University of Northern Iowa

NFO: The Fight for Rural AmericaAuthor(s): William MurraySource: The North American Review, Vol. 253, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1968), pp. 24-26Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25116754 .

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NFO

The Fight for Rural America

by William Murray

Recently, an editor of one of the local 'underground' newspapers here in Iowa City came looking for infor

mation on NFO. He had heard I'd done an article on the organization for the New York Times Magazine. I had, in fact, written such an article; but, it was never

published. After a visit to Corning, Iowa?NFO head

quarters?and interviews with organizational function aries from President Staley on down to rank-and-file

members, I ended up with material which I could have obtained from Public Relations Releases or an examin ation of a few issues of the NFO Reporter. NFO peo

ple are as close-mouthed and as well trained in organi zational propaganda as the Viet Cong. I was looking for a charismatic leader, the charismatic cause, the

fiery devotees; I found an organization of hard-headed realists interested mainly in setting up collective bar

gaining units with processors, so that their farmer mem bers could get better prices for farm produce.

SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and other radical student organizations have developed a sudden interest in NFO with the idea that they might have in terests in common and might be able to work up a

political rapprochement. SDS propaganda now usually carries a sentence or two acclaiming NFO for their

revolutionary stand against corporations. I had to in

form the editor who had come to me that NFO leaders

emphatically reject allegiance to or support of any po litical party. NFO has no political philosophy or goals

whatsoever. Mr. Staley says: "NFO is a service or

ganization. We're a collective bargaining outfit. Our

main job is to bargain for our members so that we can get them better prices for their products." The non

political public posture of the group has been main

tained consistently; they have not come out in sup

port of any party. A rapprochement between SDS and

NFO seems out of the question. In spite of its ap

parent radicalism, NFO is at the core conservative

and possibly even regressive. It was shocking to find in NFO such an unimagina

tive approach to what must surely be the last ditch

stand of the agrarian tradition in America. The South

has, for all practical purposes, lost that battle. If the

agrarian tradition is alive at all today in any real sense, it is alive in the midwest, the area of NFO strength. If NFO leaders are aware at all of the historic link

they have with the Southern Agrarian struggle, they do not indicate it in their propaganda. (We will not

go into the difference between Southern and Midwest

agrarianism, but will assume that they have certain

qualities and general values in common, though the two regional cultures are different in many ways.) NFO is involved in a historical struggle of great importance for the survival and thriving of critical spiritual values

within American culture. It seems to me the only sub stantial force that could be pitted against the tentacled

military-industrial-city-urban complex and its values

which are threatening to make our culture lopsided and unreal.

The line up of forces in the struggle goes like this:

UNDERDOG: NFO THE ENEMY: Chain Stores

Meat Packers

Dairy Companies Industrial Corporations setting up

Farming Corporations Foreign Agricultural Imports The Government (?)

ALLIES: Family Farmer and Family Small Town Businessman Small Town Banker Small Towns (Rural America) Town and Country Division, National

Council of Churches

Small, predominantly church-oriented col

leges.

RIVALS: Farm Bureau UNCOMMITTED: Farmers Union

The Grange A glance at this line-up will show immediately that

NFO is fighting not only for better prices for farm pro duce, but for the survival of rural America itself. They are aware of this, to some extent. The typical party line one hears at headquarters in Corning, and down to the rank-and-file goes like this: if the small farmer and rural America does not prosper and remain stable, the country is in for a Depression. Rural America is the backbone of the nation, the source of its conser

vative strength. Rural America prevents the country from breaking up into chaos and anarchy. America's

great leaders have come from rural America. If NFO is fighting to preserve rural America as it

has existed in the past, then thoughtful men every where will simply say such a fight is regressive, and not worth fighting. Consider the typical image we have of the small town in America: "repetitive small towns

24 The North American Review

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whose spirit is forever horizontal," as Norman Mailer calls them. The mentality is agressively secure, insular, tradition bound. Something called 'common-sense'

passes for thinking. The 'citizens' are community ori

ented, and confident in the view that what the commu

nity wants and thinks, is right. The structure of the

personal identity is solidified, even glorified, in the ap proval of the community, no matter how absurd the

person may appear in a wider context. The result is that in the main, people have a too rigid view of what human nature is and how life should be lived. Gossip is still the great pastime, in spite of TV. In the city,

no one knows; in the small town, everyone knows. A small town's secure view of itself is only shaken when someone commits a murder, or runs away with the

cash, or one of the wives has a nervous breakdown and has to go to a psychiatrist.

Is this what NFO is fighting to preserve? Though they are in the right batde, they are in it for inferior reasons. The old small town, as those of us who grew up in them know, is going the way of the dodo bird. The NFO is not fighting the corporation, but the 20th

century.

But, to dismiss small-town values as being out of touch with reality as modern man knows it, would seem to me to be a great mistake. A new concept of the small town may be just what we need to provide that balance in a culture dominated increasingly by urban-industrial values. It would be just as easy to

paint a picture of urban living as grim, in its own way, as the one I have just painted of the small town. What

we need is imaginative rural leadership which would direct the small town away from the regressive aspects of its life towards an ideal of the small town which would have as its spiritual base a willingness to come to terms with assumptions about human nature and human life more consonant with 20th century thinking. I am not advocating the 'modernization' of small towns, and all that word means in its most pejorative sense. I have seen West Branch, where I live, modernizing like the dickens over the past four years, and gradu ally forgetting in their new-found National-Historic Site- prosperity, the spiritual insights and outlook of their Quaker heritage, except in so far as Quakerism can be used to give the town some local color. New build

ings and a new park will not a new town make. I am not advocating either a renewal of the sentimental

bilge and nostalgia about small town life. I am think

ing of a vision of rural America and an agrarian tra

dition more like that adumbrated by the Southern

Agrarians thirty years ago: Ransom, T?te, Lytle, Dav

idson . . . They had a vision of the contribution a pro

foundly experienced, understood, and managed agrar ian tradition could make to a world that has mostly lost touch with Nature in any way but a rapacious one.

They saw that values inherent in the agrarian-rural tradition, particularly the deep and often terrifying

harmony of relationships experienced between man and

man, and man and Nature, can restore Man's sense of

balance and reality. These values the Southern Agrar ians saw were the most hopeful ones to juxtapose

against the disintegrative and dehumanizing effects of industrial culture.

But, of course, not much attention was paid to the Southern Agrarians. If I sent my copy of I'll Take My Stand to Mr. Staley I wonder if he would understand.

My next door neighbor is a man and a farmer for whom I have great admiration. I'd be embarrassed to talk to him about the spiritual values of the land.

NFO does not have men like Ransom and Davidson to speak for them, and to address for them, men who are

still capable of entertaining grand ideas about how the

good life should be lived, in a sense other than the

political. And men, who once addressed and persuaded, might begin to propose a philosophy, to make plans on how rural America could be brought into the best

part of the 20th century. Because there is a good side to what has happened to us in this century, too. And

maybe a small town is a place where life could be lived in the old human, often terrifying, and always pro found way.

On a practical level, NFO is very highly organized to carry on its fight. Behind a block of old store fronts in the Main Street of Corning, Iowa, NFO func tionaries operate a national, regional, state, and county

structure which keeps them in almost hourly touch with farmers and markets in all of the 28 states in which

NFO is now organized. Large windows in the con

verted stores display NFO buttons, sweatshirts, ban

ners, tie clasps, hats, etc. All the paraphernalia of a

militant organization, including a huge flag of the U.S. emblazoned with a green map of the U.S. on a white

background: sunbeams radiate out from the midwest to the letters NFO.

Inside, a battalion of secretaries pounds away, and behind them are the offices of the major departments:

Meat, Grain, Dairy products, and Research. The build

ing contains 70 telephones, a PI office, and printing and mailing facilities from which a steady stream of

propaganda goes out to the rank-and-file. Each week NFO sponsors 61 half hour and 11 fifteen minute TV

programs, and 200 radio programs beamed to audiences from Maine to Colorado, and from Minnesota to Texas.

The substance of these programs is the price of farm

produce, and collective bargaining. Once a month, directors from 28 states are flown

in to Corning to plan strategy in their on-going fight with the processors. They are presently laying plans for the 'all-out-holding' action which will be held this

spring. Meat, Dairy, and Grain produce will be held off markets on a national scale in an attempt to get processors to make bargaining contracts with NFO and its members. Staley will need 60% control of produce in order to make this all out holding action effective.

March-April, 1968 25

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In December of 1967, he claimed to have betwen 30 to 40% control, and membership was raising. NFO

will not release figures on their present membership. The all-out-holding-action will be a little like what

happened in Viet Nam during Tet. Produce will be held off key markets until the processors are willing to

bargain for contracts. How long can the farmers hold out? It is my impression that this action has been so

carefully and patiently planned?they've been working up to it for almost seven years now?that it stands a

good chance of gaining some measure of success. But what will NFO have won? The farmers will get

better prices; the consumer will have to pay more for food. But will rural America be saved? It is a generally acknowledged fact that the number of small farm hold

ings are decreasing every year. Most of NFO member

ship consists of small farmers, though President Staley denies this. A small percentage of NFO members work farms of 800-1000 acres. But the rank-and-file are

in the 200-400 acre category. The cost of labour and

machinery will continue to rise; any gain NFO makes in bargaining will be offset by rising prices in the in dustrial market. And the cost-price squeeze will be on

again for the small farmer. Don Kerf lives in a two-story frame house shaded

by elms; red barns rise in the background; all around the house lie the cornfields?a comfortable Iowa farm house setting. Mr. Kerf has been a member of NFO since 1960 and has engaged in some of the NFO hold

ing actions. He farms in general farming, about 400 acres. He was born in Johnson County and has lived

most of his life in this area. Married a local girl. His

family goes back here four generations. He is buying his farm on time from his father.

He talks about his farm and his desire to live out his life on it. He is prepared to go the limit with the all out holding action coming up.

"We got no choice anymore. Either we gotta do it

now, or we won't be here in a copla years. The Cor

porations '11 take us over."

Kerf goes on to talk about 'rightful ownership', and how NFO will help him keep rightful ownership to his

place. Kerf has five children; his oldest son stands be hind him. I ask him if he wants to farm. He plans to

attend one of the new vocational-technical schools. He looks off into the cornfields where the matured corn

glows pink now from the rays of the setting sun.

Kerf talks on about the farmers' problems. They have overplanted this year on the advice of the Govern

ment, because reserves were depleted as a result of hav

ing to send so much grain to India. Too much corn

was planted, and the price will go down this year. If NFO doesn't do something about it. He needs new

machinery; capital to buy more land and pay off his

father for the land he now has. And he has a big fam

ily to raise. He doesn't know how he will manage. NFO gives him his only hope though. He wouldn't want to give up his farm and move into the city. What

could he do in the city? Half the people on the Poverty Program are farmers that moved to the city.

I bid goodbye to Kerf. I think that maybe he will be able to hold out in his generation, but in 30 years that

frame house may be a home for the wind. Should NFO

fight to preserve it? One can say this much at least, lives such as Mr. Kerf's have a certain integrity born of hard work, modest ambition, and a sense that the work he is doing is really necessary. He has a keen sense of 'rightful ownership', and 'rightful work', too, I suspect.

The National Advisory Commission on Food and

Fibre recently released a report which recommends to

the President agricultural policies the Government should follow up through the 1980's. The report con

cludes that there is a rapidly decreasing need for farm

ers, and that farmers are farming a lot more acres than

they should. They are wasting man-hours in working those needless extra acres. A free market which en

courages efficient methods of farming, and the applica tion of technology would guarantee enough food at even lower prices than today's. The solution to the

farm problem, the report proposes, may possibly be in

shifting farming manpower to other industries. This report would seem to strike a blow at the NFO

cause. Mr. Staley knows about this report, and knows

too that it is not enough to answer it by demanding fairer prices for farmers. The holding action will be a

mere fleabite on the giant economic body encircling us all. The report has struck at where NFO is strong est?their practicality. It beats them at their own game

by talking about efficiency. I know some young farmers in our area here, young

men with M.Sc. degrees from agricultural colleges. They have computerized their farm operations to such a de

gree that they can feed 200 hogs and 500 cattle in a

half hour's work in the morning. These young farmers

call themselves 'farm managers', and have little senti

mentality about farming as a way of life. They consider

it a business, like any other; they think of themselves as 'professional men' and are basically urban in outlook.

Some of them live in the city and drive to the farm to

work.

One feels that if NFO is really to win their battle what

they have to present as their program is some vision of a rural Utopia where a man can once again get some

balance and harmony into his life by placing himself

in touch with some fundamental, not maunfactured, realities. They have to stop talking about land only as an economic unit. Gold and capital long ago sup

planted it as the most powerful economic determinant. But the land can still be seen as a great teacher of

spiritual values. As William Faulkner saw it. An agrar ian-rural environment liberated from insularism and

narrow-mindedness would provide a place where hu

manitarian values might once again become a vital force

which could move a sick culture. It seems to me a

pity that some prophet does not rise up in the ranks of

NFO and talk of them of a more important destiny

they might fulfill for their country than haggling over

price. Though that, of course, is part of what they have

to do. But that is not all they have to do if they are

to prevent the giant squid from sucking us all into its

maw.

WILLIAM MURRAY won the Meredith Award for his novel

Michael Jo. He's an Irish expatriate with a feeling for land.

26 The North American Review

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