Demand a Healthier, More Equitable Farm Bill Today!

Farmers and eaters across the U.S. (that includes every person in this country, btw, since we all eat) benefit from a fair and healthy Farm Bill. Right now the House Agricultural Committee is accepting public comments on this critical piece of legislation.

As usual, there are a lot of bad ideas that Congress is considering, including cutting funding to vital programs such as nutrition, conservation and support for organic and sustainable agriculture.

Click here to tell the House Ag Committee that it's time for real reform. Comments are due by May 20th to be considered part of the official Committee's Farm Bill field hearing record.

http://www.agriculture.house.gov/farmbill_feedback.html

Here are some talking points suggestions:


Tell Congress you want

1) The full endorsement of all provisions of the Local Foods, Farms and Jobs Act (H.R. 3286).

2) Fully funded conservation programs, such as the Conservation Stewardship Program, and making sure that enrollment in any new insurance subsidies are tied directly to compliance with conservation programs.

3) The implementation of all provisions of the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act (H.R. 3236).

4) Maintaining the EQIP Organic Initiative.

Reports from Washington DC about the Farm Bill negotiations have not been pretty. According to an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle by Environmental Working Group’s Ken Cook and Kari Hamerschlag, Republicans in the House Agricultural Committee have already “voted to slash $33 billion from the food stamp program while leaving farm subsidies unscathed.”

The editorial goes on to report on the latest agribusiness boondoggle that steals food from the mouths of the hungry to create a “$33 billion new entitlement program that guarantees the income of profitable farm businesses. That's on top of $90 billion in subsidies for crop and revenue insurance policies.”

If this weren’t bad enough, the Senate Agricultural Committee has already voted to cut $4 million from organic research funding and cut funding to support Beginning Farmers in half

At the same time, the Senate Ag Committee has voted to get rid of wasteful subsidy payments, which sounds like a good thing. Unfortunately the Committee has proposed to replace it with a new subsidized insurance program that leading sustainable agriculture advocates are calling rife with opportunities for fraud and abuse.

While Congress is looking to get rid of direct payments to commodity farmers, the subsidized insurance program it proposes to replace it with will allow giant commodity farmers and insurance companies to walk away with billions in taxpayer dollars while putting the land, soil and environment at greater risk.

According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s Ferd Hoefner, "By failing to place limitations on crop insurance subsidies and to re-attach soil erosion and wetland conservation requirements to crop insurance programs, the Committee has failed to do the full reform that is needed.”

Tell Congress how you feel by May 20:
http://www.agriculture.house.gov/farmbill_feedback.html

Chag Purim sameach

A great message from American Jewish World Service:

Demand an organic farm bill

Join me in telling Congress, "I want an Organic Farm Bill" to help meet the serious challenges of the 21st century. It's time that U.S. agricultural policy in the farm bill shift from its focus of creating cheap commodities and artificially propping up income for farmers toward implementing best agricultural practices for sustainable and organic production. Share your ideas of how to make the Farm Bill better serve farmers, eaters and the environment!

Farmers need your voice today. Please spread the word.

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/your_organic_farm_bill/?referring_akid=.92252.M13cg7&source=mailto

Are you smarter than Congress?

On most things, I'm sure you probably are. Congress (collectively speaking) sets a pretty low bar, after all.

However, in this instance, this is actually not a rhetorical question, but a short quiz from American Jewish World Service to see how much you know about the Farm Bill, which is coming up for renewal later this year. Take it and see how you do, and then tell your friends to come visit my blog (which is very lonely out here in the abyss of cyberspace) and take the quiz themselves.

http://www.ajws.org/farmbillquiz

Save locally grown greens!

Today the USDA and Big Ag are conspiring to implement a set of rules that favor giant industrial growers while placing small, diversified farms at risk. Known as the National Leafy Green Marketing Agreement, this set of rules was designed by industrial growers to protect their market share while harming their main competition, the growing local and organic food movement. The Leafy Green agreement, drafted by the largest vegetable growers’ lobbyists in an effort to whitewash their growing food safety problems, would implement draconian practices that saddle farmers with one-size-fits-all rules and would drive local and organic farmers out of business with expensive regulations.

Tell Secretary Vilsack that it's time to protect family farmers and stop letting Big Ag write the rules by adding your name to the petition:

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/leafygreens/?referring_akid=.92252.M13cg7&source=mailto

Trying to fight my yetzer cynique...

In Jewish tradition, we learn about the yetzer tov and the yetzer ra, the good inclination and the bad inclination. Both are locked in constant conflict, each trying to dictate our actions and reactions. I submit there's a third inclination, the yetzer cynique, or cynical inclination. I must admit I have more trouble not giving in to my yetzer cynique than I do resisting my yetzer ra (I'm basically a good person, after all, however boring that sounds).

So imagine the difficulty I have containing the old yetzer cynique when I read this:

MEDIA ADVISORY

Launch of Major New Food and Ag Policy Initiative

Long-Term Initiative Funded By Eight Leading Foundations

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 27, 2011 – On May 3, eight of the world’s leading foundations will launch a major new initiative designed to impact food and agriculture policies on a global scale.  

The world will have more than 9 billion people to feed by 2050, with two-thirds of them living in cities, putting greater demands on our agricultural and environmental resources. Current food and agriculture policies cannot meet the needs of this future without drastic consequences for our environment, health and rural communities.   

This initiative is funded by Ford Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and The Walton Family Foundation.

Please join us for a press conference detailing how the initiative will engage on food and agriculture policy on May 3, 2011 at 10 a.m. at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Who:    Deborah Atwood, Executive Director

Dan Glickman, Co-Chair, former USDA Secretary under President Bill Clinton

Gary Hirshberg, Co-Chair, President and “CE-Yo” of Stonyfield Farm

Jim Moseley, Co-Chair, former USDA deputy secretary under President George W. Bush

Emmy Simmons, Co-Chair, former assistant administrator for Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade at U.S. AID

Todd Barker, Partner, Meridian Institute

What:  Launch of a new initiative to transform food and agriculture policies

Where: The Fourth Estate, National Press Club

529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor, Washington, D.C.

When:  Tuesday May 3, 2011, 10 a.m. – 11 a.m.

It sounds good, doesn't it? But I can't help thinking this is just one more instance of the haves taking over food production from the have nots. Given the USDA's conflicted mission: to promote US agribusiness and to safeguard our food supply (guess which one wins out 95% of the time), I question the integrity of any current or former USDA official. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation I've already written about, and their love affair with technology over sustainable socially just solutions (particularly with regard to their advocating GMO crops, esp. in Africa). So much as I'd like to think Bill and Melinda are doing a good thing here, I have serious doubts.

Anyone else's yetzer cynique sending off warning bells?

Tell President Obama No GMO beets and alfalfa

Please join me in telling the Obama administration it's time to halt the sale and planting of Monsanto's Roundup Ready GMO alfalfa and sugar beets until proper independent peer reviewed science can be conducted.


On January 17, 2011, Dr. Don Huber, an internationally-recognized plant pathologist sent a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack attempting to warn him of a serious problem facing U.S. agriculture. This letter, marked “CONFIDENTIAL and URGENT”, warned Secretary Vilsack of a previously unknown pathogen, “new to science” that “should be treated as an emergency”.

Huber’s letter discussed the new pathogen in the most dire terms, saying that the findings of this top team of scientists had already discovered a link between the new pathogen and the steady rise of plant diseases in Roundup Ready corn and soybean crops and in association with high rates of infertility and spontaneous abortions of animal livestock.
Huber warned Secretary Vilsack that the discovery of the new pathogen was “highly sensitive information that could result in a collapse of U.S. soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies.”

Unfortunately, less than 3 weeks later, the Obama administration approved 2 new Roundup Ready GMO crops, which are set to be planted this spring.

Please join me in this urgent action telling President Obama and Secretary Vilsack to halt the sale and planting of Monsanto's Roundup Ready GMO alfalfa and sugar beet seeds until more independent scientific testing can be conducted to ensure the safety of our food supply.

Watch the interview with Dr. Huber and learn about the science at Food Democracy Now! -
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/dr_hubers_warning/

Thanks!

End the Monsanto monoply

Last year, the Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Agriculture held a series of five hearings investigating anti-competitive practices in the food and agricultural sectors. The hearings were historic and gave a vital opportunity for hundreds of thousands of America’s farmers, agricultural workers and citizens to call for an end to agribusiness’ excessive monopoly power. 

Last December, Food Democracy Now! delivered more than 200,000 citizen comments to Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney with your demands to break up the worst abusers.

Nowhere are these abuses more prevalent than in the extreme market share enjoyed by the seed and chemical company Monsanto, which has a virtual stranglehold on seed supplies in crucial sectors that has severely limited farmers' choice in what seeds they can buy. Monsanto’s control of the seed market is so high that 93% of soybeans, 82% of corn, 93% of cotton and 95% of sugarbeets grown in the U.S. contain Monsanto's patented genes.

Not only is this level of market share allowing Monsanto to jack prices up on farmers because there’s no competition, but it also threatens our democracy as Monsanto uses their corporate power to influence our regulatory agencies, like the USDA, EPA and FDA, as well as Congress and the White House.

It’s time to fight back, and the only way to do that is to make sure that the Department of Justice continues their investigation into Monsanto’s anti-competitive business practices.

Legal matters

Last week, the Center for Food Safety and Earthjustice filed a lawsuit against the USDA challenging the USDA's decision to allow the planting of GM alfalfa. You can read more about it in their joint press release here.

In other legal news, the Iowa state house last week approved a bill that would criminalize secret videotaping of activities on farms, specifically related to the mistreatment of animals. While the ag industry is crying victim here, saying they're being held hostage by PETA and other animal rights groups, the larger issue is that investigations into farm and animal conditions would be illegal, if video was used. The bill could also apply to crops, not just animals. In other words, the makers of Food, Inc., could, under this bill, have been arrested if they'd filmed in Iowa and this bill had been law at the time the film was made. Florida is reportedly also considering a similar bill. The Iowa Senate has yet to weigh in.

If you're an ag company and you're supporting a bill that would make it illegal to video your crops, exactly what are you hiding? Yes, that is a somewhat rhetorical question, but I ask it because I don't personally know a single farmer who'd object to anyone filming their farming practices.

Other thoughts? I'd share more of mine but am posting this while I should be writing program notes. Back to Bartók.

Political activism in 30 seconds

Here are three petitions you can sign, from Change.org: one protests Monsanto's stranglehold on the USDA, one protests GMO crops, and the third demands that President Obama protect our right to buy and eat GMO-free foods.

I know that the Center for Food Safety plans to sue to stop the planting of GMO alfalfa (and GMO sugar beets), but have not heard if they have actually filed their suit yet. You can click on the link to their site here for more info. They also have many more petitions to sign.

Adding your name to a petition, as I once said in an earlier post, is a pretty spineless form of activism, but it's better than nothing. If I hear of more direct ways to get involved, I'll post them.

FYI, these petitions have widgets that you can embed on your Facebook page or blog; at the bottom of each one there's a "Get Widget" link for the embed code. Feel free to pass them along.

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Michael Pollan GMO redux

WNYC interviews Michael Pollan on the latest decisions by the USDA to approve GMO alfalfa, sugar beets and a new kind of GMO corn. As always, Pollan manages to lay open the heart of a very complex issue. His point about the lack of independent research on GMO foods is particularly germane, imo.

Check out the interview here, then scroll down the site to "Dish on GMOs." You can stream it from the site or download it to listen to at your leisure. If you're still confused about why GMOs are such a big problem, or you're trying to convince someone who's skeptical about the brouhaha, Pollan's remarks will provide useful talking/argument points. Plus he's the most articulate spokesperson we have.

What he said

Marc Bittman says "ERF," and I agree. What's ERF? Read more here:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/is-eat-real-food-unthinkable/?ref=opinion&nl=opinion&emc=tya1

As for who's Mark Bittman and why should you care what he says? Well, I'll leave that up to you to decide.

Did you know...?

Whodathunk it? It's a start. For a good explanation of what this means, check out Sam Fromartz' post here.