In the early '90s, it was clear a multi-state campaign was needed to beat back the challenge posed by the pork industry and its disastrous factory farm production methods. Farm Aid supported the convening of a series of planning sessions with grassroots organizations in Kansas City beginning in 1995; the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment was the result. The campaign's win on the checkoff is a tremendous victory.

––Ted Quaday, Farm Aid

The Farmers’ Legal Action Group (FLAG), the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment (CFFE), and the hog farmer challengers in the case worked hand-in-hand in identifying issues their members are facing, developing the legal strategy to address these issues, responding to onerous discovery requests, preparing for court, and celebrating victories. FLAG's mission to preserve family farms is enhanced and strengthened through partnering with CFFE. This partnership works effectively to quickly mobilize members and spread the word that independent hog farmers have important constitutional rights, USDA and NPPC arguments to the contrary. According to two federal courts, these rights now include the right not to pay into the mandatory pork checkoff, a checkoff that supports corporate hog factories. We all look forward to the day in the very near future when the pork checkoff is no more.

––David Moeller, Staff Attorney, Farmers' Legal Action Group

Campaign Wins Big for Family Farms and the Environment
Groups take on corporate power

by Kolu Zigbi, Jessie Smith-Noyes Foundation

What does it mean to fund social change from the bottom up? As a national environmental funder with limited resources––making it difficult to do much funding at the local level––the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation often goes about this task by supporting coalitions and networks that bring together grassroots groups to effect public and private sector policy change. Building effective coalitions that can wage successful campaigns is a long-term prospect. For almost a decade, Noyes has supported the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment (CFFE). On October 22, CFFE won a major victory when the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati affirmed a federal judge’s ruling that the mandatory pork checkoff program is unconstitutional and should end (see side bar). I pulled together the interview and quotes below so that we could learn what was behind CFFE’s winning strategy.

While most of what needs to be said on this subject is best said by those who did the organizing, a couple of funders, John Powers of the Educational Foundation of America and Ted Quaday of Farm Aid, share their insights as well. My own insight is that it is a misconception that bottom up social change funding lacks identifiable benchmarks to signal progress along the way. Good grassroots organizers know that wins keep constituents involved and motivated and, for that reason, are careful to pick achievable goals even if the objective is highly ambitious. For environmental grantmakers comfortable with objectives like saving wilderness areas, where progress can be measured in terms of acres, the diversity of benchmarks for progress in a bottom-up campaign to stop the spread of factory farms may feel messy. The truth is, it’s the unpredictable twists and turns and how the groups negotiate them that make this kind of grantmaking so exciting.

When we first funded CFFE in 1995, we had no idea that it would eventually defeat the pork checkoff. We kept making renewals because CFFE and its member groups prevented over 100 proposed factory farms from going into operation; and won passage of proactive environmental policies restricting emissions of hydrogen sulfide and providing public funding for research and demonstration projects on sustainable hog production. Eventually, CFFE gathered signatures from 19,000 hog producers on the petition challenging the checkoff, increasing the clout of CFFE and its five member organizations––Citizen Action Coalition of Indiana, Illinois Stewardship Alliance, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, the Land Stewardship Project (LSP), and the Missouri Rural Crisis Center (MRCC).

Through the pork checkoff campaign, CFFE has helped reshape the power landscape in the Midwest and other farm states by diminishing powerful anti-environmental and anti-family farm organizations––like the National Pork Producers Council––while strengthening state-based farm and rural membership groups. As the environmental movement grapples with how to translate its popular appeal and base into real power to frame major political and cultural debates and effect policy change, the CFFE pork checkoff campaign offers a compelling case study. Three CFFE leaders––Hugh Espey of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Mark Schultz of Land Stewardship Project, and Rhonda Perry from Missouri Rural Crisis Center––took time to respond to the questions below.

What is the Pork Checkoff?  

The mandatory (or "legislative") pork checkoff was established nearly 20 years ago when Congress passed, and President Reagan signed, the Pork Promotion, Research and Consumer Information Act of 1985.  The checkoff program requires all US pork producers (and importers) to pay an assessment every time they sell a hog.  The current checkoff rate is 40 cents per $100 value of animals sold––which means, if a farmer sells a hog to a meatpacker for $100, s/he must pay 40 cents into the checkoff fund.  The pork checkoff has been generating $45-50 million annually; money that goes to the National Pork Board.  In recent years, most of that money ended up in the coffers of the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC).
Money collected under the program was originally intended to financially benefit hog farmers financially through research, education, promotion and consumer advertising.  Lobbying and related activities were not permitted.  However, in reality the pork checkoff has forced independent family farmers to pay into a program that supports corporate concentration, industrialization, and the factory farm system of hog production.  This style of agriculture hurts independent family farmers because it drives them out of business; it also pollutes our air and water, and threatens public health.

Why did it become a target for CFFE’s campaign?  

Before we could challenge the corporate power driving anti-environmental policies and practices of factory-style hog farms, we knew we had to make it difficult for the corporations behind those farms to receive political cover from the NPPC. Even though the CFFE and our member groups had been raising concerns about the checkoff program and NPPC's pro-factory farm policies and agenda since 1995, we did not target the pork checkoff directly until 1997.  That's when we learned the NPPC was using checkoff dollars to pay a high-powered Washington, DC public relations firm to "gather information" on some of our member groups. As one of our hog farmer members said, "NPPC was using my checkoff dollars to fight me."

There's no doubt that NPPC was conducting its "intelligence-gathering campaign," because we were leading the charge and effectively challenging the corporate takeover of the hog industry, and fighting factory farms in our own states and across the Midwest.  Simply put, NPPC was sizing up its opposition; they wanted to assess our strengths, better understand our tactics, and look for ways to marginalize us. And they were using checkoff dollars to do it.  Their plan backfired big time when farm columnist Alan Guebert was leaked the surveillance report and broke the story in February 1997. Our members, many of whom raise hogs, hit the phones and the press to criticize the NPPC for such sleazy tactics. Public reaction was solidly on our side, so much so that NPPC was forced to try to explain themselves. We earned lots of media by discrediting their so-called explanation. Several months later, and with a lot of pressure building on them, NPPC agreed to pay back over $51,000 in checkoff funds, but of course refused to admit any wrongdoing.

As far as we were concerned, though, the die had been cast.  With the help of Farmers' Legal Action Group, we researched the 1985 Pork Act and found a provision, which said that hog farmers could call for a national referendum on ending the checkoff if they gathered signatures from 15% of the nation's hog producers. Our petition drive started in April 1998 and ended in May 1999 when we turned in over 19,000 hog farmers’ signatures, about 4,000 more than we needed.

The rest is history––the vote was held over several weeks between August and September 2000. We waged a classic "David vs. Goliath" battle and won the referendum 53% to 47%, with over 30,000 hog farmers voting. In February 2001, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman threw out our democratic victory, forcing us back to court. Since then, we've won two federal court decisions saying that the mandatory pork checkoff program is unconstitutional because it violates producers' right to free speech. We've shown that we refuse to lose.

Is the elimination of the checkoff important to environmental funders?  Isn't it really a win for the family farm movement?

CFFE organizes around basic principles that we all should have access to: clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment. The members and participants in CFFE are not what most people might think of as traditional environmental advocates––they are family farmers and rural residents who have been able to link the issues of environmental sustainability, economic equity, and the basic tenants of democracy.

The issue is whether livestock will be dispersed across the countryside on a variety of farms typified by local family ownership managing diversified farm operations; or produced in large, energy and capital-intensive confinement facilities that concentrate the animals and their wastes in vast quantities, and concentrate economic wealth and control in the hands of absentee investors. At stake for funders is the future of large parts of America’s rural environment, the health and prosperity of rural communities and their residents, access to economic opportunity for farm and rural families, and far-reaching questions of food safety and affordability.

We targeted the checkoff in the first place because it was fueling the pro-concentration, anti-environmental policies of the NPPC and the state pork associations. In state capitals across the country, NPPC and its state chapters work to dismantle our most proactive family farm legislation, such as laws that prevent or restrict corporate farming. They vehemently oppose the rights of people––through their local units of government (townships and counties)––to have something to say about whether hog factories are coming into their communities and under what conditions. They work to protect factory farms from taxes and legal liability, and to weaken public health and environmental laws.

Some member groups of CFFE come at the campaign from an interest in promoting sustainable agriculture and others represent the progressive family farm movement. The success of CFFE's work has strengthened both of these movements. Our intentional commitment within the CFFE to the principles of cooperation, communication and consensus has helped break down some of the barriers that have historically kept the progressive family farm and sustainable agriculture movements from working together in the most constructive ways.

How did the CFFE succeed in building so much support? 

For the most part, each of the CFFE member groups has been organizing family farmers and rural residents for nearly two decades, and our experience has been very positive.   When people have problems, it doesn't matter if they're urban or rural, East Coast/West Coast or Midwest––they want to get action on their concerns. They understand the value of "people power" and the importance of building power from the grassroots level on up.  They want to belong to groups with a proven track record that are willing to tackle tough issues head on, i.e., speak truth to power.  Our fight in the countryside is really about organizing for democracy, stewardship, earning a decent living, getting a fair shake, and maintaining our dignity.  These are core values that resonate very well with farmers and rural people (and other folks for that matter). 

The CFFE has been able to build a lot of support because we're strategic and we use basic organizing techniques consistently over time.  The main elements of these techniques are: identify the issues; get your constituency involved, and develop their leadership skills; find possible allies, and then build relationships with them; figure out who you are targeting; develop a set of demands and various strategies for achieving those demands; implement your strategies, and do necessary follow-up to adjust them and move your campaign forward; and make sure you have a media strategy with a clear message that you can deliver consistently.

When we started our pork checkoff petition drive in April 1998, we wanted to make sure we had a clear message about ending the mandatory pork checkoff that "made sense" to independent hog farmers.  We knew from past experience that NPPC would try to paint us as a bunch of malcontents with no real power base.  To develop our message, we spent considerable time talking with our members, many of whom raise livestock.  We also purchased magazine subscription lists to give us access to thousands of hog farmers across the country, and we made sure to target those who would be most likely to support us––the independent hog producers who felt betrayed by NPPC's willingness to carry water for the corporate operations.  The response to our petition drive was overwhelming.  And once we got it started, we made sure we stayed on message at all times and looked for ways to continue building our base.

Looking back over the campaign, are you able to pick out key decisions that helped build success? 

Our commitment to key principles was an important early decision that helped frame the work of the Campaign over the last eight years. Some groups could not support all of our principles and pulled out. We expect member groups to commit to building capacity––to turnout people, develop campaign materials, and obtain funding for the campaign. Members also must support family farming, sustainable agriculture, environmental protection, local democracy, the humane treatment of animals, and be able to speak from all those perspectives about CFFE’s positions and actions. For many who come from either a family farm or sustainable agriculture background, this expectation has necessitated coaching and practice to be able to understand and address an array of issues broader than those generally represented by individual groups. As members of the CFFE, we commit to participate in, and organize, direct actions to make our adversaries accountable, and to raise attention to our issues. Gaining skill in direct-action organizing has improved our individual state- and local-level campaigns as well. Finally, a key to our success has been that member groups of the CFFE stay in frequent communication––meaning weekly, if not daily. This allows us to base most of our decision-making on consensus, which increases the level of cooperation.

NPPC was a prime target for a campaign because their funding source was directly tied to a mandatory fee that all hog farmers had to pay––the pork checkoff. Every time a farmer sold hogs, they had to deduct the pork checkoff from their pay. This was a frequent reminder of the NPPC’s ability to use hog farmer dollars to support a corporate agenda. By organizing a petition and referendum on the future of the pork checkoff, hog farmers had a tangible outcome––the vote on the checkoff––to organize around. This clearly stated campaign target and goal helped CFFE tremendously as it organized the thousands of family farmers around the country to end the pork checkoff.

What's next for the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment? 

Well, of course we'll continue the checkoff fight until the program is ended once and for all.  We know that USDA and NPPC won't give up easily, even though we have two federal court decisions and a national referendum win in our corner.  However, we intend to nail down our victory as soon as possible.

Beyond this, our overall goals are to: 1) stop the spread of factory farms and corporate concentration in the livestock industry; 2) develop an agricultural infrastructure based on efficient and environmentally sound family farms that create economic opportunity and jobs, produce healthful food, and care for the land; and 3) protect the environment from the pollution and degradation caused by factory farms.  We've been very active in this regard at the local, state and national levels. In each of our states––Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri––we’re fighting factory farms on a daily basis. 

On a national level, we've been active in Country of Origin Labeling, Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), and the ban on packer control of livestock. In fact, CFFE groups played a lead role in the fight to win a ban on meatpackers owning livestock. The power base that we developed in our checkoff campaign – the names, addresses and phone numbers of more than 20,000 hog farmers in 45 states––has paid off on several occasions.  In 2001 and 2002, we helped pass the packer ban twice in the US Senate largely because we were able to mobilize our base through phone calls, letters, emails, and action alerts.

Other strategies that we will pursue in the next 12-18 months include: building new relationships with other member-based organizations that are concerned with corporate accountability and policy changes; exposing state and federal public "giveaways" to corporate-backed factory farms––like tax breaks and direct subsidies––and showing how they produce public costs rather than public benefits; restricting the ability of factory farms to use EQIP (which is most likely to happen at the state level); advocating in our states and nationally for public research and development funding to be directed to sustainable agriculture instead of factory farms; preventing proponents of factory farms from repealing existing laws that provide citizens with democratic avenues for protecting their communities from factory farm pollution; publicizing the harmful policies and practices of major factory farm corporations and meatpackers; and ensuring that presidential candidates (all parties) are aware of, and responding to, factory farm and corporate concentration issues.

We plan to create a CFFE fact sheet on "Two Paths for Economic Development," which will contrast factory farms with family farm livestock producers. As always, we will seek to achieve frequent media coverage of CFFE organizing and messages. All in all, we'll continue building our power and fighting hard for justice.

The Sixth Circuit Court found the checkoff in violation of producers’ free speech––that sounds like a legal victory. What else did CFFE gain from the Campaign as a result?

The decision of the court is a big legal victory. It is how we’re going to stop the mandatory pork checkoff. And we’re going to see it through to the end. But from the beginning, the pork checkoff campaign has been about more than simply ending the checkoff (as critical as that is). The overarching strategy was to greatly diminish the power of the NPPC and its affiliates to promote factory farms, and to simultaneously build the power of our organizations to win positive environmental and social change. Through the campaign, the member groups of the CFFE worked to grow our numbers, trained highly skilled (and now seasoned) leaders, framed issues (such as the term “factory farm” for large-scale confined animal feeding operations), developed media and political contacts and allies, passed important policy initiatives and advanced others forward in the policy debate, stopped nearly 100 proposed factory farms in our states, and accomplished a host of other environment-protecting and grassroots power-building objectives. A key piece of that is to end the $50 million-per-year pork checkoff gravy train, of course, but it has never been the only piece.

For instance, CFFE members led the grassroots organizing and political strategy in 2001 and 2002 to push for a ban on corporate meatpackers’ ownership of livestock. After Senator Paul Wellstone introduced the bill in committee in November 2001, hot farmer member volunteers manned phone banks and called thousands of other hog farmers, literally from Maine to California (from the checkoff petition list). This succeeded in getting the US Senate to pass the ban––first in December 2001, then again in February, overcoming an all-out effort by big agribusiness and the NPPC to kill the bill in the Senate.

The organizing was multi-dimensional, and in many ways the campaign against the pork checkoff actually created space for state-level policy change. In 1997, when the NPPC paid for a firm to conduct surveillance on three members of the CFFE, that huge gaffe was used, not just to score points in the media, but to actually launch progressive policy initiatives at the state level. It was during 1997 and 1998, for instance, that the Minnesota legislature passed laws restricting the emissions of the hazardous gas hydrogen sulfide from factory farms; established a state-funded Alternative Swine Task Force, and funded faculty positions and facility construction for sustainable swine production research and demonstration at the University of Minnesota; preserved Minnesota townships’ power of local control; passed a state-wide ban on swine manure lagoons, which is still in effect; and established a grant program to assist in the start-up of new sustainable family farm marketing and processing cooperatives. A critical factor in this success was the fact that the NPPC was on the defensive as a result of the “spy scandal.”

Now, as we move forward with our work, and build on the checkoff victory, we are in a different place than we were in 1998. We are stronger, and a key opponent, the NPPC, is much weaker. That will help us on current priority issues, ranging from state and local environmental policy, the federal ban on packer ownership of livestock (packer livestock is raised virtually exclusively in polluting factory farms), and bacterial resistance to antibiotics due to extensive non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in industrial livestock operations.

With the victories we have won, we are more than ever targets for corporate agribusiness and the commodity groups––even more than when the NPPC paid for corporate spying on us in 1996-97. The Minnesota Agri-Growth Council, at their November 2003 Annual Meeting, unveiled a well-financed campaign to attack a CFFE member group, the Land Stewardship Project, and to promote factory farms with new, sanitized language. They have brought in right-wing campaign consultant Eddie Mahe from Washington, DC. Mahe is a former deputy chair of the Republican National Committee, and known for dirty tricks and vicious tactics in the campaigns he runs, including the infamous (and almost completely untrue) Trooper Gate scam directed at President Bill Clinton. Attempts to discredit and defeat our organizations are a measure of our effectiveness. We don’t take them lightly, but they will not deter us––the stakes are too high.

For the CFFE, we not only aim to continue to work on these issues, we aim to win.
Any one of the member groups of the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment can be contacted for more information about the Campaign and about work in their state.

CFFE’s First Win

On April 1, 1995, the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment was launched in Lincoln Township, Missouri, when 3,000 people, including Willie Nelson, joined a rally demanding government and corporate accountability in the livestock industry. The rally was started in Lincoln Township because that is where Premium Standard Farms bought land to set up a factory hog farm. When residents heard about the plan, they organized and overwhelmingly passed strict zoning rules preventing this type of facility. In response, Premium sued the town for $7.9 million under the "takings" clause of the constitution in an effort to get the zoning rules declared unconstitutional.

From Lincoln Township, they embarked on a six-day "Journey for Justice" march/caravan to Ames, Iowa, where President Clinton and Agricultural Secretary Dan Glickman were holding a National Rural Conference. More than 1,000 people participated in the march, which featured nightly meetings in seven communities throughout northern Missouri and Iowa. Press coverage, both locally and nationally, was excellent. The Campaign gathered 10,000 signatures on a "Speak Out for Family Farms and the Environment" petition and won meetings with Secretary Glickman in Washington, DC and Missouri. And Premium Standard Farms dropped its suit.

Funders Worked Together on Factory Farm Fight