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Guebert -- Questions about checkoff money used for backing feedl Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Do you know where your thousands -- and on a national scale, hundreds of millions -- of federally-mandated, non-refundable checkoff dollars go?
It's a question Bobby King, policy director of Minnesota's Land Stewardship Project, asked when he viewed advertisements that attacked "anti-livestock activist groups" in the state on Minneapolis' powerhouse WCCO TV station earlier this year.
The 30-second ads, says King, had an unmistakably political message. "To build the case that there's a crisis in livestock production here," he explains from his Twin Cities office, "because Minnesota law gives counties and townships authority over livestock facility siting."
Documents obtained by King under the Freedom of Information Act later confirmed that the ads' blunt message was paid for by the United Soybean Board and the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council, the federal and state soybean checkoffs. And that, he charges, is illegal.
"Federal checkoff dollars can be used for many things," notes Lynn Hayes, senior staff attorney for St. Paul-based Farmers' Legal Action Group, "like market promotion, export development and research, to name a few.
"One thing specifically outlawed by the soybean checkoff legislation, however," she continues, "is influencing legislation or governmental action -- lobbying."
King had little difficulty making the connection between the ads and the soybean checkoff: Two of the three ads prominently sport the copyrighted USB logo. Also, all three of the ads encouraged viewers to "go to," "visit," or "learn more" about what is "at stake here" if "livestock expansion continues to arbitrarily denied" by going to the web site of the Minnesota Farm and Food Coalition.
The Coalition is a who's who of Minnesota farm and agribusiness groups, including Farm Bureau and the Agri-Growth Council. All openly and actively lobby local, state and federal officials on farm issues.
As questionable as the ads' legality is, the content of the ads is even more questionable. For example, one ad slugged "soybeans" -- and, ironically, the one not sporting the USB logo -- begins by noting "Minnesota livestock numbers continue to decline."
USDA data shows that blanket statement untrue. In fact, even though the number of livestock farms in Minnesota, like most Midwest states, has dropped dramatically over the last 10 years, the number of hogs raised there has increased from 4.95 million in 1995 to 6.6 million in 2005. Minnesota's other premier livestock industry, turkey production, has experienced similar growth: from 40.5 million birds in 1995 to 46.5 million in 2004.
The ad's claim is closer to hitting its stalking horse -- the perceived loss of livestock is because of Minnesota's local zoning process -- when considering Minnesota's dwindling dairy industry.
What isn't noted, however, is that every Midwest state has lost dairy farms in the last decade, mostly to Sunbelt states like California, Texas and Florida. For example, while Minnesota has seen 6,200 of its 12,000 dairy farms close between 1995 and 2005, Wisconsin has lost 12,700, or 45 percent, and Iowa 2,700, or 52 percent, over the same period.
As such, the closer truth isn't that these states are cow-phobic; it's that other states offer a better climate, cheaper labor and faster growing markets than the Midwest. This selective use of fact and creative use of fiction has one goal, believes the Land Stewardship's King: "They want to take away the local community's freedom over where mega-livestock facilities are built in Minnesota."
In a June 14 letter to USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, the soybean checkoff's government watchdog, FLAG asked that money spent on the Minnesota campaign, an estimated $250,000, be refunded.
AMS is reviewing the Minnesota ads and the overall campaign, conceived by USB as a broader, $909,115 multi-state effort. AMS hopes to rule on the FLAG request by October. |
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