Family farmer speaks out against agribusiness at "showdown in Chicago"

Larry Huelskoetler, a family farmer from Beason, IL, a small unincorporated town in central Illinois with a population of about 200, spoke on Monday morning, October 26th, to hundreds of people gathered for the "Showdown In Chicago," a national grassroots mobilization taking place in Chicago against the October 25-27 national convention of the American Bankers Association (ABA). The ABA is a banking industry lobbyist group that "works to enhance the competitiveness of the nation's banking industry." Its members represent over 95 percent of the banking industry's $13.3 trillion in assets. The protests against the ABA have brought thousands of people to Chicago from across the U.S. to demand progressive reform of the financial industry, call to "bust up big banks," and send the message that "the only ones too big to fail are the American people."

Huelskoetler directs Farmers Supporting Independent Agriculture (FSIA), ia Central Illinois-located, faith-based community organization that works to save family farms, preserve local economy, and promote sound stewardship of farmland. FSIA has successfully negotiated low-interest rate operating loans for Central Illinois family farmers who commit to purchasing from local suppliers, worked with farm realtors and farm managers to develop land stewardship best practices, partnered with institutional landowners to craft farmland leases that create sustainable farming incentives, and pushed the University of Illinois to manage its endowment farmland in a more sustainable manner that benefits tenant farmers and local communities. FSIA is a member organization of the Central Illinois Organizing Project (www.ciop.org), the largest faith-based community organization in downstate Illinois, which organized dozens of people to participate in the Chicago rallies and protests against the ABA.

"I'm here to talk to you today about the long-term effects of the decisions that the dishonest Wall Street bankers have done to my community," Huelskoetler said. "Like in many rural communities, family farmers in my area are struggling and having a difficult time with the decisions made by the people on Wall Street."

"I've been farming for 37 years, and 7 years ago a Wall Street investor came and bought the farm that my family has farmed for 50 years. I then talked to the investor. He said, "Give me an extraordinarily high rent and you can continue to farm." I said, "I can't give you that kind of rent and do the job right." He said, "Too bad, I'll bring in a mega-farmer." "

"A mega-farmer is a farmer who wants to be just like the big banks, big enough that he can't fail. But high-risk farming by mega-farmers is becoming a reality. Mega-farm operators are pushing family farmers off the land they have farmed for decades. Mega-farmers can do this because they farm in an unsustainable manner. They work on narrow margins of profit. The risk is so great that these mega-farmers know they can't do the right thing and make a profit, so they don't even put back the nutrients into the soil that the crop takes out."

"Therefore they are stealing from one of our greatest natural resources: the soil. The impact is felt severely. What's left is poorly maintained fields, agricultural runoff, and diminishing productivity at a time when the world's population continues to grow and we have to feed the people all over the world. Large-scale mega-farm operators are bypassing local agricultural suppliers and costing local communities billions of dollars in economic activity every year."