GET THOSE BOYS OFF THE FARM! - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 11

Hansen was born in 1919, and as a teenager he worked with his father at the militant Farmer's Holiday
Association, an organization formed in the Midwest during the 1930s, organizing “penny auctions” at farm
sales: neighbors of foreclosed farms would bid only pennies on each item offered for sale and return it to
the family. Hansen was deeply affected by the experience, and after serving in the Pacific during World
War II, he became a field organizer, first for the South Dakota Farmers Union (SDFU) and later for the
Iowa Farmers Union (IFU). He worked closely with African American activist Edna Griffin, the Iowa or-
ganizer of one of the first desegregation campaigns in the nation.
Hansen returned to his family's Nebraska farm in the 1950s, when the Korean War caused a bitter split
in the IFU. There he became vice president of the antiwar U.S. Farmers Association and was active in the
local chapter of the NFO. Hansen viewed farm policy through a social justice lens and believed deeply in
broad-based coalitions. In 1970, he became president of Nebraskans for Peace, and later in the decade be-
came a state officer in the American Agriculture Movement. He eventually became Reverend Jesse Jack-
son's chief adviser on agriculture policy, and he nominated Jackson for president at the 1984 Democratic
National Convention.
Hansen continued to act as an articulate spokesperson for the farmer during the devastating crisis of the
1980s and helped organize the benefit concert Farm Aid; in addition to founding the North America Farm-
ers Alliance, he started the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC).
George Naylor, an Iowa farmer and former president of the NFFC, worked closely with Hansen during
the Reagan era. He reminisces about Hansen, who died in 2009: “He could give a wonderful speech, so that
people's eyes were filled with tears at the end of his speeches. He was just a tremendous person.” Naylor
says Hansen had the ability to bring together people with different political beliefs to talk and take action.
Merle Hansen originally brought many of the groups now working as part of NFFC together. 15
When he was in his eighties, Hansen commented:
There was a time when I was an outcast in my own community, but that is not true today. When I opposed the
Vietnam War, people wrote me letters threatening to kill my cattle and saying that I was a terrible, unpatriotic
person. My kids paid dearly for it. Our car was vandalized, and in school our kids were taunted and called Com-
munists. My son John was starting to wear long hair and, boy, were they out to get him. . . . Today, when he
comes to Newman Grove and speaks as president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, some of these very same
people say he's really good. 16
John Hansen, the sixth generation in his family to farm, followed in his father's footsteps, also becoming
an activist in the early 1970s. He worked tirelessly for passage of the 1982 law banning corporate farming
in Nebraska—the strongest law in the nation until it was overturned by a judge on a technicality in 1982.
John has continued his father's work at the Nebraska Farmers Union where he has been elected president
ten times since 1989. The younger Hansen says that the ongoing fight for the family farm raises funda-
mental questions about what kind of society we are going to have.
Hansen charges: “The American families who produce our food and fiber are hemorrhaging. The pres-
sure from one-sided and unfair farm and trade policies is taking a tragic toll on farm families, farm busi-
nesses, rural communities and the soul of America.” 17
Naylor, whose grandfather acquired his family farm in 1919, agrees with this assessment. He only man-
ages to survive in Iowa as an independent family farmer by living very modestly, repairing his own equip-
ment, and keeping costs very low.
In August 1999, the heartland was still reeling from the elimination of all of the New Deal programs
and safety net. Naylor testified at the U.S. Senate Democratic policy hearing held by Senator Tom Harkin