June 26, 2001, Tuesday
CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
COMMITTEE: HOUSE AGRICULTURE
SUBCOMMITTEE: CONSERVATION, CREDIT, RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH
Rural Development
TESTIMONY-BY: JOHN ZIPPERT, CHAIRPERSON,
RURAL COALITION/COALICION RURAL
Statement of John Zippert
The following testimony is presented to the US House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture on behalf of the Rural Coalition/Coalicion Rural, the Missouri Rural Crisis Center and Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund. We represent minority and other small-scale farmers and poor and people of color communities across the continent. Among them are vibrant and creative organizations working with African American, Euro-American and indigenous producers determined to maintain and rebuild a historic connection to the land, as well as Latino and Asian producers who represent a growing sector of agriculture throughout the nation.
I. INTRODUCTION
For over three decades, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund has worked diligently to help minority farmers remain on the land and to assist the hundreds of poor and people of color communities we serve throughout the southeast to build houses, cooperatives and credit unions. In 1978, the Federation was among the founding members of the Rural Coalition. Our Coalition has for over two decades serve to build alliances and enhance the efforts of the communities the Federation serves, and many others like it in every region of this nation.
The founding principles and goals of the Rural Coalition, below, are an appropriate starting point for this testimony on rural development. The communities of the rural United States now lag farther behind in sharing the benefits of the economic vitality of the past decade. The digital divide is only one of the growing chasms that separates poor and people of color communities from the rest of our society. In addition to the long injustices and neglect in African American communities in the south, federal government support has also failed to reach the new Latino and Asian-American communities who seek access to the land throughout this nation. Today, the poorest living conditions on this continent are found on Indian lands and in migrant worker colonias at the borders. The programs and services of the Rural Development mission area in the US Department of Agriculture still fail to reach the vast majority of the communities we and our members and partners jointly serve.
This is not how it should be. The recommendations we share with you today emerge from the goals and principles which govern the Rural Coalition and those that form our joint Campaign for a Just Food and Farm Policy. All members of our Coalition believe that:
II. SUPPORTING THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY BASED ORGANIZATIONS IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT
Community based organizations are essential and experienced partners in any effective rural development strategy. Public policy seeking equitable rural development should strengthen the capacity of these organizations and include them as real partners at every level of development.
For the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, or the dozens of community based members of the Rural Coalition, the need for support to build capacity is our most fundamental, every day need. For decades, our members have struggled through every challenge imaginable to keep our doors open and continue to serve the members of our community, to whom we are accountable, and who have no place else to go. Many staff members of our organizations have struggled every day for years with far too much work to do, and no hope of a secure income, retirement or often even health insurance. We keep on working because those we serve have strong faith in us and hope to secure a better future for their families. The Federal government was at one time a critical partner in rural development, one that led advances in our communities and brought electrification, water, transportation and other basic services to some of the most isolated areas. For decades, the foundation community was another critical partner, with many years of investment in eradicating hunger and poverty in rural areas.
Over the past two decades, these resources have steadily eroded. Most of the major foundation-supported anti hunger and rural programs have been replaced by other priorities. Changes in telecommunications law, health, transportation, education and energy policy have left our communities far behind and without hope of equity in services. USDA programs have become smaller and more cumbersome, and for the most part no longer accessible to the community based groups who spurred their development for many years.
We struggle now to do everything with far less, and watch opportunities pass by our communities for want of no more than the time of one or two experienced community workers who could make things happen. I would like to share with you one sad illustration of this reality.
Over the past 20 years, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives has had a rural housing program that with some federal support has yielded many results. In two of the poorest rural counties in the nation, Greene and Sumter, Alabama, our efforts have led to the construction of 350 single family homes and 4 cooperatively-run housing projects with a total of 126 rental units. To enable the families who now reside there to fulfill their dream was no easy matter.
Our Housing specialist, the late Cleo Askew, labored day in and day out on details of construction. But more than that, he guided the very poor families on the hundreds of technical details they needed to address to even think of owning a home. Many had credit problems that had to be cured to qualify for loans. Negotiations were made with hospitals for payment plans to meet unpaid bills. Frequently, older people needed to correct problems with loans they had cosigned to help other family members. Day in and day out, Cleo worked with these families, never giving up on anyone.
Last year, the Federation at long last had secured funding to hire assistants to work with Cleo and to be trained by him and introduced to the networks and communities essential to making housing happen for very poor people. Unfortunately, before new staff could be hired, Cleo died suddenly of a heart attack. At the time of his death, he was working with over 75 more families who sought his assistance, while also training our other staff in Mississippi to do more housing work. In rural Epes, Alabama, Cleo is irreplaceable. The contacts he had can only be transferred over time and personally to new and dedicated people who are hard to find in our rural communities.
We miss him and we know this work shortened his life and left him no opportunity to enjoy his accomplishments.
How many other Cleos have we lost to overwork, who for years filled with their time and dedication, their spirit and their very lives, the gaps that are everywhere in our communities? Sometimes we forget to step back and see what we have achieved against all odds because what lies ahead of us is always looming large. Besides the housing in Greene and Sumter counties, the Federation has helped develop over 100 cooperatives and credit unions serving more than 25,000 borrowers across the South. We have assisted over 500 farmers to complete their application and appeals packages under the Pigford v. Glickman class action lawsuit. We have developed cooperatives and marketing projects, and are selling food in US cities and foreign nations.
Within the Rural Coalition, despite the fact that a majority of our members have been underserved or denied access to the programs of the Department of Agriculture and have had unequal access to commodity and trade programs, they have worked diligently together to develop new methods and new markets. A partnership of more than 15 diverse member groups have acquired a network of computers and developed internet and marketing skills. They have crossed the digital divide and began using the Rural Coalition Super Marketcoop.com to market their products. Their latest project is a virtual CSA (community supported agriculture) that is being used to educate consumers as well as build new markets for participating coops.
Our partner, the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, has created Patchwork Family Farms, which processes and markets fresh pork products directly to consumers and assures a fair price to all participating producers. Our member, the Sin Fronteras Organizing Project has built a center serving farmworkers in El Paso, and the Florida Association of Farmworkers has established three credit unions, a cooperative store, and labored to meet the housing and other needs of its more than 5000 farmworker members.
The farmers we represent have further determined that cooperation across borders and seasons can improve the viability of farms and communities. They have built new links across communities and regions, and through Supermarketcoop.com, created their own version of an alternative people to people North American Free Trade Agreement with our members and partners in Mexico. Along with linking U.S. consumers to Mexican products, members of the SuperMarketcoop.com are preparing to serve the growing middle-income market in Mexico with products from U.S. small farms.
These are only a few examples of the achievements of our hardworking members. Without them, our communities would certainly be even more poor.
At a time when policy makers are contemplating federal support of faith based organizations to accomplish work that has been difficult for others, we strongly recommend that the Congress focus as much support on the Community Based sector which represents poor people, serves their needs, and is accountable to them. These organizations need and deserve to be recognized, valued and supported. Experience shows that policy makers have called on our organizations, we have delivered all that was required and more.
We recommend that this committee and the Congress:
III. RURAL DEVELOPMENT MADE A VITAL PART OF FARM POLICY, ASSURING ALL BASIC NEEDS ARE MET AND NO COMMUNITY IS LEFT BEHIND
Rural Development Programs and Services must be a fundamental part of any cohesive national farm and food policy, and must be designed in such a way and funded at such as level as to assure basic needs of all rural people are met equitably and that no community is left behind.
We strongly support the position of over 100 members of Congress as conveyed to this committee that Rural Development must be an integral part of the 2002 Farm Bill and that budgetary resources must be shared among all critical farm policy goals, including rural development. We urge all other members of this committee to support their request.
The Rural Development Programs of the Department of Agriculture do not reach the vast majority of our community-based members. Application processes are often cumbersome and are largely controlled at the state level, where many community-based organizations have not achieved the network of relationships necessary for successful proposals. In many states, our members have had no success in gaining access to resources.
In the past decade, community based groups working at the grassroots level have often been bypassed or overrun by the many efforts to develop state rural development councils. While the councils in some states have reached out to community based partners, often their overall agenda differs from that of poor communities. Most of all, resources have not been provided to develop the relationships necessary to make the councils effective. This is not to say the councils are not useful.
Housing is an urgent need. We share the belief of our member organization, the Housing Assistance Council, that federal government should commit to a comprehensive strategy for combating the housing affordability crisis in rural America.
Nearly one-quarter of nonmetropolitan households pay more than 30 percent of their incomes, and over 2.1 million rural households pay more than half of their incomes, for housing. Also, despite housing quality improvements in recent decades, substandard housing continues to plague rural America, and many communities--especially those in persistent poverty areas such as Appalachia, the Lower Mississippi Delta, the U.S.-Mexico border, and Native American lands--lack an adequate supply of decent housing, especially rental housing, available at any price.
To meet urgent housing needs we recommend that Congress:
IV. IN ORDER TO BE TRULY VIABLE AND EQUIBLE, THE BENEFITS OF OUR NATIONAL FOOD AND AGRICULTURE POLICY SHOULD ACCRUE TO AND NOT EXTRACT FROM RURAL COMMUNITIES
A viable and equitable agriculture policy is fundamental to any rural development strategy. Recent Farm bills have redirected resources to larger farmers. However, the Small and Minority Farm Sector has held on through many adversities and appears to be resilient and with appropriate investment, ripe for expansion. The federal government should invest in and not undercut their efforts. Moreover, our farm policy should be constructed in such a way as to assure the benefits of agriculture are accrued within, rather than extracted from, rural communities, their land and resource base, and their future viability.
The word "rural" was once almost synonymous with agriculture. The growing expansion of corporate agriculture and industry concentration has forced many families out of farming and closed down the locally owned businesses that supported and survived off of the traditional agriculture industry. No longer does "rural" indicate a community of thriving family farmers and without this economic base, no longer does agriculture promise a viable future for rural people and places. The loss of agriculture as a foundation has left many rural communities in crisis and rural people with few economic opportunities. Rural communities are struggling to find their identity in this new era of agriculture and development.
The current structure of agriculture programs strongly favors large producers over small, a trend we urge Congress to reverse. Recent increases in the payment limitation and return to annual and untargeted disaster relief subsidies, while politically feasibly as emergency response, have enlarged and redirected farm support payments to ever-larger farmers. However, the continued priority on policies that emphasize production over value and sustainability are not only shortsighted. They rob rural communities of a critical income base and diminish the value of the land, water, air and soil.
The farmers and rural communities we serve have employed determination and creativity to remain on the land. They have cooperatively derived new methods to diversify production, produce value-added products and enter new markets. The believe and support a strong network of thriving, successful, small and mid-sized family farms as being fundamental to the health of all people and to the economies of rural communities.
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