Farmers of North America was founded by farm families on traditional farm family values. The ethics and integrity with which we employ those values are paramount to our organization's philosophy and our employees' and members' success.

Our approach to ethics begins with our mission. Everything we do must linked to our mission, and in the process we must always be accountable to our farmer members and our own good conscience.

While we don't get involved with internal industry issues between farmers, if there exists a dispute between farmers and external forces, we will always take the side of farmers. This is true in every community in which our members live and do business.

A common misconception by detractors of FNA is that our volume-buying organization is being unfair to local businesses, and this simply isn't true: our ethics simply don't allow this.

Consider this: for an FNA member who saved $5,000 on his glyphosate bill in 2006, the impact on the local community is extremely positive. The local dealer would never have received all of that $5,000. He might have gotten 10%, maybe even 20%. So the FNA member could essentially take $1,500 of his $5,000 savings, write a donation cheque to his dealer-get absolutely nothing for it except community spirit-and still be $3,500 better off. That other $3,500 could go to buying things from other local businesses or in fact other purchases from that same local dealer that the farmer otherwise could not have afforded.

FNA has a local first preference, but ultimately our job is to serve the financial interests of farmers. Where we cannot find local partners, we will supply farmers through other means, including direct distribution ourselves if that is what is required.

We also take our integrity very seriously. For example, FNA enforces upon its employees a strict no-tolerance policy with regards to employees lying or misleading members. While this means that at times the organization cannot reveal much about our products (due to confidential research and development information, program negotiations, etc.), if any false information is knowingly given to a farmer member and/or if an employee sells a member a product for which the he or she knows the member will never realize the full savings from, that employee will be immediately dismissed.