Former N.D. Commissioner of Agriculture Sarah Vogel was inducted into the N.D. Agriculture Hall of Fame at the North Dakota Winter Show in Valley City in early March.
In the height of the 1980s farm crisis, Sarah Vogel became a household name in North Dakota. The soft-spoken attorney from Bismarck who took on the U.S. Department of Agriculture and won – righting injustices caused by the Farmers Home Administration when the agency began aggressively foreclosing on farm families without due process – was inducted into the N.D. Agriculture Hall of Fame March 5, after North Dakota Farmers Union (NDFU) nominated her for the prestigious honor.
“It’s a delight,” Vogel said of her induction. “I'm not a farmer, but I've always worked for farmers. My dad and my grandfather were both advocates for family farm agriculture. When I was a little kid, I was taken to many, many, many Farmers Union picnics, because my dad was the lawyer for the McLean County Farmers Union.”
Her national class-action suit (Coleman v. Block) halted farm foreclosures, protecting the constitutional rights of 240,000 farm families. That case laid the foundation for federal legislation in 1987 that required fair appeals processes for most USDA programs.
“I think the Coleman case was the most significant case I ever did,” Vogel said.
Vogel went on to be elected N.D. Commissioner of Agriculture in 1988, becoming the first woman in U.S. history to be elected to the position in any state. She served in that role from 1989 to 1997.
From 1999 to 2018, she was co-counsel on another national class-action lawsuit (known as the Keepseagle case), which eventually resulted in a $680 million settlement and required major reforms in USDA discriminatory treatment in lending to Native American farmers and ranchers.
Vogel continues her work to right injustices for farm families.
“The opportunities for class actions and group actions in agriculture is really strong,” Vogel said. “The companies that sell to and provide services for farmers count on any one farmer being unable to do anything. But when the farmers get together and work together, they can get a lot done, even against huge national and multinational companies and the federal government.”
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This is an edited version of a story written by Pam Musland, NDFU communications director, and published in the April issue of the Union Farmer. Read the full story online at ndfu.org.
