wfn.org | Dairy Farmers May Lose Farm but Not Faith

[News News <NEWS@ELCA.ORG>]

ELCA NEWS SERVICE

December 29, 1999
99-FE-06-MR

        DAIRY FARMERS MAY LOSE FARM BUT NOT FAITH:
                ELCA ADDRESSES RURAL CRISIS
                  by: Melissa O. Ramirez

     They are a husband-and-wife team with a handful of dairy cows in
western Wisconsin.  While their marriage is a 45-year romance, Larry and
Rachel Ecklor's dairy farm has been everything but an affair to
remember.
     Wearing mud-spattered boots, Rachel Ecklor declares that "the day
of the family farm is gone forever, with corporate farming taking its
place.  Most of the family farms around here are now out of business,
with the exception of a big farm about a mile away."
     Rachel and Larry Ecklor operate their own dairy farm in Hillsdale,
Wis.  They are one of two families still operating dairy farms in the
small-town area.  In the late 1980s, there were 13 dairy farms in
Hillsdale.
     Posted on the roof of the Ecklor's barn, facing the black-top
road, is a verse from the Bible book of Romans:  "We know that all
things are possible to those who believe."
     "There is a verse from the Bible that best describes my life,"
said Rachel.  "'Trust in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not unto
thine own understanding.  And in all thy ways acknowledge him and he
will direct thy paths.'  I don't know what the paths are, but I know to
be faithful to him."
     In 1989, Rachel and Larry Ecklor auctioned 50 of their Holstein
cows in order to pay debt.  After the auction, they managed to retain a
few dairy cows to help pay bills.
High farm operation costs, declining milk prices and a barn fire in 1991
have hurt the Ecklors financially.
     Since then, "it's been hard because we've never gotten back up to
a barn full of cows.  When financed to milk 50 cows, one should have 50
cows milking.  We just never have ... it's been hard," said Larry
Ecklor.
     In 1995, the Ecklors sold off another part of their dairy herd to
help reduce their debt load.  On Aug. 27, 1999, "we sold our dairy herd
once again," said Rachel.
     "Larry and I thought that with the increase in cattle prices at
the time, we should be able to sell all the livestock we have
accumulated since 1995 and pay off the remainder of the personal
property debt, plus another debt of $25,000.  The auction in 1995 did
not pull in the money we had anticipated.  There are other costs we have
not dealt with since the barn fire in 1991," she said.
     "It has been hard to keep watching our life's work sold in order
to keep things paid.  But we've learned that, throughout life, it's not
the materials things that keep one happy or successful.  Larry and I are
still together, along with our four children and 16 beautiful
grandchildren," said Rachel Ecklor.
     Today, the Ecklor family milk only four cows to help pay current
bills.  Larry also works part-time in a neighboring farm.  "I do night
milking.  Sometimes I help put up hay.  When they need me, they call me.
I've got work there.  I'm capable of doing other things, too.  I'm
licensed for driving tractor-trailers.  I can get a job if I really have
to ... that gives me confidence," he said.
     "Through all the years we've farmed, God has taken care of us.  I
know that God will take care of us now.  I don't know how.  I don't know
what is going to happen from one day to the next, but God will take care
of us.  He always has," Rachel said.
     The 5.2 million members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America (ELCA) have pledged to stand with family farmers, their families
and rural communities.  The 1999 ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Denver,
Aug. 16-23, passed a resolution that calls for prayer, education,
governmental advocacy, and support groups that help farmers and rural
residents.  The resolution also reaffirms the ELCA's commitment to
small-town and rural congregations through the work of various
churchwide units, and it asks the church to respond to the farm and
rural crisis in the United States.
     "We have a responsibility as people of God to be raising food in
order to feed people," said the Rev. Robert D. Berg, bishop of the ELCA
Northwest Synod of Wisconsin, Rice Lake.
     "I think it is a call for us to be concerned about the land, to be
concerned about the farmer, the one who actually plows the field and
plants the seed and looks to God for the rain and the sun.  The church
needs to be about the business of that particular relationship," Berg
said.
     "We have gone through a crisis and we have lost a significant
number of farmers.  We are still losing farm families but not at the
rate we were because we have lost so many in the northwest part of
Wisconsin," said Berg.
     According to Berg, the milk-marketing system in the United States
is a "very complex matter."  He explained that for more than 50 years,
Eau Claire, Wis., was the "hub or center" for establishing prices for
milk.  "The further out you farm from Eau Claire, the more you receive
for your milk.  That is the system existing today."
     Dairy farmers in the upper Midwest have sought reforms in the
system that sets prices for fresh milk, contending they are penalized
simply because of their location.  "There is work being done right now
in the U.S. Congress to bring some reform to that milk-pricing system,"
Berg said.
     The Rev. Paul Landstrom, retired pastor of Augustana Lutheran
Church, Cumberland, Wis., believes that the problem farmers faced in the
1980s and 1990s remains the same today -- farmers are not able to set a
price for their product.  Farmers "just take what's available, which is
pretty low," Landstrom said.  "Some solutions the U.S. Congress have
made are make-shift.  They really haven't addressed the basic issues,
such as how a farmer receives a fair price for his product."
     According to Landstrom, dairy farmers in the last 10 to 20 years
were under exceedingly high stress because of the continual drop of milk
prices and prices for other farm commodities.
     "We were sending signals to the church that it needed to do some
advocacy for rural people, because rural people were suffering severe
stress.  Nothing seemed to be happening as far as awareness,
understanding and care from urban people at that time," said Landstrom.
     "In the last decade at Augustana Lutheran Church, we went from
having a congregation made up of approximately 13 farm families to two.
Right now, it is down to just two active dairy farm families," Landstrom
said.
     While dairy farmers like Rachel and Larry Ecklor scarcely manage
to hang on, there are exceptions.  Gina and Roy Grewe have a dairy farm
in Cumberland, Wis.
     "We milk anywhere from 120 to 140 cows in two computerized milking
parlors.  We have automatic identification, so we keep track of how much
our cows milk," said Roy Grewe.  "We also have more than 150 cows in a
stall-free barn.  We raise all our heifers and convert our barns into
heifer facilities.  We put all our feed into bulk silos," he said.
     Unlike the Ecklors, the Grewe family is new to Wisconsin.  "We've
only been in Wisconsin for five years.  We're from western Washington
state," Roy Grewe said.
     "We haven't been through drought and we don't have many acres of
land.  We buy a fair amount of our feed, so we do not rely on what we
grow.  I think that kind of hedges our expenses a little bit.  Plus,
we've had pretty good weather since we've been here," he said.
     Roy Grewe contends that farming is hard, no matter what.  "It is a
lot of work.  There are a lot of farmers who work really hard and still
can't seem to make it.  I think a lot of farmers run into problems when
they are milking fewer cows in a stall barn.  Plus, inconsistent milk
prices are a factor in farming.  If they could figure out a way to set
the price and pay everyone fairly, so that farmers know where they were,
it would make all the difference in the world.  When they leave the
price of milk varying the way it does, it creates a higher debt load for
farmers," he said.
     "The way it is right now, I don't think anyone can farm just for
the monetary value," said Gina Grewe.  "Farming is just not stable
enough for anyone to consider doing.  It must be about having a love for
the land and the type of lifestyle, or the cattle or the fields or
whatever it might be that draws people into it, because the [financial]
benefits are just not there.  The financial risks are just too high."
     "Farming is just so important.  It is the basis of our entire
country.  We need to feed our children and we need to have a quality
product to give people," she said.
     "People want cheap food and I don't blame them.  But, I don't
think people realize how much work goes into producing the product and
how little money is paid for all that work," said Roy Grewe.
     In July 1999 the staff of the ELCA Division for Church in Society
listened to individual stories about failed crops, collapsing global
markets and low market prices, farm-crisis workers, meat processors,
pastors, American Indians and others, said the Rev. Russell O. Siler,
director of Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs (LOGA), the ELCA's
federal public policy advocacy office in Washington, D.C.  LOGA is part
of the ELCA Division for Church in Society.
     "What emerged from those conversations was a sense that the term
'farm crisis' is much larger than the heartbreak of families ceasing to
farm when their predecessors have worked the land for generations,"
Siler said.
     "As difficult as that aspect of the crisis is, it also includes
immigrant workers' struggles, American Indians facing tremendous
difficulties, the morality of new technologies and genetic manipulation,
the concentration of agricultural power in the control of a relative
handful, and the trauma of losing a style of life that is as American as
apple pie," Siler said.  It is an "unbelievably complex human problem
with no easy answers or simple solutions."
     The Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs, the ELCA rural
ministry desk, the Division for Church in Society and other entities are
working to assist the church in its ministry to and with those whose
lives are intertwined so fully with the provision of food for the tables
of the world, said Siler.  "When we work, plan and act together, we can
make a difference both in ministering to those living in pain and in
changing the conditions which cause the pain and suffering," he said.
     Marilyn Sorenson-Bush, ELCA director for American Indian and
Alaska Native ministries, said many American Indians work seasonally on
farms.  "A good percentage of Indian people who are land owners will
also lease their land to surrounding farmers for income," she said.
     "The church, as a whole, has not worried about poor people living
on reservations, particularly about topics like health insurance.  Some
people have not considered the fact that many Indian people have lived
without health insurance for years," Sorenson-Bush said.
     "So much of Indian life is governed by treaties with the U.S.
government.  We have a different relationship which calls for a
different kind of ministry for the church.  We have to do advocacy with
the government and with other members of the church and  provide ELCA
members with information about legislation," Sorenson-Bush said.
     Sandra A. LaBlanc, ELCA director for rural ministry, resources and
networking, said, "When any member of the body of Christ hurts, we all
hurt.  When almost half of our congregations are being affected in one
way or another by the economic crisis in rural America, it is a real
issue for the church," she said.
     The ELCA rural ministry desk provides a ministry of presence and
provides resources and networks, said LaBlanc.  "It's about putting
people in touch with other people."
     LaBlanc contends that in the 1980s, the United States lost
approximately 600,000 family farmers and ranchers.  Demographers are
predicting that by 2001, this country will have lost that many more, she
said.  "For every six family farmers and ranchers that go out of
business, we lose one small-town business.  If you are going to have a
thriving rural community, you need a strong family farm or ranching
base."
     More than 51 percent of ELCA congregations are in rural and small
town settings.  "That goes from open country to a town with a population
of about 25,000," said LaBlanc.
     LaBlanc wrote a one-page church bulletin insert to help ELCA
congregations address the farm crisis.  "Today we're witnessing the
final buy-out of the family farm across rural America," she wrote.  "The
agricultural globalization process that began in the 1950s with poultry
is finishing in the Midwest with hog farming.  John Ikerd, agricultural
economist, University of Missouri, Columbia, predicts that the final
stages of our food system's globalization will take place by 2010.
Farming, as we have known it, will be no more; the family farm will be a
lost way of life."
     The bulletin offers eight suggestions for members of the ELCA to
address the farm crisis:
     + Join the 'Green Ribbon' campaign -- members wear a green ribbon
on their lapel as a reminder of the farm crisis;
     + Ask state and federal representatives to support family farming
through legislation and budget appropriations;
     + Support congregation-supported agriculture in which members
support a family
     farmer by purchasing "shares" for an agreed price, allowing them
to receive
     produce (vegetables, fruit, poultry, eggs and more) based on yield
and availability;
     + Buy locally grown products;
     + Ask grocers or supermarkets to sell locally grown foods;
     + Study community food security and look for ways to implement a
food security council;
     + Hold adult forums in ELCA churches to learn about the current
food system and what are the moral, theological and ethical questions to pose
and answer;
     + Pray for those affected by the farm crisis.
     The Bible book Genesis "roots us in the land and, in a sense, in
the rural life," said the Rev. April Urling Larson, bishop of the ELCA
LaCrosse Area Synod, Wis.  "That is our first call.  That very first
call to the human was to till the earth and keep it -- in other words,
to see the earth as a friend that needs our gardening and our tending.
I believe what that story says, which is a story about all of us, is
that humanity is tied deeply to the earth."
     "We are taken from the earth.  We are taken from the ground, and
we are deeply bound to the ground.  So, ever to talk about those who
tend the earth so intimately as our farmers do, ever to talk about them
as sort of 'the other' is really anti-scripture," said Larson.
     Sandra Simonson-Thums, Rib Lake, Wis., said one of the biggest
challenges farm families will face in the decision to close their farm
operations is, "what are our options for work and life?"  She said, "One
member of the family will suggest one option, while another offers a
different suggestion.  Often times this is the place where people get
stuck.  That is why it is so important sometimes to have a third party,
an agency or a good listener -- somebody who has expertise in helping
people to look at their options.  This is real challenge for people,
coming up with a win-win situation."
     Thums is founder of "Farmer to Farmer," a national program
designed to bring farm families together to address rural concerns and
for support.
     For many farm families, losing the farm is a death and it needs to
be treated in that way, according to Thums.  "It is like a Good Friday
experience -- it is a heavy cross that we bear.  So how then do we, as
the church, help people go from Good Friday to Easter -- to
resurrection?  It doesn't necessarily happen in three days.  I was in
the farm crisis for 11 years.  Severe, hard farm crisis.  It has taken
me nearly 10 years to be able to say, I have found my Easter," said
Thums.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Photographs are available at
http://www.ELCA.org/news/images.farm.html

MOSAIC, the video magazine of the ELCA, features an eight-minute segment
about the farm crisis available in December.  The segment includes
interviews with Rachel and Larry Ecklor, Gina and Roy Grewe.  To receive
a copy of MOSAIC call 1-800-638-3522, extension 6009.

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://listserv.elca.org/archives/elcanews.html