STATEMENT OF DENA HOFF, CHAIR – NORTHERN PLAINS TASK FORCE and TRADE
TASK FORCE CHAIR OF NATIONAL FAMILY FARM COALITION
– PRESENTED AT FOOD AND AGRICULTURE DAY:
– Thursday December 2, 1999; Methodist Church, Seattle, WA
– For comment or interviews: In Seattle (202) 903-5111; In Montana, (406) 687-3645
Good Morning. I am Dena Hoff, a family farmer from Eastern Montana. I am the current chair of the
Northern Plains Resource Council, a Montana grassroots organization dealing with family agricultural and
conservation issues, and Trade Task Force Chair of the National Family Farm Coalition.
My family is one of the 95% of Montana farm and ranch families whose income this year has been greatly
reduced, not because hail, drought or floods or disease robbed us of our harvest; not because my husband
and I are inefficient managers; not because we don’t live within our means. My pickup is a 1970 Ford.
We have an excellent lamb crop. We weaned heavy calves without hormone implants. We have nearly six
tons of alfalfa per acre; we raise almost all our own food. We have delayed for yet another year many
much needed capital improvements and purchases for lack of cash flow.
We have always been told we could succeed if we were willing to work hard. Any person in America
working two or three minimum wage jobs, and any farmer in America working seven days a week from
light till dark can tell you that’s a lie.
I raised four children who, like my neighbor’s grown children do not see a future for themselves or their
children on the family farm.
Why can’t efficient hardworking family farmers and ranchers make a living?
When market bargaining power becomes unequally distributed, farm prices are not set by the laws of
supply and demand, but by whoever holds the greater share of power.
This power is held by a few enormous agribusiness corporations who control our nation’s grain and meat
supply, forcing us to become serfs on our own land or quit farming.
Our Justice Department has approved a record number of mergers (4,728 reportable mergers in 1998
alone), putting more and more power into fewer and fewer hands.
The booming economy in the U.S. is not shared by rural America. Montana residents have the lowest
annual incomes in the entire country. Fifty out of 50. Montana farmers and ranchers can’t settle up with
their bankers this fall.
The prosperity promised by the free traders from the export market has not materialized for family
agriculture anywhere in the world.
In Seattle this week we have repeatedly heard 3 things from official WTO delegates.
The first is that the WTO is based on rules. 700 pages of rules, actually, which provide an enforceable cold
governing markets and trade worldwide. 700 pages of rules not enforced by national elected governments,
but by the WTO itself – making the WTO a powerful system of world government.
These rules are supposed to apply to all countries regardless of national differences in cultural food
preferences, economic and social structures, and widely diverse methods of agricultural production – a sort
of “one size fits all world market”
Any clothing shopper can tell you one size never fits all, and these 700 pages of rules don’t fit every
country.
We hear the words “free trade”. What is free about selling your commodities to a very few buyers at prices
they manipulate which are below our cost of production?
What is free about trade when countries that overproduce are allowed to dump subsidized surplus
commodities into other countries and undermine and destroy their domestic markets?
What is free about trade that forces countries to import a commodity when they already have a surplus of
that commodity?
We are told the WTO is democratic because member countries have elected their leaders who represent the
people.
What is democratic about an organization completely insulated from public opinion? Who won’t listen to
civil society?
What is democratic about an organization with the power to challenge and repeal laws enacted by
democratic nation-states?
The reality is that the U.S. sets the price for commodities on the world market. In order to have prices fair
to family agriculture, we need a new domestic farm policy which will promote long-term sustainability
with fair prices for family farmers here and around the world.
We must not allow multinational agribusiness to use the rules of the WTO to challenge and repeal laws and
policies made by sovereign nations to protect their family agriculture and their food security. Bring the
economy back home.
Thank you.