6-20 IAN Family Farmers

  I’m going to take a chance and go on a bit of a diatribe. I’m not a fan of lobbyists. In my mind, it’s all about who has the most money to bribe special interests with. That said I have to retract part of the statement. We have all of these locavore movements which is great, but often times the thinking is that people want to buy from farmers not big commercial agricultural operations. We’ll get back to that in a minute.

The Corn Farmers Coalition is back in the nation’s capital with a lobbying campaign designed to put a face on family farmers. Corn farmers from 14 states and the National Corn Growers Association are supporting the program to bring the facts about corn farming to legislative decision makers. NCGA President Bart Schott says it’s been effective at promoting family farming - a term that is misunderstood by leaders in Washington, D.C. Schott says many of them don’t believe many true family farms exist anymore. “Most people don’t know that 90% of corn grown in the United States is grown by family farmers. So that’s kind of a myth about how big are these farms and are they industrial farms. No they are family farmers most of them like my farm, on the third-generation farmer and my sons are the fourth, so I think that’s a real valid point to get out.”

The program will put prominent facts about family farmers in Capitol Hill publications, radio, frequently used websites, the Metro and Reagan National Airport.

Each message includes a picture of a family farmer - and an important fact that corn farmers want our policymakers to know