By Randy Dugger
I traveled to Washington D.C. recently to advocate for 2018 Farm Bill policies that would allow U.S. farmers and ranchers opportunities to participate in fair and open markets. The trip, which brought diverse farmers from all over the country to D.C., was sponsored by two national organizations, Organization for Competitive Markets and Family Farm Action.
While there, we delivered the message from more than 90 farm and food groups that are urging members of the Senate to include commodity checkoff reform in its version of the 2018 Farm Bill. The U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee recently advanced its version of the bill by a vote of 20-1. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brought the bill up for a vote on the floor last week.
Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) offered an amendment equivalent to the Opportunities for Fairness in Farming (OFF) Act, SA 3074, when the bill reached the Senate floor. This legislation would have brought transparency and accountability to commodity checkoff programs by prohibiting lobbying, reining in conflicts of interest, and stopping anti-competitive activities that harm other commodities and consumers. SA 3074 also would force checkoff programs to make program budgets public and undergo periodic audits.
There are many reasons checkoff reform is needed. The checkoff programs were originally intended to pool money for commodity-specific promotion and research. Funded through mandatory payments taken directly from farmers, these programs were supposed to benefit all farmers. Instead, the wasteful and secretive programs have done much to promote and support corporate agribusiness, while leaving independent family farmers out to dry. In an article posted by Brownfield Ag News, Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly didn’t acknowledge just how far off-course the commodity programs have gone—despite the evidence. Research and repeated audits have shown that illegal relationships between checkoff boards and lobbying organizations have formed and checkoff funds continue to be misused. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been collected and improperly spent — with little to no accountability or transparency— hurting the Indiana family farmers that Donnelly claims to represent. The organizations that pushed against this reform, including the National Cattleman’s Beef Association, National Pork Producers Council and others, are the very organizations that receive checkoff program funds.
For five years, Organization for Competitive Markets has been engaged in a lawsuit calling for the disclosure of financial records of the National Beef Board and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) checkoff expense funds. The NCBA, in conjunction with United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), blocked the release of financial information by redacting the majority of the data in the documents released and, within the past month, the NCBA and USDA obtained a court order for the return of any and all documents released. The system, as it stands, is clearly not transparent.
As an Indiana family farmer and a board member for Indiana Farmers Union, I called on our legislators, Senators Todd Young and Donnelly, to support Lee and Booker’s efforts to the keep the Farm Bill for farmers — and not for corporate interests. But they didn’t do it. Instead, they sided with corporate agriculture special interests and voted against the reform that would bring much-needed transparency and accountability to a program riddled with abuse.
This government program was built with good intentions, but it has been plagued with mismanagement. By leaving the checkoff program as it is, how can we trust any other government program to work in the best interests of family farmers? The current state of our commodity checkoff programs has the potential to taint other government food and agriculture programs in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of family farmers and millions of consumers. Misuse of commodity checkoff funds undermines the confidence of the American people, and it is time our legislators fix this well-intended program by bringing it back to its original scope.
Randy Dugger is owner of Dugger Family Farm and Board Member of Indiana Farmers Union. Send comments to [email protected].
