People & Land - Volume 1 Number 2 - Winter 1974 OCR Reduced

7/28/2019 People & Land - Volume 1 Number 2 - Winter 1974 OCR Reduced

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THE NEWSPAPER OF THE LAND REFORM MOVEMENT

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ERSThe response to the first issue of PEOPLE & LAND was overwhelming. Wehave received hundreds of letters and thousands of orders for reprints. We can'tprint all of the lett ers we received but here are a few. Please continue to sendus correspondence, ideas, news items, photos, cart oons, etc. And by all means,pass PEOPLE & LAND around to your friends and colleagues. Let' s spreadthe word!

APLUG I was so impressed with your first is-sue of People &: Land that in order togive it the type of "plug" Wdeserved,I had parts of it reprinted in Rural1lmes.

In a separate letter is my contribution to your work With the bopethat I will be on your mailing listwith permission to p r o m o . t ~ J>.eople& Land by occasionally reprin'tinga special aJ1icle.

Harold R. Minor Rural TimesAlbany, IndianaFANTASTIC

Your first issue of People & Landwas fantastic. P l e ~ s e send me twoadditional copies. I enclose a dollarto cover the cost.

Cynthia RoseCambridge, Mass.

SMART CONSUMERSWe were really excited to see the magazine People &Larrd. It's 'Yell putan

as an expression of what land reformis all about. A couple of us are becoming quiteadept at the technical organizationaspects of the land reform-propertylaw phase that' every land holdingand preservation group must becomefamilar with. I f we can be of anyhelp in that respect, it's an offer.

We have some good people in positions of responsibility who will beassets in assisting us in the acquisition of land for Trusteeship, and asour skills widen in that area, we'll bewilling to share our capabilities. ThePacific Northwest needs an effectiveland reform movement. You shouldsee how many acres in this region areowned by timber and nciw, manufacturing interests (we're working onthat one, incidentally).

Tom BahrEvergreen Land Trust Assn.Clear Lake, Washington

BY GEORGE!Before you go any further with your

to muddle-headed "reasoning" andlack of radicalism.

N o ~ e r e in People &Land is anymentiqn made of the one essentialc o m l > ? . ~ n t of the land question.The issue is not who holds titleto lancl\for use and possession, bu twho recc;ives the economic rent ofland. :.J

In o r d ~ r to enforce the equalrights 9f all human beings to the giftsof a t ~ r e , it is necessary to collect .for public purposes the economicrent of land. This proposal is trulyradical in that it actually abolishes"private property" in land. Landwould thus be restored to its rightful status-the common property ofall the people.

This is the proposal outlined soeloquentlyby Henry George in.hisfamous book, Progress and Poverty,and which later came to be known. .as the ~ i n g l e Tax.

By the way, Fred Harris apparently failed to point out that whenWinston Churchill proclaimed landmonopoly to be the mother of allmonopolies, he also said that theoruy solution to the problem was thead valorem taxation of land values tocollect the ground rent for the community, as proposed by HenryGeorge.

Richard PensaclSanFrancisco, (;alifomia-FAN LETTER

This is a fan lett er. Volume 1/Number 1 was the best thing I've read ina long, long while. An excellentnewspaper.

Somehow, though it says so much

Thank you very much. I will senda donation when I can.

Land for people, not profit!Carol A. HineNew York City

FIRST HOMES FI RSTI need to receive People & Land fororganizing in the North Georgiamountains. We're fighting Atlanta'ssecond-home syndrome moving intothis recently "discovered" area.

June TramelA t l a n t a ~ Georgia.GREAT GLANCE

I just had a glance at People &Landat a friend's house, but it was one ofthe most encouraging sights I've seenin ages. I'd been thinking along sim-ilar lines fo r quite a while.

Van HowellWesthampton Beach, N.Y.WRONG SCAPEGOAT

'I am the director of the boycott act-ivities of the United FarmworkersUnion h ~ r e in Eugene. I was e s ~ c i -ally interested in yqur articles on agribusiness rip-offs. I am appreciativeof your outstanding Declaration ofPrfuciples, especially those regardingthe exploitation of rural labor.

In this area of the country, as inmuch of the West, the small farmeris slowly dying out. Actually beingdriven of f the land by monopolisticindustries interested in land development and speculation. But manysmall farmers regard Cesar Chavezand the UFW as the scapegoat fortheir plight and obstruct all efforts to


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make any payment for membership.I enclose one dollar to pay for thenext issue or two. There is much interest in Oregon in land reform, andI will try to show copies of your magazine to as many people as possible.

Jere RosemeyerEugene, Oregon

GUmRIE'S SONGThe crucial battle in the HudsonValley during the next ten years, Ibelieve, will be to preserve the lindfrom exploitation by developerswho are taking advantage of the factthat the water is now going to beclean enough to swim in and ,boat inand fish in on ce again,.No small town' is going to be ableto withstand them .' They'll .make usoffers we can't afford to refuse unless

..a master plan of the whole. HudsonValley is drawn up statingexactlywhere it will no t be allowed.

I look forward to receiving yourmagazine and enclose a few dollarsfor postage.

One last thing .Apropos yourlead article, "This Land is Not OurLand," you might be interested in seeing the article I wrote on t!!atsong for the Village Voice a c O U J ? l ~of years ago.

Pete SeegerBeacon,N.Y .

.;.. ' ! I:-' ' 'I \ IWe 'ue reprinted excerpts from thearticle on page 15.

VENCEREMOS!Enclosed please find our check for$10.00 to cover membership.

for the depression. I'm used to making it on no money by working formyself and my friends. The countryis full of resources bu t someone ownseverything and they charge high pri-ces. _So many people don't see the depression coffiing or are fearfullysticking thei,: heads in the sand. Alas for that too. The T.V. and the suburbs have laid the basis for the fas-. cism we wilt have in winning our landback. But ~ will get it back someday. .Our strug&le is one. The land be-. .iongs to the tiller.

. . . Mike PilarskiPeshastin, Washington

. A PLACE TO RETIRE_Yo u have asked for s u g g e s t i o ~ s . So .I'll offer one

You sa:y that the people .in Ap-.. P a l ~ c h i a are impoverished:' And' '

there are alsci other parts of the countiy where there just isn't enoughmoney. But_no ne seems to thinkof a imple way of improving the .lots of these areas.-

We have a' large number of peopleeither r e t i r e ~ or retiring. Since their.incomes are often small, the overde- veloped places do not offer them

good places to retire. Ifthey couldbe induced to go to some of these impoverished l a ~ s to retire, thatwould solve two problems at once.Their incomes would be brought intoplaces that need additional money.Retired people do no t take up all thejobs. And they all must eat and buyclothes and other necessities. So theirincome would be largely spent where

farming and other land reforms, andas you can see, I have tied all of i t-the whole subject of decentralization-to the oncoming Bicentennialas a goal line toward which to striveas a turning point.

Ed WimmerForward America, Inc.Covington, Kentucky

GET AMERICA BACKIt was'a thrfll to read your first edition of People &Land. I want tothank you for sending it to me. Idid not know there were so manydifferent groups working together tosave this natiail; to get it back underthe control of he American citizens,backto the p o s i t i o ~ where our people \ViJ.l be proud to use capital fet- .ters to spell THE UNITED STATESof AMERICA.

' 'If ; only a"few short years ago, thepresent condition of our country hadbeen -prophesied arid flashed on aTVscreen for Americans to see, very fewwould have believed it. Some havestuck their head in the .sand and refuse to believe it now. Without adoubt, the terrible plight in Washington, the havoc in our large cities, thecongestion and turmoil in our prisons, the steady fade-out of ourtowns and small cities, due to the systematic elimination of hundreds ofthousands of farmers each year-all ofthis and much more is true becauseit is past, no t prophesy.What are our citizens going to do?Are they going to appear as driftwood and continue down streamwherever the current takes them? Or

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CONTENTSEnergy Giveaway............................... 1Hidden Dimensions of the EnergyCrisis ................... ................... ..... 5We Gave At The Office ................. .... 5160-Acre Limit.................................. 6Watergate and Water Law .................. 6Midwest Land Conference .............. 72lh Million Pigs in a Poke....... ............ 8 Truth in Adventsing .............. . . . . . . . . . . 8Here's Lead In Your Wine ................ 9Supportinl the UFW Boycott............. 9Oil Kings Near Marvin's Garden......... 9Food Impedallsm.............................. 10Bury My Heart at the Peabody Mine . 11Black Mesa...................... 11People & Lo.nd (photos) ................. 12Uiban Land Reform ......................... 14Net Worth Tax Plan ............14Open Space Trusts . 14Woody Guthrie's Song ....................15Kurt Vonnegut on Wealth & a n d . ~ 15 ..The Organic Alternative .... : ......... 16EI Bracero Co-op Fum ...................16$6,000 on 1/5 Acre ........ ................ 16Land Use Planning For Wbom? ...... 17ABC Food Documentary .................. 18Tax Dodge At The Mine ................. 20Counti ng Calories .......... .................. 20Canadian Land Reform ..................... 21Looting Maine's PublicLots ........ .... 21Southern Woodcutters Strike ............ 21Nebraska's New Land Barons.: .......... 22Rocky Mountain Blues ...................... 22Land Reform Publications ...............22List of Active Groups ........................ 23


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Energy GiveawarContinued from page 1

Ufortunately, the track record of thefederal government is no t good. While othercountries have been moving more and moretoward public ownership of energy resources, theUnited States remains a firm believer in giving tothe few what belongs to us all.

The standard practice of the Interior De-partment is to lease energy resources on publiclands to private bidders. In areas where the resources are known to be substantial, bidding isusually competitive; elsewhere it is first-come,first-served, or based on random drawings. Generally the bidder pays an initial bonus plus a12* percent royalty when production begins.

The recent "crisis" has spurred the InteriorDepartment to accelerate its leasing of public resources to private corporations. Thus, within thepast year, hundreds of thousands of acres of offshore oil and gas reserves, oil shale l ands in Colorado and geothermal sites in California have beenturned over to Exxon & Co. This is in addition tothe hundreds of thousands of acres of western coalrights that were leased to th!' same corporation inthe years prior to 1973.

If he federal government wants to spurcompetition within the energy industry, the lllstthing it should do is to give control of new energyresources to the same corporations that controlthe present ones. A study'by the Federal PowerCommission found that eight major corporationsalready lease 74 percent of the available oil andgas reserves on federal lands. . ,:

Other studies have pointed out that thecorporations that control oil production and refining have now moved into competing sourcesof energy: 20 of the largest oil companies accountfor 60 percent of American natural gas productionand reserves, 29 of the top 50 coal companies aresubsidfaries of oil companies, and oil companies

ENERGY COMPANY LANDThe table includes acreage owned andleased, some of which is off-shore.Acreages for companies such as Shell,Exxon and ARCO were no t available.Source: .Moody's lndustriiJI

ManUGI .

Union Oil, for example, claims rights tounderground steam in the Geysers area north ofSan.Francisco, the only site in the United Statesat which geothermal power is now being generatedcommercially. In fact, there is some dispute overwhether Union Oil actually o\vns Ule geotherm:U

People & Land/Winter 197 4

CompanyStandard of IndianaTexacoMobilGulfPhillips Petl'oleumStandard of Calif.Continental

' ,

U.S. Acreage20.8 million9.9 million

7.8 millian7.5 milliork5.3 .million5.2 million 4.5 millian4.1 million

sponsoring the bill are Senators Abourezk, Hart,Kennedy, McGovern, Mcintyre, Metcalf, Mondaleand Moss. A similar corpo rati on has been proposed for the state of California by CongressmanJerome Waldie, a candidate this year for governor.

The Federal Oil and Gas Corporation; as well


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People & Land/Winter 197 4 Page 5

Less Water, Higher Food Prices

Hidden Dimensions of the Energy CrisisN ow that the oil bubble has burst, the race

is on to develop substitute processes to satisfy ourseemingly endless demands for energy. Corporateexecutives and federal officials have focused primarily on three such substitutes: nuclear fission,coal burning and gasification, and oil shale.There are many nasty problems with each ofthese techniques, but one they all have in common

-and perhaps the worst of all in the long run-isthat they all require enormous amounts of water.So much water, in fact, that an unintended consequence of solving the energy crisis may be thecreation of a far.more serious food and water crisis.Consider, for instance, the nuclear reaCtorthat the Los Angeles Department of Water andPower.wants to locate in the San Joaquin Valley.Putfuig aside for the moment the hazards of theplutonium used in such plants, see if you can comprehend these figures on the amount of water .thatthe proposed installation will use . . ~ s i d e s an.unspecified quantit y of agricultural-drainage water,the plant is expected to take about 100,000a c r e - f e ~ t of water each year from the CaliforniaAqueduct. Translated, that works out to the consumption of at least 33 billion !Wlons of water ayear, or a bout 4 billion flushes of the average. .toilet.

for over 80,000 acre-feet of water from theYellowstone River in Montana, which is approximately one-fourth of the total flow of that river.As reported in the last issue of People & Land, theU.S. Bureau of Reclamation has granted Tennecoa license to build a pump plant on the Yellowstonedespite the factJhat an environmental impactstudy has not be.en completed-an apparent violation of the law. '

We might g e . t b y with. 'less flushing, b u t c ~we stop eating too? ..The effects of mining oil shale may be stillmore severe. The Departme nt of Interior's own

impact statement for the prototype oil shaleleasing program estimates that amature 1 millionbarrel per day shale industry will require from . '121,000 to 189,000 acre-feet of water annually.Bear in mind that there are at least 1 trillion barrels of shale oil buried in Colorado, enough for about 2 ,740 years of mining at this rate. The actual"mature shale industry" will likely be a great deallarger than Interior suggests, especially with the

In California, for instance, sc phisticatedlinear programming techniques den .onstrate thatagricultural water use is insensitive w price untilit reaches a cost of about $18 per acre-foot, whichis 80 percent above current undervalued waterprices. At this poin t, water usage falls of f drastically. This means that a 50 percent decrease inirrigation water in California, brought abo ut bydepletion and higher prices, would result in a$1.5 billion reduction in crop production. Andwhen these crops disappear fr'om the market,prices on what's left will rise to the tune of $2billion.Thus the consumer gets hit from two sidesat once. Energy will cost more because--watercosts more, and food will cost more for the samereason, in addition to being more scarce.Moreover, the withdrawal-of cheap suppliesof irrigation water comes at a time when u.s. agriculture should be coming to grips with the rapiddepletion i,n its stocks of fossil water as well asfossil fuel. At present the U.s : is using twice asmuch water from groundwate r reserves as is beingnaturally recharged into these reserves.

Strip mining the West for coal will c r ~ a t eeven more dramatic water demands. A recentre-port by the National Academy of Sciences wanist h a t ''stripmining and processirfg ofWestern co1i.lwill raise ".staggering" water problems that havenot ye t been addressed. ,Western strip mining, saysthe report, may disrupt water supplies to the

- - r e ~ t q u a n t u m l e a p ID'-POSted.price&>folloib

In' h ~ r t . the United States must quicklyturn its attention to solar, geothermal, wind andother sources of energy that are no t only non- .polluting and non-depleting, but also not dependent on vast supplies of water. Otherwise the rushto coal, shale and fission will leave us gasping forwater in the future.

point where "the direct and indirect consequencesmay be far more important than the ability toreclaim the actual site of the mining."Regardless of whether the coal is b\uned to

The effect of such d_astic reductions i n irrigation water will inevitably be a decline in Westernagriculture. The cost of these projects for theAmerican consumer, first in terms of water andthen in terms offood, may be enormous.

We might get by with less flushing, but canwe stop eating t o o ? ~

-Michael Perelman and Hugh Gardner


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Page6 People & .Land/Wiilter 1974

160-Acre Limit

Legal Battles on the Western n tAtent ive readers of People &Land will re

call Paul Taylor's history of the battle over the160-acre limit (Summer 1973 issue, page 21).That battle-and a parallel one over the live-onthe-land requir ement-s till goes on. This reportmay be considered an update from the Westernfront.First, the setting. California's ImperialValley lies about 100 miles to the southeast of. - i .

the summer White House .at San Clemente. It isa large valley (about 1% times the size of RhodeIsland), hot (temperatures of 1200 are not uncommon in mid-summer), dry (total annual rainfall isbarely three inches) and flat. It is also one of therichest v.Ueys in the world, pr,qucing $300rnillipn annually ofcotion; sugar beets, le ttuce,alfalfa and-other crops. 'Whilbnakes the Imperial Valley rich is waterfrom the ~ o l o r a d o r i v e r , water brought tJu:ougha netwo,rk-of dam$.and canals built by the teder;Ugovernment in the 1930s and '40s . Where federalwater goes, so goes-in theory-the ReclamationAct of 1902. That act provides that landownerscan get water for 160 acres only' and that in orderto receive any water they must live on or neartheir land. The intent of the act was to break upthe land monopolies in the West'.Unfortunately, land monopolies in the .Westwere not broken up by the 1902 Reclamation Act.Rather, irrigation projects authorized under theact became just one more subsidy .to the big landowners. The acreage limitation and the residencyrequirement were not enforced, and the value ofnewly irrigated lands owned by large absenteeowners sky-rocketed.

"Our banker SGys I may iuave to move tothe Imperial Volley, wherever that is.''

In the Imperial Valley, more than half theirrigated acreage is held by owners of more than160 acres, and nearly ha lf is held by absentees .(In many cases the categories overlap.) Some ofthe holdings are as large as I 0,000 acres. Severalbelong to 'such'agribusiness giants as Purex,Dow Chemical and the I r v i n e ~ d Company.Meanwhile, the vast a j ~ n t y of the people in theImperial Valley remain poor and a n ~ l e s s . . .In i n i e r i o r ~ c r e t a l y S i e w i f t ' " O d a l f , . . ,stunnedthe large landowners in the'lmperlit,lValley by announcing that the 160-acre limitationwould be enf'orced. The local irrigation distr ict,controlled by the big growers, refused to go along,

so the Interior Department sued the district. Alocal judge ruled in favor of the landowners, andthe Interior Department planned to appeal. Butthen Richard Nixon was elected President and allof a sudden the appeal was dropped (see below fora possible exp lanation.)Meanwhile, a group oflandless Imperial Valley residents, led by Dr. Ben Yellen, sued to get theresidency requirement enforced. Amazingly, theywon. U.S. District Judge William D. Murray ruledthat "the failure to apply the residency requirement is contrary to any reasonable interpretationof the clear purpose and intent of national reclamation policy." Of course, the Nixon Administrationappealed this deCision.

As this issue goes to press, a panel of-federaljudges in San Francisco (Ninth Circuit) is gettingready to hear arguments on both the residency and160-acre questions. Their decision, whatever it is,will doubtlessly be appealed to the U.S. SupremeCourt. That august ~ o d y will then issue a rulingthat could determine the future of land distribution not only iQ Imperial Valley,-but .. ,throughout the West

Note: Twoadditional efforts to enforce. the'160-acre limit in California are pending in federalcourt. In one case involving the Kings River, largeland owners claim to be exempt from the 160-acrelimit because the dam on the river was constructedby the Army Corps of Engineers rather than theBureau of Reclamatiorr:"ln the e o o n d c a s e i h e " b i g " ~corporations served by the California Water Projectclaim exemption on ,the grounds that the majordams and aqueducts were built by the state, eventhough federal funds were used. ~


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People & Land/Winter 1974 Page 7

Report From .IowaMidwest Conference Draws 300

A long list ofland issues, ranging from stripmining in the Great Plains to corporate involvement in agriculture, was discussed at the First Midwest Land Conference sponsored by the Centerfor Rural Studies.

Nearly 300 persons from 20 states attendedthe three-day conference on Thanksgiving weekendin Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The participants, who represented a wide range of viewpoints, includedfarmers, church leaders, environmentalists, Indians,professors, labor leaders, bankers and stud ents.Government figures taking par t included Sen.Dick Clark of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Rural Development; Sen. JamesAbourezk of South Dakota, author of the FamilyFarm Antit rust Act; and Dr. Gene Wunderlich ofthe Department of Agriculture, an economist whois directing the first nationwide survey of rural landownership.

Senator Clark proposedgovernment loans toyoung farmers that wouldrequire repayment ofonly half the mortgage.

More than SO speakers led th e conferencesessions, which covered such topics as "Who WillControl U.S. Agriculture?"; "Who Owns theLand?"; "Organic Farming as an Alternative;""Indian Land Issues;" "Land Use A GrowingConflict;" and "Government-F unded Assaults on

The Family Farm AntiTrust Act would curbvertical integration andforce big companiesout of farming.

Present tax laws invite non-farm capital intofarming, Briemyer said, r e B t i n : ~ unusual stress fortraditional types of farming and putting the familytype operator at a disadvantage.

"A high percentage of land buying by nonfarmers right now is simply an attempt to getaccess to a base for taking advantage of capitalgains," he said. "Although many farmers may dothat too, by and large they are badly out-dollaredin terms of capital available."

Various proposals were made to strengthenthe independent farmer and rancher and to opennew opportunities for young people to get onthe land.

''Once basic food production is controlledby a few conglomerates who also dominatemarkets," he said, "the consumer will know what areal bind is."

Charles Frazier, director of the NationalFarmers Organization's Washington office, saidmost consumer organizations support legislationthat would curb corporate involvement in foodproduction. High grocery bills, he said, have stimulated their interest in the structure of agriculture.

iEJ

From left: Reu. John J. McRaith and RogerBlobaum, conference co-ordinator."Every time I have talked to representatives

of hese groups, or the young lawyers in Washington who are involved in the consumer movement,I have found them willing to support this legislation," he said.

"I think I can promise you that the consumerpeople .I have talked to will o i n ~ and work in be-'half of keeping farming in the hands of farmers ifwe can build enough public understanding of theissue."Mrs. Alberta Slavin of St. Louis, a National

Consumer Congress leader who was a big meat boy


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Page-S People & Land/Winter 4

New Threat to Small Farmers2lf2 Million Pigs inA Poke

Midwe s t hog farmers are a bi t apprehensivethese days, and with good reason. An outfit calledMissouri Foods International has announced plansto build the world's largest "hog factory" on 6,000acres of land in Clark ColJllty, Missouri: where Missouri, Iowa and Illinois intersect. When completed;the operation will wean, feed and slaughter theasto:unding total of 2* million hogs a year.

to the project, mostly by Chicago and New Yorkbanks. Insurance on the opera tion will be backedby Lloyds of London, he added, and will coverdeath, disease and catastrophi c losses.The entire com plex will involve 100 productionunits, a feed mill and a packing plant. When thepacking plant is running at full tilt it will process500 to 600 hogs an hour and use 2,000 gallons ofwater per minute.Plans for the hog operation have been drawn up

by Globe Engineering, a subsidiary of Swift & Co.Reportedly, Swift will run the slaughterhouse andRalston-Purina will provide feed and breeding stock.

Two major problems that the ope ration facesare disease risk and waste disposal. But McQuoidis confident that these can be overcome with goodmanagement.Tom Ellis, farm editor emeritus of the Spring

field, Mo., News and Le4der, summed up what ison many farmers minds: "Think of the blow thatwill be dealt to thousands of farmers who feedhoSs throughout the'Midwest. If this succeeds, itwill .mark but the b e ~ g of agribusiness takingover another segment of farming, just as it did withbroilers and turkey product ion."

dous. For years specialists have said hogs wouldeventually follow the same route as broilers - hugeintegrated complexes- i f disease, waste disposaland management problems could be overcome.Giant East European hog units have proven it canbe done, with units of 100,000 to 250,000

Hog production in the U.S. is currently dominated by independent farmers who raise animals ontheir farms, then deliver them to markets. Enormous integrated hog operations such as MFI's couldwell throw thousands of farmers of f the land.McQuoid prefers to talk about the "benefits"MFI will bring to northeastern Missouri. He haspromised to build an 18-hole golf course, a swimming pool, country club and je t air strip to handlethe "fo reign dignitaries" who will be visiting thehog operation. And, he adds, from the profits-ofMFI a grant will be given each year to the University of Missouri - half to the College of Agriculture for swine research and the ot her half to makea better football team. ~

James Kennel, cou nty farm extension agent atKahoka, Missouri, told the Hannibal Courier-Post:"They are still drilling for water and taking outland options. This will have a nationwide effect onthe pork industry."

hogs ... If the Missouri operation goes according toplan, it will completely rewrite the book on hogproduction in the U.S., and probably around theworld."

According to Pro Farmer magazine, "The significance of a 2* million hog operatio n is tremen- .

The man behind Missouri Foods Internati onal isCharles McQuoid, a former Chicago insurance salesman. McQuoid he has $100 million committed

Tnith:in Advertising". Sometimes.the best way to tell what' s going on in America is to read the'business

advertisements in the newspapers.The ads reproduced on this page are from the Wall Street JouTTUJlSan FranciscoChronicle, and the Des Moines Register. They tell better than any USDA study or PhDdissertation what is happening throughou t rural America: mdependen t family farmers

IMated 1,4 MOe S..tll I mlle West tf GarrllltaSahrday, Dec. 1Sale Time 12:H


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'Here's Lead inYourWine!'

In case you 're wondering what last y ear's winevintage tastes like, here's the word from America'slargest winemaker, the Gallo Wine Company.

"The deliveries of mechanically harvestedgrapes were very poor," said co-owner Ju lio Gallo."The machines macerated the grapes, exposingthem to oxidation, and the lead content was high,imparting undesirable characteristics to the juice."

To bring back that wholesome non-leaded tasteto its wines, Gallo haS'allnounced that henceforthit will no longer accept machine-picked grapes, except for Thompson seedless. Gallo's decision represents a big setback for proponents of super-mechanized agriculture, who have been taking the tasteout of everything from tomatoes to CabernetSauvignon.

Meanwhile , the lousy taste oi this year's crop isone more reason to boycott Gallo wines. The mainreason is Gallo's refusal to renew its contract withthe United Farmworkers Union.

How You Can Help the BoycottUFW organizers report that the boycott of Gallo wines has been making headway, bu t that

~ . \ l a l r e ~ J l P P ~ b Y , . ~ j t a a d ~ r t i a i p gbudget: $13 million on TV last year, up from $7million in 1972, making Gallo the ogly wine company ever to make the list of the top 100 Tv advertisers.

Gallo, the world's largest and most profitablewinery, was one of several California growers thatrefused to renew its contract with the United FarmWorkers Union. Instead, Ga)lo,signed a "sweeth eart"r - ...... oontract with the Teamsters that elirillnated the

union hiring hall and brought dangerous pesticides

Targets of the boycott include Gallo label winesas well as Gallo-owned "pop wines:" Boone's Farm,

back into the fields . The UFW is calling for a boycott of all Galloproducts, including Paisano, Thunderbird, Boone'sFarm, Spanada, Tyrolia, Ripple and Red Mountain.Also on the boycott list: Guild and Franzia wines.

You may buy the following wines: ItalianSwiss Colony, Inglenook, Almaden, Paul Masson,Christian Brothers, Lejon, Petri, Sangrole, AnnieGreen Springs and Pirelli-Minetti.

As part of the boycott campaign the UFWhas prepared a series of radio and TV spots whichare available free of charge to any station th at willplay them. You can help the boycott by urgingyour local station to order the spots from the UFW,AFL-CIO, Box 4453, San Francisco CA 94101.

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People& L G n d i W ~ n t e r 197 4

Food ImperialismAgribusiness Goes Multinational

Men t i o n the Del Monte Corp. and you don'tautomatically conjure up images of AnacondaCopper or United Fruit extracting profits from undeveloped countries. Not yet at least. But soon we shall be able to add Del Monte and a host ofother American food companies to the roster ofextractive industries that pluck countries clean asa chicken.American food prod uction appears to bemoving lock, stock and trac tor to outpos ts in Asia,Africa and Latin America. Agricultural chemicalcompanies, farm equipment manufacturers, cattlefeeders, corporate farmers, packing and processingmagnates, banks and speculators are all joining theinternationalization of farming. Their plants andfarms are ealled "offshore production units," achoice of language that tells us much about howthey view their investments abroad.No matter where you tum, the evidence ismounting that overseas farms and factories areturning world agriculture int o a kind of extensionservice for American corporations. From 1960-

American foodstuffs and to bacco companiesincreased their overseas employment by 222 percent, compared to a 7 percent domestic increase.

A more equitable taxstructure might havesaved 5,000 jobs.In Argentina, the largest export er of feedgrains is Cargill, Inc., the Midwestern giant thatfigured so prominently in the Russian wheat deal.In Hawaii, pineapple, the stat e's number tw o agri

A threatened domestic agriculture is by nomeans the whole story. The agribusiness.giantswould have us believe that their efforts abroadwill result in jobs for everyone and the eradication of hunger, poverty and illiteracy. A morelikely outco me is that agribusiness mechanizationwill displace rural farm workers and drive up linemployment in both city and country in the ThirdWorld. _Foreign sources of capital (i.e., Americancapital) needed to pay for expensive farm equipinent will become increasingly important and makethese nations increasingly dependent. The presumed cornucopia of increased food productionwill either be exported or priced ou t of reach ofthose who need it most. And who knows whatwill happen to the ecosystems of Third Worldcountries when new seeds are in troduced andchemical fe_tilizers and pesticides are sprayed wi tha free hand?As he world's largest canner of fruits and

vegetables, the San Francisco-based Del Montecorporation epitomizes the worldwide sweep ofthe American food business. In addition to canning and selling everything from applesauce tozucchini, it owns or operat es 132,700 acres hereand abroad and employs 40,000 people.Its direct investments abroad total $60 million and it has sales organizations in 100 coun-tries. In the U.S. it has over 100 processing plantscanneries, ranches and distribut ing centers. Over- -seas it has processing plants or plantati ons in 17nations. It has its own trucking operations andcargo ships and is completely integrated bothhorizontallyand vertically.

United States tax laws make overseas foodproduction an attractive business. The Western

by a feed-lot oper ator from Fresno and Ethi0pia:"I f you take an approved investment , approved bythe host country and leave it productivelyemployed for ten years, you can bring it back tothis country and have it taxed at a capital gainsrate. In other words, you can allow profits to pileup and at the end of ten years, you can bring themback for next to nothing in taxes." U.S. tax lawsalso permit any corporation to deduct taxes paidto host countries from its U.S. taxes.

A pineapple airliftedfrom the Philippines does1ittle to nourish thosewho cut and packed it.

In 1972, Del Monte had a total federal taxliability of only $11.7 million on worldwide salesof $820 million.A more equitable tax structure might havesaved the jobs of 5,000 pineapple workers inHawaii. Stokely-Van Camp has already closed outthere, and Del M ~ n t e and Dole will follow suit by1975. The reason? In Hawaii, the minimum wagefor a pineapple worker is $2.69 an hour. In the

P h i f i p p i t it' S ~ ~ # i an l i ~ i : i ' f ~ ' i t J . S : ~ ; Tariff Commissiori'investigation pointed out,"these firms (Del Monte and Dole) market the imported pn:>duct at the same prices that they askfor their domestically canned pineapple."When American farmworkers are driven off .the land by international agribusiness, they have simply little choice but to migrate to the cities.


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People & Land/Winter 197 4 Page 11

,c..&0uc..C(

BuryMy Heart at the Peabody MineL 876 the U.S. Army labelled the CheyenneIndians as "hostiles" and began a war for the ir land.

What followed is well-known: the Battle of theRosebud, the Little Big Horn, and the fateful Armyattack on the Cheyenne village near the PowderRiver.

A surrender and removal to Oklahoma followed, but soon many Cheyennes began movingback north. Eventually the Northern Cheyennes _were granted 437,000 acres of rangeland - a tinyportion of their original homeland - as their permanent reservation.

Today the Cheyennes are fighting for their landagain. This time the ene my is no t the Army butthe Department of the Interior and a group of pri

tion to the coal leases. A conference was held onthe reservation to which scientists, conservationists,lawyers and other native peoples were invited.

Last March, the tribal council passed a resolution calling for "terminating and cancelling allexisting coal permits and leases." The traditionalleadership stated: "Our land we must kee p forever,since it is synonymous with our identity, above all,our very existence as a Cheyenne people."

The Secretary of the Interior did not cancel theleases, but instead ordered a "study group" formed.The Cheyennes have now mounted a legal drive torequire the leases to be cancelled. For more information, write Cheyennes Against Strip Mining, P.O.Box 83, Lame Deer, Montana 59043. ~

'IJumks to AkweSIUne Notes for this story.

Pray for Black MesaBlack Mesa is a barren land wit h little water,

covered with brush arid juniper and pino n trees.cate water tables in _he area, interfere with traditionallife .patterns, and tie the Indians to the whiteman's economy. Most of all, they worry that the


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Ill0a.,i

PEOPLE&LAND


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14/24

Jage 14 People & Land/Winter 1974

Cities Need Land ReformriOoIt has often been that urban areas are asmuch in need of land reform as are rural areas,

and that a land reform movement must bring together dispossessed people in cities with thosewho live in rural communities and on farms.The basic problem affecting many low andmoderate income city dwellers is much the same

as that facing rural people: too much absenteeownership of real estate, too much speculation andtoo much profiteering at the expense of workingfamilies. What needs furt her explorat ion is thequestion: what might urban land reform look like?

Many followers of the 19th century American economist Henry George suggest that urbanland reform would consist primarily of a shiftto site value taxation-i.e., taxing land alone, instead of land and improvements jointly. Theyargue that site value taxation would 1) stimulatedevelopment of unimproved lots, 2) discouragesprawl, and 3) cut d!?wn on land speculation.While a shift toward taxing land more than buildings would undoubtedly be useful, it is doubtful\16tether suc h a shift , by itself, would be enoughto alter basic ownership and profi t patterns in thecities.

Nor is urban renewal, 1960's-style, the kindof land reform that's n e e d ~ d for urban areas today.Urban renewal involved the setting up of ocalpublic agencies that acquired land at market prices,razed the buildings, and then sold the land atwritten-down prices to developers. The profitsusually went to the absentee slum-lords whoowned the old buildings and the subsidized developers who built the new ones. Low-income housing, bad as it was, was generally replaced by middle and upper income housing, and by office buildings, convention centers, shopping plazas andsports arenas.

The best models we've seen for urban landreform come from Scandinavia and involve dty

The basic objective is toeliminate needless profitsof landlords, real estateagents and banks.

A similar app roach to urban land reform, involving municipal land banking, cooperative housing and new financing methods, was recently proposed by Edward Kirshner, an economist and urban planner with the Community Ownership Project in Oakland. The basic objective is to enablelow and moderate income families to becomecooperative owners of decent housing by eliminating the needless profits current ly extracted bylandlords, real estate agents and money-lendinginstitutions.

Under the land b a n k i n ~ part of the program,cities would acquire land and then lease it tohousing cooperatives. The co-ops woul d reimburse the city for the cost of acquiring the land,but payments wouldn't begin until the co-ops finished paying for the housing itself. This way thehigh price of urban and would not be added immediately to a low-income family's housing costsand the land would be forever taken of f the speculative market.

The cooperatives themselves would offertax advantages as well as fmancing advantages.Under the property tax laws of many states,

corporation. This would eliminate all the refmancing costs that tenants in landlord-owned apartmentbuildings have to pay. For example, it'scommon practice for a building to be sold fromone landlord to another every few years, after thetax breaks for depreciation J?.ave run out. Eachtime the property is sold, its price goes up, withsales commissions adding to the price rise. Thismeans the new landlord's financing costs are higherthan th e old landlord's, and he shifts these highercosts to tenants by raising rents.

Kirshner estimates that by removing urbanhousing in this manner fr om profit-oriented ownership, it would be possible for a family with a$7,400 annual income to own the same housingthat is available today oruy to families earning$14,300. And this could be done without a singlepenny in federal subsidies.

Suggestions from readers are invited onother models for urban land reform. For a copyof Kirshner's proposal, write Community Ownership Organizing Project, 349 62nd Street, Oakland, California 94618. tJ ,

Open SpaceRustEderal and local governments are often

handicapped in acquiring land for open space bytheir competitive disadvantage in the private realestate market, where flexibility and speed areessentia! to success. As a result, public_agenciesoften miss good chances to acquire land and/orare forced to pay prices jacked up sky-high byspeculators:An organization called the Trust for PublicLand has come up with a fresh approach to thisproblem by using the non-profit la nd trust as anintermediary between private seller and public


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~ !

Woodys LegacyThis Song is Our Song

he ong This Land is Your Land, with itsdeceptively simple melody, was put together byWoody Guthrie aroun d 1940. When he first gotthe idea for it, God Bless America was getting abig play on the radio. The last of his verseoriginally went, "God blessed America for me."Through the months and years he changed it,and in the late 1 940s he recorded it for Disc Records (now Folkways) in the version printed onthis page.

When Woody Guthrie went into the hospital in 1952 he signed over the rights to the thenlittle-known song to a publisher who now collectsroyalties for it and turns them over to Woody'sfamily. Indirectly much-of the royalties go tothe Committee to Combat Hunt ington's Disease,which has been set up by Marjorie MaziaGuthrie.

What will happen to the song now? Myguess is it depends on who sings it, and how, andfor what purpose. There is a danger-of this songbeing co-opted by the very selfish interests Woodywas fighting all his life. Clark Clifford in March1950 addressed th e wealthy businessmen atChicago's Executive Club: "I feel the people haveto feel that their small share of this country is asmuch theirs as it is yours and mine ... " Withoutsome new verses, TUYL falls right !nto Mr.Clifford's trap.

, One young e l l o w w r o t e . t h a . t he wasstarting a campaign to make the song the national anthem. I wrote him, "Please stop! Can'tyou see U.S. Marines marching into another littlecountry playing this song?"

Here are some of Woody's lesser knownverses:In the squares of he city by the shadow of he

steepleNear the relief office I saw my peopleAs they stood there hungry, I stood there

whistling This land was made for yo u and me.Was a big high wall there that tried to stop me Was a great big sign that said private propertyBut on the other side it didn't say nothingThis land was made for yo u and me.Wen sing the song today , still usuallyend up with th e gloriously optimist ic verse,

"The sun came shining and I was strolling." Butbefore this I do a lot of singing and talking andoften th row in a couple new versesof my own.

Maybe yo u been working as hard as you're ableAnd you just got crumbs from the rich man's tableMilybe yo u been wondering is it true or fableThis land was made for yo u and me.

Dozens of other verses have been writte n tothe song within the last ten years. Some of themsimply change a few words to make the chorusapply to Canada or to England or to Australia.There have been verses sung in Spanish. There havehave been anti-po llution verses. I always encourageanyone who loves any song not to be ashamed totry making up verses for it.

The best thing that could happen to thesong would be for it to end up with hundreds ofdifferent versions being sung by millions of people who understand the basic message.

-Pete SeegerReprinted by permission of The VIllage Voice.Copyrighted by Th e VIllage Voice, Inc. 1971

---------------TheSon ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~As I was walking that ribbon of highwayI saw above me that endless skywayI saw before me that golden valleyThis land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my landFrom California to the New York IslandFrom the redwood forest to the Gulfstream

waters;This land was made for YP'!- and me

I roamed and rambled and I followed myfootstepsTo the sparkling sands o f her diamond deserts

An d all around me a voice was soundingThis land was made for you and me.(Repeat the chorus)

When the sun come s shining and I was s t r ~ l l i n gAnd the wheatfields wavingand the dust cloudsrollingAs the fog was lifting a voice was chantingThis land was 1'11iide for you and me.

L1 (Repeat the chorus)

By WOODROW WILSON GUTHR IE(1912-1967)Copyright Ludlow Music, New York


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Page 16 People & Land/Winter 1974

The Organic Ahernative Plows AheadIn 1910 there were 890,00 0 black o w ~ e r / o p e r -

ated farms in the United States. By 1970, theDepartment of Agriculture could identi fy only79,000. To turn this trend around is the majoraim of the National Sharecropper Fund.Three years ago, the NSF began to encourageand assist two farm cooperatives, one in Virginiaand one in Georgia, in the produ ction of organicvegetables. NSF soon discovered that the marketfor organic food is tremendous. It is now estimated by a Bank of America study that by 197540 percent of all food sold in this country may beorganic. This growing demand for organic foodoffers an opportunity for small farmers to capture .a market that is largely ignored by the giantsof commercial agriculture.With these realizations and the success of threeyears in Virginia and Georgia, the NSF last yearlaunched the nation' s first training center for organic farming. The site selected was a 500-acreformer hog farm, eight miles south of Wadesboro,North Carolina.For all practical purposes, the farm had beenabandoned for the past ten years. Much of theland was depleted and overgrown with shrub."We bought as poor a piece of land as we couldfmd-because that's all the poor have to workwith," says James Pierce, national directo r of NSF."We must be able to prove to people th e validityof organic farming under realistic conditions. "Shortly after NSF acquired the WadesboroCenter, the US Department of Labor offered tobring hundreds of migrant farmworkerS'from allover the country. p.be t r a i n e ~ in all phases ofagriculture. After spending several months negotiating and re-negotiating-with the Labor Department, Pierce decided not to accept the $1.3 million grant. It was too much too soon.The first task at the farm was to rebuild thesoil, depleted from years of neglect. For the 100

acres planted last year this required over 300 tonsof lime, 2,500 tons of com posted chicken manureand 100,000 pounds of bone meal, seaweed emulsion and feather meal. To control insects the farmrelies on an abundant supply of birds, which eatgreat quantities of insects, and on grass terraces,which draw insects away from the crops.

he irst year's planting was very much experimental. The Center learned w h a ~ the soil requires, what to plant , .when to plant, when to harvest and how to harvest. The Center staff also established a detailed accounting system specifyingwha.t it costs to grow ,each crop and most importantly, how much is made from each crop. Even 'with the experimentation, the Center was able toharvest over twenty different crops, ranging fromtomatoes to zucchini.One of the farm hands native to the area commented at harvest time, "I grew up here and been

farmin' all my life, and I just didn't believe itcould be done."The Center plans to cultivate an additional 100acres next year and to complete construction of aresidential training building. Then, low-incomefarmers will be able to live at the Center and getthe kind of training that can spell th e differencesbetween productive lives on the farm and furthermigration to the ghettos."The reason so .many kids are not turned ontofarming," says Center Staffer Don Blood, "is thattheir fathers have not been able to make any money at it. We believe if we can show young peoplethat it can be done, a lot of them will turn onto it." l l .;. -''. -John Wilson

$6,000 on 1/s AereYes, that' s right: $6,000 on 1/5 of anacre. That's what a small farmer can expect to


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.People & Land/Winter 1974

Land use planning has lately become therage among liberal politicians, environmentalists,planners and a new breed of "enlightene d" developers. There is, of course, nothing wrong withland use planning per se, but it must be remembered tha t land use planning is not the samething as, or a subs titute for,land reform.

Land use planning iS' generally concernedwith the visual environme nt-ur ban sprawl, forexample, or the intrusion of mining and recreational development into wilderness areas. Theseare legitimate concerns, but they do not adequatelyaddress such economic and social realitieS as whohas power, who makes profits and who gets exploited by whom.

The latest salvo lrom the land use planningcrowd is a 318 -page report entitled The Use oflAnd, produced by a task force chaired (andfinanced) by Laurance S. Rockefeller. Below,Warren Weber.assesses the Rockefeller report andits meaning for th e land reform movement.

Luoughout the report the authors showlittle ability to address the reality which most ofus perceive, a reality greater than a lost ideal oran ugly slurb. This is a report by a corporateelite to its willing supporters, and it is by themissing assumptions about the o f l a n d thatit finally must be judged.The members of this self-appointed. askforce were mostly doyens of the educatio-nal, .

philanthropic, banking, legal and real estateindustries, with the League of Women Voters andthe National Urban League thrown in to represent the obedien t citizen. Perhaps readers of.People & lAnd aren't likely to read the report, buthundreds of planners and politicians across the

Page 17

Rockefeller Reportfor Whom?

If this report is implemented, it would donothing to redistribute land to the poorand dispossessed.a separation of ownership of the land itsel f fromownership of urbanization rights, and the expansion of environmental impact analysis.On he other hand, the report asks localcitizens to help implement environmental guidelines which will effectively cut their own throatsby taking away local prerogatives. I know it isconsidered neanderthal in the age of the globalvillage to question master planning, but one cannot be too scrupulous about what and whose in

terests such plans serve.The task force wants to see quasi-publicUrban Development Corporations established,along the lines of New York's, which wield "thepower of eminent domain, the power to overridelocal land-use regulations, and the power to control the provision of public utilities" in behalf oflarge scale development. Such developmentwould feature clustering of housing and industry,leaving room f.or recreatiqnal open space. Themodei is Reston, V i r ~ i a , now owned by a subsidiary of Gulf Oil.

Such "balanced" development can only beaccomplished by the largest corporate interestssuppliers, contractors, banks and insurance companies. But they need citizen help in pushingthrough the red tape of local jurisdictions. There

land.) Because the cash value of private propertyis most often socially created, the report maintains that when value decreases due to public acts(for example, restrictive easements limiting development, or zoning), the owner has no right tocompensation from the public. It's just a risk hemust absorb.This No Compensation theory looks radicalon its face and is the report's most forceful idea.If the court s can be persuaded to adopt this view,it will be much easier for the public to purchaseland for open space without incurring speculativecosts.But what of the obverse situation? Whenthe public enhances value (for example, by puttinga highway interchange through your raspberrypatch) the report condones profit-taking. Thus it

is saying that sometimes you win, sometimes youlose, and those are simply the breaks of the speculative game .Nothing is said about what ought tobe the celitral issue: the right to speculate in hefirst place, the right to profit without any input oflabor. Looked at in this light, it is curious that weshould even have to consider No Compensation.But the taxpayer has gone so far in buoying up thespeculator who makes a bad investment, just as we


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PagelS People & Land/Winter 197 4

ABC DocumentaryGreen Grow the Profits

On December 21, 1973, the ABC television net'WOrk broadcast a one-hour documentary on corporate agriculture. The producer was JamesBenjamin. Report ers were Roge r Peterson, BillWordham and Dick Shoemaker. The documentary was so outstanding that we are printin g herewith substantial excerpts from the soundtrack.

Secretary of Agriculture Earl.Butz: Last year wespent less than 16 percent of our take-home payfor food. T h i ~ year it's going to be less than 16percent. That's less than ever before in the historyof America. I think that will continue on downward.Narrator: The 16 percent is an average which includes take-home pay spent for food at home andoutside the home. Using the Agriculture Department's own statistics which are restricted to money spent for food eaten at home, find that anaverage urban family with two s c h o o l ~ a g e childrenon a moderate food budget-take-home pay eightthousand a year-spends 32 percent of its budgeton food. A family that takes home $12,000spends 21 percent on groceries.And food remains cheapest for the rich. If youtake home $50,000 or more-average food cost,six percent per year or less.Roger Peterson: There is a fundamental changeoccurring in the ways our foods are being grown,processed and delivered to us. Seasonal crops arenow available year round. Prepared foods havedrastically cut time in the kitchen . This is nowpossible Qecause giant corporations and cooperatives handle our food from seed to supermarket.The system is known as Agribusiness. I' m Roger

"Efficiency" and "quality" are the two claimsof Agribusiness. To achieve this in the farmingend, machines replace or help man. Animals arepenned up and fed chemically-enriched feed thatresearch shows will make them grow bigger faster.Fertilizers and pesticides are used heavily. Mostresearch by the food industry is toward fmdingnew products and food supplements. The bulkof agricultural research in this country, however,is by the Department of Agriculture and LandGrant Colleges who spend an estimated $600million of tax money each year. The public paidfor the mechanical tomato harvester which can'tharvest the tomatoes it was meant to pick. Italso required genetically changing the old-styletomato to one which the harvester wouldn'tsquash.

Dr. Allen Stevens at the University of California at Davis had been tailoring tomatoes tomachines. ABC News correspondent Dick Shoemaker talked with him.Dr. Stevens: As we have gone to mechanicalharvesting, we have had to develop tomatoeswhich have smaller fruit size. The fruits have tobe tougher, they have to be firmer, they have tobe able to stand the bumping and the pressure thatthat they get during mechanical harvesting.Shoemaker: I see here there's quite a differencebetween the old style and the one that you'vedeveloped for meqhanical harvesting.Dr. Stevens: Right. As you can see, the older tomatoes have a thin wall, they have a lot of seedarea, a lo t of juice. And as we have developed afirmer tomato we have gotten to a much thickerwall, a reduced seed area, and the tomatoes aremuch firmer and harder.

Narrator: Jim Hightower is Director of the Agribusiness Accountability Project which is a private non-profit organization supported by foundations. To him, the tomato story illustrates what'swrong with tax-supported reserach being done forAgribusiness.Hightower: Del Monte and Hunt and Heinz andthe giant processors wanted to mechanicallyharvest tomatoes because they wanted to eliminate labor in the fields.And, the land grant colleges said w e ~ l l ~ r , , sdo that for you, So they genetically r e - d e s i g n ~ dthe tomato. But then they had to harvest thetomatoes green, because they still aren't hardenough. So they developed a system of applyingethylene gas to tomatoes, which turns them red,but it doesn't ripen them, necessarily. It just turnsthem red, uniformly and at the same time.


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People & LGnd/Wlnter 1974

tributed it for 18 years. During that time, its cancer-causing ability in animals was established. But,so long as no residueof DES was found ip ediblemeat, its use was permitted by Congressionalamendment. . .until1972. -.The effect of adding chemicals to our food isa source of groWing concern. Dr. Ben Feingold,chief emeritus, department of allergy. Kaiser Medical Center, San Francisco, e l i ~ v e s artificalcolors and flavors, along with naturally occurringsalicylates, contribute to extreme over-activity inotherwise normal children, a condition known ashyperkinesis . Eighty-five percent of his patientsimprove on a diet free of these cheJnicals.

N ext, we'llloak at the chicken industry whichwas reorganiZed by Agribusiness fo r -he purposeof greater pr9ductivity and efficiency.

Once, chickens were raised bY farmers in blll'Jlyards. Now there is 'an assembly line process .Laying hens, hatcheries, tbe chicks themselves arid what they eat are owned and provided bythe corporation. Farmers have become contractgrowers for the company and rent the-chicks.The feed is delivered weekly by the corporation.There are rule_ which growers must follow during

the 7-9 week growing stage to provide a uniformproduc t. Growers must also pay for building theirlarge expensive chicken houses and the equipment,

~ c i a t insulation, heaters. watering trays andautomat ic feeding troughs. Growers must updateequipment as the company decides.Mter 7-9 weeks, the chickens are -picked up

by integrator corporation trucks and taken to theprocessing house for slaughter. The same corportions ldll; dress and d ~ t r i b u t e the; btoilers. Theysay- that vertical integration is efficient and provides good, uniform broiler quality.

Despite an expansion of broiler productiondue to mechanization, the price of broilers hasgone up. And the system may be far from foolproof.

Grower: We borrowed it.Wordham: So your home was mortgaged to payfor the houses?Grower: Yes.Wordham: Now how about the money you'vebeen getting for your chicks. Is that working outall right?Grower: No. It sure im't. It has dropped in thelast bunch of chicks I sold. I didn't get nothingfor them, hardly. period.Wordbam: And how about the number ofchickens or chicks that you've b een raising thisyear as compared to last year? .Grower: Well, they was six weeks betweenbunches of chickens this time.Wordham: Did the growers give you any reasonwhy they didn't deliver the chicks?Grower: No, No, they don't.Wordham: Why do you stay in the business ofchicken raising?Grower: We have to! We'll lose our home. Ourfarm. Everything we've worked for.

Peterson: The quest for profits in this newlyemerging system of agriculture has led to harsherrors in judgement. Agribusiness corporationsencouraged many small farmers to extend themselves, borrowing money to expand. These ventures resulted in some farmers losing their land.Narrator: In California, for example, many losttheir land when. they tried to expand to meet thedemands of large corporations for more crops.

Tom Ellerd of Modesto, a successful farmer for40 years, was one of them.

Page 19

D ~ l M o n t e C o r ~ r a t i o n heeame no t only hisbuyer. bu t also lent him money to expand, anarrangement no longer legal. A few bad years forpeaches and Del Monte foreclosed. A court deniedFllerd's petition which tried to establish that apartnership existed Wiih Del Morite.

ABC N e ~ s asKed Del 'Monte for a comment.It replied that when the Ellerd indebtedness exceeded the value of the property, Del Monte reluctantly foreclosed, since it too had lost money.Ellerd now lives in this three-room house owned.by a relative. He and his son lost over $100,000 ,worth of land and buildings. .FJlerd: It one of the best farms in the country, best taken care of. Even .the canneries complimented us qn our way of operating, taking careof the place. We hadtwo homes. One of themwas a new home we built in '65.Dick Shoemaker: Why couldn't you go and fmdthe money someplace else? Whey did yo u have togo to Del Monte?Ellerd: Well, afte r you get started with Del Monteand they have a mortgage on your crop and yourequipment, so bank or anythingwill touch yo u because they've got everything in their control.They wouldn't release the crop for you to getmoney or anything. They wanted it all.Peterson: Mr. Ellerd is no t an isolated case, bu t anexample of a pattern that has developed as agriculture has become big business .Yet, Secretary


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Page 20

Tax Dodge at the MineYou might think that energy-rich counties in

the United States wouid be able to tax Americanoil companies at least as effectively as do Arabiansheiks. You might also think that, as the value ofenergy resources soars throughout the world, thelocal taxes paid on domestic energy resourceswould also soar. You'd be wrong on both counts.Appalachia delivers more than 70 percent ofthe coal consumed in the United States-about 15percent of the national energy. Yet the regionremains America's poorest, getting far less for itsenergy than do the princes of the Persian Gulf.In 1967, 60 percent of the local revenues inCentral Appalachia came from property taxes,compared to 66 percent nationally. Andpays the bulk of Appalachia's proper ty taxes?Not the coal companies, you can be sure.

Coal companies in onecounty are assessed at 2.3 percenL Homeownersare assessed at 50 percent.

In the fourteen major coal producingcounties of West Virginia, 25 major landownerscontrol 44 percent of the land. But these largeresource o w n e r s m . o ~ t of them out-of.-state corporations-account for only one tentl{of theproper ty taxes in these coal-rich counties . Inone county.:...Wetzel-major landowners are as-sessed at only 2.3 percent of the value of theirholdings, while homeowners are assessed at 50percent.

Consoiidation Coal, a subsidiary of Contin

schools, Consol's tax dodging deprives localchildren of decent education.How does Consol get away with it? Thesame way other major energy companies dothrough long and cozy relationships between company executives and tax commissioners.

Former Governor Barren of West Virginiaappointedas his first tax commissioner C. HowardHardesty, who later resigned to become a Consolvice-president. Hardesty was succeeded by C.Thomas Battle, who headed the department until1968 when he returned to private law practice.While practicing, Battle was retained by Consol'sdirector of tax affairs, John J. Innes, to negotiatea reduction of the compan y's tax assessment overa four-county area. Innes had previously beenchief of auditing for the state tax department.Consol fares equally well in Tennessee. InSequatchie County, one cal tax assessor departed from practice and appraised Consol's landby including its mineral value. Using this meth odthe valuation jumped from $32 to $322 per acrea hint qf what the county had .been losing before.

Consol, however, had powerful allies whereit counted. On appeal to th e State Board.of .Equalization, which includes the Governor and theCommissioner of Revenue, Consol got the assess-ment cut to $180 per acre-still much more thanConsol pays in other counties with less aggressivetax assessors.

"You can't tax anything you can't see," wasthe way the taX assessor for Anderson County,Tennessee's largest coal-producing area, defendedhis exclusion of coal from property valuations.:Consol's assessment in Anderson County was $30an acre, about one quarter the valuation ofneighboring farms, until local citizens filed a complaint in 1971. The State Board of Equalizationresponded by altering the assessment methodslightly. A follow-up study by the citizens'


Counting CaloriesTt te.purpose of agriculture is to capture the

sun's energy and transform it into human energy.Theoretically farming should be a ne t producer ofenergy, but in the United States it doesn't workthat way. .It takes en6rgy -lots of energy - to grow foodthe American way. Fuel is needed to power tractors; electricity;is used to pump irrigation water;natural gas is key ingredient offertilizers; 'pesticides are made from oil. All inall, agriculture consumes more petroleum than any other single in

dustry.This might not be so important were it notfor the fact that cheap, abundant energy is a thing

of the past. Already farmers are having to pay -.


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Peopk & lAnd/Winter 197 4 Page 21

..

I

...CariadaDoes.It:Two StrongLandLaws' J : ~ Canadian provinces have recentlyadopted programs that should greatly interest land

reformers' i1 America.In Saskatechewan, where the number of in

dependent farms has fallen 40 percent since 1950and the average age of farmers is 55, the provincial government has embarked on a multi-milliondollar land bank program designed to get young'eople into farming.

U r l d ~ r the program, the government purchases farms offered for sale by persons 65 yearsof age and over. A fathe r wishing to transfer landto a son receives priority. The government paysthe market price, then offers the land for lifetimeleases at an annual rent of five percent of the purchase price, with option to buy after five years.The lessors are young people eager to work thesoil, bu t.who haven't the capital to land andmodern equipment.

In the program's first year of operation,there were over 2,000 applications to sellland.tothe,bank . Tiie batik bought 406 parcels tQtaling200,000 acres at prices of $30 to s 25 an acre.There were 1,500 applications to lease, and 425actual lease agreements. The average age of thelessors was 35.

Agriculture Minister John R. Messer saysthis is only a beginning. "PractiCally all themajor institutions currently operating in ruralsociety are in need of restructuring," he contends.Another government program, called FarmStart, is part of this -restructuring: Farm .Start

' P f o ~ d e s - . r a n t s andJoans toJow..income fannerswho wish to expand into livestock. Six percentloans of up to $60,000 are available, payable overa 15 year term. Grants of up to $8,000 are alsoavailable to persons with a net worth of less than$36 ,000.

"I believe the approach our government hastaken is a radical one in the sense that it chal

"We accept the idea that we must haveefficient production. We do not accept that thiscan only be achieved through the creation of largescale farm units or super-farms. Family farms,where labor and management are primarily derived from the family itself, or from two or morefamilies operating in cooperation, can quite readilyexhaust all the economies of scale available infarming today."

In British Columbia, the provincial government acted last year to deal with another veryserious land problem-the loss of prime agricultural land to urban and suburban sprawl.

The legislature established a powerful fivemember commission with authority to determine

use of all land throughout the province. Thecommission immediately declared that all landpresently used for agriculture would remain agricultural until further plans were adopted.he ommission also has authority andfunds to bank land in urban areas for housing.And the law provides that landowners who losedevelopment rlghts as a result of commission decisfons need no t be compensated by the government.

Significantly, both British Columbia andSaskatchewan are governed by New DemocraticParty administrations. The NDP-which alsogoverns in Manitoba-has a socialist and populisttradition. l l

Lootlllfl Maine's Pullllc LotsFo r the past ~ n t u r y , large paper and

timber companies, mostly absentee-owned, havecontrolled some 400,000 acres of land in Mainethat is owned by the state. These parcels of landaverage 1 000 acres apiece and are called "publiclots." As in most of New England, these lots werereserved for townships when the st ate was originally formed.

But the townships have never been formed.When the paper companies bought up the surrounding forests they began the policy of discouraging settlement. Thus the companies cancontinue ta C!JLtimber from the state land on .thebasis of rights they bought dirt cheap 100 yearsago when it was assumed that the land would soonbe settled. The companies now claim that thestate cannot . ake away their tights to control theland so long as it is not settled. And-the land cannot be settled so long as the companies control it.

Two recent Nader reports, Timber Taxation

paper companies, and were in good part responsible for a se.ries of l}earings before t he MaineLegisl-ature's Committee on Public Lands last December. Some of tl fe Qest testimony at thesehearings' came from . he Maine Land Use TaskForce; a loose coalition of ten citizen organizations.The thrust of their testimony was that Maine's"public lots" should be used to_ reate a loCally-.owned wood products industry that wouldexpand jobs and s e t t l e ~ e n t opportunities forMaine people, whose average income ranks 41stthe Nation. . .. , Spe3kingfor the Task f ' : o ~ e e , )ciff J;la!JX, aneconomist from Whitefield, Said thitt "Maine'seconomic and ~ n v i r o n m e n t a l interests will n e v e ~be protected as long as the destiny of her forestresources is so completely in the hands of absenteeowners."

For further details on the activities 9fMaineiacs, check out the Maine Land Advocat e,

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Nebraska's New Land BaronsN ew evidence that family-type farms in theMidwest are losing ground to larger units w ith

absentee owners; hired managers and seasonalworkers has turned up in a land ownership studyby the Center for Rural Affairs.The conclusions were outli ned by MartyStrange of Walthill, Nebraska, the center'sdirector, durinS a panel discUSSion at he FirstMidwestLan,d Conference. ' The st udy, covering land ownership changessince 1968 in l3northeastNebraskarounties,showed a sizeable increase in corpora te .ownershipof agricultUral land, extensive absentee ownershipby non-farmers, and growing involvement of Urban- based farm management _omparu!'B.

A class .structure.definedalong owner-m_nagementworker lines wlll e v ~ l o pif the tre.nd toward_argerfarm units c o n t i n u e s ~' t

S ~ e said ~ datagenerally ~ p p O r t s theproposition that a clasutructuredefined .gogo w n e r - r i J a n a g e r - w o ~ e r ~ t n e s will. evelop in :the .Midwest -f the trend toward' largeJ; farm unitscontinues.

''Tile data reipforces_he notion that agriculture' is beconuniilg"structurally: spedlwzed andthat ownership, operation and management of landwill be separated functions," he reported.

''Undoubtedly, if this trend does exist, itwill enhance absentee ownership of land by nonfarmers who will employ professional managersand who will seek the limited liability advantagesof the corporate structure."

corporations and involvement of professional farmmanagement firms in the 13-county area.The study showed corporate ownership ofagricultural land in the area had increased 64.8 percent since 1968. It also showed a high degree ofconcentration in t he professional farm managementfield.

The largest farm management compan y washandling 61 ,267 acres in the area and the top fourcompiUlies had .nearly 72 percent of the business.The study also.showed a high ratio of leased toowned land in the large operations.

- . Another interesting disclosure was the factthat as many as 40 percent of the corporationsowning land in the area were riot authorized to dobUsiness in Nebraska. Some had failed to ftle, andothers had faijed to keep current,_he occupational. aX reports r e q U i ~ d by the sta.te:"Beyondthe fact that these corporationshave escaped P!lYm8 an occupation taX lies the

troublesome fact that their maverick behavior prevents the public from knowitlg who or what theyare," the study noted. .

Strange said the failure to comply with thefiling requirement makes it difficult to either studyor classify the big companies involved. The reportsthat are filed do little more than identify a cOrporation's board of directors, list the addresses, andstate. ts general business nature. They tell nothingabout the ~ x t e n t orlcication of land holdings.'Ens nformat ion is available only tomost diligent researcher who is willing to.spendlong hours in county_ ourthouses. In order todetermine th e Nebraska land holdings of a corporation one has to contact every courthouse in thestate,'' he noted."This is an inordinate amount gf effort forsome basic information that the public is entitledto."

, -Singing. the ROcky,Mountain ,Blues-;In Colorado, as Pe_ople_ & Land reported lastissue, the land developers arebreeding like bunnies.

W)lat's left of the state's pristine beauty-the stuffofballads Jike Jolm Denver's "Rocky Mc;mntainIngh" is being bought, bulldozed and sold fasterthan the eye can see. This overdeve lopment isboth cause and coinCident of new lows in waterabuse and air pollution that have already madeColorado one of the most despoiled states in thenation.In 1973, liber,al Colorado legislators attack edthese problems with a comprehensive land use bill.The bill ultimately died because of recalcitrantstate Senate Republicans and a lack of leadershipfrom then-Governor and ex-Energy Czar JohnLove, who supported the bill in theory but did nothing to promote its passage. This year the landuse bill is back again, calling for creation of a StateBoard of Land Appeals which would be em

Prospects for pasSage of the bill apj,ear to bedim. Much progress has been.made in educatingthe Colorado public to the urgency of land use controls, but this year as last, it seems that he Republican dominated Colorado Senate just isn' t going tobudge from its cozy relationship with big develop-

' . .mentmoney.This bejng the case, it' s apparently going tobe up to the citizens to do 'it themselves. Itworked with the California Coastal ManagementAct and it.worked once before in Colorado wjth.the effort to sfop the 76-Wfnter :Olympics::What'might be called a "quali ty of life brigade" 'is keeping close watch on the legislature and if nothinghappens, count on a land use initiative to get onthe November ballot.Meanwhile, the recenfjump in oil priceshasbrought attent ion to the budding Colorado oilshale industry, which many Coloradans are starting


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People& LGnd/Wlntet 1974 Page 23

-Get Involved: Some Groups To Dolt WithAc r o s s the country, a great nwnber of organizations are involved in various aspects of the landreform o v ~ m e n t . Herewith a partial list. Getin touch With a group near you and pitch in!

.Alribusinels AceountabUity Project, 1000 Wisconsin Aw.; N.W., Wublngton, DC 20007AlitmztJ Feilenil de Puebloa Librea, 1010 Srd, NW, Albuq..,rque,N.Mex. 87101Appalaebi&n Dewlopment Fund, 114 W;1mncllAw., n o ~ . Tenn. 37916 .AppalaclilaD R8siareh and Defenae Fund, 116-BKanawha Blvd. E. , b ~ n ~ W.VL, 26301Bailn Electi lc Power Co-Op, Bismarck, ND 68601Black Economi c Reeeareh Center, 112 W. 120tb ' St., New York, NY 10027 .Black.Land S e n i c e a ~ r.nn Center, Beaufort,s. c. 29902 - . .Black Mesa Deftnae Fund, 770 Old ~ c o s Trail, .Santa Fe,N. Mex. 87501California Rural ~ g a l Assi,tance, 1212 Market 'St .; Sah FranCtseo; C.:: 94102 . .Center for Community Change, 1000 Wisconsin Ave.,NW, Washington, DC 20007Center fo r Comm,..nity Economic Development,1878 Massachusetts Ave., Cambri dge, Mass.021 .0 , . . .c e n ~ Cleirlng House, 338 E. De Vargas, SantaFe, N.Mex. 87501Central Coast Counties Development Corp., 266Center Ave., Aptoa, Ca. 95003 . .Colorado Project, 1232 Delaware, ~ o v e r , Colo.80204Committee to Save North Dakota, 801 2nd Ave.,

J,S.E., Jamestown, N.Dak., 58401Community n t e e s , Inc.,Box 243; YellowSprings, Ohio 45387Conservation Foundation, 1717 Massachusetts

Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20036Concerned Citizens United, 208 W. Bertrand,. St . Marys, Kansas 66536 Cooperativa Campesinp, PO Box 824, Freedom,

Environmental Policy Center, 324 C Street, SE,Washington, DC 20003Evergreen Land Trust Ass'n., P.O. Box 303, ClearLake, Washington 98235FederatioQ of Southern Cooperatives, P.O: Box 95,Epes, Ala. 35460

Foundation for Community Dewlopment, 604 WChapel HOi St., DUrham, NC 27702Frlenda of he Earth, 529 Commercial St., SanFranclaco, Calif. 94111Georgia Council on Human Relations, 13 3 Luekle.St.,Atlanta, Ga. 80303 ] GulfcoutPulpwood Allociatlon, Box 63 , Eaata. bucbie,Mila. 39436Henry George School, 833 Market St., San F r a Q ~a.co,.C.Uf. 94103 . . HilhJander Reaearcb and Education c.tnter, Rt . 3,

Box 245 A, New Market, '!'linn. 57820 - ' Institute for DevelOpment of Indian Law, 92_15thSt., N.W.; WubingtOn, D.C. 20005 .. lllatitute fo r Liberty and Community> Box .94 ,- LyndonVIlle, Veimont 05851Inatitiite'for.the Study of o n - V i o l e n c e ~ Box 1001,:,, .P81o Alto, calif;' 92302 .. .. ; . 0 .. . -International Independence Institute, West Road,

Box 18 3 .AShby, Mass: 01431 Iowa Student Public Interest Research Group, 305S. Wilmoth, Ames, Iowa 50010K.U .Farm Market Research PrQject, P.O. Box 362,Lawrence, Ks. 66044Land Tenure Center, 310 King Hall, Univ. of Wis-consin , Madison, Wise. 53706 Maine Land Trust, 661h 7th Street, Bangor, Maine

04401Migrant Legal Action, 1820 Massachusetts Ave.,N.W., Washington, DC 20036Minnesota Public Interest Research Group, 2651N. ColfU. Miimeapc:;lla, Minn: Mississippi Action for Community Education, Box

588, Greenville, Miss. 3870 1Montana Farmers Union, Box 244 7, Great Falls,Mont. 59403Movement for Economic Justice, 1609 Connecti

cu t Ave., N.W., Washi!ll{ton, DC 20009

National Indian -Youth Council. 201 He.rmosa N.E.,Albuquerque, N.Mex. 97108National Sharecroppers Fund, 112 E. 19th St.,New York, NY 10002Native American Rights Fund, 1506 Broadway,Boulder, cOlo. 80302Nature Consenancy, 1800N. Kent St., Arlington,Va; '22209 New Alchemy Institute, P.O. Box 432, Woeds Hole, Mass. 02543 North Dakota ~ r i U n i o n , Box 651, James- .town, N.Dak. 58401 -

North West: lnfoimatton -Network, 608 19th Ave.. , E. , Seattle,_Wash 9 ~ 1 1 2 . . . .Northern California Land.Trust, P.O. Box 156,Berkeley, Calif. 94701 , Northern Cheyenne Land Owners' Aasoclatlo n, P.O., Box 113, Lame D e e ~ , Mont .59101 ..Noitbein E b ~ m e n w : . C o u r i c l l , Box $9 , Ashland,Wise. 54806: NQrtttem.l'l81nsRe&OlD'ce c ~ n ~ ; 437 S t a p l e ~ B l d g ~ , Billings,Mont. 59101 ..NortheJD Rockies. Action.Groug, 9 J.iacex St., . Helena, Mont. 59601' - OPel\ Space Institute, 145 E. 52nd S.t. , York,. .. NY. :loo22 . . . : Peacemaker Land Trust, 4818 Florence Ave., . .Philadelphia, Pa. 19143 ' Penn Community Services, P.O. Box 12 6; Erog

more, S.C. 29920People's Appalachian Research Collective, 321Ridgewood Ave., Morgantown, W.Va. 28505Return Surplus Land to Indians, 1701 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20036Rocky o u n ~ n Farmers Union, Box 628, Denver,Colo. 80201 ., Rural Farlners o ~ p , Forest Home, Ala. 36030Rural Housing Alliance, 1356 Connecticut'Aw.," N.W.,WUhington,DC 20036Rural Resources Institute, 120 S. Izard, Little

Rock, Ark.Save Our Cumberland Mountains, Petros, Tenn.a7845 .Sierra Club, 220 Bush St., San Francisco, Calif,


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People & Land - Volume 1 Number 2 - Winter 1974 OCR Reduced