Hog farmers monitor counting of pork checkoff votes

Campaign for Family Farms likes chances of ending mandatory pork tax

For more information call: Land Stewardship Project office, 612-722-6377
Monica Kahout, hog farmer, Olivia, Minn., Land Stewardship Project, 320-523-1516
Dale Leslien, hog farmer, Durango, Iowa, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, 319-588-0657
Rhonda Perry, hog farmer, Armstrong, Mo., Missouri Rural Crisis Center, 573-449-1336
Phil Wright, hog farmer, Paris, Ill., Illinois Stewardship Alliance, 217-884-2291


12/1/00
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. —Based on firsthand observation of the ballot counting, the Campaign for Family Farms says that it looks like the votes of independent hog farmers may have made the mandatory pork checkoff a thing of the past. According to farmers who monitored the counting of ballots, hog producers voted to end the checkoff by a margin of two to one in counties in which they witnessed the vote count.


On November 29, hog farmers traveled to their Farm Service Agency (FSA) offices to watch the counting of ballots cast in the mandatory pork checkoff referendum, as allowed by referendum rules. The referendum will decide the future of the pork checkoff, a tax every hog farmer must pay on each hog they sell. The Campaign for Family Farms (CFF), a national coalition of state-based farm organizations, led the effort to end the mandatory pork checkoff.


“The counting we witnessed in Minnesota looked very good,” said independent hog farmer Monica Kahout, a spokesperson for CFF and a member of the Land Stewardship Project, “We had members watching the ballot counting in several key counties and their reports are showing hog farmers turned out to vote down the checkoff.”


In Iowa, the largest hog producing state in the country, the unofficial tallies also look good to producers who want to end the pork tax.


“We’re rolling up big numbers in some of the largest hog farmer counties in the state,” said independent hog producer Dale Leslien, a CFF spokesperson and member of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. “NPPC announced that they have approved a $51 million budget for the coming year. The way things are looking, I wonder where they plan to get that money?”


Hog farmers from across the country voted to end the mandatory pork checkoff because the checkoff hasn’t helped independent producers. Since the mandatory checkoff began in 1986, hog farmers have been taxed out of more than $500,000,000, over 250,000 hog farmers have gone out of business, and farmers’ profits have plummeted.


“It is just ludicrous to think that we should pay checkoff money to organizations that support policies that are putting independent producers out of business. The NPPC hung independent producers out to dry,” said Phil Wright, a hog farmer-member of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance and CFF spokesperson. “We’re just not going to take it anymore.”


Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman called for the referendum on the pork checkoff because more than 19,000 of the nation’s hog farmers signed a petition requesting that a vote be held to end the mandatory pork checkoff. The votes were cast by hog farmers in August and September of this year at FSA offices around the country.


“We’ll have to wait a couple of weeks for the official announcement on who won this referendum,” said Rhonda Perry, a hog farmer-member of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center and CFF spokesperson, “but we are confident that the majority of hog farmers in this country voted to end the checkoff and bring NPPC’s gravy train to a grinding halt.”


The Agricultural Marketing Service of USDA will have the referendum totals on December 8, and a public announcement of the referendum results from the Secretary of Agriculture is expected in December or January.

 ©Land Stewardship Project, 2001


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