Policy Statement: Family Farms

The National Sharecropper Fund/Rural Advancement Fund (NSF/RAF) was founded during the last great farm depression when the largest single outmigration of farm people occurred in the Southeast. Then, as now, it stood for the right of people on the land to earn a decent living from their labors. 

Today, we face conditions in agriculture similar to those in 1930s. Families and whole communities are disintegrating under the weight of the crisis. Since 1981 we have lost over 600,000 farmers in the United States. Of the 2.2 million farms remaining, 640,000 are operated by families who depend on farming for most of their income. Of those families, 120,000 are expected to shut their gates within the next two years, and another 200,000 are in a high risk category. 

Related industries, mainstreet rural businesses, churches, schools, and banks are closing daily. Thousands of acres of land and valuable farm assets are passing out of the hands of farm families and into the hands of investors. Adjusted for inflation, the price farmers receive for their products is half of what it was in 1981, yet consumer prices and food processors’ profits are higher than ever. 

To survive under the terms of the present economy, farmers have been forced to expand, applying more chemicals and working longer hours to squeeze out a greater yield, sacrificing good stewardship practices and substituting debt for income. 

By eliminating the mid-sized producers our nation is moving towards a dual system of agriculture: part-time farmers, who cannot make a living from their small farms, will produce a marginal part of the nation’s food; the majority of our food production will be controlled by a handful of giant corporate interests. If the present trend continues, farm people will have no choice but to return to sharecropping and tenant farming, or become low-wage “factory farm” laborers. With the proliferation of agricultural strip-mining methods employed by agribusiness investors, depletion of our natural resources will accelerate. 

Present farm programs are the most expensive this nation has known. These ineffective programs benefit the large conglomerates who are the major buyers, processors, and distributors of farm products. Tax, credit, trade, and commodity policies meet the needs of these corporate giants for cheap raw food and fiber. This kind of system is not sustainable; it is not inevitable. 

RAF opposes the continuation of farm programs which subsidize large producers and food processors while forcing farmers to maximize yields and sell below the cost of production. 

RAF supports: 

— commodity programs that guarantee small and mid-size family farmers (gross farm income of under $200,000) a fair share of the net earnings generated from farm products; 

— programs that emphasize sound supply management with production quotas (such as the current peanut program) and a minimum price to produce parity at the farm level (balancing price received with total cost of production); 

— debt restructuring which passes the benefits of the reduced value of land and farm assets to farmers in debt rather than to speculators, who currently acquire farm assets at 25 percent below book value through foreclosures and bankruptcy sales; 

— tax, credit, and conservation programs, such as grants and low-interest loans, which allow farmers to scale up or down as needed, to diversify operations and make the transition to methods which are less capital- and chemical-intensive; 

— cost-share measures and enforced compliance among large- scale recipients of farm programs to encourage conservation; 

— supply management as a means of conserving land and resources and as an incentive to on-farm feeding of livestock; 

— discouragement of tax code farming by the elimination of such tax breaks as rapid depreciation schedules, use of capital gains and investment credits which give unfair advantages to large investors. 

RAP advocates democratic opportunities for farmers including producer referenda and elections for farm lender, commodity, and cooperative boards from local working farmers. If we are to have an agricultural system that is sustainable, providing low cost, quality food over the long term, then America must have policies which enable farmers and farm communities to sustain themselves. 

 

Policy Statement: Farm Labor 

 

The deplorable working and living conditions of farmworkers are well documented. For the privilege of toiling in the fields for minuscule wages in order to feed the people of this nation, the average farmworker will cut some 20 years off his or her own life expectancy. This farmworker will be three times more likely to suffer from exposure to toxic chemicals than the average American. In Florida, the infant mortality rate among migrant workers is 250 percent higher. 

Despite national child labor laws, a 1970 study estimated that one-fourth of all farm labor in the U.S. is performed by children. And despite a federal constitution outlawing slavery, involuntary servitude is not an isolated incident among migrant farmworkers. RAF has long advocated the coverage of agricultural workers under federal law to guarantee them the right to organize and bargain collectively with their employers. The average farm worker today earns less than $5,000 a year. Increasing the federal minimum wage would provide immediate aid. 

Federal and state programs to increase the availability and quality of housing and medical care are also urgently needed. Current reform efforts to record, evaluate, and limit the exposure of farmworkers to thousands of agricultural chemicals and pesticides must also be strengthened. 

The RAF believes that justice and human decency require that all farmworkers have access to drinking water, handwashing facilities, and toilets in the fields where they work. They are the only American workers not protected by such standards on the job. Farmworkers formally asked the U.S. government to establish field sanitation standards 15 years ago. Finally, in February 1987, after “a disgraceful chapter of legal neglect,” a Federal appeals court ordered the secretary of labor to issue federal field sanitation standards for farmworkers. Now that standards have been issued for employers of 11 or more farm laborers, serious attention must be given (1) to ensure their strict enforcement and (2) to extend their application to include those still not covered — more than half the farmworkers in America. 

RAF is also opposed to the newly enacted H-2A provision of the Immigration Reform Law. We believe that this law, providing for the importation of foreign agricultural workers, legalizes the exploitation of a captive labor force of tens of thousands of foreign laborers who will work seasonally at low wages under inadequate health and housing standards. The so-called “guest-worker” program displaces domestic workers and undercuts their ability to negotiate fair wages and working conditions. We support efforts to repeal this portion of the new immigration law. 

In conclusion, RAF believes that all farmworkers are entitled to the same rights and protections available to other workers. These include the right to organize and form labor unions and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing. We support the consumer boycotts, both past and present, implemented by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and the United Farmworkers Union (UFW) to achieve fairer working and living conditions for their members. 

 

Policy Statement: Biotechnology 

 

In studying how life works, biologists can be likened to those who tinker with engines, seeking to understand the whole system by identifying the functions of the parts. Ultimately, the diversity of life on this planet can be reduced to genes, the tiny carriers of heredity found in every living cell. It is genetic diversity that gives rice its tolerance of so many growing conditions, that gives potatoes their many colors, that provides wheat its resistance to myriad diseases, and gives some com its sweetness and other corn its pop. 

Thousands of years ago, most agricultural crops originated in countries we designate as the Third World. The genetic diversity represented today in these crops is, in itself, a natural resource. It is the common heritage of all mankind; a heritage we employ as the foundation of plant and animal breeding and as the most basic raw material for new biotechnologies. 

RAF believes that this genetic diversity — the world’s most precious natural resource — is in danger of being lost; once gone, it is lost forever. As Mark Twain once said, “The first rule of successful tinkering is to save all the parts.” We support increased collection and improved conservation systems for seed variety and genetic diversity from the village level in the Third World countries to the national efforts of the U.S. We support the full and free exchange of genetic resources and deplore any attempt to restrict access to these resources for political or commercial reasons. 

Biotechnology — the use of living organisms to make or modify products — is one of the most powerful technologies ever introduced to society. It has the ability to improve our quality of life almost beyond imagination. However, the changes it will bring to agriculture will likely strengthen the position of large, heavily capitalized farms, further endangering the nation’s beleaguered family farmers. And the present trend towards the use of this technology in the development of biological warfare agents — directed at both people and agriculture — has the ability to eliminate life itself. 

RAF believes in the strict regulation of biotechnology for the social good. Judicious support, principled criticism, and constant questioning of biotechnology will be required for society to experience it as a blessing and not as a curse. As powerful as it is, biotechnology will never be able to eliminate or long obscure the problems of injustice in rural America caused by discrimination against the farmer and neglect of the environment. 

In the wake of illegal releases of genetically altered micro-organisms in Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and California, RAF supports immediate Congressional oversight action to review the adequacy of existing biotechnology regulations for protecting public health, agriculture, and the environment. 

RAF steadfastly opposes the use of biotechnology as an instrument of war and calls upon all nations to renounce such use in strong and verifiable international convention backed by national legislation. 

RAF believes it is absolutely vital that Third World nations, in particular, have access to information about the social and economic consequences of introducing biotechnologies into developing countries. In order to develop strategies to cope with these consequences, Third World planners and policy makers must be able to monitor the activities of biotechnology companies, new scientific developments, and potential products. Third World countries must also formulate national laws to regulate the use and testing of biotechnology products within their borders. 

RAF supports the establishment of an “international code of conduct” on biotechnology through the appropriate United Nations body. An international code of conduct could be used to establish rigorous standards for the development, use, and testing of biotechnology throughout the Third World.