Farmers `sow seeds of hope' in Minnesota (International Farmers Dialogue).

Harland Anderson, a Minnesota farmer and author of the 1995 US `freedom to farm' law, generated a lively debate when he spoke at an International Farmers' Dialogue in Minneapolis, last November. He said that American farmers wanted full planting flexibility, phased-out government payments and freedom of choice. `The important thing should be what the customer, not the government, wants,' he said.

Some participants at the dialogue, entitled `Seeds of hope in a changing agriculture', questioned whether a market economy alone was the best way to deal with global hunger and the environment. Alberta dairy and grain farmer John Bocock said Canada's supplymanaged marketing system might not be the best in the world, but competitiveness would not solve all farmers' problems either.

Anderson's thinking was supported by a message from New Zealand farmers saying they had weathered difficult economic change and discovered `there is definitely life after subsidies'. They contended, however, that the World Food Summit's goal of halving the world's hunger by 2038 would not be met without `changed lives'--people who have restored for the mistakes of the past and found a new motivation.

The debate on marketing systems was typical of the intense interchange that went on between the participants from 19 countries. Topics ranged from environmentally sustainable production systems, through trade barriers and quotas, to the role of education and politics.

Participants visited the grain handling and shipping centre of Cargill Inc, the Minnesota-based multinational. Cargill's farm marketing manager, Richard Thayer, said that his company's vision was to raise living standards around the world `by delivering increased value to producers and consumers through relationships built on trust, character and competence'. This led to a discussion on whether large agribusinesses served the industry or tried to control it.

Asian agriculture was represented by seven from South-East Asia--Thailand, Cambodia and Laos--and two from India. Kem Sokha, head of the human rights committee of the Cambodian parliament, said that America's large-scale, high-tech farming was totally foreign to Cambodia, most of whose farmers worked on only one or two hectares. He spoke of the droughts and floods plaguing his country due to deforestation caused by 23 years of war. Farmers also faced the problem of land mines. Kem appealed to all nations to help Cambodia stop deforestation, rebuild the economy and find political openness and stability. The dialogue saw increased friendship between the South-East Asians, not natural allies.

An elder and former tribal chairman of the Dakota Nation of the Lower Sioux reservation spoke before a traditional sacred `Pipe Ceremony' of his deep anger at the theft of his people's dignity by centuries of official US Native American policies dictated by white people. He had begun to find healing when new legislation freed him to practise the traditional faith of the elders.

`We have had a good dialogue between Europe and America,' said one French participant, `but we need the opportunity to carry it further, and to see now what European and North American farmers can do together for the world.'