Frustration With National Organization, Urban Lawmakers : California Farmers Feeling Political Isolation

“Agriculture serves you --three times a day,” reminded a bumper sticker on a car parked outside the urban San Diego meeting place of the state’s largest organization of farmers and ranchers.

The fact that such a slogan was in existence at such a gathering underlined a feeling of defensiveness not uncommon these days among California’s agricultural community, about 1,000 of whose representatives descended on the Southland last week for the 67th annual meeting of the California Farm Bureau Federation. The state’s farmers and ranchers feel increasingly isolated, not only from their fellows in the city but, politically, from their farming counterparts in the South and Midwest, whose enthusiasm for price supports they--to put it mildly--do not share.

Howard Harris has good reason to stick close to his fellow farmers after he was forced, under eminent domain, to sell his 5,000-acre ranch in San Benito County to the state, which converted it to a park for off-road vehicles. Harris, who for years grew walnuts and peaches on the hilly spread near Hollister, continues to be active in the organization, heading its natural resources policy committee.

But the fact that the state could push a rancher off his property illustrated one of the major changes in agriculture since Harris attended his first California Farm Bureau Federation meeting at Bakersfield in 1932: Government has, to him, increasingly become a major adversary.

Zoning Problems Cited

“We spend more time now in fighting our own government than we used to spend in improving production,” Harris said. For one thing, he said, zoning problems arise as population sprawl settles city dwellers next to the farmer’s fence, bringing new complaints of noise, dirt and flies from agricultural operations dating back generations.

Henry J. Voss, whose family works 500 acres in the San Joaquin Valley town of Ceres, knows something about these urban pressures: Twenty-five years ago, he moved his operations from rapidly urbanizing Santa Clara County to rural Stanislaus County. But Voss, who is beginning his third two-year term as president of the state federation, sees change as inevitable in agriculture--just as the changes in agriculture have changed the federation that represents, by his estimate, 85% of the state’s farms.

The farm bureau operation began early in this century after Congress created a research-oriented agricultural extension service to be administered through land-grant institutions such as the University of California. The legislation provided for county agents or farm advisers to spread the fruits of the research to county-organized farmers. The result was a proliferation of county “farm bureaus.” Humboldt County claims to have formed California’s first farm bureau in 1913.

The result was establishment of a grass-roots agricultural movement that over the years has created state federations and the American Farm Bureau Federation, a national headquarters representing a membership of 3.6 million.

The California Farm Bureau Federation met here last week to determine policy on a wide range of agricultural, fiscal and social issues and will send a delegation to the national meeting next month in Atlanta, where, once again, Western growers and ranchers will find themselves isolated from the majority of their colleagues across the nation.

98,000 Members

“It’s a big frustration,” Voss conceded. “We have to do things by persuasion, not force of numbers.”

The California organization counts more than 98,000 members, but its bylaws limit voting members to those who actually derive income directly from agriculture and not, for example, from providing farm services or supplies. Other states are more generous. As a result, California--the nation’s leading agricultural producer and, if it were a nation, the world’s eighth largest--has but 6% of the voting national membership while accounting for 22% of farm income.

“I’ve got to remind them that, even if we don’t have the numbers (of members), we do have the agriculture,” Voss said.

“The only thing we can do is keep yakking about what we think is sound,” agreed Harris. “But we actually have made gains.”

For example, he said, the national organization now accepts the concept, at least, of “market-oriented” farm policies, which he defined as encouraging “producing for the market rather than for a government storehouse--or getting paid for not producing at all. What we have to do is fight for markets,” he said.

Still, farmers who face the whims of Mother Nature know perhaps more than their urban counterparts about the art of compromise and the value of negotiation. In the floor debate here on federal farm policy, for example, one delegate moved that the California federation come out flatly opposed to price supports, because that is what its members believe in.

That motion quickly brought one of the organization’s youngest county presidents, 33-year-old David Forster of Colusa County, to his feet in protest. “We oppose price supports,” he agreed in an interview later, “but California’s policy is to phase them out in three to five years. People (elsewhere) would be hurt if you just cut them off. We have to look at agriculture as a totality.” In addition, he said, by taking a moderate approach, the California delegates retain bargaining influence in seeking to influence national policy.

National Farm Policy

By the time the national meeting convenes in January, however, the issue of present national farm policy--now being debated by a congressional conference committee--may well be moot. But the debate will begin on how to move further to market-oriented programs in the next go-around.

While state federations can break with the national organization over any national policy, Voss said, California has chosen not to at this point. “The realities in the give-and-take of the political world are that, if something’s going in your direction, you support it,” he explained.

The California federation has experienced a sharp dose of political realities since the state Legislature was reapportioned in 1966 in conformity with so-called one-man, one-vote court decisions. Previously, each county in the state had two senators, regardless of population, heavily weighting the upper house’s membership in favor of rural interests. The Assembly, whose districts were based on population, was regarded as the advocate of urban interests.

The one-man, one-vote doctrine, “from the farmer’s point of view, wasn’t very good,” Harris said. “Rural areas lost their representation, and they are just not heard.”

But, Voss said, that political transformation eventually forced the organization to change political tactics: Because agriculture no longer had a powerful friend in an urban-dominated Legislature, the federation had to work in new ways to make its positions heard. As a consequence, in 1976 it formed a political action committee to raise campaign contributions to support those candidates who support agriculture’s interests.

“We didn’t like doing that,” Voss said, “but that’s the way the game is played. Making contributions doesn’t buy votes, but it does open doors and allow us to have our side heard.”

To ensure that its side could be heard, the farm bureau also beefed up its lobbying operation from one full-time staff member to eight.

California agriculture has in the the last few years needed some political allies in confronting growing government regulation in such areas as pesticide use, environmental controls and water policy--often confronting urban-based opposition to what it considers its best interests. The federation’s particular bete noire is the administration of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., and it courted the favor of Gov. George Deukmejian from the start of the Republican’s campaign.

Sector-by-Sector Shakeout

California also has belatedly felt the devastating effects of a national recession in agriculture, which has provoked a sector-by-sector shakeout among the state’s growers, Voss said. “We’ve got another three to five years of difficult times in some segments of agriculture,” he said. The result, inevitably, will be fewer farmers and ranchers.

“But,” he added, “that’s a trend that’s been around for 100 years.” There were 12 million farmers nationwide at the beginning of the century and there are 2.5 million now, he said, and that reduced number is producing just as much--in part through the kind of research that led to the creation of the farm bureau organization.

“As you get more yield, you need less acreage,” he observed. “And you need fewer people.”