By STEVE TARTER of the Journal Star
PEORIA - Dean Kleckner is traveling the Midwest these days pushing for truth. He wants to fight what he feels are distortions regarding agriculture and trade in the United States.
President of the American Farm Bureau for 14 years, Kleckner was in Peoria last week to discuss his new organization, Truth About Trade, which he said looks to promote both trade and biotechnology.
"The group was organized in Iowa earlier this year by farm leaders and producers disgusted about the disruptions at the World Trade Organization meeting (last December)," said Kleckner, ousted as farm bureau chief at the group's convention this spring.
Saying only that Truth About Trade is a coalition of producers, farm associations and corporations, Kleckner said he's on the stump to provide facts about groups who have protested trade and biotechnology issues.
"We have researched the protesters and where they get their money. What we find is that there aren't a lot of people involved but they're loud, well- organized and well-funded," he said.
Some get funds from "many reputable foundations," said Kleckner. He said Ted Turner's Turner Foundation was behind San Francisco-based Ruckus Society, one of the groups involved in the WTO demonstrations in Seattle.
"This group does its training in California. They know how to disrupt meetings," he said.
"Truth About Trade will continue to dig and ferret out information on these and other anti-agriculture groups. We intend to shine a very bright light on these groups and hold them accountable for their actions," said Kleckner.
"Protesters have done a good job in establishing a fear of the unknown," he said, referring to groups opposing biotechnology in agricultural.
"It's so irritating to see headlines saying we haven't run enough tests yet. The broad middle ground of science agrees that biotechnology is safe," said Kleckner.
"Will science say something different in five years? Possibly, because science is always evolving," he said.
It bothers Kleckner that more attention is paid to what he calls "suspect tests" regarding the effect GMO crops may have on the Monarch butterfly than on the fact biotech crops require less chemicals.
"More butterflies are killed by trucks delivering pesticides than through the use of GMO corn," said Kleckner.
"We farmers aren't doing a very good job getting out the technology story," he said. Kleckner maintains a 350-acre family farm in Iowa raising corn, soybeans and hogs.
Kleckner said Truth About Trade receives no money from chemical companies that have bankrolled biotechnology in agriculture.
"If they'd give us some, we'd take it," he said.
Kleckner wants farmers to band together with an election approaching. "Farmers could hold the balance of power in the next election. Agriculture and rural America needs to have a voice," he said.
"Neither Bush or Gore are saying much about agriculture yet. We're going to have to force candidates to talk about trade," he said.
Sue Jarrett, a family rancher in Colorado and member of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Small Farm Advisory Committee, met Kleckner during the Democractic National Convention in Los Angeles.
"We were both attending an ag reception. I told him exports and trade don't help me as a family rancher," she said.
She quoted a representative from Cargill Inc., the world's largest grain trading company, as saying at an agricultural seminar this summer that it would take at least 10 years before China trade would impact the small farmer in the U.S.
"I also said that I opposed corporate hog production. I have 400,000 hogs at my backdoor," said Jarrett, referring to a Seabord Corp. facility near her home in eastern Colorado.
Jarrett is an independent consultant for the GRACEFactory Farm Project, a group opposing large livestock confinement operations.
As for Truth About Trade keeping a list of enemies, Jarrett said she promised Kleckner she would soon be "number- one on your target screen."
Instead of being attacked, protest groups and dissident farm associations should be recognized as part of "a huge uprising nationally," she said.
"Many people are very concerned about how we want our food produced," said Jarrett.:
