FSIA negotiates with JP Morgan Chase

[NOV. 14, 2005]  CHICAGO -- Members of Farmers Supporting Independent Agriculture have met with Bank One-JP Morgan Chase decision-makers to negotiate farm management practices that will help save family farms and benefit local communities. FSIA met with the bank's senior farm manager for the Midwest along with the vice presidents of community development and community reinvestment in order to address the problem of rapidly rising land cash rent prices.

FSIA and Bank One-JP Morgan Chase agreed to exchange farm management best practices statements and then discuss them at the next meeting. FSIA's best practices statement outlines key farm management issues that affect local communities. FSIA recognizes the important role that farm managers play as a link between landowner and tenant farmer, and the Bank One-JP Morgan Chase meeting in November will focus on farm management and farmland investment.

FSIA represents the interests of local family farmers and local communities at meetings with national bank decision-makers and is currently doing so in its negotiation with Bank One-JP Morgan Chase. FSIA is negotiating with the bank to end highest bidder cash rent, to keep local tenant farmers on the land after it is sold and to receive a commitment from the bank to truly invest in rural communities.

Rapidly rising cash rent prices drive local family farmers off the land, and they are replaced by absentee mega farmers. Local communities suffer because local farmers lose their livelihoods and absentee mega-farmers bypass local farm supply businesses and do not practice sound land stewardship. The only ones who profit are landowners who collect the rising cash rents and the absentee mega farmers who profit at the expense of local communities.

Rapidly increasing cash rent prices are driven by investors who are looking for short-term financial gain when they buy farmland. Many times short-term gain comes at the expense of local communities that rely on farming as the foundation of the local economy. By going after short-term profits, the long-term health of local farmland is put at risk.

FSIA works to negotiate bank farm management policies that will keep family farmers farming local land and help local communities survive.

Farmers Supporting Independent Agriculture is a member organization of the Central Illinois Organizing Project, a faith-based organization that represents urban and rural community members throughout the region. The Central Illinois Organizing Project website is at www.ciop.org. 

[Farmers Supporting Independent Agriculture news release]

See related article:

• Farm management best practices promote realistic returns on farmland investment 

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