In a room full of farmers

For the past six weeks, I spent every Wednesday with a group of farm women who wanted to learn about financial management. There were several organic farmers, a horse farmer, conventional dairy farmers, and a strong representation of corn and soybean farmers. Although I have been to a number of sustainable farming conferences and classes, I had never been in a class with both conventional and alternative farmers, and it felt really important to me.

I did not grow up wanting to be a “sustainable” farmer; I had never heard of such a thing. Instead, I just wanted to be a farmer, maybe like my relatives in northwestern Minnesota who grow row crops. I wanted to be like my mother’s aunt, who had lived so long in the country that even when she moved to a nursing home in town, she looked out toward the parking lot and saw her late husband heading out to the barn. I wanted to be like our dear friend Kurt, who let me work on his conventional dairy farm when I was 17 years old. I wanted to have a kitchen like his parents’ kitchen, steeped with life and rooted in the rhythms of milking.

So I felt humbled to finally be included as just a regular farmer in this financial management class, which was called Annie’s Project. The leader of the class, an extension educator, worked very hard to be sure there would be useful information both for sustainable and conventional farmers. It worked really well. Some information was applicable to any kind of farm, some of it was not. My eyes glazed over a little bit during the intricate session about marketing corn and soybeans at the elevator, but I was grateful to know more about what my neighbors do.

It wasn’t until the last class that I felt some of my buttons get pushed. During a presentation about crop insurance, a very likable insurance representative started talking about genetically modified crops. He said that Monsanto convinced the federal government that their modified crops were so resistant to bugs that people who plant them should be given a significant discount on crop insurance. Basically, bugs die when they eat the genetically modified plants, and so the crops are less vulnerable to loss. The number of farmers who use this discount has increased tremendously in the past two years.

Farmers can get this insurance deal if they plant at least 75% of their crop in the GMO variety, and people will come and inspect some farms that have applied for this discount to be sure that they are actually using the GMO seeds. Officials take tissue samples from the plants to be sure. There has been some confusion, the insurance agent said, because farmers who plant GMOs are also supposed to keep at least 20% of their crops as a “refuge,” using seeds that are not genetically modified in that portion of their field. So understandably, when officials come out to take tissue samples, some farmers lead them to their “refuge” corn, showing them that they are indeed following the rules. However, these officials want to verify that Monsanto’s seeds are being used, not that the farmers are keeping a refuge area. This has apparently happened often, but fortunately, officials test twice before imposing sanctions on the farmer.

This whole thing was sounding very creepy to me. Bugs die when they eat the plants? Wouldn’t that have some wider implications over time? And officials are testing to verify that fields are full of bug-poisoning plants? And every year there are more and more of these fields?

It did not sound creepy to many of the people in the room. The insurance representative seemed delighted with the effectiveness of modern technology. A young farmer and mother (who I like very much) questioned why the refuge areas were necessary. “Are they a refuge area for the bugs?” she asked incredulously.

Later I heard the insurance agent commiserating with another farmer, apparently bewildered by people’s concerns about GMOs. “You would think that the Greenpeace people would like these plants because it means less chemicals are used to get rid of the bugs,” he was saying.

After that presentation was done, another member of the class who represented an organization of corn growers passed out information. One pamphlet described how the people in the United States spend less money on food than people in almost any other country. The pamphlet said this was evidence that cheap corn was making our country more secure. I’d heard that fact before, but I heard it used as evidence that our current food system is not stable because it does not reflect the true cost of producing the food.

I’m impressed by how differently people see these issues, and I have no clue how to reach across these wildly different perspectives. Growing self-righteous feels like the most tempting option, but I don’t think I can afford that. Some other people probably can afford it, but some other people can probably afford to take a trip to Hawaii too. If I indulged in either of those luxuries right now, I would be shooting myself in the foot. I do not want to see conventional farmers as the “other.” I have invested too much love to walk away from the dream of sitting down again in a room full of farmers –sustainable and conventional -- and just being one of them.