Donated tractors bring cheer to farmers hit hard by Katrina

[undeterred]

SHEEPLO - With a halting first belch from its exhaust pipe, a Wisconsin tractor prepared to take its first ride through Mississippi soil. The McCormick Farmall was one of five dusty but working tractors unloaded Friday afternoon in front of the Indian Springs Farmers Cooperative in the Sheeplo community near Petal. Representatives of the national Family Farm Defenders had hauled them from southwestern Wisconsin to donate to the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives, a coalition of independent farming cooperatives in 11 counties- many of whose members lost equipment and crops to Hurricane Katrina.

At least two of the tractors are expected to stay at Indian Springs - where farmers like Donnie Pen-Travis said they are sorely needed. "They might be worth $4,000 or $5,000 to you, but to me they're worth a million bucks," said Pen-Travis, 53, who works a plot of land he said has been in his family for five generations. He beamed as fellow farmers from Wisconsin backed the red and orange vehicles off the back of an 18-wheeler before a crowd of about 50 farmers and pro-organic farming activists.

"(Katrina) beat my sugar cane to death," he said, adding that he also lost a tractor and three-and-a-half acres' worth of bell peppers and sugar peas to the Aug. 29 storm's winds and rain.

Family Farm Defenders was in the Pine Belt for its annual conference, which is promoting small farmer solidarity against the pressures of agribusiness and the global marketplace. "We've all been so excited we could do something that was a way of gaining solidarity with all the farmers in the hurricane area," said John Kinsman, 80, president of FFD and a dairy and tree farmer from Sauk County, Wisc. The group sent two truckloads of food to the Gulf Coast in Katrina's aftermath, and several supporters on hand had spent the winter volunteering in New Orleans.

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Let's hear it for farmers!

Most of these farmers are black and are struggling to keep their land.