Women Involved In Farm Economics Holds Annual Convention

This is the 43rd annual convention for the organization

FARGO, N.D. — Women Involved In Farm Economics, or WIFE, held their 43rd Annual National Convention at the Expressway Suites In Fargo.

For WIFE Vice President Jennifer Jones, this year’s convention is tackling a range of issues, including low commodity prices, tariffs, monopolies and the high suicide rate for farmers.

“We are all small–time farmers trying to make it. These are family farms that have been handed down from generation to generation, we would all like to leave our farms to our children and grandchildren,” Jones said.

Jones, who does farming and ranching in Nebraska, says it’s been a difficult time for independent farmers.

“The low prices are making it where farmers and ranchers are not even breaking even; they are losing at a greater rate than we can come in,” Jones said.

Jones says one of the bigger problems the organization is tackling is monopolies they say are hurting small time farmers.

“Our seed comes from four places basically and they control the price so pretty much all of our seed coming in is exactly the same they can up the price and you can’t go anywhere else to buy it,” Jones said.

She says the issues facing farmers across both Minnesota and North Dakota are national concerns.

“I’m from Nebraska, and we had major flooding, earlier we had major freezes that cost our cash crops, and I feel for all the North Dakota from what they are having to combat right now,” Jones said.

The organization says that the public needs to be aware of, and care about, the current crisis farmers are facing.

“We have the safest cheapest food supply of any country in the world, and if they would like to continue that, then they should care about our farmers we are who the ones who raise the food that you eat,” President Of WIFE Diane McDonald said.