LORETTE PICCIANO - Rural Coalition
Our Vision for Food & Agriculture

What should a food system look like? If you had no limits in time or resources, what meal would you like to find on your dinner table in the evening after work? Would you shop for and prepare it yourself, or wish someone would do that for you? Where would you like to shop, and what kind of market would you create if you could have any market you like?

In preparation for the 2002 Farm Bill, the Rural Coalition and more than a dozen of our member groups conducted a similar visioning process at the other end of the food system. Small farmers from Maine to Mexico, in Minnesota and Iowa, and from California to Alabama were asked to envision their dream farm. If resources were unlimited, what would their dream farm look like?

The pictures and farm maps and lists they shared were not at all extravagant. One farmer wanted a horse to plow his vegetable plots, and a pond with catfish. Another wanted to grow flowers for weddings and funerals in the community. Many wanted to care for the land that had been in their families for years. Some wanted to provide recreation for their communities. Most hoped simply to be able to make a living from the land. As one woman stated, on her dream farm,

"There would be leisure time and less stress for my husband and my sons and me, and there would be stability of income. I think that’s kind of at the root of the whole thing– earning an income that meets the cost of what you’re doing. From that, everything else falls into place."

For the minority producers especially, hopes and dreams included also a desire for increased land ownership and improvements in housing, and sending the grandchildren to college. In Mexico, all the visions included a community engaged in agriculture, helping each other, sharing land and building cooperatives. Everywhere, producers wanted access to markets and a fair return for what they labored to produce.

Our farmworker communities within the Rural Coalition also have their dreams. They want fair wages and working conditions, safe places to work and to rest, and enough work to sustain their families. In one conversation, farmworker women learned what the annual earnings would be for someone earning minimum wage. "Oh, if we could have that much, it would be a dream," said one.

Another group of farmworkers from Florida are sharing a dream with a group of African American farmers in Arkansas. They want to develop a plan to work together, a plan that assures the farmer has enough trained workers for the fresh vegetables he is producing, and that assures the workers good wages and housing for the season, transportation and protections for their health and safety.

The American Indian producers envision new attention and support for farming, and especially, ranching, and an end to the inequities they have faced. For example, they would like the federal government to pay for placing Extension Agents on all Indian reservations, just as taxpayers support Extension agents in most counties in the nation.

The African American farmer cooperatives in hurricane devastated Mississippi and Louisiana and Alabama want to rebuild their houses and farms, and reopen the markets, like Crescent City in New Orleans, that connect them to the cities.

The family farmers in the United States have joined with the campesinos of Mexico to participate in a region wide and worldwide movement to remove agriculture from trade agreements that benefit only corporations. They envision an agriculture where the producers and consumers in every nation have the right to construct a farm and food policy that best suits each nation.

The devastation of hurricanes, floods and earthquakes has reminded us this year that we are called upon to share. We seek a food and farm policy that assures no one in our human family is hungry, and that we are ready to meet the needs of those who suffer disaster, or the devastation of chronic poverty and exclusion.

As the Rural Coalition joins with our members and our allies– the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, The Missouri Rural Crisis Center and the National Family Farm Coalition– in our Campaign for a Just Food and Farm Policy, the following encompass our vision and goals for our Agriculture and Food System:

Global Food Sovereignty and Community Food Security
Justice and Equity for all Participants in the System
Sustaining of the Earth and the Community
Equitable Access to High Quality and Affordable Food for Everyone

We, the more than 80 diverse community based organizations of the Rural Coalition, want to work with you to secure a dif-ferent agriculture that nourishes us all. We want everyone to have food that looks good, tastes good, smells good, and– produced without exploitation and with fair returns to workers and producers who care for the land– is good.

For more information contact Rural Coalition at www.ruralco.org.

Lorette Picciano is Executive Director of the Rural Coalition in Washington DC. Visit www.ruralco.org.


National Catholic Rural Life Conference
4625 Beaver Avenue
Des Moines, Iowa 50310-2199
(515) 270-2634
email address: ncrlc@mchsi.com
website: www.ncrlc.com

This article was published in the Winter 2005 issue of Catholic Rural Life©. No portion of this article may be reproduced without written permission from The National Catholic Rural Life Conference. To purchase the Winter 2005 issue of Catholic Rural Life, please contact The National Catholic Rural Life Conference office at 4625 Beaver Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50310-2199, call (515) 270-2634, or e-mail ncrlc@mchsi.com. The cost is $2.50 an issue plus postage and handling.