1)      America’s rural communities have taken the hardest toll in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  According to the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, “the death rate for rural soldiers is 60% higher than the death rate for those soldiers from cities and suburbs.”  

2)      We are losing our farmers.  There are eight times as many farmers in the US over the age of 65 as there are under the age of 35.  This is a national crisis that threatens our very ability to feed ourselves, affecting our quality of life and the security of our nation. 

3)      Rural communities cannot support the large numbers of returning soldiers .  These communities, already lacking in employment opportunities for young families, are also lacking much needed medical and mental health services for veterans. “Our rural members”, says Paul Rieckhoff, President of Iraq and Afghan Veterans of America, “are having the hardest time.”

4)      The current wars are taking a huge toll on our national treasury.   While taxpayer dollars still fund large farm subsidies – these subsidies primarily benefit  large multi-national food processors – while monies needed for conservation, credit needed for the family farmers  and help and training needed for the new  and start-up farmer are all lacking.

5)      Since the beginning of the latest Gulf War oil prices have more than tripled.  While oil company profits and those of all military related industries have skyrocketed, the American farmer has once again paid his undue share of this unprecedented cost of fuel.

6)      While the US farmer pays his unfair toll for these wars, so too do the farmers of the countries where the wars are fought.  Afghani farmers have turned to opium as the only viable crop in a countryside ravaged by several decades of international forces battling in their homeland.  The fertile farmland of the Tigris-Euphrates River has been seriously damaged and many of the farm families who haven’t lost members directly to the war have lost their farms to ethnic cleansing.

7)      We farmers are on the front lines of both global wars and global warming.  Higher temperatures, draughts, and erratic weather patterns are hitting us hard already.  Going to war with fossil fuels, for fossil fuel is giving our farms  a one-two punch while benefiting the very forces that threaten us.

8)      Control of land, water and food production will become important issues in preventing new wars.  As the world’s population continues to grow and resources continue to shrink the issue of food sovereignty – the right for all people to decide what they eat and to ensure that agriculture in their community is fair and healthy for all – will be keys to a peaceful world.

9)      We can change things by changing the way we farm.  By creating healthier and more diverse farming systems, with food, fuel and fiber grown closer to where it is consumed, we can rebuild our rural economies, create work for our returning soldiers, promote national security, rebuild our democracy,  improve America’s economic and physical health and do more for global warming than any other single change by any other industry.

10)   We can create a progressive voice for agriculture.  By bringing together America’s family farmers, organic farmers, farm workers, the new generation of urban gardeners and farmers, along with consumers who demand a safe and just food system we can change the voice of American agriculture.

11)   Farmers are the biggest workforce in the world.  There are more farmers in the world than there are believers of any one religion or followers of any one political dogma.  Together with the fishers and the foresters we feed the world, and manage most of its land and water.  We can come together in groups like Terra Madre and La Via Campesina that can become powerful, democratic forces in the coming decades. 

12)   A connection to the land is essential to being peaceful people.   American writers from Thoreau, Emerson and Whitman, to Scott Nearing and Wendell Berry have shown us that our connection to the land is essential to our spirit as a nation.  Generations of Amish, Mennonites and others have chosen farming as part of a simpler life, without need or capacity for violence.  And young Americans growing up during the War in Vietnam pushed organic farming as the ultimate statement against a country that had lost its moral center of gravity.  More than ever, in a shrinking world, we need to look at how we farm, how we eat, and how we live as both means and ends in our search for a more peaceful and just world.

Michael O’Gorman

www.farmsnotarms.org