and been paid an estimated $216,000 by SDSU for “licenses, services and goods.” <p> Even with those wide, green ties, Chicoine sees little possibility for conflict between his roles at the University and Monsanto. “Whether Monsanto continues to invest (at SDSU) or disinvest will be a call by the research folks at both places, not me.” <p> Indeed, he likens his director’s job to consulting work many professors at most public universities do for publicly-held companies. Monsanto, he reckons, “reviewed my status as a university president,” but, “more importantly,” saw his skill as an ag economist specializing in public finance and technology transfer as key to the directorship. <p> Chicoine, a 1969 SDSU alum who spent most of his (meteoric) academic career at the University of Illinois before returning to Brookings in late 2007, says there’s little opportunity for any conflict-of-interest between his day job and duties at Monsanto. <p> “Less than 11 percent of all public university money comes from private sources” like Monsanto, he says. Much of what does flow helps Land Grants “commercialize technology,” something they “are not built to do.” <p> Granted, but where’s the line that neither should cross? <p> I don’t exactly know. But I do know it’s somewhere south of the office door of our Land Grant leaders. http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/farm-and-food-file-big-biz.html Mon, 04 May 2009 04:53:58 GMT <p> Rural areas need broadband most USA TODAY's story <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-04-05-broadband-fcc_N.htm">"FCC to decide what 'underserved, broadband' really mean"</a> addresses a long simmering debate in telecommunications policy over the best use of taxpayer dollars to address the needs of rural communities (Money, Monday). <p> There are good reasons for these funds to go largely to communities where there are no broadband providers. First, most rural Americans lack access to a single high-speed Internet network. These are people who live where both the need for access and the job-creation potential will be greatest. <p> Second, taxpayer-funded broadband networks have not always done well financially in communities where there is an existing broadband provider. <p> Broadband investments for underserved areas will bring higher productivity, improved education and quality health care to communities that need it most. It may also minimize the political wrangling and manufactured controversy of which taxpayers have grown weary. http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/op-ed-rural-areas-need-broadband.html Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:42:08 GMT <p> Merle Elwin Hansen, 89, of Newman Grove died Friday, March 27, 2009 at the Mid Nebraska Lutheran Home in Newman Grove. <p> He was born November 26, 1919 on his family's farmstead 11 miles northwest of Newman Grove, Nebraska. He was a nationally known advocate for family farm agriculture, conservation and environmental issues, civil rights, and world peace. <p> Funeral services will be held Saturday, April 4th at 2:00 P.M. at the United Methodist Church, 190 North 4th Street, in Newman Grove. Rev. Kenneth Purscell of Newman Grove and Rev. David McCreary of Lincoln will officiate. A lunch will be served at the Church immediately following the funeral services. Visitation will be from 4:00 to 8:00 Friday evening, April 3rd at the Newman Grove Memorial Funeral Home, 206 N. 3rd Street. <p> Hansen was preceded in death by: his parents Ruth (Petersen) and Carl Hansen, Newman Grove; wife Lucinda; sisters Viola Beeson, Berkley, CA, Irma Shade, Laguna Hills, CA, Phyllis Goodman, Fullerton, CA; brothers-in-law Carl Shade, Laguna Hills, CA, Leonard Burgart, Alta Vista, IA, John Brummond and Harold Clark, Ionia, IA. <p> Survivors include: seven children John (Karen) Hansen, Lincoln, Mary (David Marsh) Hansen, Denton, Jean Hansen, Norfolk, Lee (Kim) Hansen, Norfolk, William (Joan) Hansen, Norfolk, Chris (Marilyn) Hansen, Tilden, and Juli Hansen (Scott DePriest), Newman Grove; eight sisters-and brothers-in-law Florine Clark and Norma Brummond, Ionia, IA, Lucille Burgart, Alta Vista, IA, Patricia and Harold Balk, Charles City, IA, John and Judy Kramer, Sugar Grove, IL, and Jack Goodman, Fullerton, CA; twelve grandchildren Laura (Jeff) Marks, Hugh (Katy) Hansen, Hal (Tara Firenzi) Hansen, Kyle (Sheryle) Hansen, Michelle, Mark, Edward, Lacey, Brandon, and Taylor Hansen, and Keenan and Corina Marsh; three great-grandchildren Henry and Willa Marks and Stella Hansen; and numerous cousins, nephews, and nieces. <p> After graduating from Newman Grove High School in 1938, Merle attended a business college in Chillicothe, MO until he enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a petty officer on December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked. During World War II, he served on transport carriers including the U.S.S. Fuller in the Pacific and North African theaters. He was awarded six battle stars, attained the rank of Chief Yeoman, and was honorably discharged in 1945. Following the war, he worked as a multi-state field organizer for the American Veterans Committee headquartered in Omaha. <p> In the late 1940s, Hansen worked as a field organizer for the National Farmers Union in South Dakota and Iowa. While organizing a farmer and labor picnic in northeast Iowa, he met his future wife, Lucinda Kramer, who was the labor Union Secretary for the Oliver tractor manufacturing plant in Charles City, Iowa. On February 18, 1950, they were married at the St. Boniface rectory in Ionia, Iowa. They moved back to the farm 11 miles northwest of Newman Grove where they raised their seven children. <P> Hansen served as a Madison County Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor, earned county and regional soil conservation awards, and made many presentations to elementary schools on the importance of soil and water conservation. He was the first in his area to use minimum tillage. <p> Always the innovator, Hansen formed Hansen Charolais in 1960, a nationally recognized purebred cattle business that sold breeding stock to commercial cattlemen and purebred breeders across the country for 24 years. He was a passionate promoter of the Charolais breed, serving as the first state Vice-President and second President of the Nebraska Charolais Association. Hansen built and owned a fertilizer business with his family, raised and sold a wide range of certified seeds including grasses, legumes, and oats along with their mostly irrigated corn, soybeans, oats, and alfalfa farming operation. <p> Hansen's tireless fight for economic justice for family farmers led him to be active in many farm organizations, always building broad based political and organizational coalitions while educating farmers about the importance of understanding farm policy history and the need to work together. As were his parents and grandparents, Merle was active in Nebraska Farmers Union. He loved to discuss all facets of farm policy and bring new members into the organization, oftentimes winning top state membership recruiter recognition. <p> In the 1950s and 1960s Hansen was a key National Farmers Organization organizer, nominating Oren Lee Staley to head the organization at their national convention in Des Moines, IA in 1956. In addition to organizing Madison County, Hansen organized several area counties of the NFO, and believed in the value and need for farmers to use collective bargaining to market their products at more fair prices. <p> For many years, Hansen served as Vice-President of the U.S. Farm Association. In the mid 1970s Hansen became a state leader in the American Agricultural Movement that organized the "Tractorcade" to Washington, D.C. <p> In April of 1983 Hansen was elected President of the North American Farm Alliance, a loose coalition of more than two-dozen state and national groups supporting national farm policy reform. The new organization worked with financially strapped farmers struggling with farm credit and foreclosures. <p> In 1986, he helped found the National Family Farm Coalition, and would serve for years on its Board of Directors and Executive Committee. In 1997, the American Corn Growers Association presented Hansen with their "Carl L. King" award for distinguished service. The award read: "For representing what is really the best in agriculture and never forgetting the importance of maintaining a strong voice for the needs of farmers." <p> While working for Iowa Farmers Union in the late 1940s, Hansen became a close friend of African-American civil rights activist Edna Griffin and her husband, Dr. Stanley Griffin of Des Moines, Iowa. Hansen volunteered his support to Edna's campaign to integrate the lunch counter at Katz Drug Store, one of the first successful actions of the civil rights movement. Hansen's friendship with the Griffin family led to his acquaintance and friendship with other civil rights leaders. <p> In 1984, Hansen became Jesse Jackson's agricultural advisor and heavily influenced his farm and rural policies for his 1984 and 1988 Presidential campaigns. He often traveled with Jackson, including a trip to Africa and Europe. Hansen gave one of Jackson's nomination seconding speeches at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Hansen won one of two inaugural Dixon Terry/Tom Saunders Rainbow Rural Leadership Awards from the National Rainbow Coalition in 1990 for his leadership on economic and social justice issues. <br> Hansen attended the first Farm Aid concert in 1985, worked with Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp, and was heavily involved in many Farm Aid Concerts, including its third concert held in Lincoln at Memorial Stadium September 19, 1987. He was influential in helping Farm Aid develop its message and supported their efforts to fund organizations that serve rural Americans. <p> Hansen was active in the Democratic Party at the county, state, and national levels. He served on the Nebraska Democratic Party Central Committee from Madison County for many years and received the state party Franklin Delano Roosevelt Award in 1990. Hansen ran unsuccessfully for University of Nebraska Regent in 1976 and Nebraska Legislature in 1978, and volunteered on many dozens of local, state, and national campaigns. <p> Hansen was one of the founding members of Rural Nebraskans for Peace in May of 1967, which later was integrated into Nebraskans for Peace. Hansen served as President of both peace groups and was an outspoken opponent of American involvement in Vietnam. Studs Terkel featured Hansen in a section of his book "Coming of Age: Our Century As Told By Those Who Lived It." Hansen was featured in many national publications articles including USA Today, The New York Times, and Ms. Magazine as well as many documentary films on rural issues. He served as a source of information for many of the articles and books written on the Farmers Holiday movement including "Cornbelt Rebellion: the Farmers' Holiday Association" by John L. Shover. Hansen wrote two chapters for Jim Schwab's book "Raising Less Corn And More Hell," which describes the struggles of midwestern farmers during the farm crisis of the 1980's. <br> Across the country and around the world, Hansen made hundreds of speeches. He wrote dozens of articles for a wide range of publications. He was a mentor to countless younger leaders and activists. Often with a combination of humor and preaching, he linked together the themes of peace, human rights, environmental conservation, economic justice, and the plight of the family farm. <p> Hansen's files and records were donated to Iowa State University. The manuscript collection available at ISU in Ames includes his speeches and writings, the organizational archives of the many organizations he was involved with, and exchanges of letters with dozens of correspondents. Some of his records were also sent to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, including most of his records relating to Nebraskans for Peace and the American Veterans Committee. <p> To his many friends and family, Merle was known for his keen sense of humor, good stories, historical and political insight, personal warmth, disarming smile, unyielding sense of justice and fairness, progressive politics, and his skills as a marksman. While leaving behind an enormous legacy of accomplishments, he will be greatly missed. <p> The family asks that memorials be sent to the Nebraska Farmers Union Foundation, 1305 Plum Street, Lincoln, NE 68502, Nebraska Peace Foundation, 941 "O" Street, Suite 1026, Lincoln, NE 68508, or your local food bank. http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/obituary-merle-elwin.html Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:55:46 GMT Group says national strategy should focus on (1) accurate date on service availability and adoption, (2) locally-owned infrastructure, (3) assistance in technology adoption, and (4) uniform and transparent federal policies. http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/policy.html Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:27:37 GMT <p> The number of Iowa students with limited English-speaking skills has skyrocketed over time but their test scores have fallen, according to an Iowa Department of Education report released today. <p> About 14,000 students who were classified as English language learners – most speak Spanish – lost ground in every test category except fourth-grade reading from 2005 to 2008. <p> The figures were included in the annual Condition of Education report. <p> Eleventh-grade math scores showed the biggest decline. <p> The percentage of English language learners who passed 11th grade math tests between 2006 and 2008 was 38.6 percent, down from 44.2 percent between 2005 and 2007. <p> By contrast, 78 percent of all eleventh graders passed math tests in the same period. <p> The report calculates test scores over two years instead of annually. Iowa’s share of students who are learning the English language has more than doubled to 14,000 over the past decade. <p> They represented about 3 percent of Iowa’s public school enrollment in the 2007-08 school year, records show. <p> School districts receive federal money for each English language-learner for three years. Census figures earlier this year showed Iowa gained more than 36,000 Hispanic residents since 2000. <p> http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/new-report-more-english-language-learners-in.html Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:47:03 GMT <p> Murray, Neb. - It's Monday morning, and the schools are dark. The yellow buses rest. <p> Students will mow lawns for money, clock in at Pamida or help their fathers with farm chores. Others will sleep in. Some will have baby sitters. <p> Welcome to tiny Murray, Neb., where school is out on Mondays. <p> "I can save up for college and make my truck payment every month," said Kalby Wehrbein, 18, a senior who works on Mondays. "It's a major thing for me." <p> The Conestoga school district in Murray, a farming town 25 miles south of Omaha, stopped having school on Mondays two years ago in a last-ditch bid to pare expenses and dig out of debt. <p> For the same reason, the shorter week could come to an Iowa school district near you. <p> Iowa lawmakers will consider in the next session whether schools should have the power to operate on four-day weeks. The state's 180-day school calendar doesn't allow it now. <p> A shorter school week doesn't mean fewer hours in the classroom. It just means four longer days. Wehrbein's school day stretches from 7:55 a.m. to 4 p.m. <p> Conestoga's schedule is getting a closer look in Iowa and Nebraska as small school districts battle financial problems fueled by shrinking enrollment, climbing costs and, in some cases, their own failure to cut back. <p> Conestoga school officials have saved more than $100,000 a year - a tenth of their overall budget - in unused bus fuel, energy and substitute teacher pay. <p> The shorter week's effect on students is tougher to measure. <p> ACT scores are on the rise. Graduation rates have held steady. The school district missed annual targets set by the federal No Child Left Behind law in the 2006-07 school year, but it got high marks in a Nebraska ratings system. <p> Critics in Iowa aren't convinced the payoff is worth a gamble on children's education. <p> Some lawmakers also believe a shorter week sends the wrong message at a time when Iowa has lost ground in national test scores, despite its heritage of good schools. <p> "I don't want to give kids a third day to sit in front of the television," said state Rep. Mike May, a Republican from Spirit Lake. <p> "I'm a proponent of local control and think we should give districts options that work for them," May said. "But I don't want to hurt student achievement in this state." <p> http://www.leagueofruralvoters.org/resources/articles/four-day-school-week-suits-nebraska.html Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:11:36 GMT