Tolkkinen: African pastors bring a different perspective to Farmfest

MORGAN, Minn. – As politicians at Farmfest called to shut down the border with Mexico, and for new markets for corn amid flailing markets, and in some cases, to banish government intervention in the markets, a small group of men watched with intrigue, and some astonishment.

These men weren’t farmers. They were African pastors and students or faculty at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. They spend much of their time in urban spaces, so Jon Anderson, the seminary’s director of rural ministry, thought it would be good for his colleagues and students to learn something about rural Minnesota.

The group watched interviews with political candidates and a panel discussion of the U.S. farm bill. Paul Kisingu of Kenya said that where he’s from, people grow crops to feed their families, so he was interested in the U.S. practice of growing food to sell. Kenya exports tea and cut flowers, but they also import much of what they eat, like rice.

“Kenya is starting to wake up to commercial agriculture,” he said. “It’s happening on a small scale for the super rich.”

Around greater Minnesota, as around the country, farmers often don’t even grow food for themselves. Combines reap millions of acres of corn and soybeans in Minnesota, which are hauled away by semis to train cars or elevators, then diverted for livestock feed or ethanol.

The group heard politicians calling to crack down on illegal immigration. But these men said that keeping people out is impossible. Instead, the country needs to look at what is causing the influx of migrants. For instance, U.S. farm policy itself could be a culprit. The U.S. has been accused of dumping corn and wheat on the Mexican market at costs below production, which the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a nonprofit sustainable agriculture organization with an office in Minnesota, says has cost Mexican farmers billions of dollars.

“In Mexico, this leads to El Norte, this idea of El Norte, ‘Let’s move to the north because we have lost employment, we cannot survive in this market anymore,’” said Leon Rodrigues, dean of students. “When we have economic policies that make it difficult for developing countries to survive, then when survival becomes very difficult, people start looking for opportunities to migrate.”

Samuel Zalanga of Nigeria, Director of Inclusion and Belonging at Luther Seminary, shook his head over the calls from some candidates, mostly the Libertarian wing, to let the market reign free of government intervention.

The market, he said, has no moral or ethical principles. It doesn’t care about those who are left behind. The government is necessary to protect the interests of people who would be cast aside.

“I’ve seen many Americans, white, minorities, who are being ignored. They are suffering. In pain,” he said. “Somebody could be an American citizen but if they are irrelevant in the market they will be ignored.”

They noticed that Farmfest was almost entirely white, and that there was little, if any, attention paid to the Indigenous people who were kicked off the land generations ago and have not been able to benefit from the profits wrung from the land.

Just 10 miles from Farmfest is the Lower Sioux Indian Community, a federally recognized tribe, where about 145 families live on 1,743 acres of tribal land. That amount of land would make an OK-sized farm for one midsize farmer.

There was also little, if any, discussion about long-term exposure to farm chemicals.

“As ministers, we are concerned about people,” Rodrigues said. “Many of these people are exposed to toxic chemicals. They are exposed to food that might not be healthy for them but it makes profit. We are the ones who visit them in hospital when they are dying of cancer or other diseases.”

My big takeaway from this group of African pastors was this: We have to care about the rest of the world. It feels good to farm big, from “fencerow to fencerow,” as then-U.S. Agriculture Commissioner Earl Butz put it in the 1970s. It feels good to drive big, new trucks and to be able to buy big, new equipment and to think you’re feeding the world.

But our own policies can hurt other countries. They can hurt us, too. Farmfest was full of politicians lauding farmers as being great stewards of the land, but I didn’t hear anybody bringing up the dead zone the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico, or how U.S. farmers continue to use the herbicide atrazine, which has been linked to birth defects and cancer.

Farmfest would be a great place to have real conversations about these challenges. What happens in America has global implications.

“I don’t have a problem with America having power,” Rodrigues said. “My only concern is how is that power used in the world. There’s a way we can use this power to make positive impact in different parts of the world.”