AGRICULTURE WHITE PAPER
KANSAS CATHOLIC BISHOPS
Year 2001
It is time.
With the depressed prices of grain; with the on-again off -again prices of livestock; with the major structural changes in the agricultural world; with the disappearance of our rural communities; with the damage done to our natural resources; with the approach of 2002 and the re-writing of the Federal farm law... what with all these things, it is time, and past time.
Time for what, you say? Time to begin a large and sustained conversation on a single question: What kind of agriculture do we want anyway?
Farmers need to be involved in that conversation, and ranchers too. Members of family corporations should be at that table as should representatives of multi-national corporations. Bankers should be there, of course, as should implement dealers, and smaller retail and county officials. Legislators should be there, obviously. And the eaters of the world should be there, the people, the 98% of us not farmers or ranchers. All should be there because all have a stake in how that question is addressed and how that question is answered.
So too should the Church be there: that group of women and men shaped by our Judaeo-Christian heritage. The church has no technical solution to bring to the table: she is not an agricultural expert. Church has no political solution to bring to the table: she is not a political expert. The Church does have a deposit of ethical principles which could ensure that the question does get fully answered: after two thousand years, after all, she has become something of an expert in humanity.
And what would the Church suggest if she were privy to the conversation? Nothing other than what her children and her God have always told her.
FIRST, they tell her there is nothing inevitable about the ownership of the land, nothing inevitable about the methods of production, nothing inevitable about the methods of distribution. It seems that way at times: large, forbidding, impenetrable, impossible to change. It seems that way especially to those of us who are not farmers and ranchers: that blind market forces drive it all. But that is not true. The whole complex system is the result of human choices, and choices made can be unmade.
SECOND, they tell her there are ethical implications to every human choice. Every decision will take us closer to our final end, or further from it: will be ethical or unethical, will be good or bad, will lead to virtue or to vice. Our educational choices, our business choices, our personal choices, our recreational choices, our agricultural choices ... are fraught with implications that go far beyond this world. There can be no divorce between economics and ethics. Those who try to answer the question without the security of clear moral standards wander aimlessly in the fog, and they produce no policy that is effective in safeguarding the concerns of nature and those of society.
THIRD, they tell her that farming occupies a quite singular place in the wide range of human activities. It is more closely tied than any other economic activity to the very processes of life itself. Food, its production and its distribution, goes to the very heart of who we are as fragile human beings. Shelter is basic, but not so basic. Transportation is basic, but not so basic. Nothing is so basic. Farming is different from any other form of economic activity. Economic science sometimes calls the agricultural world the primary sector. Plain good sense would tell us that ranching and farming have a real primacy with respect to vital human needs. And we must get first things right before going on to other things.
FOURTH, they tell her that, as we look at the earth and those who work it, the most important principle is the one that brings the earth back to its Creator: the earth belongs to God. It must therefore be treated according to his law. Those who work it must respect the natural and moral structure with which He has endowed it. The farmer and the rancher minister to things that are beyond them. They do not, finally, control them. They do not wring things from them. They woo things from them, if the sun smiles, and the rain falls, and their luck holds.
Fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air (Gen.1:28). These words from Genesis entrust the earth to our use, not to our abuse. They do not make us the absolute arbiters of the earth's governance. They make us the Creator's co-workers: a stupendous mission, to be sure, and one that is already marked bv precise boundaries that can never be transgressed with impunity. Each advance through biotechnology must be looked at very carefully, therefore. It cannot be evaluated solely on the basis of immediate economic interest. It must also be submitted to rigorous scientific examination, and equally rigorous ethical examination, lest it become disastrous for human health and for the future of the earth.
FIFTH, they tell her of the universal destination of the earth's goods. What God has given, he has given to all of us. Every person, every people, has the right to live off the fruits of the earth. It is an intolerable scandal that so many are reduced to hunger, and are forced to live in inhuman conditions. We must rid humanity of this disgrace through appropriate political and economic decisions on a global scale. This does not imply that we have no right to private property. But this does demand a conception of private property, and a regulation of it, that will safeguard and further its intrinsic social function. In our economic decisions we must abandon the logic of sheer advantage, and combine legitimate profit with the value and the practice of solidarity.
SIXTH, they tell her that, in the countries of the developed world, an unhealthy consumerism is spreading, leaving us mired in a culture of waste. This tendency must be opposed. We must try to teach, rather, a use of goods which never forgets either the limits of available resources or the poverty of so many human beings, and which consequently tempers our manner of living with the duty of fraternal sharing. While this would be an enormous pedagogical challenge, it would be the wisest of decisions and would serve us well far into the future.
SEVENTH, they tell her that we should follow in the footsteps of our best tradition: that we should be bold enough to open ourselves to all the developments of our technological age; and that we should be wise enough to cling to the perennial values of our Christian faith. The great problems posed by the agricultural sector cannot be addressed as technical problems only. Nor can they be addressed as political problems onlv. They are, at their root, ethical problems. When we address them in this way, we pass on a hope-filled future to the world of agriculture.
In the letter to the Romans, St. Paul gives us the arresting image of all creation groaning in travail (8:22). This groaning of the ear reminds us that agricultural work is never free from wariness and pain. The culture of the farming world has always been marked by a sense of impending risk to the harvest because of unforeseeable climactic misfortunes. Today, in addition to the traditional burdens, there are often others due to human carelessness. Agricultural activity in our era has had to reckon with the consequences of industrialization and the sometimes disorderly development of urban areas, with the
phenomenon of air pollution and ecological disruption, with the dumping of toxic waste and deforestation. It is time to listen ... to the groaning of the earth and the groaning of those who work it.
It is time.
The Bishops of the Province of Kansas:
Most Rev. James P. Keleher, S.T.D.
Archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas
Most Rev. Thomas J. Olmsted, DD., J.CD.
Coadjutor Bishop of Wichita
Most Rev. George K. Fitzsimons, D.D.
Bishop of Salina
Most Rev. Eugene J. Gerber, D.D.
Bishop of Wichita
Most Rev. Ronald M. Gilmore, D.D.
Bishop of Dodge City
APPENDIX
We Kansas Bishops think the following Federal and State policy recommendations should bulk large in the developing conversation about the kind of agriculture we want in Kansas and in the country. The time is now to correct, and even to change, course so that we might have an agriculture that is economically viable, environmentally sound and socially acceptable.
Federal Policy Recommendations
1) By 2002 a new federal farm law will be debated and passed. Fundamental change is needed with this new farm bill. The new planting flexibility of the last farm biIl should be maintained. The income support payments should be modified to reward different levels of conservation practices. There should be maximum limits set on the amount of federal farm payments to individual farms. The existing conservation programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program should be targeted to maximize environmental benefits. A national -level competitive grants program should be established to provide farmers and ranchers with resources for translating their entrepreneurial ideas into concrete solutions.
2) Agriculture research priorities should be established in light of stewardship incentives. Farmers and ranchers should be encouraged to improve water quality, protect wildlife habitat, conserve seed and livestock diversity, promote soil health and prevent soil erosion through on-farm research programs and cost-sharing incentives. Sustainable farm based energy options such as bio-diesel or pelletizing perennial grasses for home heating should be developed.
3) Adequate resources should be given to the Untied States Department of Agriculture and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department to investigate and enforce a fair and competitive agriculture marketplace.
State Policy Recommendations
1) Establish a contract grower bill of rights that would develop a fair and open market for both the farmer and the processor. This bill of rights would establish guidelines for contract termination, the duration of the contract, procedures to renegotiate contract terms, dispute resolution mechanisms, capital construction requirements and responsibility for environmental damages. Model legislation will be introduced in several states and should be considered in Kansas.
2) Prohibit packers from procuring livestock for slaughter through the use of forward contract, unless the contract contains a firm base price that can be equated to a fixed dollar amount on the day the contract is signed and the forward contract is offered or bid in an open and public manner. Prohibit packers from owning and feeding cattle, unless the cattle are sold for slaughter in an open public market. Price reporting for all packer livestock transactions should be mandatory.
3) The new Kansas Restraint of Trade Act law has updated the antitrust law in Kansas. The enforcement of this law resides solely with the Attorney General. The Attorney General must have adequate resources to enforce this new law and work with other States to enforce antitrust law.
4) Kansas counties should regain the authority to regulate the siting of large confined animal feeding facilities. Prior to 1998 the counties had this authority to protect the health and safety of their local communities.
5) The new Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Alternative Crops at Kansas State University will provide research, education and outreach on production and marketing for independent, family-owned farms. This Center will collect and analyze information- on the Kansas food system and opportunities for production of new crops, value-added processing and direct marketing. This Center deserves a fair share of existing tax-funded public research, credit and marketing programs.
6) Kansas should expand the new $50 million subsidized interest loan program for Kansas farmers. This new program was out of funds on the first day of implementation with hundreds of loan applications now on a waiting list.
7) Kansas should establish loan and grant economic development programs to help farmers and rural communities gain a greater share of the consumer food dollar. These programs support self-employment and small-scale entrepreneurship. Kansas should leverage such grant and-loan programs with private resources and federal programs giving special attention to assisting small locker plants, establishing independent milk processors and developing regional produce warehouse facilities.
Kansas Catholic Conference
6301 Antioch
Merriam, Kansas 66202
913-722-6633