If Farm Bureau is an advocate for the NAIS and generally supports multinational agribusiness policy, who represents independent farmers and ranchers in political and legislative issues? A number of advocacy organizations that don’t support the NAIS list their mission as supporting farmers. Among them:

Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance took an early stand against the NAIS and has been active in educating the public and working with legislators to stop the program. Its mission is to protect independent agriculture by serving as an advocate in the legislatures and the courts for independent farmers, ranchers, livestock owners, and homesteaders.

Farmers Legal Action Group provides legal services to family farmers and rural communities, and deals with such issues as resolving credit problems, encouraging sustainable agriculture, and fighting corporate concentration and vertical integration in the poultry and livestock industries

National Family Farm Coalition strives to change farm and food policy to reverse the economic trends faced by family farmers and rural communities in the United States, and works toward an international trade policy that supports the independence of each country regarding how to develop and protect its capacity to grow food, sustain the livelihood of its food producers, and feed its people.

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.