The battle against CSAs, Farmers Markets, and wholesome food

I hope that you will click on this story and read it. It is horrifying, but if you don't know what the enemy doing, you will be defeated.

Goodbye farmers markets, CSAs, and roadside stands

It is an ongoing battle. This is a real threat. Tacoma tried to stop people from selling food from their homes because residences are not businesses. Totally in conflict with the right to farm. Yes we have a right to farm. I suggest that everyone write to any congress person they know to help stop what the article your friend sent is writing about... Read More. There is only ONE farmer in the Senate, Jon Tester (D) of Montana. He is an organic farmer. Read the www.whitehouse.gov website and read the Agenda/Rural link. If you like locally grown, organic or naturally grown food, you have to protest this. These companies are evil.

Snow, Seeds, and Surprises from the USDA

Last night three inches of snow fell. It should be mostly gone by evening when more snow may fall. Last week the temperatures bounced between the 40s and the 60s. Some ornamental cherry trees are blooming in the neighborhood. Heavy rains are normal. Snow is not. We are in a maritime climate.

We are planting the transplants in the greenhouse that will be planted later in the tunnel houses.

We are ordering seed. There seems to have been some seed crop failures, and that wedded with higher demand means that there are going to be organic seed shortages this year.

Finally, The Rodale Institute web newsletter came with this analysis mixed with hope about the new USDA: Like Nixon to China, Vilsack reshaping USDA landscape. Rodale reports that:

We’re on the cusp of a similarly noteworthy shift in the posture of the USDA under its new secretary, Tom Vilsack of Iowa. Initially dismissed by many progressive food and farming activists as a tool of corporate agribusiness, the new leader is making waves several times a day in what is starting to feel like a tsunami of positive change.

What surprised me the most is Sec. Vilsack announcing that Kathleen Merrigan, the person who drafted Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, will be his deputy secretary. That makes her the second most powerful person in the USDA behind Sec. Vilsack himself. There is more. Sec. Vilsack has spent the month of February presenting surprises. I encourage you to click through to the Rodale Institute newsletter and read this for yourself.

New administration supports local and organic agriculture

UPDATE

Sam Kass, who has been cooking for the Obama family for several years, is moving to the White to continue feeding them healthy organic food. He will be working with chef Cristeta Comerford, who is the head chef, apparently.

This is according to a NYTimes blog entry Obamas Bring Their Chicago Chef to the White House

Mr. Kass's appointment signals changes at the White House that should please chefs like Alice Waters, who have lobbied the Obamas to set an example for the rest of the country by emphasizing food that is healthy, local and sustainable. It further suggests that a vegetable garden on the White House grounds, another of Ms. Waters' dreams, could be on the horizon.

This is seen as good news for local, wholesome, organic food. The orginal post follows and gives some background on President Obama's vision for food.

In her Health.com article, Julie Upton, RD, talks about how the Obama family, and the President himself may help both the health of our country and the local and organic agriculture movement. She writes in
4 Ways Barack Obama Can Change the Way Our Country Eats that

Both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have expressed their desire to support legislation in favor of local and organic agriculture. Obama frequently mentions his appreciation of reform-minded food writer Michael Pollan, reports the New York Times, and wife Michelle has said she tries to buy organic when she can.

She joins other writers who are supporting that healthier food can be inspired from the top down. Michael Pollan clearly puts forth a way that we can change what we do, how we eat, even how we see ourselves. Michael Pollen proposed a "Farmer in Chief" in his New York Times blog The Food Issue: Farmer in Chief, discusses how we got to where we are with our food supply.

Others are advocating a portion of the grounds of the White House be turned into an organic garden.

Back in December, (December 23, 2008) Kim Severson listed what many people want to see happen in the new year in her article Is a New Food Policy on Obama’s List?

This is not simple wishful thinking. For the first time in nearly 40 years, we have a President with a rural agenda and policy. Read it. It is not all you may hope for, but it is radically different from anything we have seen in since Nixon. Plank after planK clearly spells out the Obama Administration's policies, such as this:

Encourage Organic and Local Agriculture: Help organic farmers afford to certify their crops and reform crop insurance to not penalize organic farmers. Promote regional food systems.

Those few of us who are in the forefront of healthy eating need to support and push this agenda. While you may find parts in it that are not perfect, support of all of it is essential to making sure that we have a place from which make adjustments. As Kim Severson said as she concluded her article,

“It’s like the hat manufacturers being furious because J. F. K. didn’t wear a hat, and suddenly everyone in America stopped wearing hats,” she said. “It’s that simple.”

Afterword: If you read these articles, look at the comments. There you will read the opponents of President Obama and his policies. Please consider writing comments in support of the articles (if you truly can make them) because the negativity to such ideas seems very strong and often stated.

Capital Press letter to the editor

I couple of weeks before the election, during the endorsement frenzy, Capital Press endorsed John McCain. For many reasons I did not support his candidacy. For many more reasons I supported Barack Obama. Yea!

I believe that the past seven years have been extremely hard on family farms. The twelve years previously under Republican administration was even harder on us. The eight years of Clinton were not as hard, but far from good. The assent of the industrial farm, which like much of American industry has been shown the doorway to China, is really the legacy of Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He devised the industrialized farming scheme that dominates today's agriculture. I have come to believe that this is one of the most harmful policies we have in the USA. There are many reasons for this, but it not good on many levels, including homeland security, that the USA has become a net importer of food, much of it being imported from China.

My husband had read the Capital Press endorsement to me in the morning, and later that day I read an article from the McClatchy newspapers website that discussed how John McCain ridiculed small, family farmers. I wrote a letter to the editor, which now appears on their website. As far as I know, it was not printed in the paper.

Enemy of Agriculture vs Friend of Agriculture

Agriculture: McCain would wield veto pen for farm subsidies is a scathing article describing the contempt that McCain has demonstrated toward American agriculture. I have been aware of his opposition to farm aid and the farm bill, but this article actually shocked me. In particular, this part of the article sent a cold chill through me.

The agricultural-policy differences were apparent in 2006 when McCain sought to remove a $74 million grant program designed to help states promote sales of fruits and vegetables. In Senate debate, he likened the farm promotions to previous federal grants that funded artwork on airplanes.

"Maybe that (money) will be used to paint vegetables on airplanes. Or maybe a pretty flower. Or maybe a nice acorn," McCain suggested. "How about some dried apricots or prunes? That would be sure to increase consumption."

McCain's sarcasm was characteristic. So was the legislative result. His amendment failed by a 61-37 vote, with Obama joining a number of McCain's fellow Republicans in defeating it.

by Michael Doyle, McClatchy news papers reported on Thursday, September 18, 2008.

This is just one more reason...

Here is link to this blog as it appeared in the Capital Press letters to the editor McCain 'mocks' U.S. agriculture.

Good Food: the movie

I received this message from Mary Embleton who was passing it along from Melissa Young of Moving Images .

Dear friends, please forward to interested folks.

For those who missed the Seattle Film Festival premier of GOOD FOOD:

Seattle -
October 4, 7 pm Local Sightings Festival at NW Film Forum - 1515-12th Avenue [more on fest below]
October 16, 7 pm South Park Neighborhood Center, 820l - 10th Ave. South
October 22, 7 pm Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 S. Alaska Street
November 21, 7 pm Wallingford Friday Night at the Meaningful Movies, Keystone church, 5019 Keystone Place N.

Western Washington -
October 12, 6:45 pm Oddfellows Hall in Eastsound, Orcas Island
October 18 & 19, 5 pm Lynwood Theatre, Bainbridge Island
October - date TBA Vashon Island
November 8, 8 pm Bellingham, WA - Washington Tilth Producers Conference

Eastern Washington -
September 25, 11:30 am Spokane Falls Community College
September 25, 7 pm Magic Lantern Theater - Spokane, Washington
October 2-5 date/time TBA Ellensburg Film Festival - Ellensburg, Washington

Elsewhere -
October 17-19 -dateTBA Black Bear Film Festival, Milford Pennsylvania
October 25, 11 a.m. UN Association Film Festival - Palo Alto, California


We hope you can join us. Check out - www.goodfoodthemovie.org to remain current on screenings, to view a 5 minute preview of the film, to read reviews, and to learn more about sustainable agriculture in the Northwest.

Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young
Moving Images


11th Annual Local Sightings Film Festival , October 3-8

Northwest Film Forum’s premiere showcase of Northwest filmmaking is back, bigger than ever. The festival, which happens at NWFF’s theaters in Seattle, features great prizes, filmmaker parties, archival Northwest films and an impressive national film industry jury looking for strong Northwest work.

The annual festival includes both feature film presentations as well as short film programs and special events with live film performances, installation art, audience participation and parties. This year’s festival takes place in the cinemas of Northwest Film Forum from October 3–8. Included in this year’s festival will be the usual assortment of fiction, documentary and experimental films as well as a featured presentation of a historical Seattle film, a staged reading of this year’s Washington State Screenplay Competition winning script, and an opening party that will ignite Seattle’s film scene Friday night and keep it bleary eyed Saturday morning.

Schedule features the documentary GOOD FOOD – playing Saturday October 4 at 7pm!

More information and complete program at www.localsightings.org

Tainted Milk: Why Sustainable Agricultural Practices are Needed

Sustainable agricultural practices feed the soil with the nutrients it needs to grow healthy crops to feed you. Dying, chemically fed soil produces grains, vegetables, and other plants that are low in protein. Processing practices can also lower the nutrient value. Foods are tested for protein levels under certain situations. Food grown in poor soil simply lacking nutrients, and food processing managers who want to pass the tests without providing the nutrients have found a cheap cheat in Melamine, a chemical that shows higher levels of protein than really exists.

Melamine, a plastic that is poisonous to humans and animals (tainted dog and cat food in 2007), was found in the milk given to babies in Chinese hospitals in Beijing. The result, so far, is 6,200 sickened and 3 dead.

An article published on Huntington Post reports the following.

More than 6,200 babies have been sickened by tainted milk formula and dozens of infants are suffering from acute kidney failure, China's health minister said Wednesday as the death toll rose to three children.

The article went on to discuss the situation,closing the article with this:

Suppliers to the dairy companies are believed to have added the banned chemical, normally used in plastics, to watered-down milk to make it appear higher in protein. Inspectors will now start testing for melamine in all dairy products, Li said.

The chemical additive was at the center of a major pet food scandal in the United States in 2007. An estimated 1,500 dogs and cats died after ingesting a pet food ingredient manufactured in China that was laced with melamine.

This sad story is going to be repeated again and again all over the world as our food chain is centralized, processing leeches out the nutrients, and the soil our food is grown in is weakened and killed by herbicides and pesticides.

By buying organically grown and naturally grown food, you are telling farmers that you value this type of food. The message that "conventional" farmers are being bombarded with is if they farm without these additives (poisons) they will fail. The simple act of buying organic food shows conventional farmers that this is a lie, and they can make a living farming the healthy way.

My prayers and best wishes for full recoveries go out to the sick children and their parents. I send my condolences to the parents and families of the children who died.

Bush’s New Budget Revisions Negate New Farm Bill Provisions

The 2008 Farm Bill stuck in the craw of the Bush Administration, and was not vetoed because the House and Senate had enough votes to override a veto. So the administration is crippling the bill by not funding it the Budget that they sent to the House. If you are concerned with this omission, please contact your Congressman and tell them to provide funding for these programs in the 2009 Budget.

Please read this article to understand what this means for small farmers, locally grown food, and healthy food for school children. Washington State Representative Rick Larsen worked hard on this bill to include cane crops (berries). This will hit us in several small ways, such as the loss of EQIP program funding that will aversely impact our farm and most small farmers. The Bush Administration's budget really only helps industrial agricultural concerns.

The following article is being reprinted in whole, with permission, of The Fruit Growers News.

Bush’s New Budget Revisions Negate New Farm Bill Provisions
By Dick Lehnert

Some provisions of the new Farm Bill that specialty crops producers had found so appealing will not be funded if proposed adjustments to the federal budget, recommended Aug. 1 by the Bush administration, are approved by Congress.

Cuts would be made to the new National Clean Plant Network, the organic research and Extension program, specialty crops block grants, section 32 funds for fresh fruit and vegetable purchases for school lunch programs, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the plant pest and disease management and disaster prevention program and several other USDA programs for which new or increased spending was authorized by the new Farm Bill.

Proposed budget cuts tallied up to $594 million for USDA. Increases of $172 million were recommended for the Farm Services Agency, $117 million for a new computer system and $55 million for staffing.

In net total, USDA would take a cut of $422 million, and the savings would be used to fund other, non-agricultural federal government programs.

The adjustments were proposed Aug. 1 in a letter and documents addressed by President George W. Bush to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and in a transmittal letter from Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jim Nussle.

There was no reaction from the farm community except for a press release Aug. 6 from the American Farmland Trust, which drew attention to the proposed cuts. Some $403 million of the cuts affect conservation-related programs. John Stierna, AFT’s authority on conservation issues, plowed through the documents OMB sent to Congress and detailed the cuts.

Bush had sent his proposed FY 2009 budget to Congress in February, before the new Farm Bill passed early this summer. The Farm Bill authorized new or increased funding in a number of areas, especially for programs favored by specialty crop producers and organic farmers. Bush then proposed amendments to his earlier budget, in which he proposed not funding many of the new provisions of the Farm Bill.

AFT is concerned that if these cuts are adopted, it will set a precedent for future years — taking away some of the funding for conservation and other purposes that was provided in the Farm Bill, Stierna said.

Here are details on some of the proposed cuts:

– Previous legislation had authorized funding for EQIP – which cost-shares pollution prevention and other conservation measures implemented by farmers – at $1.05 billion. The new Farm Bill increased mandatory funding to $1.33 billion for FY 2009. The president proposes cutting this $287 million increase.

– Section 32 funds to the Domestic Food Assistance Program, which provides money to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains in the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program, would not be increased. The new Farm Bill had authorized an increase of $100 million, to $1.17 billion for FY 2009. Bush proposed permanently eliminating this increase.

– Specialty Crop Block Grants that support producers of fruits, vegetables and nuts by providing research, technical assistance, food safety and educational programs – a new Farm Bill program to be funded by $34 million – would have FY 2009 funding of $15 million under the Bush proposal.

– The provision in the new Farm Bill to increase funding for the Organic Research and Extension Initiative to $18 million a year would be cut by $8 million under Bush’s proposal. This remains an increase; the funding level under the previous Farm Bill was $3 million.

– The Farmland Protection program, which provides matching funds for state and local programs that purchase development rights to preserve farms, was increased from $97 million for FY 2009 to $121 million by the new Farm Bill. Bush proposes cutting it back to the previous level.

– A new Chesapeake Bay Watershed Program that was established to add funding for conservation measures on agricultural lands to reduce nutrient and sediment in that watershed would not be funded. The new Farm Bill added $23 million for FY 2009; the Bush proposal would eliminate that.

– The Agricultural Management Assistance Program, which provides conservation assistance to states where participation in the Federal Crop Insurance Program typically has been low (largely states in the northeast), would have an added $5 million for FY 2009 under the new Farm Bill, from its previous $10 million. Bush proposed eliminating all $15 million.

– A Farm Bill feature to add $12 million to the Value-Added Agriculture Market Development Program would not be funded in FY 2009 under Bush’s proposal, leaving it at $3 million.

– A new Farm Bill provision to add $12 million for “plant pest and disease management and disaster prevention,” all new money, would be canceled for FY 2009.

– The Farm Bill provided $50 million for the new Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentives program for FY 2009. Bush’s proposal would cancel all funding for the program.

– Another Bush proposal would permanently cancel $5 million of FY 2009 funding for the National Clean Plant Network.

Full details of the president’s proposed budget revisions can be found at www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/amendments/amendment_8_1_08.pdf.

The new fiscal year starts Oct. 1, by which time Congress must pass appropriation bills (typically 13) or an omnibus bill (a combination), or approve a continuing resolution.


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