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Right to Farm will “protect all Missouri farmers”

The spokesman for the Missouri Farmers Care Coalition tells Brownfield that the Right to Farm measure that lawmakers passed in the final week of the Missouri legislative session will protect ALL farmers and ranchers in the state if it’s passed by voters next year.

Executive Director Dan Kleinsorge of Missouri Farmers Care says the Right to Farm constitutional amendment “will protect all farmers and ranchers by enshrining their freedom to produce.”  He says how a farmer decides to grow or raise food, whether organic or conventional, “should be up to them and not outside forces.”

And about those outside forces, Kleinsorge says, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) tried but failed to derail the bill.  He says, “They tried to hire a lot of lobbyists late in the process. You know, they already have several but they tried to hire a few more. We were told some lobbyists told them ‘no, we’re not going to work with you.’  They did manage to hire a few.  What they were trying to do was they were trying to get some senators somewhere to filibuster Right-to-Farm to try and kill it.”

Kleinsorge says ag groups stayed on message with lawmakers, saying, “(It’s) the same case we’ve been laying out for four months, that agriculture needs this type of protection, that we need certainty in the future and we need some kind of insulation from these animal rights groups that keep coming after us, over and over.”

He says the campaign for Right to Farm between now and the 2014 election will include educating consumers about the importance of protecting farming and ranching and what that will mean to food choice and food affordability.  Last year, North Dakota became the first state to pass a Right to Farm constitutional amendment.

AUDIO: Dan Kleinsorge (8:00 mp3)

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