Published in America, October 30, 1999

During the past summer, a disastrous drought destroyed crops in New England, the Atlantic states and the South. Farm prices in all farm products-grain, livestock, fiber-are at historic low levels. "Nightline" has reported that in Minnesota 10,000 farmers will go out of business in the near future. In Iowa, 6,000 farmers are reported to be in trouble. Already manufacturing and supply centers like John Deere and Firestone are closing their doors, laying off employees who have been furloughed for lack of demand. Cities as well as the countryside are increasingly feeling the devastation of weather and market forces on rural life.
Increasingly too, consumers are asking questions about their food, its safety and security. About their milk they wonder if the dairy farmer injected it with growth hormones and whether those hormones adversely affect human health. Was the grain for the bread grown by a family farmer struggling to stay afloat amidst growing consolidation in the grain industry and its control by three multinational giants? Is the pork chop from a pig fed in a massive hog barn, with a huge lagoon for the collection of animal waste? Is the grain in the cereal for the children genetically engineered? Was it grown with herbicides and pesticides? Were the chickens who laid the breakfast eggs raised organically and allowed to range freely, or were they penned massively together with thousands or millions of other chickens and fed antibiotics that become part of the food chain and lessen human resistance to disease?
Today, during a grave crisis in agriculture, we must ask ourselves these and many other questions-about our food, about the produce from the land and plants and animals upon which our life depends-because agriculture in our country is undergoing rapid and radical changes. We are being forced to choose between a sustainable food system or an industrial food system. Sustainable food systems factor in the environment and future generations; industrial good systems factor these out and focus only on profit.
One of the most significant changes in the food system today is the relentless loss of family-sized farms. The number of family farms has dropped precipitously in recent years-by 300,000 since 1979-as multinational agribusiness corporations have gained more control over farm production, commodities and markets. In January of this year, people in at least 13 states became ill and 16 died after eating hot dogs contaminated with the bacteria Listeria. The Federal Centers for Disease Control linked the dramatic increase in food-borne illnesses to the industrialization of agriculture and the enormous size of many processing facilities.

Why should we, citizens of the nation and members of churches, synagogues and communities, have to worry about the future of rural America, where most of our food and fiber is produced? What is there about the future of agriculture in our nation that is in doubt or is troubling and worrisome for us? Who is shaping the future of rural America? Who will be left after the current farm crisis has run its course? We must be concerned because our Federal food policy is at best uneven in its support of a more sustainable future for agriculture. Consider, for example, the following:
* The United States Department of Agriculture has recently received an exception which allows poultry to be sent to Mexico's restricted zones (classified as such by the United States government) for processing. These zones now have been declared free of microbial illnesses, so that former restrictions on the shipping of whole carcasses from the United States to Mexico for processing and reshipment to our country are allowed by the United States Department of Agriculture.
* In January 1998 the U.S.D.A. released the report of its National Commission on Small Farms, A Time to Act. The report states that 94 percent of the farms in the United States fit the definition of small farms. Recently, most of the members of the National Commission on Small Farms joined the campaign called A Time to Act and issued a report card to the U.S.D.A. that gives several D's on various aspects of the implementation of the agenda of the report, including market access and welfare of farmworkers.
* The United States recently blocked a treaty on genetic modification of agricultural products in Cartagena, Columbia. More than 120 countries supported the treaty. The United States led less than 10 countries in opposing it. The treaty would have limited the market for genetically-altered foods, a direction upon which the United States has embarked with little attention to the unintended harmful consequences of such a policy.
* The Environmental Protection Agency has recently concluded an agreement with the National Pork Producers' Council to allow environmental self-audits by hog factories. Such an agreement was concluded behind the scenes amid the convening of ostensibly public hearings meant to determine how the E.P.A. was to enforce regulations regarding Confined Animal Feeding Operations. The film "A Civil Action" tells the story of how two large corporations in eastern Massachusetts fought identification as toxic polluters. Is there any chance that these hog factories will reasonably and responsibly police themselves? The track record is not promising.

Wendell Berry, in his essay, "Conserving Communities," which appears in his collection of essays, Another Turn of the Crank, analyzes the forces at work in our globalized economy. He sees a split between "locals" and "globals" or a movement toward a two-party system which divides over the fundamental issue of community. On one side is the party of the global economy; on other side is the party of local community. Regarding the party of local community, he writes:
The natural membership of the community party consists of small farmers, ranchers, and market gardeners, worried consumers, owners and employees of small shops, stores, community banks, and other small businesses, self-employed people, religious people, and conservationists. The aims of this party are only two: the preservation of ecological diversity and integrity, and the renewal, on sound cultural and ecological principles, of local economies and local communities (p.18).
In January of this year in Mexico City, Pope John Paul II clearly allied himself with the community party when it comes to the support of local cultures and the environment against the forces of neoliberalism and homogenization. In the apostolic exhortation The Church in America, the Pope states:
However, if globalization is ruled merely by the laws of the market applied to suit the powerful, the consequences cannot but be negative. These are, for example, the absolutizing of the economy, unemployment, the reduction and deterioration of public services, the destruction of the environment and natural resources, the growing distance between the rich and the poor, unfair competition which puts the poor nations in a situation of ever increasing inferiority (No. 20).
The Pope underlined the moral responsibility of the Church before the growing phenomenon of glolabization:
The Church in America is called...to cooperate with every legitimate means in reducing the negative effects of globalization, such as the domination of the powerful over the weak, especially in the economic sphere, and the loss of the values of local cultures in favor of a misconstrued homogenization (No. 55).
He goes on to indicate clearly the erroneous understanding of humanity that underlies certain social and political structures in our day:
More and more, in many countries of America, a system known as 'neoliberalism' prevails; based on a purely economic conception of man, this system considers profit and the laws of the market as its only parameters, to the detriment of the dignity of and the respect due to individuals and peoples. At times this system has become the ideological justification for certain attitudes and behavior in the social and political spheres leading to the neglect of the weaker members of society. Indeed, the poor are becoming ever more numerous, victims of specific policies and structures which are often unjust (No. 56 ).
Loss of esteem for local cultures includes the loss of esteem for rural cultures. It is the result of homogenization, which flourishes when neoliberalism prevails. Legitimate means for countering such homogenization and predatory economics include political advocacy, education and pastoral care for the victims.
Wendell Berry and John Paul II are in significant agreement in their analysis of the situation. Globalization is the economic and communications process currently being driven by multinational companies through economic integration and restructuring. Wendell Berry's community party would be one of the forces that would presumably advocate for local cultures and resist homogenization.

In a country that increasingly takes for granted what we eat, who grew it, how it was grown, how its growth affected the environment and the local community, how it got to us, and how it affects our bodies, it is paramount to raise the questions about globalization's negative impacts and to search for more positive alternatives. In the midst of a devastating crisis in the U.S. food production system, we need to scrutinize our options and choose carefully. We are at a crossroads. What can we do? The following are actions which we can take to foster sound agriculture in a sound local community and culture:
- We can oppose the industrialization of agriculture and animal factories, and the policies which depopulate the countryside, erode security regarding our food, gambling with our food safety and food production, put our family farmers out of work, and despoil our environment.
- We can encourage church leadership and grassroots organizations to speak out for family-sized farms, and to act on behalf of family farmers.
- We can work to introduce education about sustainable agriculture, in accord with God's plan for creation, into the curriculums of all our schools.
- We can support an alternative food system which is sustainable or regenerative. We can use our commercial quality kitchens in parishes, church halls, and other church institutions as local processing centers and incubators for local food production.
- We can use our halls and parking lots for farmer markets and direct agricultural marketing.
- We can have our institutions buy locally and support a regional food system.
- We can support policies which work against the loss of prime farm land, control urban sprawl, and develop balanced approaches to growth.
- We can promote cook books for our local communities that contain recipes using local foods and that celebrate special days, seasons and events expressive of the wider connection between spirituality, and the land and the food and fiber produced on the land.
- We can frequent restaurants in which food is produced by family farms of the region, farms on which a sustainable form of agriculture is practiced.
- We can encourage and support efforts like pasture poultry, pasture pork and beef and locally-produced vegetables.
- We can encourage labeling which tells us who produced the food, where it was produced, and how it was produced.
- We can support anti-trust activity in the sector of food production.

We can do all of this and more to support an alternative to the industrialization of agriculture, which continues in our nation at an increasingly rapid speed. Christian churches and communities have always prayed, "Give us this day our daily bread." Churches have a duty to insist that quality be an essential element in the future of rural America. They can fulfill their responsibility for moral leadership-expressed in preaching, teaching and public statements-through the support of sound legislative policies, the funding of pastoral remedies and the promotion of grassroots on behalf of family-sized farms.
A Time To Act, the report of the National Commission on Small Farms states plainly:
The pace of industrialization of agriculture has quickened. The dominant trend is a few, large, vertically integrated firms controlling the majority of food and fiber products in an increasingly global processing and distribution system. If we do not act now, we will no longer have a choice about the kind of agriculture we desire as a Nation (p.9).
Now is the time to act. Our food system is in crisis. As eaters, we will make choices and decide the future of the food system: what kind of food we will eat, who will produce it, what it will contain, how food is related to other parts of our economy and culture. As the saying goes, "We are what we eat."

Brother David Andrews, C.S.C.
Executive Director of The National Catholic Rural Life Conference

The Most Reverend Raymond L. Burke, D.D., J.C.D.
Bishop of the Diocese of La Crosse
President of the Board of Directors of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference