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From: "Scotty Johnson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "(Farm Bureau Investigation}" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 14:02:36 -0700
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Subject: Important Farm Bureau History Lesson
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The following the excerpt is from A.V. Krebbs on line publication
entitled AgBiz Examiner - edition # 73 - May 8, 2000.

This writing chronicles a very important part of any history lesson
about the American Farm Bureau Federation.  In the words of
Aldous Huxley,  "The greatest lesson of history is that we rarely
learn our history lessons."

To subscribe to AGBiz Examiner contact <[log in to unmask]>
To view his book, "The Corporate Reapers" go to the Corporate
Agribusiness Research Project at:
http://www.ea1.com/CARP/

Scotty Johnson


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AgBiz Examiner # 73 May 8, 2000
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION:
THE ENEMY WITHIN

Alarming as Mike Wallace's recent "60 Minutes" essay on the
American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) was to millions of
Sunday evening television viewers, the scandalous history of the 80-
year old organization also reveals that time after time it has ignored
the best interests of its farm members in favor of those goals and
objectives favoring corporate agribusiness.

When one reads Dale Kramer's timely The TRUTH About the Farm
Bureau, published in the mid-30's and reprinted in 1950, or Wesley
McCune's well-documented The Farm Bloc, published in 1943, or
Samuel R. Berger's telling Dollar Harvest: An Expose of the Farm
Bureau, published in 1971, or Grant McConnell's thoughtful The
Decline of Agrarian Democracy published in 1977 it is clear to see
that the Farm Bureau has indeed been the "enemy within"
agriculture, that it's leadership has paid scant attention to the
needs of family farmers while enriching themselves at the expense
of those same members.

Indeed with the long train of policy manipulations and abuse of its
farm membership as its legacy being exposed by such
investigative reports as "60 Minutes" and the recent Defenders of
the Wildlife Amber Waves of Gain, the Farm Bureau's day of
reckoning may be at hand and Nebraska's famed U.S. Senator
George Norris's thundering prophecy seven decades ago
may now become a reality: "The time will come when the rank and
file of American farmers will realize by whom they are being
deceived."


PLYING THE "TACTICS OF A RURAL MAFIA"

An enduring mystery of the post-World War II era is that while the
American Farm Bureau Federation has grown so politically
powerful, both within the farm community and in the halls of
Congress, pushing both its legislative agenda while destroying
agencies and organizations it saw as a threat, there has been an
almost total lack of critical analysis by farmers or their elected
representatives about the ways and the means and the goals the
Farm Bureau often employs in its pursuit of political and economic
power.

The story of Rep. Joseph Resnick (Dem.-N.Y.) and the fate of his
1967 inquiry into the affairs of the Farm Bureau possibly clarifies
why we have seen so few "profiles in courage" in evidence in the
Congress of the United States in all the years that the Farm
Bureau has claimed to be "the voice of American agriculture."

In June, 1967, Resnick, Chairman of the House Agriculture
Subcommittee on Rural development, was holding unprecedented
hearings on the affects of Federal programs in rural America and
their role in alleviating rural poverty.The AFBF was invited to testify
in regards to the role they were playing in meeting the needs of the
rural poor, but at the initial hearing time expired before the Farm
Bureau representative could complete his testimony.

At the following week's hearings and before the completion of the
Farm Bureau representative's testimony, Resnick had uncovered
material strongly indicating that the Farm Bureau had a substantial
nonfarm membership and that it was conducting widespread and
questionable financial and commercial activities. Resnick further
noted that the Bureau was a gigantic interlocking, nationwide
combine of insurance and reinsurance companies which were
unrelated to the interests of farmers.

Once again, however, time expired before the Farm Bureau could
complete its testimony or challenge Resnick's charges, so the
Congressman invited the Bureau representative to come back
before the committee and complete his remarks.

In the following week, however, Roger Fleming, the then AFBF
secretary-treasurer, dispatched a letter to House Agriculture
Committee chairman W.R. Poage, with copies to each committee
member, specifying those terms by which he would appear before
Resnick to continue the Bureau's testimony. In effect the letter was
what Resnick later called "a blueprint for Agriculture Committee
action to silence me and prevent me from making further
revelations about the Farm Bureau." In part the letter stated:

"In the interest of justice and fair play we urge the full committee
give immediate consideration to the charges made by [Resnick]
against the Farm Bureau organization (county, state and national) .
. .  if the Committee does not concur in these charges, then we
feel that the Committee should clear the record by adopting a
resolution in which it disassociates itself from the attacks on the
Farm Bureau made by [Resnick] and by making known to the
public at an early date its disposition of this matter."

Within 24 hours of receiving the letter five members of Resnick's
subcommittee, four of which were reportedly Farm Bureau
members, issued a statement attacking their chairman's criticisms
of the Farm Bureau with language almost identical to that in the
Bureau letter.

Their statement was followed by action unprecedented in the
history of the U.S. Congress. Within 48 hours of receiving
Fleming's letter, the full Ag Committee met behind closed doors in
executive session without Resnick present and issued a statement
declaring it did "in no manner endorse, condone or support the
personal attack launched by the Chairman of the Subcommittee on
Rural Development upon the AFBF."

At the same time, the committee was issuing its statement, the
Farm Bureau's Fleming was distributing a press release which
stated: "This judgment by his Congrtessional colleagues should
make it clear that Congressman Resnick's charges against the
Farm Bureau Federation are reckless, unwarranted, and
unfounded." Later, in a speech to the House of Representatives
Resnick reflected:

"While any reading of the committee resolution would make it
obvious that Mr. Fleming's statement did not contain a single grain
of truth, and was in no way related to the specific and documented
charges I have made against the Farm Bureau, not one single
member of the committee has risen to criticize him for it . . . [The
AFBF] reaction, and the reaction of the Committee on Agriculture
is all the more remarkable when we recognize that I am being
attacked --- not for telling lies about the Farm Bureau  --- but for
revealing the truth. The plain fact is that this powerful organization
has at no time denied or contradicted any of the revelations I have
made about its operations. But before my subcommittee they were
evasive, tight-lipped and downright untruthful."

Later, Resnick added:

"The leaders of the Farm Bureau run their organization with the
heavy handed tactics of a rural Mafia. As long as the members pay
their dues and their insurance premiums, keep the Farm Bureau
gas bill paid up to date, and do not run up too sizable a bill at the
Farm Bureau's so-called cooperative, they are entitled to all the
benefits that membership in the Farm Bureau bestows on an
individual. But, if anyone dares to question a policy or voice
disapproval loud enough, the wrath of the magnates of the
Merchandise Mart will rain down upon him and his."

Or as one former woman officer of a county Farm Bureau wrote to
Rep. Resnick: "Most people talk to convey a meaning, the Farm
Bureau talks to keep you from figuring out the meaning."


A BILL OF PARTICULARS

A review of Congressman Joseph Resnick's "revelations" today
concerning the American Farm Bureau Federation's operations in
the 1960's has led an ever increasing number of angry and
disillusioned family farmers to realize that a similar, if not identical
set, of charges could legitimately be made against the present
AFBF organization. Resnick's charges included:

* The Farm Bureau is not the organization of farmers it claims to
be. A substantial portion of its membership --- possibly less than
half --- have no agricultural interest whatsoever. (The USDA
Agricultural Census reported in 1997 that there were 1.9 million
farmers in the U.S. The Farm Bureau boasts a membership of 4.9
million members.)

*The Farm Bureau has used the American farmer to build one of the
largest insurance and financial empires in the UnitedStates.

* The Bureau has misrepresented itself to the Internal Revenue
Service in order to obtain a tax exemption, and to the clerks of both
Houses of Congress.

* The directors and officers of the Farm Bureau are also directors
and officers of insurance companies directly and indirectly
controlled and owned by various State Farm Bureaus. As a result
of these interlocking directorates the Farm Bureau could well be in
violation of antitrust laws.

* The Farm Bureau has taken advantage of its tax exempt status in
order
to expand its business activities which cover the fields of insurance,
real estate, shopping centers, fertilizer, mutual funds, gas stations,
oil wells, grain storage, petroleum refineries, and a considerable
variety of other such ventures.

* Because of its widespread commercial interests the Farm Bureau
has misrepresented its true nature in its dealings with farmers and
its statements to Congressional committees.

* As a tax-exempt organization the Farm Bureau has been
improperly competing in commercial activities with private
taxpaying business concerns, thus enjoying an unfair competitive
advantage.

* The Farm Bureau has torpedoed American farmers by posing as
an organization representing their interests when in fact, the
Bureau's widespread commercial activities --- which include the
operation of businesses which sell to the farmer and buy from the
farmer --- puts them into a position of representing a point of view
antagonistic to the interests of the farmer.

* The Farm Bureau's commercial activities have generated funds
which have found their way illegally into political and lobbying
activities.


A RUSTLING IN THE GRASSROOTS

Despite the admonition from his Congressional colleagues Rep.
Joeseph Resnick continued his investigation and attacks on the
Farm Bureau. In the meantime, he received hundreds of letters
from farmers throughout the country ("One might say that the
farmers of America have been my unofficial investigative force in the
field") calling his attention to a
plethora of questionable Farm Bureau practices.

Charging that the Farm Bureau had done more to prevent economic
and social advancement than any other organization in America,
Resnick told the pathetic stories he had heard about the misery of
migrant workers and the poverty of rural communities throughout
the nation, such as Belle Glade, Florida (which in later years would
become known as "the AIDS capital of the world") where the
second largest industry was the manufacture of baby coffins.

"The Farm Bureau," Resnick declared, "is entitled to its full share of
the blame for the fact that our rural areas are burdened with the
most poverty, highest unemployment, least social and economic
development, and poorest health facilities in the Nation. Their crime
has not been mere indfference. Quite the contrary. They have
intensively fought every attempt to correct thse ills."

There is nothing to which the Farm Bureau has dedicated more of
its resources, save the dismantling of Federal farm programs, than
fighting to destroy attempts by farm labor to achieve economic and
social justice.

>From both legislative and often times physical prevention of the
organization of farm workers to the prohibiting of strikes, from
promoting the importation of foreign migrant laborers to denying
coverage of social security and unemployment insurance to farm
workers, from opposing coverage of field workers by minimum wage
and hour laws to restricting enforcement of health and safety laws
in the field (e.g., its 1985 platform called for the repeal of the
Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA)), the Farm Bureau
has devoted countless time and effort to stifling progress in rural
America.

When organized labor won their right to collectively bargain with
their employer under provisions of the Wagner Act in the 1930's it
was the AFBF that successfully campaigned and lobbied against
the inclusion of farm labor, a stance they still maintain to this day
as farm workers continue to struggle to obtain those rights under
law enjoyed by the rest of organized labor.

Also, as recently as 1985 the Texas Farm Bureau voiced its
opposition to a federal minimum wage for farm workers and
reaffirmed its long-standing opposition to child labor legislation,
workers' compensation and unemployment compensation, and the
abolition of the back-breaking short-handled hoe.

Here too, the Bureau's vested interests are blatant. In many farm
areas, the Farm Bureau has not only operated farm labor camps,
but served as a ontractor service in providing local growers with
seasonal workers. Despite fatal fires in what have been described
as "squalid" labor camps and fatal accidents involving over-crowded
work buses, the Farm Bureau has constantly opposed legislation
to correct unsafe conditions claiming each time that such federal or
state action would be inappropriate since no "dire emergency"
exists.

The Bureau's role as a farm labor contractor no doubt explains why
whe in 1983 the North Carolina State Farm Bureau opposed anti-
slavery legislation.


RURAL POVERTY:
"PRIMARILY A POVERTY OF THE MIND AND SOUL
--- A LACK OF DESIRE"

Nothing typifies the Farm Bureau's attitude toward rural poverty and
the people who are forced to suffer inhuman conditions in rural
America more poignantly than a statement by the AFBF's one time
president Charles Schuman in an interview with the St. Louis Post
Dispatch a number of years ago.

First, he defined poverty as "a combination of lack of education,
training and lack of ambition . . .I don't think the Federal
Government can do anything about it except spend a lot of money .
. .the very things which have made our Nation releatively free of
poverty --- freedom to work or play, freedom to spend or save,
freedom to own a TV set and a Cadillac but live in a shack in order
to do so. We are already too far down the road that leads to
socialism --- a morally decrepit philosophy which destroys the
initiative to do better."

Later, Schuman, while conceding that the U.S. indeed had
"poverty-stricken families," wrote in Nation's Agriculture: "What kind
of povery is this. With abundant educational and job opportunities
on every hand, it must be primarily a poverty of the mind and soul ---
  a lack of desire."

In all of its public policy statements, which include everything from
pornography (there against it!), to off-track betting, from the
libraries of ex-presidents to pay TV, from ROTC to the National
Council of Churches, the Farm Bureau never quite gets around to
addressing itself to rural poverty. Moreover, it has openly fought
against the establishment of Volunteers in Service to America
(VISTA) and attempted to stop the activities of the National
Association for the Advancement
of Colored People's (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund and the National
Migrant
Ministry's efforts to assist farm workers and the rural poor.

In other areas of agriculture the Farm Bureau has distorted the
issues, used scare tactics and opposed pro-family farm legislation
that
conflicted with its own self-interests. In March, 1985, for example, in
the midst of the nation's farm debt criris, it called on Congress to
defeat national legislation requiring the Secretary of Agriculture to
grant deferrals and forego foreclosures on FmHA loans.


FARM BUREAU COOPERATIVES:
"ONE OF THE MOST GIGANTIC AND SUCCESSFUL
SHELL GAMES EVER PRACTICED"

During his late 1960's investigation of the AFBF, Congressman
Joseph Resnick sought to show how both the Farm Bureau supply
and marketing cooperatives ranked as "one of the most gigantic
and successful shell games ever practiced."

By transferring their tax burden from themselves to their patrons,
Resnick charged, these "farm cooperatives" evaded federal income
taxes. The vehicle for such a transfer --- worthless dividend
certificates --- was one many farmers had learned about the hard
way. Federal tax laws allowed the Farm Bureau co-ops to
distribute such worthless pieces of paper instead of money, and
then deduct their face value from the co-op's earnings before
figuring their taxes.

At the same time the Farm Bureau had used such "kept money" to
expand into contract farming and drive independent millers, supply
houses, oil dealers, warehouses, and grain elevators out of
business. It had likewise made individual farmers captives of the
Farm Bureau Co-op and/or its feed companies. Through this
process the co-ops had been taking over the farm supply and
commodity marketing business by buying up and absorbing private
independent companies and becoming gigantic businesses with
management effectively insulated from the farmer patron, who by
now had little real voice in the decision making.

The Farm Bureau, Resnick also noted, had been repeatedly telling
the IRS that its membership was limited to people who "are
engaged in carrying on a farm or farms or who have a major
agricultural interest." Branding such reports to the IRS as "an
outright lie" Resnick pointed out in Illinois (in a pattern that persists
to this day) in 1967, the state where the Farm Bureau has its
national headquarters (often referred to as the "agricultural
pentagon") and its largest state organization, there was a loss of
9000 farms while the State Farm Bureau showed an
increase in membership of 10,681.

Discussing the Farm Bureau's membership policies, Resnick told
many stories he had heard of what some farmers called the
"gestapo-like tactics" on the part of the Farm Bureau management;
how they waged (in the Bureau's own words) "neutralization"
campaigns against ministers who
spoke out against them and how members who questioned policy
would suddenly find their Farm Bureau insurance policies cancelled.

Another area of AFBF activity that Rep. Resnick found alarming at
the time was the Farm Bureau's close ties with the political far right
in
the U.S. "What might once have been a conservative, business-
oriented organization is now considerably more," the New York
Congressman declared in 1968. "By my calculation, the Farm
Bureau is the most
efficient conduit now in existence for the dissemination of right-wing
propaganda. The Bureau is a perfect sewer line for transporting
right-wing ideology, particularly to our young people."

It would be unfair to blame the AFBF entirely for the recent spate of
facist, racist, anti-Semitic vigilante farm groups which have sprung
up
throughout the U.S. in the past 20-25 years, born in frustration and
nurtured by a continuing farm depression. However, the Farm
Bureau, through its long-standing role as a visible propaganda
agent for right-wing extremism, certainly made itself the spawning
ground for the misdirected, unsocial and violent behavior that has
become the hallmark in many of the nation's farm communities.

JOSEPH RESNICK, 1924-1969 --- R.I.P.

In the spring, 1969 Congressman Joseph Resnick left Washington,
D.C. and returned to private law practice. He still harbored,
however, a deep and abiding interest in the AFBF. He and his
former staff person, Samuel R. Berger, decided to co-author a book
detailing the activities of the Farm Bureau and attempt to answer
those questions that the Congressman's earlier probes had raised.
Berger traveled across the country, interviewing hundreds of people
and reviewing pages and pages of Congressional documents
amassed during and after Resnick's hearings. Suddenly at age 45,
Resnick died in October, 1969.

Berger, now head of Clinton's National Security Agency (NSA)
doggedly pursued the investigation and in 1971 authored Dollar
Harvest: An Expose of the Farm Bureau. Curiously, in Berger's
official biography the book is now simply referred to as "a book on
American rural politics" and in all the newspaper accounts and
profiles of Berger since he has taken over as the head of the NSA
no mention is made of his authorship of Dollar Harvest.

Nevertheless, in chapter after chapter Berger details how the Farm
Bureau could more accurately be described not as a farm
organization, but as a multi-billion dollar business combine with
interests ranging from insurance to oil, fertilizer to finance, mutual
funds to urban shopping centers.

"The farmer" he noted, "has increasingly become the customer, not
the constituent of an organization that today regards agriculture
largely as the market for its own goods and services, as the
cornerstone of a commercial empire."

Berger goes to show how the Farm Bureau's political power
stemmed first
from its huge business earnings that are frequently siphoned off
(while
the IRS is busy elsewhere) into tax-exempt state and national Farm
Bureau chapters to be used for lobbying and other political ventures.
Second, the Farm Bureau's political power has been enhanced by
the
public and the Congress's long-standing acceptance of the AFBF
as "the
voice of American agriculture," when in fact a near majority of the
membership joined the Bureau only as a prerequisite to buying its
insurance.


CORPORATE AGRIBUSINESS RESEARCH PROJECT
WEB SITE POSTED ON WORLD WIDE WEB

The Corporate Agribusiness Research Project (CARP) web site is now
posted on the World Wide  Web featuring: THE AGBIZ TILLER, THE
AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER and "Between the  Furrows."

THE AGBIZ TILLER, the progeny of the one-time printed newsletter, now
becomes an on-line
news feature of the Project. Its initial essay concerns one Hillary
Rodham Clinton, the newly
declared candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in New York State.

In "HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON'S $99,537 MIRACLE: IT'S THE PITS!!!" now
available
through THE AGBIZ TILLER you'll learn some of the messy details behind
her cattle futures
"miracle." You will also find in this section the archives for past
editions of the THE AGBIZ
TILLER.

By popular reader demand THE AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER section includes not
only an
issue-by-issue and verbose index of this weekly e-mail newsletter, but
an archive of all the past
issues.

In "Between the Furrows" there is a wide range of pages designed to
inform and educate readers on
the inner workings of corporate agribusiness. In addition to CARP's
"Mission Statement,"
"Overview" and the Project director's "Publication Background," the
viewer will find a helpful "Fact  Sheet" on agriculture and corporate
agribusiness; a "Fact Miners" page which is an effort to assist the
reader in the necessary art of researching corporations; a "Links" page
which allow the
reader to survey various useful public interest, government and
corporate web sites; a  Feedback"
page for reader input, and a page where readers can order directly the
editor's The Corporate
Reapers: The Book of Agribusiness.

The CARP web site was designed and produced by ElectricArrow
of Seattle,
Washington.
http://www.electricarrow.com

Simply by clicking on either of the addresses below all the
aforementioned features and information
are yours to enjoy, study, absorb and sow.

http://www.ea1.com/CARP/

--- end forwarded text


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