Union Farmer Spring 2001

The Power of Connection

Many of the ideas and recommendations that were generated at the Forum will grow and bear fruit thanks to our organizational linkages through Via Campesina, and the many strong personal connections that participants were able to make with each other.

One example of the way these linkages can work was a spontaneous meeting on the Tuesday evening when the NFFC's Bill Christison asked to get together with Mexican, Canadian and his fellow American farmers to discuss a possible cross-border scheme to raise grain prices - an idea which, as it turns out, bears a striking resemblance to the NFU's proposal for an international land set-aside plan. I was privileged to be asked to translate, and for a fascinating two hours, this ignorant non-farmer struggled to accurately reproduce in Spanish the elaborate, and to me, foreign, terminology of US Farm Bills and non-recourse loans.

At one point, floundering in complexities well beyond the limits of my knowledge, I paused to ask the Mexicans if they wanted to continue at that level of detail. I was the only one who was surprised when they said yes. Like all the other farmers in the group, they were lapping it up. What seemed incredibly complex and intimidating to me was exactly the kind of concrete, practical idea that the farmer participants wanted to see come out of the Forum. To be part of that happening - even a confused part - was exciting, and I look forward to seeing where it leads.

The NFU's involvement in the Forum and the Summit has also led to or strengthened other connections right within our own country. Throughout the preparation stage and during the week's events, we were fortunate to meet and work with Quebeckers like Romeno, Bouchard of the Sauver les Campagnes Coalition (who are interested in joining Via Campesina), Cynthia Patterson of Rural Dignity, journalist Jean-Charles Gagné of the UPA paper "La Terre de Chez Nous", a farm family from the Beauce region, a veterinarian from the Gatineau, and some wonderful young people from the Montreal group "Food Not Lawns", who organized the protest picnic at the Quebec Agriculture ministry demanding a ban on the patenting of life.

Those same young people joined the thousands of others, young and old, who went up to the "security perimeter" on Friday and Saturday to put their bodies on the line in non-violent protest.

Among the many stories and reflections that the confrontations at the Wall have generated, long-time NFU member Allan Slater offers his contribution to the Union Farmer.