wfn.org | Lutherans Lead Rally for Fair Farm Prices

[News News <NEWS@ELCA.ORG>]

ELCA NEWS SERVICE

July 20, 1999

LUTHERANS LEAD RALLY FOR FAIR FARM PRICES
99-178-LS

     CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America were among more than 850 participants and leaders of a July 9
rally at the Sweetgrass entry point on the U.S.-Canadian border to
protest subsidized Canadian commodity prices and domination by large
agribusiness corporations.
     The Rev.  Mark R. Ramseth, bishop of the ELCA's Montana Synod,
Great Falls, Mont., gave an invocation at the rally.  "The Bible
understands agriculture.  It respects and honors those who labor with
their hands and work in the fields," Ramseth said.  The church must
support those who earn a living from the land, he said.
     "The church is rural America, and rural America is the church.  We
need to stand in solidarity together," Ramseth said.  More than 65
percent of Montana's 150 ELCA congregations are rural, he said.  The
ELCA synod is a member of the Montana Association of Churches, a group
that supported the rally.
     The "National Day of Protest," was organized by the Campaign to
Reclaim Rural America, a grass-roots movement based in Montana.  The
rally included speeches supporting the campaign and the presentation of
a petition with nearly 13,000 signatures.  Aimed at members of Congress,
the petition states the campaign's requests.
     "Due to the economic emergency created by the ongoing depressed
prices at the marketplace for agricultural products, we ...  petition
for an investigation into the causes of the depression," the petition
states.  It includes a call for anti-trust investigations into the
concentration of ownership in agribusiness industries, mandatory price
reporting of commodities and an emergency price support for agricultural
products.
     The rally concluded with a three-hour human blockade of trucks
hauling agricultural commodities from Canada.  Rally organizers worked
with police and U.S.  Customs officials to ensure a peaceful
demonstration, said Helen Waller, Montana rancher and spokeswoman for
the Northern Plains Resource Council.  Waller is a member of the ELCA's
First Lutheran Church, Circle, Mont., and helped organize the rally.
She said the blockade was a "symbolic effort" to demonstrate the problem
of markets flooded with commodities.  Canadian exports just add to the
already full markets and low prices, Waller said.
     "If there is not a change, we will lose the family farm," she
said.  "It is inevitable."  Waller blames large agribusiness
corporations who buy commodities from farmers at prices "as low as they
(corporations) want."  These corporations, in turn, sell to consumers at
sharply elevated prices, thus creating a huge profit margin, she said.
     As a result, small farm operators are losing money, Waller said.
USDA statistics for the Northern Plains area indicate that it costs a
farmer $5.69 to raise a bushel of wheat, she said.  Farmers sell a
bushel of wheat on the current market at $2.19.  "It's a tragedy,"
Waller said.
     Americans must ask themselves, "do they want a food system totally
controlled from field to dinner table by a handful of corporate boards?"
she said.
     Consumers must realize the importance of standing behind farm
families, to ensure stewardship of the land and the quality of food,
Waller said.
     The Sweetgrass protest was accompanied by rallies at the state
Capitol in Boise, Idaho; at the border in Portal, N.D.; at a World Trade
Organization conference in Seattle; in Columbia, Mo.; and in Louisiana
at the Vicksburg Bridge on I-20.  More than half of those who attended
the rally in North Dakota were ELCA members, said Darwin Holmstrom,
field organizer with the Dakota Resource Council.

[*Lisa Smith is a senior at Wartburg College, Waverly, Iowa.  This
summer,  she is an intern with ELCA News and Information.]

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