For those that may  have missed the 60 minutes segment on the Farm
Bureau.  Here is a Press Release about the segment.


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CBS NEWS
524 West 57 Street New York, NY 10019-2985

April 6, 2000

FARMERS SAY THE FARM BUREAU HAS ABANDONED THEM FOR BIG BUSINESS
Farm Bureau INTERESTS ARE A BIG FACTOR IN DEMISE OF THE FAMILY FARM -
“60 MINUTES” SUNDAY

The Farm Bureau, the non-profit, tax-exempt organization which calls
itself the “voice of agriculture,” is a
rural institution known to family farmers across the nation. But many
farmers will learn for the first time on
this Sunday’s 60 MINUTES that in recent years, while tens of thousands
of farmers are sinking in debt, the
association they support with their annual dues has been building a
for-profit business empire worth
billions - and investing millions of dollars in some of the same giant
agribusiness corporations the Farm
Bureau members say are driving them out of business. Mike Wallace’s
report will be broadcast Sunday, April
9 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

The Farm Bureau has many for-profit interests outside of traditional
farming. Its Iowa chapter alone owns
and operates a $3.5 billion insurance and financial services company
that’s traded on the New York Stock
Exchange. That company, FBL Financial Group, gave thousands of stock
options to its directors, including
the presidents of 14 state Farm Bureaus. Wallace questioned Ed
Wiederstein, president of the Iowa Farm
Bureau and Chairman of FBL Financial about the “couple of hundred
thousand bucks from stock options that
you cashed in” in 1998, a year of severe economic hardship for Iowa
farmers. “Yeah, that’s right, and that no
doubt helped me out,” says Wiederstein. “I’ve got four kids in school,
and that’s part of it. I mean, that’s
just the way it is.”

The Farm Bureau says its investments make it possible for it to fund
education programs and to provide
farmers things they need, such as insurance. But some family farmers say
that the Farm Bureau’s investments
have placed them in the pocket of corporate America. “All [the Farm
Bureau’s] decisions are made for
corporate America because they own part of it,” Iowa farmer Linus
Solberg tells Wallace. The farmers point
to the Farm Bureau’s efforts to defeat national legislation that would
have imposed an 18- month moratorium
on corporate agribusiness mergers. Through its various holdings, the
Iowa Farm Bureau’s FBL Financial
Group has invested millions in Conagra, a diversified food giant that
has frequently engaged in mergers.
Another Farm Bureau company in Mississippi owns more than 18,000 shares
in Premium Standard Farms, an
enormous corporate hog processor that family farmers say is squeezing
them out of business.

Not all the Farm Bureau’s investments are agriculture-related, however.
The Iowa Farm Bureau and two of its
affiliated companies sank at least $1 million into AccessAir, a start-up
airline in Des Moines that recently
filed for bankruptcy. “They’re using farmer’s money to invest outside
agriculture while farmers are
struggling,” says Gary Bierschenk, an Iowa farmer who ran unsuccessfully
for the presidency of the Iowa
Farm Bureau. “That just burns me up.”

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, which has
battled the Farm Bureau on
environmental issues, tells Wallace that what the Farm Bureau does
should concern all Americans, not just
farmers. Fortune magazine routinely ranks the Farm Bureau among the most
potent lobbyists in Washington
and, as Cook points out, its
agenda goes far beyond farming. “If you’re concerned about civil rights,
they oppose the Voting Rights Act
of 1965. They want to repeal it, cornerstone of civil rights law,” Cook
says. “If you think that the minimum
wage is low, they oppose raising it. If you think that we shouldn’t be
drilling off-shore for oil, they want to
drill off-shore for oil.” Even some Farm Bureau leaders are surprised to
learn of the association’s
non-farming agenda. When confronted with his own organization’s call for
the repeal Voting Rights Act,
Iowa Farm Bureau president Wiederstein told Wallace he was “shocked.”

What makes the Farm Bureau such a Beltway powerhouse (George W. Bush
addressed its annual convention
this past January) is the size of its membership - nearly five million,
making it the nation’s largest farm
organization. But what many people do not know is that many, if not
most, of the Farm Bureau’s members
are not farmers at all and live in urban areas far from rural America.
Sallyann Garner, a bank vice- president
in Chicago, tells Wallace she was surprised to learn she was a Farm
Bureau member just because she bought
insurance from a Farm Bureau company. When asked by Wallace if she was
aware that the organization she
belongs to opposes, among other things, the
Equal Rights Amendment, the Voting Rights Act, gun control and an
increase in the minimum wage, Garner
tells Wallace, “I did not know that.”

Press Contact: Kevin Tedesco (NY)
                                (212) 975-2329
                                [log in to unmask]

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