
          Rural Advancement Fund Celebrates 50 Years of Farm
Advocacy
          By Amberg, RobertRobert Amberg
          Vol. 9, No. 5, 1987, pp. 11-15
          
          This year the Rural Advancement Fund/National Sharecroppers Fund
celebrates its fiftieth anniversary as an advocate for family farms
and rural communities. Initially formed as an annual "National
Sharecroppers Week," cosponsored by the Workers Defense League and the
Southern Tenant Farmers Union, the formal organization began without a
paid staff and served as the non-profit, funding arm for the fledgling
Southern Tenant Farmers Union. National Sharecroppers Week evolved
into the National Sharecroppers Fund (NSF) in 1943 and in 1966 created
the non-profit Rural Advancement Fund to receive donations from
supporters. Through the years RAF/NSF has grown in both scope and
influence to become an award-winning organization with an
international program and a staff of twenty-three that continues to
argue forcefully for the rights of small farmers around the world.
          In 1937, though, NSF's focus was the South. While the nation as a
whole was still mired in the depths of the Great Depression, the South
and its predominantly rural population were faring worse than
most. Agriculture was being revolutionized by mechanization, chemical
fertilizers and pesticides, and big business, with the result that
millions of sharecroppers, tenant farmers and farmworkers were
displaced or forced to work for less-than-minimal pay. The estimated
annual income for sharecropper families of the period was only $300,
and the substandard living conditions contributed to diseases like
pellagra, hookworm, syphilis and malaria. Educational opportunities
for sharecroppers were nonexistent and the illiteracy rate was the
highest of any occupational group in America.

          Norman Thomas, a six-time socialist candidate for president and a
long-term supporter of the National Sharecroppers Fund, speaking on a
CBS radio broadcast for National Sharecroppers Week, described the
situation: "We are speaking tonight in behalf of a group which
conservatively estimated amount to 7 or 8 percent of our entire
national population. We have life at its lowest economic level in
America. They work, black and white alike, under armed riding
bosses. In large areas they, especially the colored workers, have no
right which the bosses are bound to respect. At best they are charged
ten cents on the dollar at the plantation commissary for the credit
advanced thousands of them, and they end every season in debt to the
landlord, which means in practice that they are tied to his
land. Other more direct forms of peonage--let's call it slavery--are
fairly general."
          Against this backdrop of misery and exploitation, eighteen
men--black and white--met in July 1934, in a schoolhouse in Tyronza,
Arkansas, to form the STFU. They were led by H. L. Mitchell [See
Southern_Changes, March 1987] and Clay East, admirers
of Thomas. The union's goal was to work collectively for better
working conditions and greater benefits for farmworkers hard hit by
the labor-reducing Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933.
          While the goals seemed simple, the union had the weight of history
and culture against it. The union was interracial when Jim Crow was
still law. Further, STFU's constituency worked outside the typical
industrial setting and often viewed themselves as independent
producers. Finally, the union's leaders, Mitchell, East, J.R. Butler
and Isaac Shaw were Southerners who had been heavily influenced by and
eventually gravitated to socialism, the kind of socialism that had
incubated in the immigrant ghettos of the urban Northeast and been
practiced by many of this country's industrial labor unions.
          By 1936 the union had a Southwide membership of over two thousand
and a continual shortage of cash. In an effort to ease the cash
crunch, Sidney Hertzberg, a young staff member of the Workers Defense
League who had worked with STFU during the summer, came up with the
idea of a National Sharecroppers Week. From 1937 to 1944, this
educational and fundraising event was held annually in New_York. The
week of manuscript and print auctions, concerts and plays eventually
included as sponsors such celebrities as Fiorello LaGuardia, John
Steinbeck, Margaret Bourke-White, Eleanor Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair
and A. Philip Randolph.
          World War 11 slowed the organizing efforts of STFU and by 1943 it
was obvious that an ongoing committee to raise funds year round was
necessary. The Fund would regard STFU as its primary responsibility
and take over the running of National Sharecroppers Week. But, as
reflected in the minutes of the first meeting of the National
Sharecroppers Fund, the incorporators took a step toward moving the
organization in a direction independent of STFU when they said that
"gifts should be given rather to functional groups and pressure
groups working in the general field of improvement and eventual
abolition of the sharecropper system." This step eventually
transformed NSF from a labor organization to a
farm-rural-international organization.
          BY WAR'S END, THE changes in agriculture begun during the thirties
had radically altered the lives of small farmers and farmworkers. Many
abandoned their native South in search of industrial jobs in the
North. Others, lucky enough to own land, stuck it out in the face of
increasing competition from their better-equipped and 

better-financed
neighbors. Still others, landless and without marketable skills,
became a new class of farmworkers whose work was restricted to the
planting and harvesting of crops. NSF chose to work with the last two
groups--the small farmers who had opted to stay and the migrant
farmworkers who had little choice.
          In 1950 NSF established the National Committee on Agricultural Life
and Labor. NCALL pressured state and federal_governments by
distributing information and focusing the collective efforts of over
forty individual organizations working with rural issues. The
establishment of NCALL signalled a more direct role in politics for
NSF and a recognition that the problems of farmworkers are sometimes
solved away from the fields.
          NSF was guided in this period of transition and growth by Fay
Bennett and Frank Porter Graham. Bennett became executive secretary of
NSF in 1952, a post she held for eighteen years (she continues to
serve on RAF/N8F's Board). She saw NSF in the role of an umbrella
organization, and with Graham, a former U.S. Senator and President of
the University of North_Carolina who served as chairman of the board
of directors, moved NSF in that direction.
          While NSF had broadened its range of political activities, it
continued funding like-minded organizations working directly with
rural people. In 1953, NSF sponsored the formation of the Migrant
Children's Fund, an organization devoted to addressing the health and
educational needs of migrant families, and throughout the fifties NSF
supported organizing efforts by the National Agricultural Workers
Union (formerly STFU).
          In 1962, the year of NSF's 25th Anniversary, NSF sponsored the
Bricks Conference, a three-day meeting on rural affairs which was
widely attended by government officials, ministers, farmers and
community leaders and represented another change in direction for
NSF. In the past NSF had worked in opposition to most government
agencies, but now, because of the influx of federal monies and FSF's
reputation as an advocate for rural people, the organization was asked
to work with government.
          SHORTLY AFTER THE BRICKS Conference NSF began work on the first of
many contracts with the U.S. Department of Labor and the Office for
Economic Opportunity. Offices were opened in Atlanta and Knoxville and
programs implemented on illiteracy, job training and placement for
displaced farm workers, the construction of self-help housing and the
formation of rural cooperatives. With funds generated by NSF's new
tax-exempt subsidiary, the Rural Advancement Fund (RAF), NSF set up
day-care and 

education centers, housing programs and a rural credit
union. A Washington office was opened during this period to increase
NSF's lobbying efforts and to take better advantage of new federal
programs.
          The late sixties and early seventies brought new internal changes
to RAF/NSF with the departure of Fay Bennett and the death of Frank
Porter Graham. Jim Pierce, a labor and civil_rights activist, took
over as executive director and began building a rural demonstration
and training center. The Graham Center, located in Anson County, N.C.,
opened in 1974 based on the idea that "creative approaches to the
farm problem could make good and profitable use of marginal land and
resources."
          THE GRAHAM CENTER'S free training program was aimed towards small
farmers and their families and offered comprehensive training in all
aspects of practical small farm operation and management. Courses in
soil management, biological pest control, marketing, and crop and
livestock production were supplemented by courses putting agriculture
in a social and historical context. The Graham Center also housed a
resource center which offered research and public speaking on rural,
political and economic issues to church, university and farm
groups.
          The Graham Center's approach to problem-solving--bringing farmers
to one site for conferences and demonstrations--represented a real
change in tactics for RAF/NSF. In the past the organization had always
gone out to the farmers and their problems, meeting them on their own
ground. Now, the situation was reversed and many members of the staff
and board were uncomfortable with the change. In addition, federal
money had begun to dry up and the Graham Center was proving to be a
constant drain on capital and resources rather than the
self-sufficient model it was chartered to be.
          This fiscal and identity crisis precipitated the phasing out of
training programs at the Graham Center in 19814 Kathryn Waller,
executive director since the late 1970s, moved RAF/NSF back to its
roots by instituting a traditional, grassroots organizing effort in
the mold of STFU. Waller, along with program director Cary Fowler,
also charted new territory for RAF/NSF by instituting an international
program to address Third World problems and the worldwide loss of
plant genetic diversity.
          Beginning in 1982, RAF sent representatives into the field in
North_Carolina and South_Carolina. The goal was to organize farmers
into a cohesive, multi-racial, farmer-led unit that could address
issues affecting farmers and rural communities. The United Farmers
Organization (UFO) is now a 1,500-member organization active on a
number of fronts. UFO operates toll-free hotlines with volunteers
trained by RAF to offer advice to farmers facing foreclosures. UFO's
legislative committee, with other farm groups, recently won a victory
when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Agricultural Reform
Bill to ensure the rights of borrowers. Benny Bunting, Chairman of
UFO's legislative committee, said, "This takes a giant step towards
the preservation of family farms. It also sends a message to FCS and
FmHA of Congressional intent to help the farmers; maybe now, a little
compassion will be forced on them." In the winter of 1987, UFO and
other farm groups distributed $2.5 million worth of donated seed corn
to farmers suffering the effects of the 1986 drought in North and
South_Carolina. Most of these farmers would not have been able to
plant without this gift of seed.
          Seed is the foundation of Rural Advancement Fund International
(RAFI). While the struggle for worldwide genetic conservation appears
to be only distantly related the struggle facing farmers in the
American South, the mandate is clear. As RAF program director Cary
Fowler 

says, "The type of seeds we have available to plant into the
ground have a lot to do with the kind of agricultural systems that
we'll have as well."
          RAFI works globally for plant genetic conservation and the control
of this invaluable natural resource by its rightful owners. Most of
the world's plant genetic diversity exists in the Third World. It is
the critical raw material needed by U.S.-based multinational seed and
pharmaceutical companies in the production of new varieties. Thus,
those who control this genetic diversity control the very future of
agriculture.
          RAFI advises governmental and non-governmental agencies on how best
to preserve their genetic resources, argues on behalf of Third World
countries at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in
Rome, and assists in the development and dissemination of innovative
seed-saving strategies through publications like The Community
Seed Bank Kit.
          RAFI is also involved in the rapidly growing field of biotechnology
and its effects on agriculture. RAFI publishes
Communique which serves as an early-warning signal for
Third World countries of impending changes that could radically affect
their agricultural economies.
          In the 1980s, RAF/NSF has also moved to diversify its efforts in
rural communities. Volunteers trained by RAF monitor courtroom
procedures for the poor and disfranchised in Robeson County, North
Carolina. Robeson County has a long history of racial injustice and
its present district attorney has successfully prosecuted more capital
murder cases than any prosecutor in the United_States. RAF staff
members in Robeson County have built community coalitions that seek a
public defender for the county, a citizen's review board for the
county's legal system and equal justice for poor_people.
          In this decade, RAF also instituted a voter_registration project in
eastern North_Carolina. This effort produced an increased turnout of
30-40 percent in some key precincts in the last election which, in
turn, helped elect a number of minority candidates to local and
statewide office.
          As RAF/NSF celebrates its fiftieth year of service to family
farmers and rural communities one appropriately recalls words from
STFU's Ceremony of the Land:
          
            "In man's greed for gold, he has destroyed the
fruitful ness of the earth In his lust for power and dominion he has
brought misery upon us all. The land cries out against those who waste
it. Thy children cry out against those who abuse and oppress
them. Speed now the day when the plains and the hills and all the
wealth thereof shall be the people's own and free men shall not live
as tenants of men on the earth..."
          
          
            Robert Amberg is communications director and photographer
for the Rural Advancement Fund. A book-length history of RAF/NSF by
Tevere MacFadyen will be published this winter.
          
        
