The European Union is keen to reintroduce practices banned on farms since the ‘mad cow’ scandal broke

Controversial practices for the feeding of livestock not seen since the days before mad cow disease rocked the nation could be reintroduced after a change of heart in Brussels.

MEPs will vote this week on whether to lift the ban on feeding animal by-products to pigs, chickens and farmed fish. They have been urged to back the move by an influential EU committee, which called in a recent draft report for the feed ban to be revised.

The document, from the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, stops short of altering the status quo on cattle feed, pointing out that because cows are vegetarian they should not be fed so-called “processed animal proteins” (PAP). The same goes for sheep.

Full Story Here: Farmers may use animal by-products in feed again – News, Food & Drink – The Independent.

OPS: Soylent Brown for critters. Can Soylent Green be far behind?

Shifts in the climate over the past three decades have been linked to a 5.5% decline in global wheat production, a study has suggested.

A team of US scientists assessed the impact of changes to rainfall and temperature on four major food crops: wheat, rice, corn and soybeans.

Climate trends in some countries were big enough to wipe out gains from other factors, such as technology, they said.

The findings have been published in the online edition of the journal Science.

Full Story Here: BBC News – Climate shifts ‘hit global wheat yields’.

Scientists have long predicted that — eventually — temperatures and altered rainfall caused by global climate change will take a toll on four of the most important crops in the world: rice, wheat soy and corn.

Now, as world grain prices hover near record highs, a new study finds that the effects are already starting to be felt.

“For two crops, maize (corn) and wheat, there has actually been a decline in yields, if you account for the trend in climate — especially the warming trend that we’ve observed over the last 30 years,” says Wolfram Schlenker, who teaches environmental economics at Columbia University. He’s a co-author of the study, along with David Lobell and Justin Costa-Roberts at Stanford University.

Full Story Here: World’s Farmers Feel The Effects Of A Hotter Planet : NPR.

Scientists have long predicted that — eventually — temperatures and altered rainfall caused by global climate change will take a toll on four of the most important crops in the world: rice, wheat soy and corn.

Now, as world grain prices hover near record highs, a new study finds that the effects are already starting to be felt.

“For two crops, maize (corn) and wheat, there has actually been a decline in yields, if you account for the trend in climate — especially the warming trend that we’ve observed over the last 30 years,” says Wolfram Schlenker, who teaches environmental economics at Columbia University. He’s a co-author of the study, along with David Lobell and Justin Costa-Roberts at Stanford University.

Full Story Here: World’s Farmers Feel The Effects Of A Hotter Planet : NPR.

A group of leading scientists, economists and farmers is calling for a broad shift in federal policies to speed the development of farm practices that are more economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable.

Writing in the journal Science, they say current policies focus on the production of a few crops and a minority of farmers while failing to address farming’s contribution to global warming, biodiversity loss, natural resource degradation, and public health problems.

“We have the technology and the science right now to grow food in sustainable ways, but we lack the policies and markets to make it happen,” says John Reganold, a Washington State University soil scientist and the Science paper’s lead author. Starting in the late 1980s, Reganold pioneered several widely cited side-by-side comparisons showing organic farming systems were more earth-friendly than conventional systems while producing more nutritious and sometimes tastier food. His Science co-authors include more than a dozen other leading soil, plant, and animal scientists, economists, sociologists, agroecologists and farmers.

Full Story Here: The Washington Current: Expert Panel Calls For ‘Transforming US Agriculture’.

By ELLEN LaCONTE

Spring has sprung—at least south of the northern tier of states where snow still has a ban on it—and the grass has ‘riz. And so has the price of most foods, which is particularly devastating just now when so many Americans are unemployed, underemployed, retired or retiring, on declining or fixed incomes and are having to choose between paying their mortgages, credit card bills, car payments, and medical and utility bills and eating enough and healthily. Many are eating more fast food, prepared foods, junk food—all of which are also becoming more expensive—or less food.

In some American towns, and not just impoverished backwaters, as many as 30 percent of residents can’t afford to feed themselves and their families sufficiently, let alone nutritiously. Here in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina where I live it’s 25 percent. Across the country one out of six of the elderly suffers from malnutrition and hunger. And the number of children served one or two of their heartiest, healthiest meals by their schools grows annually as the number of them living at poverty levels tops twenty percent. Thirty-seven million Americans rely on food banks that now routinely sport half-empty shelves and report near-empty bank accounts. And this is a prosperous nation!

In some cases this round of price hikes on everything from cereal and steak to fresh veggies and bread—and even the flour that can usually be bought cheaply to make it— will be temporary. But over the long term the systems that have provided most Americans with a diversity, quantity and quality of foods envied by the rest of the world are not going to be as reliable as they were.

Full Story Here: Ellen LaConte: Garden as If Your Life Depends On It–Because It Will.

A new report from the UN advises ditching corporate-controlled and chemically intensive farming in favor of agroecology.

There are a billion hungry people in the world and that number could rise as food insecurity increases along with population growth, economic fallout and environmental crises. But a roadmap to defeating hunger exists, if we can follow the course — and that course involves ditching corporate-controlled, chemical-intensive farming.

“To feed 9 billion people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available. And today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production in regions where the hungry live,” says Olivier de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. Agroecology is more or less what many Americans would simply call “organic agriculture,” although important nuances separate the two terms.

Used successfully by peasant farmers worldwide, agroecology applies ecology to agriculture in order to optimize long-term food production, requiring few purchased inputs and increasing soil quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity over time. Agroecology also values traditional and indigenous farming methods, studying the scientific principals underpinning them instead of merely seeking to replace them with new technologies. As such, agroecology is grounded in local (material, cultural and intellectual) resources

Full Story Here: Groundbreaking New UN Report on How to Feed the World’s Hungry: Ditch Corporate-Controlled Agriculture | Food | AlterNet.

Food & Water Europe released a report today outlining why the genetically engineered (GE) salmon currently being considered by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval as a human food will not alleviate global hunger.

GE Salmon Will Not Feed the World outlines several reasons why this transgenic fish is likely to be more expensive to produce than perceived, as well as problematic for the environment, fishing communities and consumers. The report was released a day after Scottish MP Rob Gibson motioned to petition the Scottish Government to monitor the FDA’s approval process, noting that escapees are likely to occur through time and could easily reach the shores of Scotland, “altering forever the genetic integrity of wild Atlantic salmon and of quality Scottish farmed salmon.”

“The company producing this experimental fish, AquaBounty, is the only one who will be profiting from it, despite misleading claims that this product could be a means to feed growing populations around the world,” said Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Europe.

Since GE salmon can require large amounts of food, display deformities and likely have higher oxygen demands, they can be costly to produce. These projected costs, combined with the various potential human health and ecological concerns associated with GE fish, will not likely add up to a more financially advantageous product for growers or consumers.

Full Story: New Report Refutes Industry Argument that Genetically Modified Salmon will Feed Hungry World Populations | Food & Water Watch.

The long-awaited estimates of World Phosphate Reserves & Resources, recently released by the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), suggests the availability of more mega tonnes of phosphate rock in the ground than previously thought.

However, researchers at the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) at the University of Technology, Sydney, who last year published the controversial peak phosphorus estimate (between 2030 and 2040) in the journal Global Environmental Change, warned that the inflated IFDC figures should be interpreted with great caution.

Full Story: Peak phosphorus still a threat to food security, despite new report | Energy Bulletin.

British farming soil could run out within 60 years, leading to a catastrophic food crisis and drastically higher prices for consumers, scientists warn.

Full Story: Britain facing food crisis as world’s soil ‘vanishes in 60 years’ – Telegraph.

Monsanto does not have the right to dictate the value of my life

-Joel Greeno

While farmers were the star of the show at last Friday's antitrust hearing in Ankeny, Iowa, the debate over the monopolization of farming is one where all of our interests are squarely at stake.

Anyone who eats and has a brain should be downright terrified that just a few giant businesses control the vast majority of food available to us as consumers. Perhaps that explains why more than 15,000 people submitted comments in anticipation of the hearings – four more of which are scheduled this year as a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

To his credit, Attorney General Eric Holder seemed to be trying not to mince words in Iowa – always tough for an attorney – and particularly so for one under the right's atomic microscope. Noting that farming “has been at the core of the American economy ever since there was an American economy,” he went on to say, “[W]e've learned the hard way that . . . long periods of reckless deregulation can foster practices that are anti-competitive and even illegal. . . . We know that a growing number of American farmers find it increasingly difficult to survive by doing what they've done for decades. And we've learned that some of them believe the competitive environment may be, at least in part, to blame.”

Full Story: Regina Weiss: Farmers to DOJ — “Break up Big Ag”.

The twenty-first century’s uncertainty about the future abounds with predicaments like climate change, depletion of our water resources, and the end of cheap energy. And farmers are being called upon to assume a new role as innovators and stewards of the land because they know how to produce food.

“Farmers were the true founders of the United States,” said Lisa Hamilton, author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness, “because they went out into the wild and built the first structures and communities that eventually became our cities and the nation.” In 1800, 90 percent of Americans were farmers.

Full Story: Organic Farming Opens a Way for Farmers to Return to Their Proper Role as Innovators and Stewards of the Land | CommonDreams.org.

We’ve put together 9 surprising facts about fish farming that you may not have known!

Full Story: 9 Surprising Fish Farming Facts (PHOTOS).

The slow deterioration of our international crop markets has mirrored the slow deterioration of our markets for other goods as well.

The United States, for generations, was known as the “bread basket of the world.” Now the U.S. is long an afterthought; our exports of staple crops (corn, wheat, and soy) have been relatively unchanged in nearly 30 years.

Meanwhile production has exploded all around the globe. According to the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center at the University of Tennessee, from 1980 to 2009 U.S. exports of corn, wheat and soy fell 5 percent (from 129 to 122 million metric tons). At the same time our exports dropped 5 percent, global exports of the same products grew 66 percent.

What does this really mean for the United States? First and foremost it means that one of the keys to our export economy is sorely behind the rest of the world. However, it should be expected that as other nations grow and cultivate expanses of cropland they would be less dependent on our produce.

Full Story: World Has Become Less Dependent on U.S. Crops | Economy In Crisis.

One estimate by the National Milk Producers Federation predicts that U.S. dairy producers could lose as much as $20 billion over the first 10 years of the deal.

Just days into the first round of negotiations for the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the U.S. is already at the center of a trade dispute that could derail the entire process.

[In the United States alone ... ] The rift began earlier this month when, at the behest of concerned U.S. dairy farmers, 30 senators sent U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk a letter asking him to exclude dairy trade from the proposed trade pact.

U.S. dairy farmers claim that if restrictions on dairy imports are fully phased out during negotiations, they will be hard-pressed to compete with industry giant Fronterra, a co-operative owned by 13,000 New Zealand farmers.

The letter says that Fronterra controls 90 percent of New Zealand’s domestic milk production market and holds over a 40 percent market share in key internationally traded dairy commodities.

“In light of this market power, the Administration should consider whether genuine competition is possible as it proceeds with the TPP,” the letter read.

Full Story: TPP Could Cost U.S. Dairy Farmers Billions | Economy In Crisis.

Counting food miles can lead to wrong turns: Instead of worrying about how far our food has traveled we should look at the way it’s produced and hauled.

The local wits in Salina, Kansas, like to say the easiest way to for us “eat locally” around here is to heat up a Tony’s® frozen pizza. It’s not just that Tony’s has a large plant on the west side of town. Salina is also surrounded by wheat fields and is home to a large flour mill. Our local pizza, at least theoretically, could be assembled on a local crust.

But our hometown pizza can be considered local only if we ignore the many miles ingredients like tomato sauce, cheese, pork and beef travel to reach the plant. To that should be added the highway or rail miles logged by the cattle and hogs who gave their lives for the pizza; the distances that feed grains and soybean meal traveled to reach the feedlots, dairy farms and hog-confinement facilities where the animals were raised; the trips that tomatoes took to the sauce factory, and the miles that fertilizers and other inputs were hauled to reach the fields where the tomatoes were grown.

We eat lots of high-mileage meals. In 1997, the distance traveled by an average food item from its site of production to the average U.S. grocery store (counting only the delivery distance, not the transportation involved in production) was 980 miles. In the next few years, food imports shot up dramatically; as a result, by 2004, the average food item was traveling 1,230 miles.

Full Story: Does It Really Matter Whether Your Food Was Produced Locally? | Food | AlterNet.

A new ruling closes several loopholes that mega-dairies have been using to exploit the organic market with milk from farms that hardly resemble real organic farms

Proponents of small farms and organic watchdog groups found themselves in unfamiliar waters recently: cheering the USDA for tightening the definitions of organic meat and dairy. On February 12th the agency passed what some are calling the most sweeping rewrite of federal organic standards since their inception in 2002.

The ruling, called Access to Pasture, closes several loopholes that mega-dairies have been using to exploit the organic market with milk from farms that hardly resemble the farms that inspired the now $24.6 billion organic industry.

The ruling also leaves wide open a huge question on feeding restrictions — or lack thereof — for organic beef cows. A 60-day comment period is open until April 19.

Access to Pasture mandates organic meat and dairy cattle must graze for the entirety of the growing season, with a minimum of 120 days spent on pasture. At least 30 percent of total annual caloric intake must come from grazing.

Full Story New Rule Crushes Organic Mega-Dairies and Is Good News for Small Farms | Food | AlterNet.

Full Story Think Progress » Global warming is a ‘nightmare’ for coffee..

The pending rewrite of the organic livestock standards, with an emphasis on assuring compliance with provisions that require grazing for dairy cows, is under review at the Office of Management and Budget, where the administration is being heavily lobbied by industrial farming interests to water down the rules.

To meet the explosive growth in the organic industry, over the last five years a number of large industrial dairies, milking as many as 7,200 cows, have exploited the stellar reputation that organic dairy products have earned in the eyes of consumers who are looking for safer and more nutritious food for their families.

Full Story Mark Kastel: Organic dairy farms being crushed by factory operations.

In the battle between Big Ag and Small Food there were notable victories on either side.

As 2009 closes out, the dominant issues in the world of food could be lumped into two competing paradigms that have framed much of the decade. In one corner we have Big Food: factory farms, fast food restaurants, mystery meat, biotechnology and other examples of when the economics of scale are applied to how we feed ourselves. In the other corner is Small Food, whose players include farmers’ markets, ecology-based agriculture and seasonal diets of minimally processed food.

In a victory for small food, 2009 will perhaps be remembered as the year gardening returned to mainstream consciousness. Much credit goes to First Lady Michelle Obama, thanks to the organic veggie patch she planted on the White House lawn. The symbolic gesture created an instant buzz, and many other politicos around the world have followed suit. There are now gardens on the grounds of city halls, governors’ mansions, and other houses of leadership around the world, providing countless opportunities to educate and discuss why gardens are good.

According to the National Gardening Association the number of households with gardens rose from 36 million in 2008 to 43 million in 2009. Michelle Obama’s garden certainly deserves some credit, but so does the recession, which inspired many people to stick their hands in the dirt, not only to save on grocery bills, but to find economical ways to enjoy their leisure time.

Full Story The Year Food Was Totally Schizoid: Growing Local Takes Off, As Giant Agribiz Becomes More Dominant | Food | AlterNet.

In an economy structured around industrial agriculture, sustaining small farms can be a challenge. ‘Slow money’ economics could be the answer.

The slow food movement that started in Italy two decades ago has gained much attention and popularity, with a blossoming of community supported agriculture (CSA), local organic farms and general awareness of where our food comes from. But money doesn’t grow on trees, and in an economy structured around industrial-scale global agriculture, starting and sustaining small farms and local, sustainable food processing and delivery systems can be a challenge.

About five years ago, veteran financial manager Woody Tasch and his colleagues at the Investors’ Circle began discussing how an intentional and organized influx of investment into localized sustainable food systems could be paired with a general increasing philosophical commitment to slow food principles.

The result is the Slow Money movement, shepherded by the Slow Money Alliance, of which Tasch is executive director. Now 750 members, including individual investors and sustainable farms and food-related businesses, are members of the alliance, and 450 people attended a Slow Money conference in Santa Fe in September.

Full Story The “Slow Money” Movement May Revolutionize the Way You Think About Food | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.

The material is produced by power plant “scrubbers” that remove acid rain causing sulfur dioxide from plant emissions. A synthetic form of the mineral gypsum, it also contains mercury, arsenic, lead and other heavy metals.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says those toxic metals occur in only tiny amounts that pose no threat to crops, surface water or humans. But some environmentalists say too little is known about how the material affects crops, and ultimately human health, for the government to suggest that farmers use it on their land.

“Basically this is a leap into the unknown,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “This stuff has materials in it that we're trying to prevent entering the environment from coal-fired power plants and then to turn around and smear it across ag lands raises some real questions.”

Full Story EPA, USDA Encourage Farmers To Put Coal Ash That Contains Mercury And Arsenic On Crops.

GRAIN couldn’t agree more. Today’s global food system needs an overhaul. According to our calculations, the expansion of the industrial food system is the leading cause of climate change. Through its reliance on fossil fuels, massive exports, market concentration, erosion of soils and expansion of plantations, it generates 44-57% of the total global green house gas (GHG) emissions. This industrial food system is also completely incapable of assuring people’s food and livelihood needs as the world moves further into climate change. Already it has left a billion people without enough food to eat, and hundreds of millions of more people will go hungry in the coming years if the food system is not reorganised.

The most devastating consequence of this industrial food system, however, is that it is destroying other food systems that can turn climate change around and provide for the world’s food needs.

Full Story GRAIN | Other GRAIN publications and collaborations | 2009 | Climate crisis – Copenhagen -.

Modern Life Is Probably Screwed by Peak Oil, But It’s Not Too Late to Avoid Mass Starvation. The challenge of feeding 7 or 8 billion people while oil supplies are falling is stupefying. It’ll be even greater if governments keep pretending that it isn’t going to happen.

By George Monbiot

It’s probably too late to prepare for peak oil, but we can at least try to salvage food production.

I don’t know when global oil supplies will start to decline. I do know that another resource has already peaked and gone into freefall: the credibility of the body that’s meant to assess them. Last week two whistleblowers from the International Energy Agency alleged that it has deliberately upgraded its estimate of the world’s oil supplies in order not to frighten the markets(1). Three days later, a paper published by researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden showed that the IEA’s forecasts must be wrong, because it assumes a rate of extraction that appears to be impossible(2). The agency’s assessment of the state of global oil supplies is beginning to look as reliable as Mr Greenspan’s blandishments about the health of the financial markets.

If the whistleblowers are right, we should be stockpiling ammunition. If we are taken by surprise; if we have failed to replace oil before the supply peaks then crashes, the global economy is stuffed. But nothing the whistleblowers said has scared me as much as the conversation I had last week with a Pembrokeshire farmer.

Full Story Monbiot.com » If Nothing Else, Save Farming.

A September 2009 Prairie Farmer article titled, “Here Is What’s Not Sustainable” leads me to believe that the author, a spokesperson for conventional agriculture, dislikes and even fears organic farming and its supporters.

The author admits to feeling self-satisfaction in knowing that organic farmers are suffering in a falling economy, I doubt many people share her sentiments. Farmers generally have the attitude that “we are all in this together”, no matter what farming practices we use.

Full Story Corporate Agribusiness Divides Farmers | CommonDreams.org.

After some of the most profitable years in a generation, American farmers have seen their incomes dwindle as the recession begins to weigh on food prices. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning on the sad state of the heartland, which had been largely insulated from the downturn in 2007 and 2008.

How bad is the drop in farmer’s incomes? The Agriculture Department reports that U.S. farm profits will dip 38 percent this year alone. (For some context, the S&P 500 index is up just over 10 percent this year.) Here’s the WSJ:

“The Agriculture Department said it expects net farm income — a widely followed measure of profitability — to drop to $54 billion in 2009, down $33.2 billion from last year’s estimated net farm income of $87.2 billion, which was nearly a record high. The drop in farm prices is likely to lead to a slower increase in food costs for American consumers, economists say.”

As food prices decline, even staple-producing dairy farmers are hemorrhaging money. Bloomberg picks up the story:

via U.S. Farmers See Their Income Plunge 38% As Recession Grips Agriculture.

With growing numbers of food-conscious consumers, big corporations are trying to sully the reputation of alternatives to their style of agriculture.

What do you get when you cross a grassroots movement with a food industry fearful of losing its influence? Bogus studies, campaigns of misinformation and opinion pieces filled with myth and vitriol.

You may have noticed an uptick this year in news reporting that organic food isn’t really better for you, opinion pieces by conventional farmers saying that they are tired of being demonized by “agri-intellectuals”, and guilt-inducing ads by Monsanto in highbrow publications like the New Yorker touting the company’s ability to feed the world through technology.

Though all of this could be disturbing to those of us committed to sustainable agriculture and food that is fair to eaters, animals, workers and farmers, I’m choosing to see this as a good sign. I think it means we might be winning.

via Conventional Farming vs. Organic Agriculture Sparks Online Battle of Wits | EcoSalon.

The East Coast Tomato Catastrophe
IF the hardship of growing vegetables and fruits in the Northeast has made anything clear, it’s that the list of what can go wrong in the field is a very long one.

We wait all year for warmer weather and longer days. Once we get them, it seems new problems for farmers rise to the surface every week: overnight temperatures plunging close to freezing, early disease, aphid attacks. Another day, another problem.

The latest trouble is the explosion of late blight, a plant disease that attacks potatoes and tomatoes. Late blight appears innocent enough at first — a few brown spots here, some lesions there — but it spreads fast. Although the fungus isn’t harmful to humans, it has devastating effects on tomatoes and potatoes grown outdoors. Plants that appear relatively healthy one day, with abundant fruit and vibrant stems, can turn toxic within a few days. (See the Irish potato famine, caused by a strain of the fungus.)

via Op-Ed Contributor – You Say Tomato, I Say Agricultural Disaster – NYTimes.com.

Urban Agriculture

YouTube – Truck Farm – Episode 2.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act contains many provisions that would benefit farmers while creating clean-energy jobs and cutting pollution, write Jake Caldwell and Alexandra Kougentakis.

Agriculture, energy, and global warming are inextricably linked, which is why America’s farmers must be a part of the solution to global warming. Today the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture conducts a hearing on the American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454. A close review of the legislation reveals that it provides a significant opportunity for U.S. farmers to increase their income while safeguarding their livelihoods and the nation’s food and energy supplies.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack called reductions of carbon dioxide a “new income source [that could] change the old ways of supporting farms.” He has urged farmers to seize the economic opportunities from reducing greenhouse gas pollution and “not to be fearful of this future.” H.R. 2454 recognizes and rewards the benefits farmers can provide to the United States and the world in ending our dependence on fossil fuels and confronting climate change.

H.R. 2454 offers an opportunity for farmers to diversify their sources of income and cut costs by increasing energy efficiency. With modest improvements, ACESA can designate a more explicit role for agriculture in the carbon offset market without jeopardizing the gains for farmers already included in the overall legislation. ACESA rewards good practices and provides the tools to ensure that American farmers can benefit from solutions to global warming.

via Eight Reasons for Farmers to Support Global Warming Action.

NEW YORK – Bigger-breasted chickens fattened artificially. New strains of deadly E. coli bacteria. A food supply controlled by a handful of corporations.

The documentary “Food, Inc.” opens in the United States on Friday and portrays these purported dangers and changes in the U.S. food industry, asserting harmful effects on public health, the environment, and worker and animal rights.

Big corporations such as biotech food producer Monsanto Co., U.S. meat companies Tyson Food Inc. and Smithfield Foods, and poultry producer Perdue Farms all declined to be interviewed for the film.

But the industry has not stood silent. Trade associations across the $142-billion-a-year U.S. meat industry have banded together to counter the claims. Led by the American Meat Institute, they have created a number of websites, including one called SafeFoodInc.com.

“Each sector of the industry that’s named is doing its part to counter a lot of the misinformation in the movie,” said Lisa Katic, a dietitian and consultant with an unnamed coalition of trade associations representing the food industry.

via Film Aims to Expose Dangers in US Food Industry | CommonDreams.org.

A new economic study reveals that concerns a cap on global warming pollution could hurt American agriculture are unfounded. As the Waxman-Markey green economy legislation (H.R. 2454) moves toward passage in the House of Representatives, the farm lobby and rural officials have questioned the bill’s costs to farmers. Last week, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK), the ranking member of the House Committee on Agriculture, cried that farmers are “a prime target for a national energy tax“:

From higher energy costs to lost jobs to higher food prices, cap-and-trade promises to cap our incomes, our livelihoods, and our standard of living, while it trades away American jobs and opportunities. . . . Whether it’s the fuel in the tractor, the fertilizer for the crops or the delivery of food to the grocery store, agriculture uses a great deal of energy throughout production. On average, 65 percent of farmers’ variable input costs are fuel, electricity, fertilizer, and chemicals. Even a small increase in the operating costs for our producers will hurt American agriculture.

Yesterday, the Brookings Institute released the topline results of an economic analysis of cap-and-trade systems, with sectoral impacts. This study models the worst-case economic scenario for cap-and-trade programs, modeling the impact of an inflexible system that does not include offsets, incentives for renewable energy development, or other cost-control measures. Even without the inclusion of an offset program to allow the agriculture sector to benefit from carbon market, their analysis found the impact on agriculture to be minimal:

via Wonk Room » Brookings: Fears That Cap And Trade Will Hurt Farmers Are Baseless.

Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Corn damages

Farm-belt lawmakers are posing a challenge to passage of clean-energy legislation in Congress, but torpedoing the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) would hurt farmers because harms linked to global warming — including drought, flooding, and other crop damage — would continue unabated. House Agriculture Committee Chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) has threatened to bring down the entire green economy legislation if he doesn’t get his way on the renewable fuel standards and jurisdiction in the agriculture committee:

If they don’t want to change it, they’ll have to find the votes some other place. In my district a “no” vote would be a good vote.

Without congressional action on climate change legislation, global greenhouse gas emissions would continue to rise and the impacts on agriculture would grow. The link between global warming and extreme weather events is evident, and research predicts that the trend will intensify in coming decades:

via Wonk Room » Global Boiling: A Stormy Forecast For Agriculture.

A Massey University researcher has found organic fruit growing operations are environmentally sustainable and could trade carbon credits in the future.

Girija Page graduated yesterday with a PhD in Agricultural and Horticultural Systems and Management. She developed a framework to assess the sustainability of organic fruit growing, which will help gauge the efficacy of horticultural systems.

Her research analysed energy efficiency and environmental impacts of organic kiwifruit and organic apple growing operations in the Bay of Plenty and the Hawke’s Bay.

“New Zealand has a reputation for producing export goods that are thought to have less impact on the environment,” Dr Page says. “International markets are seeking goods that have been produced in this way, so this research fits well with the Government’s focus on sustainability and life cycle analysis.”

via Massey University – Research measures sustainability of organics.

While the regulators were twiddling their thumbs and looking the other way, they were getting away with murder. No, I’m not talking about Wall Street. I’m talking about the Industrial Agriculture Complex. Unsustainable farming practices, synthetic fertilizers, and widespread pesticide use accounts for a massive portion of total US carbon output—and not just carbon dioxide: methane and nitrous oxide, which are far worse. And that’s not all. The monstrous excesses of Big Ag include killing the soil, polluting our water, and mistreating millions of animals.

Will Allen, author of The War on Bugs, takes on Big Agriculture in this piece for Alternet:

via Will Allen: Agriculture Is One of the Most Polluting and Dangerous Industries : Chelsea Green.

by Will Allen

Taxpayers are demanding that government enforce existing regulations and create more stringent rules to limit the excess and greed in banking, insurance, housing, and on Wall Street. But, in the rush to regulate, we can’t forget to oversee industrial agriculture. It is one of our most polluting and dangerous industries. Like the financial sectors, its practices have not been well regulated for the last thirty years. Let me run down a few of the major problems that have developed because of our poorly regulated U.S. agriculture.

Carbon Foot Print: The U.S. EPA estimated in 2007 that agriculture in the U.S. was responsible for about 18% of our carbon footprint, which is huge because the U.S. is the largest polluter in the world.1 This should include (but doesn’t) the manufacture and use of pesticides and fertilizers, fuel and oil for tractors, equipment, trucking and shipping, electricity for lighting, cooling, and heating, and emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other green house gases. Unfortunately, the EPA estimate of 18% still doesn’t include a large portion of the fuel, the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, some of the nitrous oxide, all of the CFCs and bromines, and most of the transport emissions. When they are counted, agriculture’s share of the U.S. carbon footprint will be at least 25 to 30%.

Oftentimes we see all greenhouse gasses as being equivalent to carbon dioxide (CO2). But, methane emissions are 21 times and nitrous oxides 310 times more damaging as greenhouse gasses than CO2. Since agriculture is one of the largest producers of methane and nitrous oxide, the extent of the agricultural impact is staggering. Unless we change our bad habits of food production and long distance delivery, we will not be able to deal with climate change.

via We Need Food and Farming Regulation Now! | CommonDreams.org.

Food Fight: A Film by Chris Taylor.
Revolution never tasted so good!

FOOD FIGHT is a fascinating look at how American agricultural policy and food culture developed in the 20th century, and how the California food movement has created a counter-revolution against big agribusiness.

This clip features Will Allen, McArthur Genius Grant Winner 2008.

YouTube – Food Fight – Bonus Clip: Walking Tall.

Corn, Soy Yields Gain Little From Genetic Engineering: Study

WASHINGTON – The use of genetically engineered corn and soybeans in the United States for more than a decade has had little impact on crop yields despite claims that they could ease looming food shortages, a study released on Tuesday concluded.

“A hard-nosed assessment of this expensive technology’s achievements to date gives little confidence that it will play a major role in helping the world feed itself in the forseeable future,” said the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The study evaluated the effect on corn and soybean crop yields of genetically engineered varieties commercialized in the United States over the past 13 years, examining peer-reviewed academic studies that date back to the early 1990s.

“Based on that record, we conclude that GE (genetic engineering) has done little to increase overall crop yields,” it said.

The report said genetically engineered soybeans account for 90 percent of soybeans grown in the United States, while genetically engineered corn accounts for 63 percent of the US corn crop.

“Overall, corn and soybean yields have risen substantially over the last 15 years, but largely not as a result of the GE traits,” the report said. “Most of the gains are due to traditional breeding or improvement of other agricultural practices.”

via Corn, Soy Yields Gain Little From Genetic Engineering: Study | CommonDreams.org.

On Monday, EU environment ministers successfully blocked a move by the European Commission to force Austria and Hungary to lift bans on genetically modified corn. A German decision on the Monsanto product is expected soon, as well.

[A crowd of Germans protests against genetically engineered corn. (DPA) ]A crowd of Germans protests against genetically engineered corn. (DPA)

The European corn borer is a tiny, nocturnal moth. It likes to eat potatoes and sorghum, but — as can be gathered from its name — its food of choice is corn. There’s only one kind of insecticide that is approved for fighting the flying scourge.

Under these circumstances, the agricultural industry would like to be able to use a genetically modified corn that is at least resistant to the insect’s larvae. But this kind of modified corn has been deeply controversial for years. Environmentalists believe that genetically modified corn presents a danger to both eco-friendly agribusiness and moths.

via EU Commission Fails in Push for Genetically Modified Corn | CommonDreams.org.

The Price of Tomatoes

If you have eaten a tomato this winter, chances are very good that it was picked by a person who lives in virtual slavery.

by Barry Estabrook

Driving from Naples, Florida, the nation’s second-wealthiest metropolitan area, to Immokalee takes less than an hour on a straight road. You pass houses that sell for an average of $1.4 million, shopping malls anchored by Tiffany’s and Saks Fifth Avenue, manicured golf courses. Eventually, gated communities with names like Monaco Beach Club and Imperial Golf Estates give way to modest ranches, and the highway shrivels from six lanes to two. Through the scruffy palmettos, you glimpse flat, sandy tomato fields shimmering in the broiling sun. Rounding a long curve, you enter Immokalee. The heart of town is a nine-block grid of dusty, potholed streets lined by boarded-up bars and bodegas, peeling shacks, and sagging, mildew-streaked house trailers. Mongrel dogs snooze in the shade, scrawny chickens peck in yards. Just off the main drag, vultures squabble over roadkill. Immokalee’s population is 70 percent Latino. Per capita income is only $8,500 a year. One third of the families in this city of nearly 25,000 live below the poverty line. Over one third of the children drop out before graduating from high school.

Immokalee is the tomato capital of the United States. Between December and May, as much as 90 percent of the fresh domestic tomatoes we eat come from south Florida, and Immokalee is home to one of the area’s largest communities of farmworkers. According to Douglas Molloy, the chief assistant U.S. attorney based in Fort Myers, Immokalee has another claim to fame: It is “ground zero for modern slavery.”

via The Price of Tomatoes | CommonDreams.org.

By Jane Black

President Obama’s choice of organics expert Kathleen Merrigan for the No. 2 spot at the Agriculture Department was immediately welcomed by sustainable agriculture and food policy advocates who have been lobbying hard for progressive appointments at an agency that has historically has emphasized programs that support commercial farming.

“We think it’s great news,” said David Murphy, director of Food Democracy Now, an Iowa-based nonprofit that has petitioned for the appointment of a dozen “sustainability oriented” candidates for high-level USDA positions. “Merrigan has a fantastic background in supporting sustainable agriculture. She is the type of person we really believe should be leading change for 21st century agriculture.”

via Selection of Organic Food Policy Expert at Ag. Hailed by Advocates | 44 | washingtonpost.com.

As our government enacts a stimulus package and President Barack Obama announces bold initiatives to stem home mortgage foreclosures, disaster threatens family farmers and their communities.

The government’s response to plummeting commodity prices and tightening credit markets leads to the basic question: Who will produce our food? This is a worldwide crisis. U.S. policy and the demand for deregulation at all levels — from food production to financial markets — contribute greatly to the global collapse. The solution must be grounded in food sovereignty so that all farmers and their communities can regain control over their food supply. This response makes sense here in Wisconsin and was the global message from the 500+ farmer leaders at the Via Campesina conference in Mozambique in October.

Many U.S. farmers are going out of business because they receive prices equal to about one half their cost to produce our food. How long could any enterprise receiving half the amount of its input costs stay in business? As an example, dairy farmers in the Northeast and Midwest must be paid between 30 and 35 cents per pound for their milk to pay production costs and provide basic living expenses. Until 1980, farmers received a price equal to 80 percent of parity, meaning that farmers’ purchasing power kept up with the rest of the economy. Unfortunately, a 1981 political decision discontinued parity, and today the dairy farmers’ share is below 40 percent.

NAFTA has produced winners, mostly multinational corporations and a long list of losers, which includes farmers. The trade agreement has been the source of much discontent and has become an easy target. NAFTA is so badly flawed, but it is only one part of our failed trade and economic strategy. It has hurt many farmers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Just as there are calls to reform energy, investment, labour and environmental provisions of NAFTA, many are also demanding changes to agricultural clauses found in the agreement.

At a recent trilateral conference held in Billings, Montana, there was a general consensus among livestock producers that NAFTA is not working for North American farmers, ranchers and consumers alike. The two day conference was hosted by the Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC). The meetings addressed many challenges facing family farmers and ranchers, including the negative impact of NAFTA. Many of the promises made by proponents of the trade agreement, have not been kept and so called benefits have failed to materialize. Representatives at the conference are calling for new trade policies and market reforms, and are urging the leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico to renegotiate NAFTA.

via OpEdNews » Farmers Call For NAFTA Reforms.