Thank you for inviting me, and I’m glad I could make it, glad to be discussing this critical issue of Minnesota agriculture, a source of immense pride, actually, our farming, I’ve worked in several private and public companies helping to market your great work—Cargill, Pillsbury and General Mills, and you are a treasure of the entire state. And we need the farmer back on the flag, and the Indian too, and regarding that I am calling for clemency for Leonard Peltier based on the record that has come out.

I met Amy Klobuchar who has represented Minnesota on the Senate Agriculture Committee since soon after she was first elected in 2006, and in fact I was there when she walked through the precinct caucus where my friend who headed Migrants in Action sent me as a proxy for health reasons, and I had just been told I should get him off the voting delegation because he was a man, and DFL rules limit men. But I first met her as she attended a government meeting I had at the University of Minnesota with those active migrants, the Chicano activists, and talked with her about her dad, the very talented writer Jim Klobuchar (I had delivered his papers). And Amy confirmed this at the FarmFest debate where she sad right next to me.

Now Amy is very serious about her politics, and she is passionate about some things, especially abortion, which from the farmer’s point of view is bad, it hurts the families which are very important to a farm family, and it literally kills your market with 65 million souls lost since Roe. But Amy doesn’t come from a farming family, but rather an iron ore family. Very different.