Vote with your dollars if you want to change the industrial food system, right?  Not according to Judith McGeary, founder and executive director of the farm-and-food-policy organization Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance (FARFA).  In fact, this is a slogan she’d like to abolish.  “There’s no such thing,” she says.  “Either you vote or don’t vote.  You can spend your money consistent with your values and help build a social and economic base for political change, and we’ve got to do this, but this is not a political act.  We need to look at policies causing the problems and vote with our votes.”

            Judith, a central Texas sheep rancher with a biology degree from Stanford and a law degree from the University of Texas, in only seven years has made FARFA a real force in influencing legislation and policy beneficial to independent family farmers at the state and national levels.  From 2006 – 2010, FARFA led a national coalition to stop the USDA from implementing a mandatory National Animal Identification System (NAIS), which would have required every owner of even a single livestock or poultry animal to register his or her property, digitally tag each animal, and report animal movements to the USDA.  It is now leading the fight to amend the 2010 Food Safety Modernization Act in order to protect small-scale farmers with local markets from potentially crushing federal regulations. 

            In Texas, where FARFA is based, Judith’s grassroots activism and organizing are especially visible at FARFA’s annual Farm and Food Leadership Conference and during the biennial meeting of the Texas Legislature.  The conference draws people from throughout Texas and the nation and includes training by professional lobbyists and legislative staff in the tactics of citizen activism.  Judith herself offers tactical workshops in the Texas capitol when committee hearings on farm and food bills take place, and FARFA members from various areas of Texas show up to visit with legislators in person.  In the 2013 session, FARFA was successful in helping write and pass three bills:  one easing regulations on cottage food producers; another clarifying food sampling and cooking demonstrations permitted without special fees at farmers’ markets; and another intended to improve communication procedures of the Texas Department of State Health Services.  A bill that would have eased restrictions on the sale of raw milk, making it legal to sell at farmers’ markets rather than limiting sales to dairy farms, was passed by the public health committee but did not make it out of the calendars committee for a vote by the full house.  When the legislature meets again in 2015, FARFA will again work on easing restrictions on raw milk sales and also work on agricultural property tax valuation issues.    Though Judith rejects the slogan “vote with your dollars,” she sometimes uses as a slogan the famous rallying cry of Margaret Mead:  “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  Citizens change the world, and Judith, through FARFA, demonstrates the incremental efficacy of thoughtful, committed citizens working toward justice for independent farmers and local food communities.

Pamela Walker lives in Houston and is the author of Growing Good Things to Eat in Texas:  Profiles of Organic Farmers and Ranchers across the State, published by Texas A & M University Press, 2009. She is currently working on a book about local farm and food communities in Texas, under contract with TAMU Press.