Like Don Quixote, Dwight Ault has tilted at his fair share of windmills in his time.

Tuesday, October 19, 1999

Like Don Quixote, Dwight Ault has tilted at his fair share of windmills in his time.

Unlike the Cervantes character, Ault knows what his targets really are. Any resemblance to the foolishly impractical knight’s pursuit of lofty ideals in literature to Ault’s own pursuit of accountability in agriculture is purely coincidental.

Ault’s target is genuine: the mandatory pork checkoff.

He blames it, in part, for creating the "massive over-expansion" in the pork industry, which has forced independent producers out of business.

The mandatory pork checkoff is a fee paid by hog farmers on every hog sold in the U.S. It generates $45-$55 million annually for the National Pork Board and NPPC.

Ault, a Lansing Township farmer who raises hogs, is against the pork checkoff. A member of the Land Stewardship Project, Ault was among the producers who spent late-summer and early-fall campaigning for the National Pork Producers Council to hold an "honest" referendum on the pork checkoff Nov. 15.

"I went out and collected signatures in my community," Ault said, "I know the hog farmers who signed this petition and they want, and in all justice they deserve, the vote now.

"The mandatory checkoff has brought us massive over-expansion by factory farms and the works hog prices ever," he said. "The NPPC is doing everything they can to delay and disrupt the vote so they can keep the checkoff dollars rolling in."

Ault, a sustainable farmer who raises, among other crops, sunflowers, and pasture farrowed hogs, has made his presence and opinions known on many local issues regarding farming and the environment.

The Lansing Township farmer was a part of the Campaign for Family Farms effort of a national coalition of farm groups that ran a successful petition drive to force the vote on the checkoff.

Members spent the day after the September Farm Aid concert in Washington, D.C. lobbying for the NPPC’s president, Al Tank for their cause. The coalition’s members want the NPPC to stop trying to delay the vote, stop trying to block the vote, stop trying to buy the vote and commit to a vote by Nov. 15.

Last May, the coalition submitted petitions bearing over 19,000 signatures to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, demanding an end to the mandatory pork checkoff.

The coalition alleges the NPPC has misused checkoff dollars and is, in part, to blame for independent pork producers having to get out of the pork business and for the crippling economic impact the pork crisis has had on America’s rural communities.

The checkoff has generated half a billion dollars since it was created, according to the coalition. At the same time, hog prices have hit historic lows and the hog farmer’s share of the retail dollars paid for pork has plummeted from 46 cents to less than 20 cents at present.