​Save Family Farms in North Dakota! Refer Senate Bill 2351!

“[Bonanza farming/1873-1920] encouraged large scale agriculture in the Red River Valley of the North...The bonanzas relied on professional farm managers...[and] were worked by migrant workers ranging from as few as 15 to as many as 1,000 per farm,...[who] were divided into teams of five to twenty men under a supervisor who was referred to as the binder boss or plow boss, depending on the job...Homesteaders [family farmers] did not like the bonanza farmers because they did not do business locally and did not take part in the local schools or social institutions.” - Encyclopedia of the Great Plains

“...this isn’t the first time there has been an effort to repeal the anti-corporate farming law … many times before an ailing dairy and hog industry has been the argument. We all go through cycles, and we all hurt.” - Roger Johnson, President, National Farmers Union, March 27, 2015/Bismarck Tribune, 3/28/15

“In seeking the betterment of our farm population, no matter what part of the country they live in,...we must strive today - toward two objectives. The first is called ‘better land use’ - using the land in such a way that we do not destroy it or harm it for future generations, and in such a way that it will bring to us the best year-in and year-out return as a reward for our labors... The other objective is the control, with the approval of what I believe is the overwhelming sentiment of the farmers themselves, of what is known as crop surplus.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt, October 4, 1937, Grand Forks, ND

As I returned to Mandan on March 27 from the state capitol in Bismarck and a rally of supporters of family farms in North Dakota against the latest attempt to replace them with corporate farming, I saw The Dakota Maid in earnest discussion with a man in a three-piece suit and a farmer’s multicolored hat. A strange outfit, indeed, but no less strange than two talking pheasants, muttering beside them, sounding much like an ancient Greek chorus.

High Plains Reader: Hi there, Dakota Maid! Good to see you again. How are things at the Grain Mill and Elevator in Grand Forks?

The Dakota Maid: So far so good, but things could get worse for us, if Corporate Ag Man here and his buddies take after wheat farmers the way they have against dairy and pig farmers in North Dakota.

HPR: I see. So you were at the rally too, along with representatives of the Farmers Union and the Catholic Church in support of family farmers and signing up to pass petitions for a June 2016 referendum to overturn the new law.*

Corporate Ag Man: You are all nice people to be sure, but I’m afraid you’re just behind the times. Market forces are real you know. You folks remind me of those Luddites in England back in the 19th century who went around breaking up the new machines because they didn’t want to live in the modern age.

Pheasant #1: Can you believe Corporate Ag? First we have to flee the Bakken. Now Corporate Agriculture is going to destroy our habitat everywhere else.

Pheasant #2: Maybe we should move to South Dakota. South Dakota would never do this to us.

DM: The pheasants have it right. Never before have so many in this country benefitted so much from so few, as in the case of family farming. You guys only want to harvest dollars, not crops and livestock. That “Luddite” argument might win you some points in a high school or college debating society, but it doesn’t cut any durum in the 2015 world of farming. Family farmers, many of them with advanced college degrees, are up on the latest techniques offered by the continuing industrial revolution. It is your “bigger is always better” mantra that is out of touch with the real world of farming. Bonanza farms were not too big to fail in the 19th century, anymore than Soviet agriculture in the 20th.

CAM: Are you calling me a communist?

DM: Not at all. “Soviet” is the Russian word for “committee.” And running a farm by some committee, either in Russia or North Dakota, has always been a bad idea. The Russian Communists used government to squeeze every last ruble in profit out of their agriculture to jump-start their backward industrial revolution. We never needed such a thing over here. What we needed was government that supported fairness and common sense in agriculture, and the unique pitfalls of being a family farmer. We used to get it, under Republican or Democratic governors in North Dakota, and that 1932 law protecting family farmers against the depredations of big corporations was part of our defense. No more. Now we elect governors and legislators who want to squeeze every last dollar in profit out of our land for the sake of Big Oil and Corporate Ag.

Pheasant #1: How can I stay here?

Pheasant #2: There is always South Dakota.

DM: South Dakota. How humiliating! You Corporate Ag guys remind me of North Dakota legislator Treadwell Twitchell telling family farmers 100 years ago to “go home and slop the hogs,” and leave the legislating to men like him, a man who took his orders from Alex McKenzie and other corporate bosses in the Twin Cities.

CAM: Twitchell always denied he ever said such a thing as “go slop the hogs.”

DM: Twitchell could deny his words because he didn’t have to deal with open mics, Twitter or Facebook, but he could never deny his contempt for the people he was elected to serve. Since we can’t get rid of our 2015 versions of Treadwell Twitchell so easily, given the confusion of other issues, we will just have to get rid of this latest version of corporate arrogance by referendum in 2016.

CAM: Good luck with that. Even if you keep your silly old family farming law the new world of corporate farming will prove that it is more efficient and will produce even better for the American people!

DM: Bravely spoken Mr. Corporate Lobbyist! Not unlike Hans Christian Andersen’s Emperor who paraded before his people in his “new clothes.”

CAM: How droll. Naked CEOs?

DM: No. Naked greed.

Both Pheasants: South Dakota would never do this to us. Can we sign the referral petition on Senate Bill 2351?

*For those who wish to sign a petition or pass petitions to refer Senate Bill 2351 to North Dakota voters in June 2016, you can contact Farmers Union Member Relations Specialist, Bri Sorensen at 701-952-1404 or email at bsorensen@ndfu.org