The 2007 Food and Family Farm Presidential Summit was held in Des Moines, Iowa on November 10th and featured speeches from five Democratic presidential candidates - Senators Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton - on issues facing family farms. The event was hosted by Iowa Farmers Union and aimed to raise awareness about supporting family farms. Over 1,000 people attended and discussed the importance of the agriculture industry and fair treatment of farmers.

1. The 2007 Food and Family Farm Presidential Summit was a day to appreciate
the food that sustains us and to consider the needs of those who raise it. Held
Saturday, November 10, at the Downtown Mariott in Des Moines, Iowa, the
summit featured speakers throughout the day—including the Center's own John
Crabtree—punctuated by appearances from five candidates for the Democratic
presidential nomination: Illinois Senator Barack Obama, Connecticut Senator
Chris Dodd, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Delaware Senator
Joe Biden and New York Senator Hillary Clinton.
Iowa Farmers Union, which hosted the event, invited all presidential candidates,
though the only Republican elected official to address the summit was Iowa's
senior Senator Charles Grassley, co-sponsor of the Dorgan-Grassley
amendment to the farm bill, which the Center strongly supports. Like the five
presidential candidates and perhaps some other distinguished guests, Grassley
received a warm welcome and a standing ovation. He also took questions from
the audience.
The Center for Rural Affairs was one of eight co-sponsors of the event, and the
theme of the day was clearly "Vote for Family Farms," an appeal featured
prominently on the buttons distributed by Iowa Farmers Union and worn by so
many in attendance, including speakers. In that spirit, John Crabtree, the
Center's Development and Outreach Officer, addressed the summit with "Getting
a Fair Deal at the Meat Counter and Beyond."
"If an abandoned barn collapses in rural America and nobody's there to hear it,
does that mean that farm policy has failed?" Crabtree asked rhetorically in a
speech advocating the Dorgan-Grassley amendment and a federal ban on
packer ownership of livestock. "No more farm bills that undermine rural
communities and drive family farms out of business," he entreatied. "Small and
mid-sized farms and ranches have demonstrated time and again that they can
match or beat the costs of production in the packers' industrial facilities. Time
and again. . . . Family farmers are efficient." You can watch John's speech,
which runs about 12 minutes, on our website at www.cfra.org/ (…).
The summit attracted a cadre of journalists from the U.S. and abroad. Each
candidate addressed a room of 30 or 40 reporters immediately after speaking to
the crowd, a newspaper reporter from Prague sitting at our table told me. The
Czech reporter, who introduced himself to me as Theodore, is the top foreign
correspondent for the leading daily newspaper in the Czech Republic, MF Dnes.
He told me he was one of 15 foreign journalists brought to the event by the U.S.
State Department. Like another journalist I spoke to—a Washington-based
correspondent for New York Newsday—Theodore was there primarily to cover

2. Clinton's speech. Late in the day we also spotted Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the
Press" ascending the escalator.
Flanked on either side by three Secret Service agents carefully scanning the
crowd for threatening behavior, Clinton was the last of the candidates to speak.
Much of the crowd began to clear out after she disappeared behind the curtain,
but a number did remain to hear the last speaker, Congressman Bruce Braley
from Iowa's first district.