Family Farm Defenders

Enbridge Line 5: A clear and present danger

Posted on June 14, 2025 by admin

By: Jim Goodman, FFD board member and retired organic dairy farmer (Wonewoc, WI)

Originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner, June 11, 2025

https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2025/06/11/enbridge-line-5-a-clear-and-present-danger

Canadian energy company Enbridge’s Line 5 traverses an extremely sensitive ecological area across northern Wisconsin, 400 rivers and streams as well as a myriad of wetlands, in addition to a path under the Mackinac Straights between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, all the while skirting the southern shore of Lake Superior. Such close proximity to the Great Lakes, lakes that hold over 20% of the world’s fresh surface water, lakes that supply drinking water to nearly 40 million people, yes, that does indeed make Line 5 a ticking time bomb.

Northern Wisconsin is also a very culturally sensitive area, home to the Bad River Reservation. The Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa were guaranteed rights to their lands by an 1854 treaty with the U.S. government. The easements for Line 5 across the reservation, granted to Enbridge by the Chippewa, expired in 2013 and the Bad River Band chose not to renew them. Enbridge continues to operate the line, illegally and in direct violation of the Bad River Band’s right to sovereignty over their land.

The Bad River Band has a guaranteed legal right to their land. They also have a right to Food Sovereignty, the internationally recognized right of food providers to have control over their land, seeds and water while rejecting the privatization of natural resources. Line 5 clearly impinges on the Band’s right to hunt, fish, harvest wild rice, to farm and have access to safe drinking water.

A federal court ruled that Enbridge has been trespassing on lands of the Bad River Band since 2013 and ordered the company to cease operations of Line 5 by June of 2026 (seems that immediate cessation would make more sense), but rather than shut down the aging line, Enbridge plans to build a diversion around the Bad River Reservation. They plan to move the pipeline out of the Bad River Band’s front yard into their back yard, leaving 100% of the threats to people and the environment in place.

Liquid petroleum (crude oil, natural gas and petroleum product) pipelines are big business in the U.S. With 2.6 million miles of oil and gas pipelines, the U.S. network is the largest in the world. If we continue our heavy and growing dependence on liquid fossil fuels, we must realize that we will continue to negatively impact the climate and the lives of everyone on the planet.

Instead of moving to a just transition away from fossil fuels, liquid or otherwise, the government continues to subsidize the industry through direct payments and tax breaks, refusing to acknowledge the cost of pollution-related health problems and environmental damage, a cost which is of course, incalculable.

There are nearly 20,000 miles of pipelines planned or currently under construction in the U.S., thus it would appear that government and private industry are in no hurry to break that addiction, much less make a just transition. While no previous administration was in any hurry to break with the fossil fuel industry, they at least gave the illusion of championing a transition to cleaner energy.

The current administration is abundantly clear. Their strategy is having no strategy. They don’t like wind and solar and they plan to end any support for renewable energy. They don’t care if they upend global markets, banking, energy companies or certainly any efforts to help developing countries transition away from fossil fuels.

Pipelines are everywhere across the U.S., a spiderweb connecting wells, refineries, transportation and distribution centers. The vast majority of pipelines are buried and many, if not all, at some point cross streams, rivers, lakes and run over aquifers. Pipeline ruptures and other assorted failures will continue and spillage will find its way into the bodies of water they skirt around or pass under. It’s not a question if they will leak, but when.

Enbridge controls the largest network of petroleum pipelines in the Great Lakes states, and they are hardly immune to spills. Between 1999 and 2013 it was reported that Enbridge had over 1,000 spills dumping a reported 7.4 million gallons of oil.

In 2010 Enbridge’s Line 6B ruptured and contaminated the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history. Over 1.2 million gallons of oil were recovered from the river between 2010 and 2014. How much went downstream or was buried in sediment, we’ll never know.

In 2024 a fault in Enbridge Line 6 caused a spill of 70 thousand gallons near Cambridge Wisconsin. And Enbridge’s most infamous pipeline, the 71-year-old Line 5 from Superior Wisconsin to Sarnia Ontario, has had 29 spills in the last 50 years, loosing over 1 million gallons of oil.

Some consider Line 5 to be a “public good” because, as Enbridge argues, shutting the line down will shut down the U.S. economy and people will not be able to afford to heat their homes — claims they have never supported with any evidence. A public good is one that everyone can use, that everyone can benefit from. A public good is not, as Enbridge apparently believes, a mechanism for corporate profit.

Line 5 is a privately owned property, existing only to generate profits for Enbridge. If it were a public good, Enbridge would certainly be giving more attention to the rights of the Bad River Band, the well-being of all the people who depend on the clean waters of the Great Lakes and to protecting the sensitive environment of northern Wisconsin and Michigan. They are not. Their trespassing, their disregard for the environment, their continuing legal efforts to protect their bottom line above all else, only points to their self-serving avarice.

The Bad River Band wants Enbridge out, and in their eyes it is not a case of “not in my back yard” they do not want Line 5 in anyone’s back yard.

Posted in Climate Justice, Food Sovereignty, Land Grabbing, Treaty Rights | Leave a comment

Trump’s Trade Deals Endanger Farmers and Our Food System

Posted on May 20, 2025 by admin

Trump’s efforts to undo the previous administration’s policies set up our food system for disruption and crisis, subjecting farmers to the uncertainties of international markets and developments elsewhere.

By: Anthony Pahnke, Family Farm Defenders vice president and Associate Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University

Originally published by Common Dreams on May 16, 2025

Former presidential adviser-cum-rightwing podcaster Steve Bannon often mentions that discerning the truth of President Donald Trump’s policy goals entails focusing on the signal and not the noise.

But doing so has been next to impossible when trying to figure out the rationale behind the administration’s moves in agriculture, which since January have generated widespread confusion and uncertainty.

Specifically, while Trump publicly proclaims that he stands with farmers, his tariff war with China stands to rob producers of their markets. Since Trump’s last term, China has already been looking to countries like Brazil for soybeans as the U.S. has proven an unreliable partner. Adding insult to injury, unexpectedly cancelling government contracts with thousands around the country early in his term placed undue stress on farmers who already have to contend with what extreme weather events throw their way.

Taken together, the bailouts along with the freshly inked U.K.-U.S. trade deal and easing of tariffs on China illustrate how the Trump administration prioritizes export agriculture as the driving force of our country’s farm system.

Now, with the details of the U.K.-U.S. trade deal becoming known, the signal—that is, the truth—of the Trump administration’s vision for agriculture is coming into view. To the point, not unlike how U.S. agriculture has been directed for the past few decades, it is becoming clear that this administration will prioritize exports. The problem with this vision is that, even if it generates short-term profits, it endangers our long-term national food security by dangerously further internationalizing our agricultural system.

Consider the praise that U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins heaped on the U.K.-U.S. deal that was made on May 8, singling out its supposed gains for farmers.

Following the announcement, the secretary announced a tour that she will take through the United Kingdom to tout the agreement. While details are still being hashed out, we are told of a promised $5 billion in market access for beef and ethanol.

Contrast that clear messaging—the signal—with how government contracts with farmers were frozen and made subject to administrative review, and the funding for local food programs was slashed.

The contracts were connected with the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which included resources for initiatives like those dealing with soil and water conservation, and supporting local food processing. Additionally, programs that connected local producers with schools and food banks, for example, the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, had their funding cut in the amount of about $1 billion.

Since February, some of the contracts have been unfrozen if they aligned with the administration’s political objectives (i.e. not promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI). Despite court orders ruling that all contracts must be honored, if and when the funds will be distributed, remains to be seen.

Overall, the noise surrounding the unfolding contract drama signals to farmers who want to diversify their operations and serve local markets that they should second guess looking to the government for help.

At the same time, Trump has not abandoned all producers.

In fact, amid the commotion about freezing some contracts, Secretary Rollins ok’d billions in direct payments, or bailouts, for growers of commodity crops such as corn. Thanks to such payments and not any improvements to markets, it is expected that farmers will see theier incomes increase when comparing this year with the last.

Such dynamics smack of contradiction, as Trump appears eager to send our food abroad while he’s willing to do whatever to bring manufacturing back to America’s shores in the name of strengthening the national economy.

Still, the deeper problem is with how export promotion makes our food system insecure, subjecting farmers to international political upheavals and economic disruption.

Remember the 1970s, when a grain production crisis prompted sudden demand in the Soviet Union. Then-Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz told farmers to “plant fence row to fence row” and “get big or get out” to profit from the newfound export opportunity.

The promise of international markets came—and went. President Jimmy Carter’s embargo of grain exports to the Soviet Union in 1980 for that country’s invasion of Afghanistan came as a body blow to the farmers who made commodity exports central to their financial plans. Farmers then struggled to pay off the debt for the land and machinery that they acquired just a few years before, which, with rising gas prices, contributed to the 1980s farm crisis. Parallels abound now, including the initial effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine increasing fertilizer and gasoline costs, and most recently, the ongoing dynamics of Trump’s trade war with China.

Concerning the U.K.-U.S. deal, U.K. imports of ethanol may seem a boon for corn growers. But without future terms of the deal becoming clear, it is unclear if this is simply a continuation of what the British already import. Similarly, the significance of the slated $250 million in purchases of beef products is of questionable importance, as last year the U.S. exported $1.6 billion to China. Regardless of the recent 90 day truce in the China-U.S. trade dispute, the remaining 30% tariff would still hurt American farmers. The Trump administration’s export push will find farmers without markets and in need of more bailouts.

Besides subjecting U.S. farmers’ livelihoods to international uncertainty, the other concern is the lack of concern for the next generation of food producers. Year after year, the country’s farmers are getting older, with no one stepping up to replace them. According to the 2022 Agricultural Census, the average farmer is over 58 years old, up over half a year from when the last census was conducted in 2017. During that same time, we lost nearly 150,000 operations. Since 2012, over 200,000 farmers have left the industry, representing a 10% decline.Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, upwards of 70% of farmland is expected to change hands over the next 20 years.

Export promotion serves a temporary fix, but places farmers at the whims of international politics. Moreover, it threatens our country’s already economically pressed farmers, making our country even more dependent on a dwindling number of people for our food, as well as imports. In fact, since 2004, while exports have nearly doubled from $50 billion to $200, our food imports have increased slightly more so.

Trump’s efforts to undo the previous administration’s policies set up our food system for disruption and crisis, subjecting farmers to the uncertainties of international markets and developments elsewhere. If there is a signal with the noise that Trump is making with our food system, then this is it—farmers better get ready for a volatile next few years and more bailouts, as operations will continue to go under. Overall, Trump’s nationalist rhetoric amounts to little, as our food system becomes more global, increasingly made vulnerable to dynamics outside our control.

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MAY DAY, WHAT DOES IT MEAN and HOW CAN WE HONOR IT?

Posted on April 29, 2025 by admin

By: Rebecca Goodman, FFD board member, retired organic dairy farmer – Wonewoc, WI

When I was a child being raised Catholic and attending a Catholic grade school, May 1^st signified the beginning of the month of Mary, mother of Jesus. We used to process from the school to the church with lilacs and tulips we brought from home to honor her. But this is not the May day I want to talk about here.

Actually, May Day honors workers and is rooted in agriculture, and celebrated by workers across the globe as International Labor Day on May 1. May Day started as a per-Christian holiday celebrated throughout Europe, especially among the Gaelic people. It falls on the halfway point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. Song and dance around bonfires celebrated the sown fields starting to sprout and cattle driven to pasture. May Day is a holiday with diverse meanings around the world but gradually became associated with the historic struggles and gains made by workers and the labor movement.

In the Soviet Union, leaders embraced the new holiday, believing it would encourage workers in Europe and the U.S. to unite against capitalism. It was celebrated with high-profile parades and a showcase of military might. Celebrations have declined in importance since the breakup of the USSR.

In Germany Labor Day became an official holiday in 1933 after the rise of the Nazi Party. Ironically, Germany abolished free unions the day after establishing the holiday, virtually destroying the German labor movement.

In the United States, the holiday was first celebrated in 1886 as part of the struggle for the eight-hour workday. On May Day, hundreds of thousands of workers across the county went on strike, demanding better working conditions and shorter working hours. In Chicago, the strike became known as the Haymarket Riot. When police attacked the rioters it became bloody and resulted in 8 strikers being hung for conspiracy. In 1889, to honor the Chicago workers, an International federation of socialist groups and trade unions designated May Day a labor holiday beginning what many nations now call International Worker’s Day.

Later, U.S. President, Grover Cleveland, uneasy with the socialistic origins of Workers’ Day, signed legislation to make Labor Day — already held in some states on the first Monday of September—the official U.S. holiday in honor of workers. Canada followed suit not long afterward. In response to anti- communist attitudes and fear of working-class unity, President Dwight Eisenhower, declared May 1 “Law Day”–dedicated to the principles of government under law—and Labor Day celebrated in September.

In dozens of countries around the world May Day has been recognized as a public holiday, and is celebrated with picnics and parties while serving as an occasion for demonstrations and rallies in support of workers.

So we have May Day, International Worker’s Day, and U.S. and Canada’s Labor Day. In light of the U.S. Administration, how will these two days be celebrated this year?

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Celebrating April 17th, La Via Campesina’s International Day of Peasant Struggle

Posted on April 15, 2025 by admin

By Jim Goodman, FFD board member and retired organic dairy farmer, Wonewoc WI

“Our lives are dependent on the sacrifice of the Campesinos”- Cesar Chavez

On April 17, 1996 1,500 members of Brazil’s MST, the Landless Peasants Movement, having been evicted from their farms two years earlier, marched to the state capitol in Para to demand a return of their land so they could again feed their families. Instead of meeting with government officials they were surrounded by police, who, using machine guns, killed 19 and seriously wounded 69.

Farmers, peasants, the indigenous and the landless are entitled to land only until the government or the corporate interests find a better use for it.

La Via Campesina, the international movement of the small farmer celebrates April 17 as the International day of Peasant’s Struggles. The struggle against the evictions, oppression and marginalization of the farmer. The commemoration of the struggles of Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers and the indigenous peoples of the world.

Those who farm in the US distance themselves from the term peasant, thinking it connotes a tenant, sharecropper, a small farmer or mere farm worker. I am a small farmer, a peasant and proud of it. Remember, roughly half of the worlds population are farmers who work the land and tend livestock. While I am a minority in the US, worldwide, I am part of the majority.

The vast majority of the worlds small farmers and farm workers continue to struggle against trans-national agribusiness corporations (TNC’s) that control the worlds food supply, they struggle against oppressive government policies, trade agreements and tariffs that aim to convert local farming to industrialized agriculture.

The peasant farmer struggles for the right to grow what they wish, for access to water, land and credit and for the rights of women farmers who grow most of the world’s food. They struggle for protection from subsidized foreign imports and to protect their crops from contamination by Genetically Engineered seed. They struggle to eliminate food from international trade agreements, because food is different, food is a human right, not a commodity, despite what our misguided government would tell us.

US farmers are ambivalent to this struggle, but are we really so distant from it? Do we really control our own destiny? In Iowa, nearly 60% of the farmland is rented and with land values often topping $20,000 per acre few, especially young farmers, can afford to own their own land. As investment companies and pension funds acquire more and more farmland, they drive price increases.

We have no control over our market prices or our input costs, but the TNC’s do. We have no control over land prices and government programs dictate what crops we will grow. We compete with farmers worldwide to see who can work the cheapest while the TNC’s eliminate local food production.

Americans are not so very different than the peasants of the world. We are all at the mercy of the TNC’s. When three corporations control our meat processing and four control the worlds grain supplies, who really decides what people will eat, at what cost and in the end what will farmers be paid?

Those who do not work the land are still connected to it and to the peasant. The farm worker grows our fruit, our vegetables and our livestock, without them we would all go hungry. Most of the world knows this, yet in the US we are slow to learn and slow to care. Yet, buying at a farmers market in Minneapolis, planting a window box in Brooklyn or a community garden in Los Angeles, we are catching onwe are becoming peasants. We all have the farmer, the peasant, somewhere inside and we are destined to be part of the struggle.

There is no shame in being a peasant, a farmer, in struggling to control your destiny, for manual labor and working the land are not demeaning. Feeding your family, your community and resisting the globalization of food are the struggles all farmers, all people must share whether they grow millet and rice in India, herd cattle in Africa, grow tomatoes in a Brooklyn window box or fish the North Sea.

We must control our food supply, we must decide what will be grown to protect our health, our culture and the environment. We are all part of the struggle, for we are all peasants, or, all in need of peasants. April 17 should, at the very least, be a day to consider our connection to food and to those who struggle to feed us.

Posted in Food Sovereignty | Comments Off

Why Family Farmers and Other Rural Folks Support a Strong Public U.S. Postal Service

Posted on March 19, 2025 by admin

By: John E. Peck, executive director, Family Farm Defenders

Since 1775 when Benjamin Franklin became the very first Postmaster General, the USPS has faithfully fulfilled the many lofty goals that are now inscribed outside the entrance of the U.S. Postal Museum in Washington DC: “Bond of the Scattered Family; Enlarger of the Common Life; Carrier of News and Knowledge; Instrument of Trade and Commerce.”

Affordable universal reliable communication is not something many people can take for granted. In fact, the USPS was such a great American idea (like our national park system) that it has since been replicated across the globe. Under the pretense that the USPS is “bankrupt,” though, Pres. Trump and other neoliberal free marketeers are hellbent to impose an austerity program and ultimately privatize this vital public service. During Trump’s last stint in the White House, USPS was forced to shutter half of its mail processing centers, leading to longer delivery times, and 10% of the nation’s post offices, mostly in rural towns, were put on the auction block. Despite such, the USPS continues to have some of the highest public approval ratings of any federal government agency. After all, who can you trust to make sure you get your seed orders or drug prescriptions in a timely fashion?

How did this quite preventable (and orchestrated) mugging of the USPS come about? Well, one needs to go back a few decades when the government first opened the door for corporate competitors to undermine the viability of the USPS. At just 73 cents to deliver a first class letter, USPS rates remain among the lowest in the industrialized world. Given the surge in packages, accelerated by the pandemic, private outfits like Fedex and Amazon are now allowed to mooch off the USPS’ amazing efficiency to help deliver their own packages (saving themselves up to 75%). Contrary to some naysayers, the USPS does not get a dime from U.S. taxpayers – it provides a valuable public service at cost to consumers. So attacks on the USPS claiming its “horribly wasteful” are just flat out wrong.

The USPS is also hamstrung from taking advantage of other ways to expand its services that many people, especially rural folks, desperately need. For example, the USPS still offers money orders, but many other countries postal systems offer a much wider range of popular financial services such as checking and savings accounts, even low interest loans. One recent study found that the USPS could earn an extra $8-9 billion per year just by providing basic banking options to the millions of Americans who now subsist on the fringes of the financial system. It is no surprise that Wells Fargo is drooling over the possible demise of USPS (as revealed in a recently leaked internal memo), since they hardly want any other option for those now subject to their predatory lending practices.

Now is the time to speak up and insure the proud iconic eagle of the USPS is not replaced by some anemic vulture version. Family Farm Defenders is among dozens of organizations that have joined the Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service. And just like many family farmers rely upon cooperatives for their collective bargaining against agribusiness, postal workers also deserve to have their labor rights respected as fully unionized federal employees. Please contact your elected officials to insure the future of USPS as a vital public good, and next time you are at the post office thank the workers for their essential service. As the unofficial motto of USPS carriers goes: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Neither should DOGE!