Article Featuring Farm For Profit
Acres USA July 1997 - "View from the Country"
The great French philosopher, Lecomte du Noüy, once noted that only a few human beings always do the right thing. The species Homo sapiens seems to be a flawed creature morally. He or she will lie, steal, cheat and rationalize. This reality caused Thomas Jefferson to exclaim: talk not of the goodness of government, but bind it with the chains of constitution and law, (the exact quotation recalled loosely).
These few thoughts came to mind recently when Acres U.S.A. visited with Peter Clark and Bill Lashmett, both of Farm For Profit, a new-style farm organization that is melding its members "on the program for at least four years" into a "higher standard" marketing force with no measurable toxicity in the ppb range.
This proclamation prompted Acres U.S.A. to ask, "Why have there been several hundred farm groups characterized as national that have passed from the mind and memory of man since the Civil War? True, the Grange survives in token form, but the Alliance for Progress (main program: hanging of horse thieves) is gone, as are dozens and hundreds of responses to thieves in the markets, special commodity groups, and pseudo farm groups such as Farm Bureau.
Bill Lashmett, formerly with NFO, now CEO of Farm For Profit, may have identified the one element all have missed for a century and a half. The farmer, he said, is no more honest than the rest of mankind. He'll sell out for a dime or a quarter. He'll leave his neighbors hanging naked to their enemies if he is taken care of. "All farm groups have depended too much on farmers being snow-driven-pure honest." This has always led to pussy-footing and being fearful of making someone mad.
The solution, says Farm For Profit, is to kick out anyone who cheats, and this includes cheating on the use of anything forbidden - never to be allowed in again. We know we can raise the market because people will pay more not to have to eat plastics and pesticides, and because we can eliminate non-functioning middle people.
The farm organization for right now and Century 21, Lashmett said, will have to admit that it is no longer the handshake world. And time is run out for more blunders.
The farmer got 3 cents as his part of a loaf of bread in 1945, the bread costing 20 to 25 cents. He still gets 3 cents, bread now costing more than $1.50 a loaf.
The Farm For Profit people - now emerging as greater organization leaders - figure they'll be held to higher standards, and that means teeth in agreements and quality for the consumer.
On tape and in person, Peter Clark declared Farm For Profit's hostility to all forms of genetic engineering.
Does this mean most farmers are only as honest as they are forced to be? When the chips are down, yes! If 20 or 30 free dinners from seed companies, chemical firms, buyers and sellers are more important than profit, keep on doing what you're doing (a Missouri University study revealed), and half will go broke while all the land drifts into a few strong hands (meaning lending agencies, insurance companies and the like).
There was a time when the above comments were swilled down with a fair measure of pabulum. No more, Lashmett says. Get it straight. The people no longer want toxic foods. They'd really like to see more independent farms survive. But it is up to farmers to get their act together.
The upcoming act will include "The Highest Standard" products on the grocery shelf, trade-named, guaranteed, unadorned with clap-trap bureaucratic imprimaturs, the very label meaning truth with teeth. That's the promise. The contact for details on how the promise will be kept can be learned by contacting 1-800-232-7693 or E-Mail us or, you can check out our Web site.
Copyright Acres USA - June 1997, written by Chuck Walters.