Page 59 - Agenda 21

Page 59 of 121

Census year. Many people who do not think of themselves as farmer actually meet the definition according to
the Census. If you own horses, backyard chickens, large urban gardens, etc., you may qualify as a farmer.
Thus, by their own admission, even if you do not produce any food whatsoever, the mere act of living
on a piece of land that COULD produce food makes you a farmer! If you have a “large urban garden” you
must spy on yourself for the government!

If you refuse to fill out the form, the USDA will send government spies to your property to confront you
in person. In their own words:

“For those who do not respond by April 5, NASS will begin following up by telephone and personal
visits.”

Add yet, even though you are threatened with being visited by government agents for failing to fill out
the form, the USDA admits their own website doesn’t even work much of the time and loses the
information you’re trying to fill out:
We are experiencing intermittent connection issues and are working to resolve them as soon as possible. We
understand that some respondents have lost their connection or received an error screen that does not allow
them to return to the information they already entered. We greatly apologize for this inconvenience and we hope
to have the problems resolved very soon. (SOURCE)

Furthermore, you are not allowed to answer any question with, “I don’t know.” As the USDA explains:

NASS does not provide an option for respondents to select “don’t know” because your best estimate is always
better than “don’t know.”

Of course, the government can always imprison you for providing inaccurate information, so the mere
act of attempting to fill out the form automatically makes you a criminal for reporting inaccurate
financial data. It’s a catch-22: Refuse to fill out the form, and you earn a visit from government agents
along with possible fines. Choose to fill out the form, and you incriminate yourself with possible felony
violations for “lying to the government.” This is the crime that sent Martha Stewart to prison, by the
way.

Read what farmers really think of the USDA and its census surveillance demands
Here’s some of what’s posted on the LocalHarvest.org forum:

USDA Census harassment
Has anyone else been hassled by USDA for refusing/neglecting to fill out their census form?

They kept sending me copies, and I kept throwing them away, because as we increasingly see, USDA
fashions its every policy with an eye to promoting the interests of Corporate Ag while squashing small
family farms.

In particular, given what we have seen of USDA’s lies, deception and coercion in pursuit of their
disastrous NAIS policy, I do not trust them to honor their privacy assurances, but rather I expect they
will use information from the census to feed into NAIS.

We know that they have lied to the public and to ag organizations about the NAIS policies, e.g. that the
program is voluntary when it is in fact coercive, that it will benefit farmers when it would in fact
destroy small family farms, etc. They have demanded that vendors of livestock feed require a NAIS
“premises id number” or you can’t buy feed, in some locales.

NAIS is simply impossible for small, already overworked family farmers to comply with. It would
subject anyone keeping any farm animals, even a couple of backyard chickens, to more scrutiny,
intrusion and surveillance than a violent felon or convicted pedophile. The record-keeping and