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Minnesota event to mobilize grassroots support for just farm bill

March 28, 2007

Humanitarian agency Church World Service, Catholic Rural Life, and Catholic Charities Social Justice offices sponsoring forum in Farmington as part of CWS Sow Justice campaign

NEW YORK -- Humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS) has stepped up efforts in Minnesota and nationally to mobilize advocates, farmers, and concerned citizens around efforts to improve the farm bill now being discussed on Capitol Hill.

The current farm bill, dating back to 2002, expires September 30 and, says Church World Service, needs strong revamping to protect the needs of small farmers in both the U.S. and developing countries.

Over the past month, the New York-headquartered international agency and its Midwest regional offices have joined with other activist organizations to present a series of informational sessions in communities across the Midwest.

Those efforts culminate Saturday (March 31) with a half-day educational and advocacy workshop on the Farm bill in Farmington, Minnesota. People from the city's urban, rural, and suburban areas are invited to hear from advocacy and agricultural experts about the legislation's importance in matters of hunger, poverty, fair trade policies, and land conservation.

The workshop, open to the public, is set for Saturday, March 31, from 9 AM to 12 Noon, at St. Michael's Catholic Church. It is the last in a series of workshops building on the Church World Service "Sow Justice" campaign. Church World Service, along with Bread for the World, earlier co-sponsored a series of six workshops throughout Minnesota and North Dakota.

By going straight to the nation's breadbasket--the heart of farm country-- Church World Service and its partner agencies are sharing information and strategies that citizens, farmer-friendly advocates, and family farmers whose very livelihoods depend on farming can use to press for a bill that strengthens rural communities in the U.S. and abroad.

"Our objective is to make sure that the new legislation includes provisions that support small-scale family farmers in the U.S. and other countries. The current commodity payment system encourages overproduction of certain crops, which are then sold on the international market at artificially low prices that local farmers cannot compete against," says CWS advocacy head Rajyashri Waghray.

Advocates believe corn is a prime example. One of the effects that lower-priced U.S. corn exported to Mexico has had is to force many Mexican corn farmers out of business and into the U.S.--sometimes illegally--to search for work.

The policies now in effect also favor large commercial farmers over small-scale farmers.

From Minneapolis, Perri Graham, Director of Church World Service’s regional office for Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, is coordinating the Farmington event. She says the sessions are crucial to helping people understand the importance of the farm bill and their ability to help shape it.

"This is an issue of fairness and justice," says Graham. "People have to be informed about the provisions of the bill, about how those measures affect real people, and about how they can exert their influence with lawmakers before the debate over this legislation ends."

At a February workshop in Johnston, Iowa, Bob Gronski, Policy Coordinator in Des Moines, Iowa, for the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, led participants through a detailed analysis of the current farm bill. According to Gronski, the present legislation concentrates subsidies on five main commodities: cotton, rice, wheat, corn and soybeans.

He said findings show that 60 percent of U. S. farmers receive no government subsidies because their production does not qualify for payments and that the largest three percent of farms receive thirty percent of U. S. commodity program support.

Gronski, along with Brother David Andrews of National Catholic Rural Life, will speak at the Saturday workshop in Farmington, which is last in the series of similar events over the past month held in Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and Kansas.

The Farmington workshop on Saturday is co-sponsored by the Catholic Rural Life Office and the Catholic Charities Office for Social Justice, both housed in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Other agencies that have sponsored or participated with CWS in farm bill workshops in the Midwest include the Minnesota Council of Churches; National Catholic Rural Life Conference; Interfaith Ministries of Wichita; Oxfam America; Rural Ministry Team of the Southeastern Iowa Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; and the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska.

For more information about the event call the Church World Service Regional Office for Minnesota and the Dakotas toll-free within the region at 888-CWS-CROP, or from outside the region at 612-230-3277.

Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;

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