“Don’t ever doubt that a small but thoughtful delegation
Can change the world, indeed, that’s all that ever could…”John Pitney, “It Is Good,” Keeping the Garden, 2000
This past week I found myself actually following up with some of the people I met at the special meeting for Punjabi farmers held in Visalia (see last week’s “Standing by Words”). Normally, after an event like that I will just sit in the glow until it wears off, missing the moment of inspiration. But this time there were too many good reasons not to do that.
One of them was the sense of grace that I’d actually gone to the meeting, despite the excuses I could have made for not going. Instantly I found myself interacting with the right people as if I’d walked in on some Yellow Brick Road. The other reason was the return of strong memory of what it means to be in a room full of farmers who have come together, overriding all the excuses they could have made for not going, to speak their needs. I remembered that I’ve been here before.
In 1986 or ’87, after speaking at some water-related meeting about my land tenure/ community development research, I was approached by a woman named Hazel Barosso. She was the wife and mother of father-son rice growers north of Sacramento who were part of a farmer group forming to protest their losses of income due to imports. It was the California offshoot of the American Agriculture Movement that started in the Midwest a decade before as family farmers fell by the tens of thousands. California was a late-bloomer to this movement, as most of our growers thought themselves above the fray, but when disaster began to strike one commodity after another, some of them wised up and began to organize.
They weren’t the only ones. NFO, the National Farmers Organization, was working with dairy families out of Turlock, and I found myself drawn to their meetings as well as AAM’s, wanting to document their very existence. Organizing small farmers is harder than herding cats, they say. But I’m here to tell you it’s holy work, because the experience of being in the same room with hundreds of people, husbands and wives and children and grandparents—these people who daily take care of themselves quietly while feeding us invisibly—resembles being with the 5,000 at the Sea of Galilee, only without a messiah. All they have is the power of community—but it is enough.
So, one of the people I called last week was Jasbir Singh Sidhu, the PAGG founder who presented the Punjabi farmers’ point of view. He lives in Kerman, which seems like more grace because the last surviving member of AAM, Walt Shubin, also lives in Kerman. They do not know each other—yet—but are looking forward to meeting.
Then I called another Punjabi farmer, who has 400 acres of pistachios in Terra Bella in the Eastern Tule GSA, which has been put into probation by the State and is currently coming apart at the seams. It turns out that he’s the one who requested the Visalia meeting, after attending a meeting for GSAs in June where there were no translators for his people’s language. “We have to get organized!” he told me. “People don’t know what’s happening to the small farmers!” I replied “They never have, not until it’s too late.”
Some of this difficulty is identifying small farmers. They tend to want not to be seen, a survival strategy for people in any threatened occupation. Unfortunately, the big boys also tend to want not to be seen for fear of jealousy, resentment and sometimes being made accountable.
People tell me “It’s the money. You can’t fight it.” Money is the crux, of course: having it makes you prosperous and powerful; not having it makes you vulnerable and poor. But money’s power over government does not have to last. The more of us who stand up against it, the weaker it becomes. Small farmers aren’t the only ones who need to get organized and speak up. We can stand with them. Check out www.paggusa.com. Let’s join in.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead
Trudy Wischemann has been singing small farmer praises most of her life. Send her your farm songs c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247. This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of the Mid Valley Times newspaper.
