Idaho Rural Council (IRC)
Frank James, Organizer
P.O. Box 236
Boise, Idaho 83701
(208) 344-6184

Becky Ihli knows what the farm crisis means as well as anyone can: She saw her parents lose their family farm and home in Idaho's Treasure Valley in 1987.

Ihli and her brothers still farm land in the rich fruit-growing valley, but the experience drove her to her primary work today: She sought out the Idaho Rural Council, became an intern, then an organizer and now acting director because she saw there was something wrong with this picture, and she figured that SOMEONE had to do something about it.

The IRC is the newest member of the Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC), the Billings-based network of small-farm and ranch community organizations across the Northern Plains and Northern Rockies. Formed in 1986 in response to the farm crisis in Southern Idaho, IRC operated at first primarily as a one-on-one counseling and referral organization focused on debt issues surrounding the farm crisis. Farmers and ranchers called its "hotline" for support, information and referral provided by volunteers. (With a staff of two and an annual budget of $128,000, primarily from foundation grants, IRC is one of the smallest organizations of its type; Ihli credits technical support and training from WORC with making it possible.)

Within the past two years, however, IRC has expanded both its issues and its scope. Membership-based with more than 300 dues-paying members all over the state and formal chapters in the Boise area and the Magic Valley agricultural region around Twin Falls, it is actively organizing farmers, ranchers, rural community members, churches and civic groups to get active and become empowered on issues ranging from the farm-debt crisis to hazardous-waste disposal, "concentration" in the beef industry, sustainable agriculture and the North American Free Trade Agreement. In concert with WORC and national organizations like the National Family Farm Allicance, IRC is actively involved in dairy-farming issues such as the recent moratorium on bovine growth hormone (BGH) in milk and a current legislative battle (with a vote expected in August 1993) over whether the Agriculture Department should continue supporting the National Dairy Board, an institution that many farmers see as aligned with agribusiness and not the family farm.

In one of its most exciting current projects, IRC has joined with Northern Idaho's Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute and AERO (the Helena organization I visited last week) in a three-year effort, funded by the Kellogg Foundation, to replicate AERO's model of "Farm Improvement Clubs" organized to foster working sustainable-agriculture projects. In a variation on AERO's model, IRC intends to set up both "Farm Conservation Clubs" involving groups of five or more farm families who will get grants of $30 to $500 to actually produce sustainable projects, as well as "Community Support Clubs" of farm-town residents and small businesses. This year's phase of the project involves setting up a task force, organizing technical support from the Soil Conservation Service and state universities, and recruiting potential club members; the goal is to organize five clubs each next year and the year after that, with a total of 10 clubs actually producing working sustainable-agriculture projects by the end of 1995.

"A lot of people don't understand about farmers," Ihli said. "They think, 'Oh, farmers have got money because they've got land and all that stuff.' But it's not true. We get calls from people who are destitute . . . they have no money for food. People think farmers are rich, that they've got all these resources, but that's just not the case."

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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