by Cathy Farmer, Communications Director, Memphis Conference United Methodist Church, Phone (901) 427-8589, FAX (901) 423-2419, E-MAIL: clfarmer@usit.net
Drive along any road in West Tennessee and Western Kentucky and you'll see the results of the Class Three drought afflicting the region's farms. Dust boils in the wake of tractors crossing rock-hard fields. Cotton bolls, small white puffs, are bursting open prematurely. The stunted soybeans have no pods. Tobacco is burning up in the fields. There wasn't a corn crop at all.
"We're hitting a point of despair," said Richard Jameson, a Haywood County farmer speaking to United Methodist leaders, Sept. 15. "We'll probably lose a lot of family farms this year. They'll have to sell the land to pay their debts."
Jameson, fellow Haywood farmers French Richards and John Willis, and cotton broker Jim Nunn, were called by Brownsville First pastor Stan Waldon to a meeting on the farm crisis with Bishop Kenneth Carder, members of the Memphis Conference cabinet and other leaders. "I hope the church becomes aware of the situation," said John Willis. "I feel so pessimistic. I believe a lot of people don't care if we have domestic agriculture as long as they can go to the store and get food cheap. It doesn't bother them that it's imported from Third World countries where they use slave labor almost.
"Farming is protected in western Europe and Japan," he said. "They remember what it was like to go hungry after WWII. But we don't have that commitment. I believe it's as important to have domestic agriculture as it is to have a military." Jameson added, "I don't think (people) really understand what's about to happen. After this harvest is in, we'll have tremendous need. Once the work is done and we're not busy, when we can't pay the bills, it'll be really tough. This disaster is taking a toll."
French Richards, who's been in farming 46 years, said abruptly, "The farmer is an endangered species. It would shock you to realize how few are left. We've been heading this way for a long time." All the farmers and cotton broker Jim Nunn agreed that farm income will be 60% less than last year-and that last year was a bad year. "You're going to see a lot of blank faces in the pews," said Nunn, explaining that the crisis will affect many people, not just the ones doing the actual farming. Retired farmers, most on fixed incomes, will have no one left to work their land; widows, dependent on rented land for a living, will have nothing coming in; shopkeepers in farming communities will have no one to buy their goods; banks won't be able to lend money to farmers who don't make a good enough harvest to underwrite the loan. Loss of the farming dollar will have a wide-reaching effect.
Roger Hopson, Paris District Superintendent, commented that many people don't seem to understand that when the farmers suffer, the whole community is going to be affected. The group talked about several ways the Church can be of assistance during the next few months. The discussion also centered on how the church can affect long-term systemic change in government legislation.
Short term assistance will probably include training for pastors so they can offer one on one counseling to farmers; a media blitz designed to inform rural and urban congregations about the crisis; and enlistment of the Rural Chaplains Association and Clay smith of the Hinton Rural Life Center for advice. Long term, Bishop Carder envisions church pressure on Congress for change in farm legislation and possible re-training for farmers who need to transition to another job. "It's critical," said Jim Nunn, referring to the suicides he remembers from the last drought. "We have to show people we love them and care for them.":
