Animal power policy

[dominiquer60]

I am proud to announce that the NY Farm Bureau now officially “supports the use of animal power for agricultural purposes and transportation.” This policy passed at our State Annual Meeting with no discussion and no opposition, which leads me to believe that supporting such policy makes sense to those which do not rely on such power for a living. I know that many of you try not to let the Farm Bureau and/or the government influence your lives. However I don’t think it will hurt us to have the support of our Ag lobbyists. If any of you have any ties with your local or state Farm Bureaus I encourage you to make this simple and agreeable resolution at next years policy meetings.

I am encouraged enough by success at the state level that next year I would like to introduce this at the national level with hope that this would become the policy of the American Farm Bureau Association.

Lost in the excitement of the weeks work I need help seeing the down side of doing this, there must be one and I am sure this is as good a place as any to discuss this possibility.

Thanks for any thought on this,

Erika

[Rod]

I think it’s a great start and thnaks for your efforts on it.

[Andy Carson]

Good job Erika!
I’ll do my best to think of a down side, nothing seems obvious right now…

[jac]

Way to go Erika !!! I cant comment on the stateside situation but over here government intervention in agriculture has usually been… how can I put this… less than successful.. but if your guys positively support this then thats only good and a great start…
John

[mitchmaine]

good morning erika, can you find out for us what that really means, and if there is a way that they (or we?) plan to “actually” support animal power, and most importantly, what led to the decision. its great to know we are on the radar. i just don’t want to be a target while we are there.
trying to stay positive here, its just that flying under the radar always worked best for me. i’d support it here with our own farm bureau if i knew what i was supporting. can you find out more? thanks, mitch

[Andy Carson]

Mitch brings up an interesting point that may (perhaps) be a downside. It is possible (probably even likely) that politicians would make statements that assurt that they “support animal powered agriculture,” while also also supporting laws that make the use of animal power less practical or difficult for various reasons. If confronted on these “anti-animal power” laws, the politicians might say “Well, I signed the resolution supporting animal power” and hide thier true intent. I doubt this downside is important right now, but might be in the future. I personally think visibility is a good thing, even if these resolutions are not linked to any concrete benefits.

It’s great, by the way, that we have someone so interested in doing something real politically. Keep up the good work and thanks again for keeping us informed.

[Tim Harrigan]

The fact that there was no discussion or opposition indicates that don’t see it as a threat in any way. They are probably aware of the Amish and other similar groups and for most of them it is probably irrelevant. The connection could still be helpful though because FB will likely be very vocal in opposition to things like NAIS and other crosscutting issues that affect small farms.

[near horse]

While I am also concerned about “exposure” or not staying under the radar, in the current politcal climate it seems that it’s a good thing to ally ourselves with someone like FB that has some clout. Otherwise, we run the risk of having no voice in the policies that affect our lives as small farmers/loggers using animal power.

I do applaud you Erika for working on this and the raw milk issue! Good job.

[dominiquer60]

Let me start by clarifying in this post what our policy book is, I assume it is rather similar in most other states. The policy book is what our paid lobbypersons and our politicians use as a reference tool. All of the content of the book is policy that delegates from all over the state have created and voted on to include in the book. It is used mainly by our paid staff of lobbyists and lawyer to go forth and represent our collective opinion on political issues. It is also used by our politicians to reference our policy opinions.

For example, we had a fierce labor bill proposed this past year that would have hurt farms of all sizes in NY, our paid staff saw clearly in our policy that we were very opposed to such legislation and fought tooth and nail against it. Another example is honey. Apparently we have been importing “honey” from China that is watered down with corn syrup and pawning it off as real honey. Our country lacks a honey standard of identity and the government is tempted to create one. Our state senators value our opinion on this and when looking up apiculture policy found nothing on this topic and requested our opinion before it comes up for a vote. The bee folks looked to research and came up with what they feel defines the identity of honey and we passed it as our policy to support this definition. Now our Senators feel that they can speak for the bee keepers of this state with hope of putting a stop to this false honey.

I agree that it is usually best to go under the radar. What caused me to add animal power policy to our FB book is the threat of animal advocacy groups and food safety “animal encroachment” standards that may pop up in the future. My thought was to be proactive as quietly as possible. Our policy book simply states: “We support the use of animal power for agricultural purposes and transportation.” It is in the “Protection of Agriculture” section under the subsection “Producer Protections.” The only other policy in this subsection is “we support the right of farmers to produce their own seed.”

A couple people asked about it before hand, ribbing me about using horses, or those that remembered mentioned my oxen. I simply said to these few people that I don’t want someone telling me that it is cruel to gather firewood with my oxen or to tell an Amish farmer that he needs get a tractor. This completely satisfied their curiosity. When the subsection came up to vote I knew that they were in a hurry to get to the dairy debates, so I refrained from any comments and it quietly and quickly passed without any hesitation.

Now if a county legislature wants to consider banning Amish from using public highways ( like they did in Romaina) in that county, our paid lobbyists can make a stand against such act because we have policy supporting animal power. If we didn’t have policy, they would be tackling some other issue. The downside is this is only state policy so if the FDA wants to ban the use of animals in crop fields, NYstate’s voice may get lost without national policy on this issue. Sometimes and more often than not we have policy in place but the American Farm Bureau pressures our state FB into taking a stand against or neutral to our policy “because we have to stand united” on the federal front. For instance with this food safety bill, we had the policy to stand against it, but they told us that their stand on the bill was unclear, but that the organization was for the Tester Amendment, clearly pressure from above. So while having policy in your favor is not fail safe, it can be used to our advantage if it is in black and white in our policy book.

Erika

[tsigmon]

At the moment I can’t think of a downside to FB support of horse powered ag. . I was involved with Farm Beureau in South Carolina on the county level and had some problems with the way the policy manual was being (or NOT) being followed.I brought this to the attention of both the county board and the state office with little concern at either level. The state office said membership was so far down they didn’t want to interfere and maybe lose members. On another issue was with an Equine Promotion Bill here in SC. The South Carolina Horsemens Council had to fight very hard and butt heads with FB to get the bill worded to where the at lease part of the directors of the bill would be elected by horseowners and not appointed by elected officials. On the national level, if you are concerned about illegal immigration , increasing the national debt ( mostly in the Farm Bill)….CRP and paid not to farm…. price supports instead of a market driven farm economy, farm ID numbers, NAIS …. you might want to check out FB a little more .

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