For years, Debbie Stockton has been a visible part of the local movement for farmers’ rights. As an active member of Virginia Independent Consumer and Farmers Association (VICFA), she’s fought in the legislative trenches against what she sees as overzealous government regulation of small farms. In 2007, though, she went national with her message when she founded the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (NICFA), an umbrella for 19 state groups from Oregon to Georgia.
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“You could characterize it as full-time,” says Stockton of her work with NICFA, though she also has to leave time for “collecting escaped goats.” |
“We wanted to form human relationships with [members of Congress] so they would know we are real people,” says Stockton, 50, who laments the influence that industrial agriculture has long had in Washington. “We represent a huge population and a growing population.” She cites the USDA: American small farms increased by 13,000 every year between 2002 and 2007. “That’s a huge economic engine,” she says. “Or at least it could be if it’s not squashed.”
A key thrust for NICFA has been its opposition to the National Animal Identification System (NAIS)—a proposed plan to track the movements of all livestock nationally—and Stockton claims partial victory in a recent decision by the Obama administration to scuttle the plan. Partial, that is, because the feds will now leave development of the program to each state, and Stockton fears the result will be the same: onerous requirements that could put small farms out of business.
Their dogged lobbying has put NICFA members in the spotlight. Stockton, NICFA’s executive director, was interviewed by Glenn Beck last spring, and other members have testified before Congress and the Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile, Stockton’s national network grows. “Almost on a daily basis I’m talking to someone,” she says. “It’s a very organic thing—as people find out about it and get motivated, they start asking questions.” At a recent NICFA event in D.C., a man from Delaware did just that. “As soon as we got back, he wrote and said, ‘Can I start one in my state?’”
