So how can change be effected, if at all? If quitting is the only moral option, how do we replace Farm Bureau in its capacities as an insurance resource and farmer’s advocate?

Farm Bureau is proud of its grassroots organizing. It sends out what it calls opinionnaires to gather information from members. Local Farm Bureaus meet once a year to “develop policy” to bring to the state Farm Bureaus. And, according to a Nevada Farm Bureau source, {Farm Bureau's policy process is supposed to be only for farmer/rancher members.} Who fits into this category depends on how your county Farm Bureau classifies members, as each state has its own system. At the annual state Farm Bureau meetings, delegates vote on policy initiatives that should be taken to the Farm Bureau annual meeting. But the system can either break down or be strong-armed into submission by those who know how to use it, as is shown by recent events in Iowa.

In 2004 the Iowa Farm Bureau passed a resolution endorsing an animal identification system. The policy did not include the word voluntary, but it also did not include the word mandatory. When the Iowa Farm Bureau delegation went to the 2006 national Farm Bureau convention, and the resolution endorsing a mandatory national animal identification system was put before the delegates, Iowa’s delegation decided that their state’s policy meant mandatory, even though the word was not contained in the policy statement. How much influence did David Miller—director of research and commodity services for the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and a member of the Board of Directors of NIAA—have on this outcome? We may never know. What we do know is that the Iowa delegates took it upon themselves to infer mandatory from the policy their members had given them. They overstepped their mandate.

But the Farm Bureau policy-making structure may work. County Farm Bureaus, such as Missouri’s Texas County Farm Bureau, are starting to pass resolutions against the NAIS. In Iowa Mark Miller (no relation to David Miller) worked on changing his state’s Farm Bureau policy on NAIS. In the state meeting in August this year Iowa’s Jackson, Jones, and Linn County Farm Bureaus brought forth a resolution against mandatory animal identification, based on resolutions passed by their county Farm Bureau chapters. Two other counties joined them at the meeting. Although it was only a two-day meeting, and their resolution was new business, it reached the delegates in the late afternoon of the second day. By dinnertime they had 45 minutes of discussion from the floor, and seven or eight people stood up speaking against NAIS. Five or six large producers spoke in favor. Then leadership called the vote. The resolution lost, but the vote count was 31 against mandatory animal identification and 56 for it—only 13 votes short of overturning Iowa’s position.

At the end, one person who spoke at length in favor of a mandatory system stopped and took information from Mark Miller. Mark told him that “folks just couldn’t see the sense in reporting where you went with your horse, pig, sheep, goat, or chicken... every 4-Her, FFA member....” The pro-NAIS fellow interrupted him and said, “What do you mean? I don’t want that! It’s only for cattle.” Mark could only say, “Well, you just voted for it.”

What might the vote at that Iowa meeting have been if everyone had been fully informed? Can Farm Bureau, entrenched in designing and endorsing NAIS, and now set to make money by managing NAIS databases, afford to fully inform its members about the NAIS?

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Karin Bergener is an attorney living in Freedom, Ohio, a former member of the board of directors of the Portage County, Ohio, Farm Bureau, and co-founder of Liberty Ark Coalition. This article appeared in the Holiday 2006 issue of Rural Heritage.