CONTACT: Bobby King, Land Stewardship Project, 612-722-6377

8/30/06
A series of controversial advertisements sponsored by the Minnesota Farm and Food Coalition have come under fire from investigative journalists and farm groups for featuring inaccurate and misleading information and potentially violating federal law. The ads, which have run in heavy rotation on Minneapolis television station WCCO, are funded with soybean farmer checkoff money. They attempt to build support for policies that favor large-scale livestock operations and blame “anti-livestock activists” and “local control” for problems in the farm economy.

“It is wrong for my checkoff dollars to be used for ads that promote large-scale corporate operations,” said Evan Schmeling, a Hayfield, Minn., soybean farmer and Land Stewardship Project member. “Not only is the message wrong, the facts in the ads are wrong. This is a misuse of my checkoff dollars.”

In the Aug. 16 edition of his “Reality Check” report, veteran WCCO-TV political reporter Pat Kessler concluded that, “The ubiquitous farm advertisements promote the huge livestock expansions in Minnesota and take dead aim at people who oppose it. But they include misstatements and exaggerations about animal feedlot operations and the controversy in small towns around them.” Kessler’s analysis takes the ads to task for utilizing fake newspaper headlines and other misleading visual images in an attempt to portray agribusiness as a victim of “activists.” Kessler’s analysis is online at: http://wcco.com/realitycheck/local_story_234150807.html.

Nationally syndicated agricultural columnist Alan Guebert recently exposed the inappropriate use of soybean checkoff dollars to pay for the ads and showed that the blanket claim made in the TV spots that livestock numbers in Minnesota are decreasing is false. Guebert’s column is at http://webstar.postbulletin.com/agrinews/294650573711604.bsp.

Through documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, the Land Stewardship Project has confirmed that the ads were paid for with soybean checkoff funds. The ads also feature the soybean checkoff logo. Checkoff funds are mandatory fees paid by farmers on every bushel of soybeans sold and are to be used for soybean research and promotion. Checkoff funds cannot be used for “influencing legislation or governmental action or policy,” according to federal law.

In June, Farmers’ Legal Action Group (FLAG), on behalf of clients the Land Stewardship Project and the other members of the Campaign for Family Farms (Missouri Rural Crisis Center, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Illinois Stewardship Alliance and Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana), sent a letter to USDA outlining the alleged violations pertaining to the use of checkoff funds and demanding that the ads be withdrawn. The FLAG letter calls for the Minnesota Soybean Board to refund to the United Soybean Board the checkoff dollars used in the production and airing of the ads. USDA is currently reviewing the letter but has yet to respond. The letter is at http://www.landstewardshipproject.org/pdf/cff_soybean_chk_ltr.pdf.

The Minnesota Farm and Food Coalition is a coalition of the state's most powerful agribusiness interests, including the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council, the Minnesota Pork Producers Association and the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association. In recent years, such groups have worked at the state capitol to weaken local government control or environmental review of large-scale livestock operations.

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NOTE: To read a recent blog on the Minnesota Farm and Food Coalition ads, see http://looncommons.org/2006/08/25/ads-on-wcco-dont-pass-the-reality-test.

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