SEEDS OF DISCONTENT

...Leaders of all major farmers' organizations condemn the extreme Right, racism, and anti-Semitism...

...Anyone taking an activist approach gets bombarded with their literature, tape recordings, and so forth...

...A free market and exports, he claimed, would return prosperity to the farm...

...Neo-nazi groups are small, he says, "but they are out there and they are getting some support, more than I'd like to see...

...Even then, however, AAM members were by no means unanimous in supporting such views...

...Coming just before the first day of spring in Chillicothe, Missouri, it would ordinarily have been welcome, moistening the fall-plowed fields that awaited their crops of corn or soybeans...

...U Missouri Farmers on the Front Lines HENRIK DRESCHER Acold but gentle rain was falling...

...Then, in November, the FmHA ended its two-year moratorium on farm foreclosures, initially estimating that it would take action against one-third of its 270,000 borrowers at a time when farm foreclosures by other lenders in some states had already increased five-fold over the levels of five years ago...

...A Michigan AAM activist remembers a trip to McAllen, Texas, in 1979 to protest imports with a blockade of the international bridge to Mexico...

...Now they're not as reluctant to talk...

...and eight protesters were arrested...

...Naylor insists that farmers have no sympathy for racism and anti-Semitism, but Libbra disagrees...

...They are getting that support because people are desperate...

...We're talking about social and moral injustice," said Charles Peniston, protest leader and farmer, at a rally a week later in nearby Brookfield...

...Instead they support individual politicians, most of whom happen to be Democrats, such as Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, and they form coalitions with organizations sharing similar problems, such as minority and labor groups...

...Those groups have lots of money...

...James Aucoin (James Aucoin is editor of the Marcel ine Press and the Chariton Courier, two northern Missouri newspapers...

...Oren Lee Staley, past president of the NFO, is running for the U.S...

...Meanwhile, the Taylors became active in Missouri Groundswell, an organization formed to fight farm foreclosures...

...Exports are up since the boom days of the mid-1970s, points out Dale Nass, a retired Illinois grain and livestock farmer...

...That export line seems to be losing its sway with farmers, however...

...Consumers in urban and rural America have a lot at stake...

...Sanner also says farmers favor higher Government support rates and a "mandatory supplymanagement program" to limit production...

...We've already had several instances when a group has gone with a farmer to his lender," says Kreego...

...Two-and-a-half weeks later, Jesse Jackson led another demonstration of 2,400 people protesting the forced sale...

...The Farmers Home Administration, lender of last resort for most area farmers, has suffered a 60 per cent cut in direct loan funds...

...Current AAM leaders say they have rejected Helms, who has chaired the Senate Agriculture Committee since 1981, singling him out for abuse because of his role in defeating the Farm Policy Reform Act...

...It is consumers, he claims, who are making out like bandits...

...Now farmers seem to agree with Naylor and NAFA president Hansen that there must be Government intervention to support prices...

...I know it because I saw their names right there on the trucks bringing the stuff across the border...

...The Carsons are still farming, and the Government is appealing a court decision that went against it...

...But late last fall, Taylor says, "we began getting a lot of calls, because we have a reputation...

...what's left won't go far, considering the magnitude of need...

...Thomas Rowe of Illinois, for example, claimed the unproductive sector consisted of "the bankers, the speculators, the drug runners, and the military...

...However, not all farmers share such sentiments...

...Members of both wings of Missouri AAM worked on Jesse Jackson's campaign for President, and Jackson has reciprocated with attendance at three farmers' rallies in Missouri in the past year...

...Recent news reports have focused on the activity of extreme right-wing groups in the farm belt...

...Last year, crop prices fell by 5.2 per cent from the previous year's low prices...

...Our cheap grain is destroying those countries...

...They are paying only 17 per cent of their disposable income for food," he says...

...This year, farm loans are even less attractive to the banks...

...The Coalition is seeking to build a grass-roots movement for a program to give farmers higher commodity prices and effective production controls, provide immediate debt relief and a moratorium on farm foreclosures and machinery repossessions, and offer emergency assistance to hungry rural families...

...The farmers call their fight a frontline attack on the Reagan Administration's attempt to turn the nation's production of food and fiber over to big business...

...We need cost of production plus a reasonable profit...

...Instead of raising subsidies, it would have set minimum prices that corporations would pay for farm products...

...Farmers are not getting relief, so some of them are grasping at straws...

...They helped organize a protest that brought 1,500 farmers and unionized industrial workers to the auction of Perry Wilson's farm in Plattsburg, Missouri, on March 15, 1985...

...The free-market ideology that dominated farmers' thinking in the 1970s reached its peak in the Presidential campaign of 1980, when Ronald Reagan played on Jimmy Carter's embargo of grain sales to the Soviet Union as an example of Government interference that was destroying agriculture...

...He's turned his back on the farmer," says Randall Carson, "and Government is bigger now than when he was elected...

...They didn't...

...We can all share the blame...

...Hansen likes to contrast Nicaragua's "pro-family-farmer farm policy" with Reagan's farm policy...

...In addition, our foreign policy is to have low raw material prices so that we can control other countries...

...Are most farmers changing their opinions about Reagan and the Republicans...

...Reagan has made "clear the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans," claims Alan Libbra...

...In other countries, people spend three times as much on food...

...The Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), a Federal agency, tried to foreclose on their farm in 1982, but the Carsons fought back...

...Ken Kreego, organizer for the American Agriculture Movement-Grassroots, claims the increased interest reflects a basic change in farmers' attitudes...

...He labeled the 1985 farm bill the Farm Liquidation Act and shouted, "We're fighting back...

...They also criticized "the transfer of wealth from the productive sector, agriculture, to the unproductive sector, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security...

...Part of the popularity of AAM's early approach to parity was its anticorporate focus...

...But more than a hundred farmers protested anyway, gathering outside the Livingston County Farmers Home Administration office...

...In the resulting melee, several protesters and four officers were injured, Peter Downs is a free-lance writer who lives in St...

...The protest was planned to be nonviolent, but when the farmers made for the courthouse door, sixty club-swinging highway patrol officers moved in to push them back...

...They are a clear and present danger and they will get bigger if this thing continues...

...Both wings of the AAM, looking back on experience with the Administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, have chosen not to align with either party...

...Today AAM, Inc., has toned down its support for the military, and AAM-Grassroots joins with NAFA and other groups to urge "farms, not arms...

...Many farmers say they have never even met anyone on the violent Right...

...A year ago, representatives of farmer and labor organizations met in St...

...A lot of us are forming support groups...

...Though such groups have been present for years, they seem to have lost influence, not gained...

...In the 1970s, some AAM leaders were enamored of Jesse Helms and the ultra-right publication Spotlight...

...We can't get any help out of Washington...

...Ten years ago, farmers who went out of business had nowhere to turn and were simply labeled "bad managers...

...Kreego says his group urges farmers and workers to support each other because "workers are losing their jobs and income just like farmers...

...These support groups carry clout...

...Allison, executive director of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center in Columbia, rallied the farmers against the miserable rain and the grim reality that corn-planting time was but thirty days away and most of them had not yet obtained operating loans for the season...

...I saw that the same rich people who were buying up land here had already bought up land in Mexico," he recalls...

...Finally," he says, "they are blaming general economic forces...

...If family farmers are pushed off the land and this part of the food chain is turned over to giant corporations, we will no longer have a reliable food supply," says Helen Waller, president of the Coalition...

...Farmers in Kansas and Missouri have gained national reputations for their cooperation with civil-rights and anti-hunger organizations...

...AAM-Grassroots recently proposed to other farm groups that they join the struggle to raise the minimum wage to $5.50 an hour, along with fighting for parity prices and a moratorium on farm foreclosures...

...Many other farmers share Nass's view...

...NAFA has organized study tours of Nicaragua and played a role in persuading the Nicaraguan government to offer land to displaced American farmers...

...President Reagan argues that any retreat from free trade, whether by increasing support rates for agriculture and limiting production as proposed by the farmers' Farm Policy Reform Act or by protecting American industry, will only induce other countries to erect barriers to American farm products, which will hurt exports and farmers...

...The answer is unclear...

...Their petition is still tied up in court...

...Corporate groups want lower price supports here because our price structure sets world farm prices," says NAFA president Hansen...

...But on this day, a bleak Monday, March 17, the rain was only a reminder that in 1986 the crops might not get planted at all...

...It wouldn't happen if rational people would address the farm problem...

...Foreign countries," argues Nass, "have a relatively small amount of grain to sell...

...A lot of farmers are getting desperate and they want to know what to do...

...Charles, Missouri...

...Ken Kreego adds, "It's hard to blame any one person or party for the farm crisis...

...They were keeping those people in poverty and, instead of growing food for them, they were growing tomatoes and things to send here to the States...

...NFO president Woodland claims corporations cannot afford to pay farmers more unless everyone pays more...

...About fifty have said they will take advantage of that offer, even though the land they get will be near the Honduran border, in the likely path of any invasion by the United States...

...Our only weapon is the press...

...Now scores of rural and farm organizations operate "crisis hot lines" and are ready to help with legal advice or "direct action...

...It is destroying their farms and causing starvation...

...They are becoming disillusioned with the President and Congress, as well, and some of them are getting involved in protests"—such as those against farm foreclosures which occur in almost every state...

...They have donated truckloads of food to the urban poor...

...They hate to admit that their grandfathers' party is cutting their throats...

...They sympathized with our plight, but they considered it wrong to buck the Government...

...In 1985, bankers turned down former farm borrowers at almost four times the normal rate...

...The people there care only about the dollar, not about people...

...Such farmers are, of course, clearly a tiny minority...

...The National Farmers Organization, for example, hopes to enlist the Chambers of Commerce to help spread its "program to cash-flow agriculture...

...Louis to found a national Farmer-Labor Alliance and promise each other support for their respective legislative programs...

...Tractors and other farm machinery surrounded the building, and farmers marched on the muddy front lawn, circling a line of white crosses, planted to symbolize the death of the American family farm...

...These events enabled farmers "to get beyond blaming themselves," says George Naylor, an Iowa corn farmer who is education coordinator for the North American Farm Alliance (NAFA...

...The Carsons call themselves lifelong Republicans but say the FmHA's attempt to foreclose on their farm changed their minds about Reagan...

...are hearing our cries for help right now...

...The only beneficiaries of low prices, Sanner believes, are the companies that process or trade agricultural commodities—the likes of Cargill, Continental Grain, and cigarette manufacturers...

...With the help of the Illinois Farm Alliance, a coalition of rural citizens' groups, they shouted down the auction...

...When our prices go up, they raise theirs, but they always undersell us by two or three cents...

...Senate in Missouri on a platform of help for the family farmer, opposition to the nuclear freeze, and opposition to abortion...

...Usually, a farmer goes to his lender with his hat in his hand, but when you have a group of people there who you know are going to support you, it makes it easier to talk to the lender as his equal...

...The AAM has split into a structured political committee called AAM, Inc., and a more loosely organized protest group called AAM-Grassroots, and many of AAM's early activists, like Naylor, now work in other groups...

...Nicaragua, Brazil, and Argentina all want higher prices, but we set the world price...

...But the neighbors have changed their views now that they face similar problems of their own...

...What is happening here is going to happen all over the country," Roger Allison's voice boomed from an electronic megaphone...

...That's been a shock to farmers...

...Many veterans of the foreclosure demonstrations and AAM protests continue to harbor strongly anticorporate feelings and are attracting others to their point of view...

...During the following weeks, the Chillicothe protest spread across northern Missouri...

...Congress rejected the farmer-initiated Farm Policy Reform Act and instead approved a farm bill that will lower farm prices even more...

...People all over the U.S...

...Since the first of the year," says Carson, "we get phone calls all of the time from our neighbors wondering what to do...

...Later they filed suit against FmHA to prevent it from taking further action against them...

...Reagan is for big industry, the oil companies, and the weapons companies...

...Reagan's policy stinks, but it doesn't stink any worse than Carter's," says Harvey Joe Sanner...

...Public opinion polls show farmers overwhelmingly opposed to free trade and increased exports, according to Harvey Joe Sanner, Arkansas delegate to AAM, Inc., and a participant in the first tractorcade to Washington...

...Most farmers," he says, "are very independent and strong-willed...

...They are a factor and it would be foolish to write them off as insignificant...

...Kreego agrees, adding that farmers cannot get a fair price from the market system because "we can't compete with a water buffalo and a grass hut, but low prices prevent foreign farmers from raising their standard of living above that level...

...Perry Wilson says he called Reagan and Agriculture Secretary John Block before the bank foreclosed on his land, but "nothing happened...

...They have to undersell us or they can't sell it at all...

...For the last three years, he says, exports have held steady or risen slightly, but prices have gone down...

...A founder of the Illinois Farm Alliance, he recalls that when he first became active as a member of AAM, hot debates over the respective merits of a free market versus Government intervention would often disrupt meetings...

...In a highly publicized ceremony in Missouri, for example, three farmers who were county-level leaders in the Republican Party switched to the Democrats "out of frustration with Republican farm policies...

...We took the unusual step for farmers of filing for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, which we hoped would allow us to keep the farm and reorganize our debts...

...They wouldn't admit they had a problem...

...There is still a hard core of free-market ideologues out there," he says, "but they are very quiet now...

...In its early years, some AAM leaders championed a return to the gold standard as the only solution to the farm crisis...

...The activities in Missouri marked the kick-off of a campaign by the National Save the Family Farm Coalition...

...Our neighbors considered us rebels," recalls Susan Carson...

...When American prices drop, they have to lower their prices...

...Militarism retains some support among farmers, however...

...Sanner and Lib-bra say AAM, Inc., has been free of such influences since it established a formal structure and membership requirements...

...It was difficult to organize those protests, says Taylor, because "farmers think everything is all right as long as it is someone else who is in trouble...

...Libbra explains that such views have spread in the last few years as "we found out that our friends are working people, labor, and minorities, not the Chamber of Commerce, the Cargills, or the Bunges...

...It appears that his view has prevailed...

...Not with arms, but in a peaceful, nonviolent manner to say 'enough's enough.'" The farmers responded with chants: Farm aid, not contra aid...

...Many farmers still think Americans are subsidizing foreign consumers to the detriment of their farms, but that view is changing...

...I can't get a rise out of anyone when I speak at a meeting any more...

...There are indications, however, that farmers are admitting it...

...They say right-wing groups like "to hang out on the fringes of protests" and that is why such farmers' groups as the AAM have been tagged as right-wing...

...The credit crunch in northern Missouri has been slowly pushing farmers out for several years...

...Devon Woodland, president of the National Farmers Organization, says his group has grown more than at any time since the early 1960s...

...Others, however, remember how bad Carter Administration policies were...

...In 1984, says Ed Taylor, "We liquidated the herd to pay as many of the creditors as we could...

...They're freer with information, with asking for help, and with giving help...

...Alan Libbra agrees...

...and Butter, not guns...

...But the message of AAM—that the Government should intervene in agriculture to protect the "little guy" from the big corporations—seems to have carried the day with the activists...

...It was lousy weather for a protest...

...The Taylor family ran 350 head of cattle on a farm near Cameron, Missouri...

...In the wake of the early protests of the American Agriculture Movement (AAM) in the late 1970s, all that has changed...

...Reporters on the scene claim the auctioneer was unable to hear any bids, but nonetheless he declared Wilson's land sold to the Federal Land Bank...