Union Farmer - Winter 2001

The Prosperity Dilemma

- by Helen Forsey

If farmers are looking for prosperity, they had better be willing to work together to change the system. That was the message delivered by Paul Olson, President of the National Farmers Organization in the USA, in his keynote address to the NFU's National Convention in November, 2000.

Olson's themes of collective action and fundamental change resonated again and again as the Convention examined various possible "paths to prosperity". Whether the topic was input-reduced agriculture, land set-asides, or the profitability potential of GMOs, the bottom line was the need for radical united action by farmers, their allies, and the governments that are supposed to represent us all.

Several of the Convention presentations showed how it can sometimes be possible for a particular farm family, with enough resources, hard work, determination and luck, to find ways to cope a little longer out there in a world dominated by corporate agribusiness. Those individual experiences, whether in niche marketing, on-farm processing, or other creative efforts, are worthwhile and important in that they enable some family farms to survive and even thrive. But their potential as "solutions" to the agricultural crisis is seriously limited.

As some of those who have followed such paths themselves would point out, such initiatives in isolation are neither effective nor sustainable. In the long run, without fundamental changes to the system, those individual "solutions" will only serve as the exceptions that prove the rule. And the rule will be the rule of globalized corporate industrial agriculture.

But a different future could be possible. What follows is a sampling of the challenging and inspiring presentations made on these issues at the Convention.