Agri News | By Jean Caspers-Simmet | January 29, 2002
AMES, Iowa -- Sustainable farming methods promoted by Practical Farmers of Iowa and other groups can help save the planet, says Mark Ritchie, director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
"You've been doing this at home, and now we have to make this a global movement to save the planet,'' Ritchie told PFI members at the group's recent annual meeting in Ames.
International trade policies supporting an industrial model of agriculture are beginning to crack, Ritchie said.
He cautioned that "there has to be a moment now where we can't lose any more farmers and rural businesses: We have to have more. All of you have to find a way to hold on.''
PFI and other organizations have proven corporations wrong when they said that the industrial model of farming was better, Ritchie said.
"When that didn't work, they tried to tell us that we needed the industrial model to feed the world,'' Ritchie said. "You folks made a lie of that propaganda, and now they've moved on to new rhetoric saying the system is inevitable. Folks, now they're saying that you can't fight city hall. We've all fought city hall.''
Ritchie's speech was a homecoming of sorts. He grew up in nearby Nevada and attended Iowa State University before realizing that the messages were not right for him.
"I was hearing if you want to be a success, you have to leave the farm. You have to leave Iowa and go to a big city,'' Ritchie said.
After grassroots organizing in Des Moines and San Francisco, he started a free-range egg-laying operation in California. A big drop in wholesale prices made him realize that wanting to farm the right way and working hard weren't enough to make it happen.
"There were national and international polices that made it impossible for me to farm the way I wanted,'' he said.
Ritchie left farming and began researching farm policy. He connected with farm organizations and found people all over the country asking the same questions.
"In almost all sectors of American agriculture, government policies were designed to drive down price and push people out of agriculture,'' Ritchie said.
International rules
The 1980s farm crisis, with foreclosure rallies, crosses dotting courthouse lawns and big rallies came to a head in the 1985 farm bill debate.
Lobbying for a better farm policy, Ritchie learned that much of what he and other activists were proposing could not be done because of international trade rules.
Ritchie headed to Europe to learn more. Hidden within the thousands of pages of trade agreements were provisions that prohibited labeling products as organic, local, chemical-free or produced without child labor.
Meeting with founders of the World Trade Organization, Ritchie learned that they were shocked at what the organization had become. Things came to a head during 1999 WTO meetings in Seattle.
"People from all over the planet said, 'We're not going to let a tiny group of mostly men write rules that make it impossible for us to live on the land. Grassroots groups were networking with each other. They wanted to develop solutions that were good for central Iowa without harming someone in central Congo.''
Serious policy issues loom both in the farm bill debate and international trade negotiations, but there has been progress, Ritchie said.Agri News:
