(gentle music) - Hello, and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll meet birch bark artist, Pat Kruse, but first, joining me now is author and former North Dakota Ag Commissioner Sarah Vogel.

Sarah, thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you.

It's great to be here.

- Well, as we get started, of course, you're here to talk about a new book that you've got, "The Farmer's Lawyer."

- Right.

- But before we get to that, we'd ask you to tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background.

- Okay.

Well, I grew up in a Nonpartisan League family based in McLean county.

My grandfather at one point was the president of the bank in North Dakota.

And my dad was state's attorney later year.

So attorney anyway.

The Nonpartisan League was a religion in our family.

And I lived in, I used to claim five home towns 'cause we moved from here to there, but I went to University of North Dakota, then I went to law school on the East Coast.

I worked on the East Coast for about 10 years.

I came back to North Dakota in 1981 just as the 80s farm crisis was really getting bad.

And then I worked on the case that's in this book.

And then I was an assistant attorney general for three years.

And then I ran for and won commissioner of agriculture race.

And I was the first woman in the US to be elected to that position.

And that was exciting times.

And then I've been in private practice since then.

- Wow.

So, we got a lot that wwe want to cover.

Of course, we're here to talk about the book.

So we'll start with that.

- Okay.

- What is the book about?

- The subtitle to the book is the "The North Dakota Nine and the Fight to Save the Family Farm."

And the North Dakota Nine were nine farmers from North Dakota who exemplified what was happening to farmers in the early 80s at the hands of a federal agency then called the Farmers Home Administration.

And the Farmers Home Administration had been started in the 30s as a very beneficial...

Very good or very good agency (laughs) of the federal government, but in the 80s under the Reagan administration, they were trying to eliminate all loans to family farmers.

And there was an enormous crackdown on loan collections, a big push for foreclosures.

And these farmers and thousands of other farmers were caught up in the big chaos and storm and collections, foreclosures.

And at first one farmer and then others, and then others came to me and I decided that what we needed to do was to bring a class action lawsuit against the USDA to challenge the processes and procedures and practices that that agency was using because they were illegal and unconstitutional.

And the book is about that case, building that case, the stories of the North Dakota Nine and how the trial and how we won.

- Well, you talked (Sarah laughs) a little bit about this, but what was it like in the 80s?

What was the climate like for farmers back then?

The issues facing them?

- It was very, very difficult for interest rates were very high, land values suddenly started to drop, lenders were very anxious.

Then into the middle of all this trouble, the USDA decided that they were gonna foreclose on many thousands of farmers.

And that caused like a spiral of farmland values that really was causing a collapse.

It was a catastrophic time, a very, very difficult time for probably most farmers.

Even farmers who didn't have much debt because their land values were decreasing and they had kids or relatives who were in the same pickle.

So, it was a very bad time.

- Yeah, so this wasn't just North Dakota.

- No.

- This was going on all over the United States?

- All over the country.

And the delinquency rates at USDA we're running like 50% in some states.

North Dakota was medium at like about 42% delinquent.

Nowadays it's way less than that.

- So, what was the final outcome of all this?

And how long did it take?

- Well, I tried to work on the case without alerting the federal government of what was coming 'cause I figured I had to shock and surprise them, which is pretty hard to do when it was just basically me at first against the entire federal government, but we prepared the case.

It probably took about a year to prepare.

And then when I filed it, then it moved very fast and we were able to get a preliminary injunction from Judge Van Sickle first for the class of North Dakota farmers who had borrowed from Farmers Home that was 8,400.

And then over the summer of 83, I was getting so many calls from around the country that we turned it into a national class action which covered 245,000 farmers.

And we also won that.

And then basically, the government dropped its appeal of the decision in our favor.

So, it was dramatic.

It was the little guys against the big, bad wolf.

And it was an uneven fight, but the law was on our side and the constitution was on our side and we had a superb judge in Judge Van Sickle.

And I also, although I started the case alone, other lawyers came to help.

I mean, of course, my father and the head of the ACLU Litigation Department Burt Neuborne and Allan Kanner who was then a young class action, a lawyer who is now one of the best class action lawyers in America.

So we had a team and a lawyer from Missouri who was going one by one with a bunch of cases.

So, it ended up that I wasn't alone as the case was developed.

- Yeah.

Well, as y'all came together 'cause I was gonna, I think you said 245,000 farmers you were representing.

- Yeah.

- So, is that what made it, obviously helped it along the way when it finally got into the courts that it was huge?

It wasn't just nine from North Dakota.

It was a lot of others.

- Great.

It was the mechanism of a class action which is ordinarily, you're going to court, you represent the interest of your clients who might be just one person or one of a handful of people.

But a class action is a mechanism whereby you take people who are typical of other people and having the same legal issues, the same challenges, and then that class action mechanism make, it allows lawyers and judges to provide relief to all other people who are similarly situated.

And in the book, I talk about what I was frightened to do, a national class action because of the responsibility, but one night in the middle of the night, I got a call from a farmer from Mississippi.

He said he was from Mississippi.

He had a thick Southern accent.

And it might have been two in the morning.

And he said, "Would you please help us?

There are many farmers in Mississippi having the same problems.

Would you please help us?"

And I said, "Can you call me tomorrow at the office?"

(laughs) And he said, "I don't know if I can make it until then."

(sighs & laughs) So that kind of decided it for me.

And so, we amended the class action to become a national class action, and then we went forward.

But the federal government fought us very hard.

They did not wanna lose.

- Okay.

So, I think I may know.

Why and when did you decide to write the book?

- Well, while I was doing the case, I knew it was important, I knew it was significant and historic.

And I felt I should be keeping a diary of all of this, and I couldn't.

I was way too busy.

So I kept all of the papers and then boxes and boxes and boxes of papers.

And eventually they migrated over to the state archives.

And then I kinda waited for a historian to come along to interview me and the historian would write the book and I would just be in it, but nobody came.

(laughs) So, it was about 10 years ago, I decided that I had better write it.

And then I realized how difficult it is to write a book.

And it took me 10 years of which seven were getting ready to write it and getting prepared to write it, and then three years of writing it.

So, it was a long haul.

- Sounds like it.

What's been the reaction to the book so far?

- Really positive.

I get emails from people all the time who read it, who lived through it or who learned about it.

And one of the biggest compliments I get is that people say that they can't put it down.

It kept them up all night.

They didn't get any sleep.

And that I call is the Grisham effect 'cause I tried to write it like a John Grisham novel, but a true story.

And so, I consider that success that it's dramatic.

I mean, it was dramatic living through it, but I tried to write the book in a way that is interesting, it's a page turner.

- Well, I see John Grisham's quote on the front of your book, (Sarah laughs) "Remarkably well told and heartfelt."

So, congratulations.

- Yeah.

- Well, talk about the personal stress you were under.

You did a little bit when you're representing these farmers that are gonna lose everything.

- It was extraordinarily difficult and I was extraordinarily naive, which helped me.

(laughs) Naivety is a great weapon if you're in a tough fight.

So, it was extremely challenging, but people helped.

And the what what was burning in me was the fact that I was convinced that my clients were being treated very, very wrongly and I needed to do something about it.

I did hope that Congress could fix it.

They couldn't.

I did hope that President Reagan would back off.

He wouldn't.

And then finally there's really nothing to do, but sue, which is why we have the three branches of government.

- When were you Ag Commissioner?

- I was Ag Commissioner.

I was elected in the November of '88.

And so I served from '89 to '96.

- Okay, what were the years like as state Ag Commissioner?

- Oh, it was the best job I've ever had.

It exciting, I got to work with farmers, we got to try to rebuild after the 80s like creating new programs at the Bank of North Dakota.

'Cause of the NPL, I loved working with the state bank and the state mill.

We had a lot of rural development programs going on and we had farm credit counselors by that point.

I think when I got elected, there was a core of farm credit counselors that had been created as a result of state by predecessor Kent Jones.

Had started a credit counseling program.

And then when I got elected, I expanded it.

And so, we had about 80 people working out in the countryside at farmers' kitchen tables helping them to apply for debt restructuring and debt resolution with the federal government and farm credit services and so on.

So, it was a whirl, but it was really fun.

- Yeah.

What challenges do farmers face today?

- (sighs) Well, over the years, despite pleas from farmers, and from organizations such as the state and local national farmers unions, there's been almost no antitrust law enforcement.

So, farmers are stuck buying seeds from only a handful of companies; farm machinery, only a handful of farm machinery dealers.

They sell to basically there's only like four meat packers.

There's only a few buyers.

So, really the antitrust laws really were not enforced for so many years and now I think that's putting a big squeeze on farmers.

And you can see a lot of data about how high gross farm income is.

But the question to ask is, what is net farm income and how is it dispersed because many farmers and of course, COVID and now that Ukraine, there's a lot of variables at work, but farmers, what really matters is what is their net farm income at the end of the day?

And we've had a stupendous loss of the middle-sized family farmers.

It used to be that there were a great number of middle-sized family farmers and they were the ones that kept our main streets and our small towns alive, and now that's hollowed out.

So you have a large number of very small part... Maybe I'll call them part-time farmers or simply land owners and then the numbers of middle-sized family farmers that sufficiently support a family have dropped very much.

And then there's an increasing share of very large farmers.

But I would like to see more support, more serious support of the middle-sized family farmers and to help the small beginning farmers start out.

And there's another crisis too because there are very few young farmers.

There are many, many more farmers who are over 65 than are under 35.

And this is something that none of us can be ignoring.

It's really important.

And that's another reason why I wrote the book.

Is to try to buy this story and buy the story of the North Dakota Nine, explain why family farming is so important.

- Okay.

So yeah, what does the Coleman case and your experience mean for ag law and farming today?

- Well, it's a famous case in legal circles.

It was one of the most important cases to be brought so far.

I mean, it's famous.

I've gotten a lot of awards over it.

And one of the things I'm proudest of is that in 1987, actually '88 when Congress came and they adopted a law that really helped by debt restructuring and calling quits to the way USDA had been behaving, they set up reforms to the appeal procedures, because that was one of the parts of the treatment of the farmers that was so terrible.

Is that when USDA decided that they were gonna shut down a farm, they emptied out the farmer's bank account, they would not allow another nickel to go out.

The family literally they couldn't feed their animals.

I called it the starve out.

And then when they had a hearing, they said you can have a meeting or you can have a meet hearing.

The person that they had to have a hearing with was either the very person who had decided to shut them down or worked right under the very person who had decided.

So the appeal process was very unfair.

But in 1987, '88, Congress adopted a law, the Agriculture Credit Act of 1987 that said that there had to be reforms and farmers had to be allowed, offered due process and fair hearings.

And Congress called those the Coleman reforms.

So, I think that's the - Resonated.

- huge legacy of this case - Sure.

- That's heard today.

- We're almost out of time, but what role does the sustainability play in the protection of family farms and our food economy?

- Oh, COVID has shown how important that is.

We need to have processing spread out across the country.

We need to have outlets for farmers to take their animals and their crops.

We need to have more on-farm processing and co-ops and manufacturing plants.

And we need more competitors so that farmers are not put in a squeeze by these great big multinational corporations.

So, it can be done, but it takes a will by all branches of not just the federal government, the state government.

PTAs should be saying we have to support family farmers.

So, one of the messages I'm trying to tell people now is that when politicians come to you and say, "Will you vote for me for this or that or the other thing?"

Say, "I'd be very interested in talking to you, but first, tell me what you're doing for family farmers."

And if we take care of that in North Dakota, we've accomplished a lot.

- Well, with that said, we're out of time.

If people want more information, want a copy your book, where can they go?

- They can get it anywhere.

They can get it at the local bookstores here in North Dakota, they can get it from Amazon, from Barnes & Noble.

It's on Audible.

I read it.

My voice, my North Dakota accent.

And Kindle.

So there's a lot of places you can get the book.

- All right, thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you.

- Stay tuned for more.

(gentle music) Pat Kruse is a birch bark and quill artist who lives on the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Reservation.

Working with Birch bark for over 30 years, he creates beautiful pieces of art, including baskets, birch bark paintings, and even cradles.

(gentle music) - My name is Pat Kruse, and I'm a birch barker.

We're in Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Land.

And I make baskets and all kinds of different styles of birch bark stuff.

Now I got it cut out.

I gotta shaped it.

I wanted to do something different.

And birch bark was a route for me to do that.

I wanted to make canoes, I wanted to make baskets.

I just liked that stuff.

And it stuck with me since I was little.

So, I've been doing birch bark off and on for like 30 years.

(gentle music) Practically, most of my life I've been doing cultural things because birch bark and the culture go hand in hand.

So, without birch bark, we would never had wigwams to live in and survive a sustainable winter.

Like it started below zero, right?

If you've seen a real Ojibwe wigwam, you would understand, aha, this is how they did it.

This is culture.

This is the way it is.

And then what about the birch bark canoe?

We were able to travel from East Coast, West Coast, all the way to Montana through all the rivers and portage.

What about bowls and cups?

Medicine all come from the birch tree.

So birch bark goes hand in hand with culture.

(gentle music) There's no perfection.

There's no ever trying to be perfect with birch bark.

As you see, things crack, things break, things happen.

And every piece of art I made, whether large or small, it's stressful.

And it's like you're trying to perfect something that's imperfect thing.

And you can tell that.

See it wants to go one way or another.

See how I did that.

If it won't work one way, you can work another.

And it's important to make sure that you be mindful of any art, anything that you're trying to do native American, there's never perfection.

And you're just the same as any art or any tree or anything.

We're imperfect.

So we try to mimic a good thing, but at the same time not trying to be perfect.

(gentle music) I have a style from the old school to new school.

So, my inspirations are the original people.

Like old-school Ojibwe baskets and their baskets are phenomenal.

If you've seen them, you would understand.

(gentle music) So what we're doing is we're trying to tell a story with it through the art.

So that's what a birch bark painting is.

It's like I take a flat piece of birch, put it on wood.

And then I put a design on there, whether it's floral or a turtle or a tree, it's a giant picture scapes of a whole forest with animals in it, but it's all different colors of birch bark.

(gentle music) Some of my ideas for the birch bark paintings was there used to be scrolls and they would tell the history of us.

So, they would use these things to teach you how to hunt, how to survive, and that's what the storytelling bark is about the paintings.

Is to teach you how to understand that nature is important as each of our family members: the water or the air, everything we live on.

No litter and all that.

It's important and we teach that through the paintings.

(gentle music) Me and my apprentice Terri Hom on this cradle at the Libertyville, Illinois, Dunn Museum.

And she got ahold of them and arranged for us to go meet the people.

We went and looked at it, took pictures and took a little measurements and stuff.

And then we came home and I spent three months trying to design it and make the same similar thing.

But the cradle was so important because they were making these things in 1800s.

And that's the last time anybody made one.

We were lucky to be the two people to actually remake something so special as this cradle because now we made the same thing in this generation instead of it being lost 200 years ago, 190 years ago.

I would take up novel words to make people who are not native American understand how important that is culturally to us, to remake such a thing and to have someone alive on the planet doing these things or to teach it.

It's hard to teach.

It takes months, years.

It's not something you learn overnight.

(gentle music) What I would like people to take away from my art is the planting of more birch birk trees, to recognize the value of this tree, recognize the medicinal value, the baskets, the canoes, the finer art.

And we're actually trying to create something that lasts for generations and generations because our lives don't last that long.

It's just trying to leave history for your family.

That this is what I did while I was here and these are the nice things I tried to make to explain what I was doing while I was here.

(gentle music) - Well, that's all we have on Prairie Pulse for this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008 and by the members of Prairie Public.

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