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Larry Ginter, family farmer and farm activist in Iowa
Larry Ginter is just one of the many ordinary folks looking to gain a sense of faith, hope, and dignity from taking part in the Showdown in Chicago, which will happen October 25-27 as the American Bankers Association hold their convention at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago.
Ginter, a former family farmer in Iowa and farm activist, has experienced firsthand how the banks favor agribusiness over the family farmer and he understands that the problems with credit in this country have deeply affected farmers and continue to impact farmers nationwide.
"Farmers today are facing a real dilemma cause crops are really coming out slow. The weather isn't cooperating. Prices are in the cellar again," says Ginter. "I don't hear a banker saying to Congress we need to get decent prices out here for family farmers cause what goes for family farms goes for the rest of the country.
He continues, "That's the way it's always been in the country. When farmers are doing good, so does the rest of the country."
Ginter details his experience with getting a loan so he could get by and continue farming:
"In '98, when the big hog factories moved in to the state of Iowa, they started flooding the market and prices just went south. That's when I really started to have financial problems.
The greens didn't keep up so I made up my mind that I wasn't going to go to far in debt. I went to the bank and I said I was having trouble paying my bills. He said to me you're spending money like a drunken sailor. This really burned me cause my family and my dad had been banking at the bank for a very very long time."
Ginter needed about a thousand dollars. The bank finally gave it to him but not without making him feel ashamed for asking for the loan.
It was then that Ginter made the decision that he wasn't going to put up "with this kind of mental abuse" anymore. He had witnessed the 1980s farm crisis and how farmers got in terrible debt and lost their farm and he was not going to let his farm go into debt.
Ginter talked to a fellow farmer who rented the farm from him so he could keep his hogs for a while. By 2001, he decided to retire completely and it was this episode with the banks that drove him to quit.
Additionally, Ginter says, "Agribusiness hog factories was a great contributor to the deep financial debacle that was hurting family farmers."
His experiences have convinced him that the banks need to be reinvesting in community instead of just buying each other out.
Furthermore, he believes that the collectivization of the banking system and the manufacturing bases has got to stop and antitrust laws must be enforced.
Ginter says, "We can't have the disparity between low prices and high interest. It doesn't work. I don't care whether you're a family farmer or a laborer. It's okay to have credit but you've got to have a physical economy that's able to pay off the credit. It doesn't do any good to go to the bank to borrow anything if they don't have a decent wage to pay it back."
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