Direct citizen action is important to Northern Plains to draw attention to issues. During the 1987 legislature, Northern Plains members placed crosses on the lawn of the State Capitol for every farm, ranch, and ag-related business that went bankrupt during the farm crisis of the mid-1980s.
We counseled hundreds of family farmers and ranchers on credit rights and responsibilities during the Farm Crisis of the 1980s, and helped farm families avoid foreclosure. In 1988, Northern Plains protested and defeated an unfair electric rate increase proposal, saving Montana ratepayers millions of dollars.
Through the 1990s, we fought for sensible trade policies that would have been more beneficial to American farmers and ranchers than the trade policies Congress adopted. We worked – and continue to work – to restore competition to a meatpacking industry that is heavily monopolized. Northern Plains took part in a national campaign starting in 1999 to gain a referendum on the Beef Checkoff program, a mandatory levy paid by cattle ranchers which is then spent to support policies benefitting the big meatpacking companies. 140,000 cattle producers nationwide signed that petition, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture refused to allow a vote.
Several years later, we joined with wheat producers to help prevent the introduction of genetically modified wheat into the region. We produced and distributed 25,000 copies of a brochure titled Why Plant What You Can’t Sell? in major wheat-producing areas of Montana. Genetically modified crops are still not accepted in key overseas markets for Montana wheat, and farmers have been subjected to ridiculous legal harassment when unwanted genetically modified crops have migrated into their fields.
The health of the rural economy was one of the major reasons Northern Plains was formed, and it has played a part in our work ever since. After years of work against artificially low ag prices, unfair trade policies, and increasing monopolization of the food industry, Northern Plains took part in a nationwide Campaign to Reclaim Rural America and sponsored a widely publicized rally on the Canadian border in 1999. We also sponsored events in five Montana communities, at which we sold food for the prices farmers were getting paid for the ingredients in that food. Loaves of bread went for 3½ cents per loaf, the amount a farmer made on a pound of wheat. We also sued the USDA in an effort to gain fairness for wheat farmers in the region whose high-protein wheat was undervalued due to the USDA’s miscalibrated measuring equipment. USDA eventually hid from the lawsuit behind a shield of sovereign immunity.
Agricultural issues can be very frustrating and slow, because federal agricultural agencies have long been closely tied to the industrial agribusiness model, and are slow to move in defense of family scale agriculture. Sometimes, however, the work pays off. After participating for nearly a decade in a nationwide campaign for country-of-origin labeling, Northern Plains was gratified to win passage of a country-of-origin labeling bill in the Montana legislature, and later to see country-of-origin labeling become a reality in grocery stores nationwide in 2009.
Next: Tongue River Railroad >>
