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Farm Events: |
Farm News: Tractorcade Drives Message HomecommentsPosted: 03.15.2011 Wisconsin farmers were not lost on Saturday during a "Farm Labor Tractorcade" that brought tractors and their drivers from hours away. “The numbers of people who gathered Saturday in Madison showed dissatisfaction rural residents have in Gov. Walker’s budget proposals,” said WFU President Darin Von Ruden. “The damage it will do to our schools, health care and rural municipal budgets will be devastating. Farmers will be making the ugly choices of cutting many services or raising their property taxes, and many will end up with no health insurance.”
Von Ruden said he’s heard people say it’s fine to get rid of a program such as BadgerCare and other Medicare insurance programs, as is likely under the biennial budget proposal.
“It’s not just the low-income rural residents who depend on those sorts of insurance programs,” he said. “What are we going to do about the many thousands of elderly who depend upon government-funded insurance programs for health insurance? And, what are we going to tell our children – especially those who have special needs – who we can’t teach because the schools have no money?”
Tony Schultz, a WFU and FFD member who farms near Athens in Marathon County, spoke to crowds gathered for Saturday’s rally. He said he’s been asked why family farmers would be joining such rallies.
“This issue, it’s a farmer’s issue because our rural schools are getting decimated by this budget, and they’re the centers of our small towns and rural communities,” he said. “In my hometown of Athens, 14 of 44 teachers got pink slips – will be laid off – because of this budget. It’s bad for our children’s education; it’s bad for the stability of our town; it’s bad for the very future of our school district; and we say ‘no!’”
Schultz and other farmers at the rally said the BadgerCare issue threatens insurance losses for more than 11,000 members of Wisconsin family farms.
Collective bargaining is a long-standing tradition among Wisconsin farmers, as shown by the state’s cooperative systems. Therefore, it makes sense that farmers would stand with union workers whose collective bargaining is threatened, Schultz said.
“We’re all in this together,” he said. “We go up together or we go down together. And the way I see it, we have two choices: I can have my unions busted and stand alone and be pitted against my neighbor in a desperate and unequal economy – or, we can come together to say, “this is what our families need; this is what our communities need; this is what a just wage is; this is what democracy looks like.’”
While preparing Saturday for the National Farmers Union convention in San Antonio, the National Farmers Union Board passed a resolution supporting the farmers participating in the tractorcade and rally.
“National Farmers Union supports Wisconsin family farmers, teachers and other public employees in the protest of new Wisconsin legislation which limits workers rights to bargain for pay and benefits,” the resolution says. “The impact of this legislation will directly impact farm families’ access to health care, quality public education and core services at the state, county and town levels. NFU supports family farmers in today's action to call for the overturn of this drastic legislation.”
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