Archive for the ‘Sustainable Farming’ Category
Chickens in your backyard
May 15th, 2009
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How do you know you’re eating safe eggs. Raise chickens! More and more people are starting to have their own backyard flock. I recently found out we are allowed chickens in our suburban area, so we at MomsForSafeFood are getting our chickens in a few weeks and can’t wait. 🙂
Envisioning the End of ‘Don’t Cluck, Don’t Tell’
Article by PETER APPLEBOME
NEW HAVEN
In the modest backyard of Rosemarie Morgan’s 1890-era house, about a half-mile from Yale University, there is a small Buddha, azalea and forsythia, Japanese cherry and plum trees, and an Amish-made chicken coop with five residents — four who lay eggs and Gloria, who is barren but one heck of a watchdog.
The fowl are technically illegal under New Haven’s zoning code, which prohibited raising hens and other livestock when it was updated during the 1950s. But these days, many dozens of backyard hens are generally tolerated under the city’s informal enforcement program — call it “don’t cluck, don’t tell” — that mostly looks the other way. With urban fowl increasingly common, Alderman Roland Lemar has introduced legislation that would allow residents to raise up to six hens.
Ms. Morgan, a Victorianist at Yale who specializes in Thomas Hardy and grew up with assorted animals in England and Scotland, may not be the face of modern agriculture. But she’s a perfect representative of a tiny sliver of it — the vogue for urban farming that has cities around the country updating and tweaking zoning codes.
To Ms. Morgan — whose other Rhode Island reds and hybrids are named Brunnhilde, Tosca, Carmen and Mimi — the zoning fight is a little baffling.
“It seems extraordinary to me that you could have a cat or a dog or a caged bird, but you can’t have a chicken,” she said the other day, sprinkling corn in the yard for her little brood. “Slightly barbaric really.”
Of course, not many New Haven residents or Yale professors were raising chickens a few years ago. But some combination of the locavore craze, the growth of immigrant communities with traditions of raising hens and the recession making the idea of free eggs or milk in the backyard attractive, cities and suburbs around the country are reviewing all manner of critter ordinances.
Seattle recently allowed residents to have up to three goats. Minneapolis just legalized beekeeping.
At the center of the Brave New World of urban ag is the humble hen, whose care and keeping is the subject of Web sites like thecitychicken.com, urbanchickens.org, backyardchickens.com, or Just Food’s City Chicken Meetup NYC, which has 101 hen-friendly members in New York.
Ms. Morgan, whose East Rock neighborhood was once known as Goatville, took up raising hens when she lived in the Berkshires and, along with some friends, resumed it when she moved back to New Haven seven years ago. She likes the fresh eggs and the link to our vanished natural past. She’s very fond of her feathered friends, who eat bugs and mosquitoes and don’t make much noise other than a triumphant squawk when laying.
“The eggs are fabulous,” she said. “And it’s very emotionally fulfilling. They’re not exactly pets — they still have a wild way about them, but they’re very smart and easy to have around. And noise? They’re not as loud as blue jays, no worse than a cat’s meow, certainly quieter than a barking dog.”
Most municipalities are much less hospitable to roosters (consider that next door every dawn) than hens. But the clear trend is toward being more permissive. Jennifer Blecha, who did a doctoral dissertation on people’s attitudes about urban livestock, surveyed the zoning codes of American cities and found 53 allow hens, 16 prohibit them and 9 make no mention. In general, Ms. Blecha said, cities are much more tolerant of domestic livestock than suburbs.
“People like the idea of I take care of them, and they take care of me,” she said, explaining that the personal agrisystem of feeding food scraps to chickens that, in turn, produce breakfast, has enormous appeal.
Of course, not everyone is happy. New Haven’s head of code enforcement does not like the idea of adding chicken coop inspection to his portfolio. On the New Haven Advocate’s Web site, one resident lamented the presence of “these foul, filthy, half flying, eat anything rats in the East Rock nabe.” And any health scare involving animals — see: swine flu — can lead to a pushback, though advocates say the real threat is from factory farming, not small urban populations.
Owen Taylor of Just Food, which promotes local agriculture in New York, said the key is for people to explain their plans to their neighbors, so they know what to expect. He praised New York’s codes, which deal with potential bad behavior (smell, noise, rodents) rather than the existence of the hens, for allowing responsible fowl behavior and punishing those who create a nuisance. Citing New York street wisdom, he added, “You deal with it on a coop by coop basis.”
Read more great, Fight Back Friday posts here, http://www.foodrenegade.com/fight-back-fridays-may-15th/
Posted in 
Food freedom
by Brian Keeter
“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” – Thomas Paine
That quote echoed through my mind during my nine-month deployment in Iraq with the United States Marines back in 2004. I came home, thinking I had done some good not only for my country but for my family. At the time I thought my baby boy was going to grow up without the threat of terrorism and the Iraqi people were now free to choose their own destiny. However, those nine months had taken a heavy toll. I stared daily in the mirror, looking into the eyes of a cold and tired soul with more gray hair than any twenty-three year old deserved. Adjusting to civilian life was hard, and my family was suffering. I was in need of healing, and I found it back on the farm I grew up on.
There was something deeply satisfying about the cool Ozark air blowing across the fields of waist-high fescue grass. The cows stood chewing contentedly while their young calves frolicked about seeing who could kick their back legs the highest. My father had spent his entire adult life working, saving and accumulating over one thousand acres of productive grassland in northwestern Arkansas. Besides the peace it brought me, the thought of being self-sufficient and self-employed in a profession as noble and humble as farming drew me in further. Would I continue his path of the conventional beef market? Would I certify organic, or find overseas markets? No, my path was a more local one.
In the following years the local food movement heated up. New words like nutritional density, biodynamics and sustainability filled my vocabulary. I toured successful farms and sought the advice of their entrepreneurial owners. They said raw (unpasteurized) dairy was at the forefront of the local, nutrient dense food movement and they were gaining market share every year. That settled it – a raw dairy herd would be the centerpiece of our diversified farm as well as meats and vegetables of every kind. We’d have an on-farm store stocked with raw milk and cheeses and frozen meats and fresh, seasonal veggies! It would be glorious!
Except – it’s illegal to sell raw dairy products in Arkansas and twenty-one other states. It’s also illegal to sell any meat that hasn’t been processed in a USDA or state inspected facility. In Arkansas, it’s illegal to have a flock of more than 200 laying hens unless I pay for the equipment and facilities to qualify for Grade A certification. It may soon be illegal to own livestock of any kind without belonging to a government database called the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and having each animal tagged with an RFID chip. A carbon tax for animal flatulence is also in the works to stave off the “imminent threat” of global warming.
Excuse me? Is this the land of the free or what? What exactly did I get rocketed, mortared and road-side bombed for nine months in Iraq if not to have the freedom to do as I please as long as I wasn’t hurting anybody? Let me get this straight – I can pour toxic chemicals on my crops, process hundreds of animals an hour over feces-covered conveyors, or sell genetically alter foods with documented health risks as long as it’s approved or supervised by inept government trolls? The government had, over the last one hundred years or so, positioned itself squarely between myself and my personal and economic happiness. I was angry. I had been used and thrown away, and now found myself in the belly of the leviathan I had once sworn to protect.
Every time the market is suppressed, it goes underground – and real food is no different. People sell raw milk as pet food, or offer shares of their farm’s production in exchange for labor and feed costs. Others just ignore the laws outright, and offer their superior products despite the legal risks. Some pay the price – overzealous regulators issue crippling fines, and some are jailed. Some have even been attacked by armed state thugs with their families held at gunpoint while search warrants are executed. They take everything, all with the approval from their Federal masters at the USDA.
Thomas Paine’s quote floats around in my head once more as I ponder the future. I was so wrong those four years ago. The battle for freedom is not over, not by a long shot and the biggest threat to it is certainly not from Islamic terrorism. Food freedom will become an important front in this battle as the government-subsidized methods of food production collapse in the wake of economic reality. It will be important to everyone in the coming years to have many reliable, local sources of healthy, wholesome food.
Once again I have no choice but to fight. This time it is different – our weapon is the awesome power of voluntary interaction in the private marketplace with the goal being nothing short of total liberty for all. I’ll drink some raw milk to that.
May 7, 2009
Brian Keeter [send him mail] is a computer programmer, ex-Marine, and third-generation farmer living in the hills of northwestern Arkansas. See his blog.
http://freefarmgeek.wordpress.com/
Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
How Natural is your HF store Natural beef?
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As part of our commitment here at Moms to eat GMO free, we’ve been looking into the quality of our food even beyond what’s on the label.
One example of this has been our research into what most health food stores call Natural Beef. We don’t eat a lot of beef and for the last few years when we do, it’s been grass fed. Grass fed beef usually has less than 10% of its fat as saturated, and it has an ideal Omega 6:3 ratio, which is good us. The first time we tried it I wasn’t sure how it would taste, but our whole family loves it.
But, I’ve been curious about the other beef they sell, Vintage Natural Beef. I started by asking the meat manager of our health food store if the VNB is GMO free. He actually got angry and stated “It’s natural and vegetarian fed, just like the sign says”. Then I emailed the company directly and never got a reply, which really got me wondering,.
So, I went to the store manager and asked, he didn’t know either and directed me to the store’s district manager, who also didn’t know! I have to admit that this alone surprised me, as our local health food chain is adamant about only carrying quality and healthy products. A few years back they announced their pledge to eliminate the sale of eggs laid by chickens confined in battery cages and stopped carrying the brands that didn’t comply.
The district manager initially repeated the VNB sales info: “Vintage beef is raised solely on a 100% vegetarian diet; cattle are never fed animal by-products of any kind. The Vintage beef program has taken this premise to a stringent level and also regularly test the feed for pesticides with a zero tolerance policy. The Feed is a diet consisting of corn and whole grains. They’re also raised without antibiotics”.
There are some things that VNB does that is better then your ordinary supermarket meat. First off, they’re not fed animal by-products (aka unappealing scraps of meat from other cows, sheep, etc). Animal by-product feeding has been blamed for the creation of Mad Cow disease. It’s also not good that they’re not using antibiotics and testing for pesticides, although unless cows are sprayed like fruits and vegetables, I’m not sure why they’d have high pesticide levels.
The problem with Natural beefs is two-fold. First off Cows are herbivores and are supposed to eat grass. When they eat grain it makes them sick and then they’ll need antibiotics (and who wants to eat a sick cow- and you could be if you eat grain fed beef.) Secondly, and this was my next question, “Are the grains they’re being fed GMOs (genetically modified). Again the regional store manager didn’t know the answer, so he asked his meat purveyor. It took a week for him to get an answer.
When he finally replied it was to tell me, “Our Natural beef program is NOT GMO free.” And he was told, “it would be too expensive” as they’d have to feed the beef organic grain… (How about grass!).
I’ve been eating healthy for many years and I am amazed at how much more I have to learn, mostly to keep up with corporate propaganda. I have to say I’m very impressed that our store was honest about this but I am also concerned that they’ve been selling GMO meat and calling it Natural. Since they weren’t even aware of this hopefully they’ll work on getting a more Natural, natural beef provider.
If you want to make sure the beef you’re eating is really natural, go for grass and/or organically fed beef. It’s delicious and GMO free!
Tags: An Interview with Jon Wood
One thing we’ve done over years, as part of adding healthy nourishing food to our diet is to have a garden. It’s been a wonderful thing to share with my kids and we’ve grown everything from tomatoes to pumpkins, sweet peas to cooking herbs. There is nothing more delicious then eating a fresh picked tomato.
I’ve been a member of a wonderful Yahoo group for the past few years called Organic Homesteading and Gardening. It was started in 2002 by Jon and now has over 7000 members. If you are looking to learn about anything related to homesteading or gardening, one or more of the member of the group will know the answer. And Jon, who started the group has a wealth of knowledge that he always kindly shares with the group. For me personally, I learned how to make my own pasta, brew kombucha tea and many other tips that have helped me to have a more prosperous garden and become more self-sufficient. There’s so much more I am learning everyday, thanks to Jon and OHG.
Jon kindly agreed to this interview. Thank you Jon!
When and why did you start the Organic Homesteading & Gardening Group?
When: April 16th, 2002
Why is too complicated to answer typing a paragraph or two. (so folks can learn how to garden organically to feed their family healthier).
Can you tell us a little about the group?
We have members from every state and principality of the USA, and from 90 countries around the globe. That I know of. All hungry to find the best and most sensible, way to homestead or farm.
What’s your experience homesteading and gardening?
Survival gardening in my youth during the first depression in the 30/s. I have had an organic garden since I was 5 which was 70 plus years ago. I’ve had one ever since. Plus a self-sustaining farm in my early adulthood. I also wrote about all aspects of farming, gardening, and everything pertaining to it.
What are your suggestions for people just starting out learning about Organic gardening and homesteading (other then joining your wonderful group?)
To find an elder willing to teach them the easiest way to become self-reliant. Not only in food production, but also in fruits, honey production, medicine making and preventative eating to avoid many of the sicknesses todays people must suffer through.
If you lived closer, we could sit and chat about it most of a week and never cover every aspect of becoming more self reliant and looking to the land to provide most of our foods, fruits, sweets, milk, cheese, eggs, and any other thing we’d normally purchase with worthless cash.
Everything I type about, I have done. I raise anything I talk about, or I HAVE raised it in the past. I have honeybees, fruit trees, grape vines, berry brambles, fruit trees, peaches, apples, pears, figs, apricots, nectarines, plums, and no less than 50 herbs grown in the gardens, and over 300 wild sown and wildcrafted. I’ve raised most every farm animal used on todays farms, and many that aren’t. We’ve home raised and killed our own meat from scratch, and processed it by hand on the farm in the good ol days. We’ve also made soap from scratch, molasses, and tapped trees just to see how much fun / work it was. And we fish. Now and in times past.
And I write about it in fact as well as in fiction: factoids. Childrens stories, Cherokee storytelling, and church related activities as well as a teacher of sorts.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/a_homeschoolers_haven/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/born2write/
I was born into a Methodist Ministers home in November of `30’s’. Mom was a professional teacher in the state of Georgia, my dad was ordained a Methodist minister when he was 15, and had his medical license by the time he was 20. I grew up hearing about medicines from both aspects; mom being tribal Cherokee medicine expert, and my father in home grown medicines shipped worldwide. Plus being a circuit rider for the church. Mom and dad had many children and some of us made it to adulthood, others died along the back trail. I am an elder in the Native American culture and am still learning tribal medicines, and teaching them at the same time to folks who listen. History is also important to me.
Jabber jabber jabber: I enjoy talking. Even with my fingers on a keyboard.
Jon-known by many names
Thank you Jon. I can’t tell how much I appreciate your wonderful group and all you share with us.
If you’d like to join the Organic Homesteading & Gardening group, the homepage is here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/organichomesteadinggardening
Joel Salatin on Safe Food
Sound Science is Killing Us
By Joel Salatin
At a recent House committee hearing in Richmond, Virginia, the state Commissioner of Agriculture, Carlton Courter–seated next to me at the polished oval table that only government buildings
contain–proclaimed that “raw milk is just as dangerous as moonshine.”
That statement, of course, was based on “sound science.” Seated behind him were credentialed experts, the representatives of sound science. From industry personnel to Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services bureaucrats to Federal Food and Drug Administration academically credentialed professionals, all trumpeted forth sound science as the Holy Grail. With one voice, all of these cultural elites extolled the virtues of rBGH, irradiation, genetic engineering and pasteurization as representing sound science.
Those of us at the committee hearing who would dare to ask for consumer choice were called “borderline criminal” in our intent, because sound science has proven that consumers are incapable of informed, responsible, rational decision-making. These experts have done their consumer surveys, and they know that sound science proves that food choice is tantamount to Russian roulette on a plate. Only government food is safe food. Sound science dictates what is safe. No other standard will do. Only T-bone steaks wrapped in million-dollar, agriculturally prohibited, quintuple-permitted, government-sanctioned processing facilities are fit for human consumption. I can’t buy a pound cake from a neighbor girl who
whipped it up and baked it in the family kitchen. That’s not safe. Sound science has thus decreed.
But Coca-Cola is safe. McDonald’s Happy Meals are safe. So is irradiated food. Genetic engineering is the darling of sound science. And until just a couple of months ago, sound science decreed that
feeding brains and spinal cords to herbivores was state-of-the-art technology. Now the denizens of the ivory towers are debating whether or not to eliminate the feeding of chicken manure and dead chicken
carcasses to herbivores. Rest assured, when the edict comes down from the powers that be, it will be based on sound science.
Things are getting crazy. I’ve decided we all need some relief from sound science before it kills us. Please, relieve us from sound science. If all this is sound science, I want no part of it. And yet it is worshipped daily on the news by a fawning media too preconditioned to question pontifications from credentialed
scientists.
It’s time those of us in the alternative community shout a new truth from the housetops: “Science is not objective!” I’ve tried out this statement at several conferences this winter, and the result is a hushed, incredulous, shocked audience. Our Greco-Roman, Western, compartmentalized, disconnected, fragmented, linear, reductionist culture is steeped in the notion that we, more than any other people
in history, are scientific. We wear the mantra of science as if it bestows everlasting life.
At the risk of being labeled a Luddite, I would suggest that equally powerful is what is not readily observed. Matters of the heart. Belief systems. Soul. This is a decidedly Eastern approach: holistic,
connected, we’re all relatives, community, we. Science without soul is just as imbalanced and whacky as soul without science.
In his classic book Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future, Joel Arthur Barker notes, “The essence of the pioneering decision is: Those who choose to change their paradigms early do it
not as an act of the head but as an act of the heart.”
Eco-agriculture, to use the preferred Acres U.S.A. moniker, was developed by paradigm-challenging pioneers. From J.I. Rodale and Louis Bromfield to Charles Walters and Phil Callahan, these framers
of a new paradigm approached agriculture with a heartfelt, intuitive sense that all was not right down in the halls of the USDA. While farmers were dusting their children and cows with tons of DDT, these
pioneering thinkers did not yet know about the legless frogs and sterile salamanders that would be part of its toxic heritage.
But their morality, their ethics–their souls–demanded an alternative view. Daily I am assaulted by the cultural elite as being “unscientific.” What could be more unscientific than putting chickens out on pasture? Here in our neck of the woods, where the vertically integrated poultry industry got its start, I am known as a bioterrorist, because red-winged blackbirds, starlings and sparrows can touch our chickens–and thus, the reasoning goes, transport their diseases as they do to the immuno-deficient sound-science birds compressed in inhumane, fecal-factory, concentration-camp mausoleum
houses.
Pigs out on pasture is a backward notion relegated to a bygone era–while sound science gave us first the confinement hog house, which necessitated the docked tail due to stressed pigs biting each other, and today is driving government-funded research to find and eliminate the stress gene so these inhumanely compressed pigs won’t try to eat each other. The ultimate goal of sound science is to make pigs satisfied with their grotesque anti-pig quarters.
While I appreciate some of the scientific discoveries of our day, I also appreciate their limitations. I kind of like electric lights, four-wheel-drive tractors with front-end loaders and the low-impedence electric fence, to name just a few improvements. But when scientific discovery is used to destroy heritage wisdom contained in the DNA and the innate pigness of a pig or chickenness of a chicken, then it ceases to be an instrument of good and becomes instead an instrument of evil.
A diesel tractor can either pull an anhydrous-ammonia-fertilizer injector, or it can pull a manure spreader full of compost. It is the heart, the soul, the belief system that determines how technology
will be used. Electricity can be used to power feed augers and ventilation fans, medication timers and artificial lights in a confinement poultry house, or it can power an energizer hooked to high-tech, information-dense, polyethylene-stainless-steel-threaded poultry netting in a pasture setting. The belief system defines the use.
Many of us who have been in this eco- farm movement for a long time remember the early sound science experiments on land-grant research plots. In one infamous example, two plots that had been used for
countless toxic studies for decades were designated the organic plots, while two others were designated the conventional plots. Master’s degree students dutifully planted corn in each plot, The organic ones received no amendments. The conventional ones received the regular dose: fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide.
At the end of the season the two crops were measured, and the organic was woefully lacking. Plugging the results into a computer proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that half the world would starve under
organic farming. That finding of sound science became the backbone of the industrial warning against large-scale organic farming. Of course, anyone whose heart is in the right place understands that
organic by neglect is far different from organic by design.
Witness the current research regarding genetically engineered food. Corporate giants have carefully selected mature rats in their feeding trials to avoid ill effects. In Scotland, when pre-pubescent rats
were used under the same feeding regimen, all sorts of maladies occurred–poor organ development and behavioral changes. The agenda defines the discovery, and the heart defines the agenda.
Wall Street science will only find what satisfies Wall Street. The fact that it is championed as sound science makes it no more sound or truthful than a cult leader on an ego trip. Anything trumpeted as
“science” needs to be filtered through the heart. And if it is touted as sound science, you’d better filter it twice. It’s almost like the adjective “sound,” when linked with “science,” is a dead giveaway for: “We’re really making this one up, so we’d better dress it in more profound verbiage.”
The problem with sound science is that it changes every day. Look at the many instances of what has been commonly accepted as sound scientific practice, but has later been proven disastrous.
Here are a couple of examples:
- *Spreading manure on dormant ground. Now it’s illegal in many areas because this material is winding up in city water supplies. Intuitively, I know that nature does not apply soil amendments in the
winter because the living soil cannot metabolize nutrients when it is hibernating. I don’t need a bunch of scientists to tell me that.
- *Feeding brains and spinal cords to herbivores. Duh! Herbivores in nature never eat carrion, or grain- based diets, or fermented forage, for that matter. I don’t need scientists to tell me that feeding herbivores dead animals may not be a good idea.
- *Dusting everything with DDT. Not too long ago, this was the universal elixir, the key to the Green Revolution. Intuitively, I can’t figure out why I should use a bunch of stuff with the suffix -ide (Latin for death) to grow my food. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
- *Cleaning out and sanitizing poultry houses. Now most farmers are aerating the bedding between batches to stimulate decomposition and encourage nature to grow the good bugs. We’ve been doing this for decades on our farm because virulent decomposition is nature’s sanitation model. No scientist needs to tell me that.
What are the new darlings of sound science? Irradiation, genetic engineering, more concentration, less domestic production, and a Wal-Mart on every corner stocked to the hilt with Archer Daniels
Midland, amalgamated, extruded, reconstituted, chlorinated, adulterated, manipulated, constipated pseudo- food. The only problem with this scenario is that the 3 trillion critters inhabiting my intestines–and yours–were not designed for these Wall Street concoctions. These critters don’t know anything about the liberal left or the religious right. They don’t even know who is running for president. They certainly aren’t familiar with the term “sound science.”
Nevertheless, if we do not respect and honor them, they will fail to function as the Creator planned–and if they fail, no miracle from sound science can reenergize them. I’m betting on heritage wisdom.
I’m betting on moral and ethical parameters that make sense to my heart. Everything else must fit that template. In eco-agriculture, we must boldly and humbly hold fast to our heart. It is what anchors us.
It is what moors us to truth when our culture vacillates every Monday morning with the latest discovery from sound science–not. Enjoy science, but only when it reinforces the spiritual, the heart. This reduces confusion and liberates the soul.
About the Author
Joel Salatin is a third generation clean food farmer who has refined
techniques for production of pastured animals that improve the
quality of the land, provide healthy food for consumers and bring a
fair return for farmers He is the author of four books on innovative
farming and has been interviewed for numerous radio and television
programs. His Shenandoah Valley farm was featured in National
Geographic and Smithsonian Magazine. His books , including You Can
Farm, Salad Bar Beef, Pastured Poultry Profits and Family Friendly
Farming, can be obtained from AcresUSA at (800) 355-5313.
Outlook upbeat for food activists
This was good news to read, and it’s a start. Now lets get labeling on our food too!
White House backs healthier eating
By Andrew Martin
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
2:00 a.m. March 22, 2009
ANAHEIM – As tens of thousands of people recently strolled among booths of the nation’s largest organic and natural foods show here, munching on fair-trade chocolate and sipping organic wine, a few dozen pioneers of the industry sneaked off to an out-of-the-way conference room.
Although unit sales of organic food have leveled off and even declined lately, versus a year earlier, the mood among those crowded into the conference room was upbeat as they awaited a private screening of a documentary called “Food Inc.” – a withering critique of agribusiness and industrially produced food.
They also gathered to relish their changing political fortunes, courtesy of the Obama administration.
“This has never been just about business,” said Gary Hirshberg, chief executive of Stonyfield Farm, the maker of organic yogurt. “We are here to change the world. We dreamt for decades of having this moment.”
After being largely ignored for years by Washington, advocates of organic and locally grown food have found a receptive ear in the White House, which has vowed to encourage a more nutritious and sustainable food supply.
The most vocal booster so far has been the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has emphasized the need for fresh, unprocessed, locally grown food and, last week, started work on a White House vegetable garden. More surprising, perhaps, are the pronouncements out of the Department of Agriculture, an agency with long and close ties to agribusiness.
In mid-February, Tom Vilsack, the new secretary of agriculture, took a jackhammer to a patch of pavement outside his headquarters to create his own organic “people’s garden.” Two weeks later, the Obama administration named Kathleen Merrigan, an assistant professor at Tufts University and a longtime champion of sustainable agriculture and healthy food, as Vilsack’s top deputy.
Hirshberg and other sustainable-food activists are hoping that such actions are precursors to major changes in the way the federal government oversees the nation’s food supply and farms, changes that could significantly bolster demand for fresh, local and organic products. Already, they have offered plenty of ambitious ideas.
For instance, celebrity chef Alice Waters recommends that the federal government triple its budget for school lunches to provide youngsters with healthier food. Author Michael Pollan has called on President Barack Obama to pursue a “reform of the entire food system” by focusing on a Pollan priority: diversified, regional food networks.
Still, some activists worry that their dreams of a less-processed American diet may soon collide with the realities of Washington and the financial gloom over much of the country. Even the Bush administration, reviled by many food activists, came to Washington intent on reforming farm subsidies, only to be slapped down by Congress.
Even so, many activists say they are packing their bags and heading to Washington. They are bringing along a copy of “Food Inc.,” which includes attacks on the corn lobby and Monsanto, and intend to provide a private screening for Vilsack and Merrigan.
At the heart of the sustainable-food movement is a belief that America has become efficient at producing cheap, abundant food that profits corporations and agribusiness, but is unhealthy and bad for the environment.
The federal government is culpable, the activists say, because it pays farmers billions in subsidies each year for growing grains and soybeans. A result is an abundance of corn and soybeans that provide cheap feed for livestock and inexpensive food ingredients such as high-fructose corn syrup.
But advocates of conventional agriculture argue that organic farming can’t provide enough food because the yields tend to be lower than those for crops grown with chemical fertilizer.
“We think there’s a place for organic, but don’t think we can feed ourselves and the world with organic,” says Rick Tolman, chief executive of the National Corn Growers Association. “It’s not as productive, more labor-intensive and tends to be more expensive.”
The ideas are hardly new. Farmland philosopher and author Wendell Berry has been making many of the same points for decades. What is new is that the sustainable-food movement has gained both commercial heft, with the success of organic and natural foods in the past decade, and celebrity cachet, with a growing cast of chefs, authors and celebrities who champion the cause.
It has also been aided by more awareness of the obesity epidemic, particularly among children, and by concerns about food safety amid seemingly continual outbreaks of tainted supplies.
While their arguments haven’t gained much traction in Washington, sustainable-food activists and entrepreneurs have persuaded more Americans to watch what they eat.
They have encouraged the growth of farmers markets and created such a demand for organic, natural and local products that they are now sold at many major grocers, including Wal-Mart.
“Increasingly, companies are looking to reduce the amount of additives,” says Ted Smyth, who retired this year as senior vice president at H.J. Heinz, the food giant. “Consumers are looking for more authentic foods. This trend absolutely has percolated through into mainstream foods.”
The sustainable-food movement also owes much of its current success to pioneers in the organic and natural foods industry. Many started their businesses for idealistic reasons and have since turned their startups into major corporations.
Manufacturers improved their organic and natural products so they could compete with conventional foods on packaging and taste. Whole Foods Market also lured more mainstream customers by creating lush displays of produce and fish that have influenced more traditional grocers.
Nancy Childs, a professor of food marketing at St. Joseph’s University, said sustainable food activists forced the public to focus on the quality and sourcing of food. She says that “continual attention in the news” also gave the movement legs.
But Childs worries that some of the activists’ recommendations for buying fresh, local or organic food cannot be adopted by many Americans because those foods may be too expensive. “By singling out certain lifestyles and foods, it’s diminishing very good quality nutrition sources,” she says. “Frozen goods, canned goods, they are not bad things. What’s important is that people eat well, within their means.”
“We’d all love to live on a farm in Vermont, right?” she adds.
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© Copyright 2009 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. • A Copley Newspaper Site
An Inspiration for us all – Dr. Vandana Shiva
“Over the past three decades I have tried to be change I want to see.”
I was privileged to hear Dr. Shiva speak this weekend in Anaheim, CA. The topic of her talk was Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis.
Vandana Shiva was a Physicist in India and left the world of science, she says, “When I found that dominant science and technology served the interests of powerful, I left academics to found the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, a participatory, public interest research organization.
When I found global corporations wanted to patent seeds, crops or life forms, I started Navdanya to protect biodiversity, defend farmers’ rights and promote organic farming.
Navdanya/RFSTE’s journey over the past two decades has taken us into creating markets for farmers and promoting tasty, healthy, high quality food for consumers. We have connected the seed to the kitchen, biodiversity to gastronomy. And now we have joined hands with Slow Food to celebrate the quality and cultural diversity of our food.”
She spoke about ‘a century of error’ in food technology. When the Indian farmers were encouraged to grow Bt cotton (a genetically modified cotton) their seed price went from 7 rupees to 7,000 rupees for them to buy seed. And the GE seed is made to be infertile so the farmers couldn’t save their seed to grow the next year. They got so in debt that 84% of the cotton farmers that were using the GE seed, committed suicide. Dr. Shiva calls this Bio-Piracy; The stealing by a large multi-national corporation [{Monsanto] of our food and seed supply.
It’s time for all of us to stand up and say, no, we won’t stand for this.
Instead of changing and then patenting (and owning!) our seeds, we need to get back to basics; organic and sustainable farming. Which can feed the world and will help climate change as well. In research that was done, biodiverse organic farms had the greatest food yield of any kind of farming. It can feed the world and is good for the environment as well. The number two issue of climate change is the factory farms of the world. Our government has been exacerbating this issue with subsidies (with our tax dollars!) to GE and factory farmers. We need to focus on many small, organic farmers so people can eat local and healthy food.
She said, “A healthy environment and a just world go hand-in-hand. In a time of changing climates and increasing food scarcity, sustainable and biologically diverse farms are the champions for food production that is resistant to disease, drought, and flood. By promoting the productivity of small independent farms we can increase the potential for social justice and biodiversity”
And she ended her wonderful and inspirational talk, with a reminder to also cultivate peace, happiness and joy.
You can visit her website here:
Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader and thinker. Director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology, she is the author of many books, including Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization (South End Press, 2001), Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End Press, 1997), Monocultures of the Mind (Zed, 1993), The Violence of the Green Revolution (Zed, 1992)
Ms. Shiva is a leader in the International Forum on Globalization and founder of Navdanya (“nine seeds”), a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds. In 1993, Shiva won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award). Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India ’s leading physicists. She holds a master’s degree in the philosophy of science and a Ph.D. in particle physics.
Why NAIS will hurt small farmers – NO on H.R. 875
H.R. 875 – Tell your Representatives to vote NO
The real deal that changes the face of the American Farmer is
H.R. 875. I spent all day finding the fax numbers of each and every congressman and woman, including Nancy Pelosi that were on the Committees hearing this bill. It is titled, “[111th] Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 (Introduced in House)”. If you go to Sec 210 – Traceback Requirements, paragraph d, sub-paragraph 2, sub-paragraph D, you will find DIRECT reference to implementation of NAIS! Shoot, I’m just gonna copy and paste it for you here:
SEC. 210. TRACEBACK REQUIREMENTS.
(a) In General- The Administrator, in order to protect the public health, shall establish a national traceability system that enables the Administrator to retrieve the history, use, and location of an article of food through all stages of its production, processing, and distribution.
(b) Applicability- Traceability requirements under this section shall apply to food from food production facilities, food establishments, and foreign food establishments.
(c) Requirements-
(1) STANDARDS- The Administrator shall establish standards for the type of information, format, and timeframe for food production facilities and food establishments to submit records to aid the Administrator in effectively retrieving the history, use, and location of an item of food.
(2) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION- Nothing in this section shall be construed as requiring the Administrator to prescribe a specific technology for the maintenance of records or labeling of food to carry out the requirements of this section.
(3) AVAILABILITY OF RECORDS FOR INSPECTION- Any records that are required by the Administrator under this section shall be available for inspection by the Administrator upon oral or written request.
(4) DEMONSTRATION OF ABILITY- The Administrator, during any inspection, may require a food establishment to demonstrate its ability to trace an item of food and submit the information in the format and timeframe required under paragraph (1).
(d) Relationship to Other Requirements-
(1) CONSISTENCY WITH EXISTING STATUTES AND REGULATIONS- To the extent possible, the Administrator should establish the national traceability system under this section to be consistent with existing statutes and regulations that require record-keeping or labeling for identifying the origin or history of food or food animals.
(2) EXISTING LAWS- For purposes of this subsection, the Administrator should review the following:
(A) Country of origin labeling requirements of subtitle D of the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 (7 U.S.C. 1638 et seq.).
(B) The Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act of 1930 (7 U.S.C. 499a-t).
(C) Country of origin labeling requirements of section 304 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1340).
(D) The National Animal Identification System as authorized by the Animal Health Protection Act of 2002 (7 U.S.C. 8301 et seq.).
(3) CERTAIN REQUIREMENTS- Nothing contained in this sectn prevents or interferes with implementation of the country of origin labeling requirements of subtitle D of the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 (7 U.S.C. 1638 et seq.).
Here is the letter that I copied from earlier post with my changes:
(This is the letter I have sent to the Committees on Energy & Commerce and Agriculture as well as each individual on each of these committees and subcommittees. Please read and be aware of this bill or its incarnations as this will affect every small holding in your district and the country as a whole. This is a very scary proposition and if you have ever watched the movie “Soylent Green” realize that small farmers have watched it too.
“He who controls the food supply, controls the world”. ~Carol Peters
H.R. 875 is about making a mandatory
National Animal Identification System(NAIS) (see Sec210(d)(2)(D).
Wiping out America’s healthy food growers at a time when the nation is already about to buckle under economic distress, will only put the final nails in our coffins and this country will look like a 3rd world country in no time at all. I have a small family farm. We grow our own crops and raise our own livestock on 5 acres.
We sell our surplus to offset the costs of living off the land. Our goal is to retire on up to 200 acres of farmland.
Regulation in a Mandatory NAIS Program will destroy our way of life and our dreams of peaceful retirement farming!
Provisions need to be addressed for the small holding farmer!
NAIS is designed to eliminate private animal ownership and industrialize the global food supply. It states it is going to stop disease, but it doesn’t. Its only function is to eliminate the private animal owners from the food supply, thus industrializing agriculture and the entire global food supply. This happens as a direct result of all the required NAIS expenses, required paperwork, loss of property rights and privacy, and outrageous non-compliance fines.
All I can ask…beg of you, is to work diligently against NAIS and H.R.
875 Sec 210(d)(2)(D), as it will completely wipe out the American farmers. All that will be left is the big disgusting Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) that feed tons of antibiotics, hormones, and chemicals just to keep the million+animals alive in those “cess-pool farms”. That is the face of Industrialize
Agriculture-CAFOs. NAIS will lead to nothing but CAFOs for our food supply.
NAIS is worse than any disease it hypes about preventing. NAIS is what farmers have to worry about in destroying all their animals, not any diseases.
NAIS itself will be the most deadly thing in America’s farms, if it gets passed.
Please vote against H.R. 875 today!
p.s.
Could one of the congressmen or women please give a copy of this letter to the Chairman of Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Congressman Markey, because his is the only D.C. office that refuses to give out his fax.
Thank you.
Carol