Food, Farms, and Jobs Act

This is an interesting time for the Farm Bill, with Supercommittee nonsense and Occupy Wall Street craziness. BUT THERE IS HOPE, in the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act! See below for what it does.

PLEASE CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES AND URGE CO-SPONSORSHIP of the LOCAL Farm, Food and Jobs Act. And ask your colleagues, supporters and networks to do the same.

The larger number of co-sponsors, the greater likelihood that provisions in this bill will be included in the 2012 Farm Bill—assuming that Congress actually writes a Farm Bill in 2012. Either way, it is very important to build support for these measures among the California delegation. We especially need support from Representatives Baca, Cardoza and Costa, our three California representatives on the Ag Committee who have not yet signed on to the bill.

If you don’t know who your representatives are, you can find them at this website:http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ In addition to your representative, please contact Senators Boxer and Feinstein.

The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act

sponsored by Representative Chellie Pingree and Senator Sherrod Brown

The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act will improve federal farm bill programs that support local and regional farm and food systems. This legislation will help farmers and ranchers engaged in local and regional agriculture by addressing production, aggregation, processing, marketing, and distribution needs and will also assist consumers by improving access to healthy food and direct and retail markets. And of utmost importance, this legislation will provide more secure funding for critically important programs that support family farms, expand new farming opportunities, and invest in the local agriculture economy.

The Benefits of Local and Regional Food Systems

Local and regional agriculture is a major economic driver in the farm economy. There are now more than 7,000 farmers markets throughout the United States—a 150 percent increase since 2000, direct to consumer sales have accounted for more than $1.2 billion in annual revenues. Now, on the heels of that expansion, we are witnessing the rapid growth of local and regional food markets that have scaled up beyond direct marketing. Together these markets represent important new job growth and economic development.

The Local Farm, Food, and Jobs Act will:

Boost Income and Opportunities for Farmers and Ranchers by –

• Improving access to Farm Service Agency credit programs for farmers and ranchers producing for local and regional food markets.
• Requiring Farm Credit Services institutions to enhance lending opportunities for farmers and ranchers producing for local and regional food markets, beginning farmers, and small farms.
• Funding Value-Added Producer Grants at an annual amount $30 million and expands the program to include food hubs and outreach to underserved states and communities.
• Authorizing the Risk Management Agency to develop a whole farm revenue insurance product for diversified operations, including specialty crops & mixed grain/livestock or dairy operations.
• Directing the Risk Management Agency to eliminate the organic premium surcharge and to complete the development of organic price series.
• Funding the National Organic Certification Cost Share Program at an annual amount $7 million and raising the maximum cap per participants from $750 to $1,000.
• Expands the production of fruits and vegetables by allowing greater planting flexibility for commodity program participants.
• Funding farmer food safety training through the National Food Safety Training, Education, Extension, Outreach and Technical Assistance program at an annual amount of $15 million.
• Improving opportunities for local and regional food producers to participate in the Conservation Stewardship Program Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Farmland Protection Program, Cooperative Conservation Partnership Initiative, and Technical Assistance.

Improve Local and Regional Food System Infrastructure and Markets by –

• Increasing the Business and Industry loan funding set-aside for local and regionally produced agriculture products and food enterprises.
• Providing authority for local and regional food system funding under Rural Business Opportunity Grants, Rural Business Enterprise Grants, & Community Facility Grants & Loans.
• Funding the Local Marketing Promotion Program — the former Farmers Market Promotion Program plus funding for larger scale, non-direct local marketing — at $30 million per year.
• Funding the Specialty Crop Block Grant program at an annual amount of $90 million and creating an annual allocation for local and regional crop and market development.
• Improving Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) outreach and technical assistance to small and very small livestock processing plants.
• Requiring FSIS to create guidance for small and very small livestock processing plants to better enable compliance with food safety requirements.
• Requiring FSIS to provide an electronic submission option for the meat label approval process and to create a searchable database of existing meat labels.
• Directing USDA to produce a report to Congress on additional steps that can be taken to better meet the needs of small poultry growers and processors.

Expand Access to Healthy Foods for Consumers by –

• Improving SNAP participant access to farmers markets, CSAs, and other direct marketing outlets by creating a level playing field for electronic benefit transfer among vendors.
• Improving SNAP Education and Outreach by encouraging states to use farmers markets and other direct marketing outlets as a venue for nutrition education activities and providing states the discretion to include nutrition incentives as part of educational efforts.
• Funding the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program at $25 million a year.
• Providing $10 million for the Community Food Projects program and increasing the maximum grant term from three to five years.
• Allowing schools the option to use a portion of their AMS school lunch commodity dollars or DoD Fresh program dollars for the purchase of local and regional foods.
• Bolstering requirements that specify AMS purchases use a geographic preference for the procurement of locally produced foods.
• Amending Section 32 to support the development of local and regional agriculture markets.
• Encouraging States to include community-supported agriculture programs as eligible to participate in the Farmers Market Nutrition Program.

Enhance Agriculture Research and Extension by –

• Establishing local and regional food systems as an added new priority area within the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative.
• Authorizing an Extension technical assistance initiative to help create sustainable local and regional food systems in the neediest parts of rural America.
• Creating a new initiative for the collection and production of critically important research data on local and regional food systems.
• Directing USDA Research, Education, and Extension Office to coordinate classical plant and animal breeding research activities and projects to develop locally-adapted cultivars and breeds.

Right to Know and GMO Report Release

Greetings!

After the success of the conference Justice Begins with Seeds & GMO Awareness Week, California Biosafety Alliance would like to invite you to attend the West Coast launch of:
A Global Citizens Report on the State of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms)—

False Promises, Failed Technologies
Published by Navdanya (India), Navdanya International, the International Commission on the Future of Food with the participation of the Center for Food Safety and contributions from other partners and groups around the world.

Speakers:
Dr. Vandana Shiva, Philosopher, Environmental Activist and Eco Feminist
Debbie Barker, International Program Director, Center for Food Safety
Miguel Altieri, Associate Professor of Agroecology at UC Berkeley and Associate Entomologist

These new reports highlight scientific research and empirical experiences from around the globe demonstrating how genetically modified (GM) seeds and crops have failed to deliver its advertised promises. The reports document and expose how contrary to the myths of feeding the world and protecting food and environmental safety, GMOs have increased the prevalence of herbicide resistant 'superweeds' and pests, have led to farmer debt and suicides from the high price of seeds, have degraded ecosystems and have benefitted the corporate industry while failing to increase food production.

The reports further illustrate the alternative solutions we need to see real food security, just agricultural systems, and outline how we can act together to see this necessary transition.

The release of these reports will take place:

October, 13 2011: 7:00pm to 9:00pm at
San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center.
(401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102)

In addition, we are hosting a press conference at the San Francisco City Hall at 12:00 Noon, featuring Dr. Vandana Shiva, elected officials and other speakers.


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There is also a right2know march/ride to Sacramento next weekend. Details below from Miguel Robles:

On Friday October 13th at 9:00 AM we will depart from San Francisco City Hall, our first stop, will be in around 10: AM. West Oakland, from there we will ride to the Rising Sun Entrepreneurs/ La Placita Commercial Kitchen in Oakland, where we will have a presentation and around 1:pm we will go to City Hall to Deliver the Report to Mayor Jean Quan's Office.

Around 1:00 PM we will be at Peoples Park in Berkeley to have a gathering and Berkeley University to pass some stickers and flyers, then we will walk to the City Hall where some members of the California Biosafety Alliance are arranging a meeting with a City Council Member, we will drop a report at the Mayor's office.

Around 4:00 PM, we will ride to The City of Richmond, where we will be making a presentation at a urban garden, then we will give a report to Mayor Gayle McLaugin and maybe we will screen a movie during the evening.

We will stay over in Richmond.

On October 15th during the morning, we will cross Vallejo Bridge and the plan is to meet with people in Vallejo, Vacaville, Fairfield, Davis.

We don't have anything confirmed yet in this area, so it would be good to have local contacts if you have.

We are riding to Sacramento on Sunday morning to join the rally.

On Monday we are delivering the report at Governor's Jerry Brown office.

Please let us know if you have any suggestion, we are still working in the details, so there will be some changes.

What do we need?
Support, support, support!
Outreach, forwarding the invitation to join us, this will be a weekend action!
If you can organize a meeting at any venue, we can add it to our route.

Contact for more info:

Miguel Robles etereas [at] gmail.com

Lastly, check out this video for the trailer to a new movie about the attack on scientists who dare to question the safety of GMOs.

Re-post from the Nation

This was a great, succinct post from the Nation's recent series of articles on the "Food Movement"; it definitely merits reposting.
Social Justice Food Is Not Just About Food

Saturday 24 September 2011
by: Eric Schlosser, The Nation

Forty years after the publication of Diet for a Small Planet, thousands of farmers’ markets are thriving across the United States, countless young and well-educated people want to become farmers, community gardens are being planted in inner cities, Walmart is championing local foods, the White House boasts an organic garden—and the poorest workers in the United States are earning about $1.50 less for every hour they work.

That decline of almost 20 percent in the federal minimum wage since 1971, adjusted for inflation, suggests the limits of the food movement—and the necessity for it to have the sort of broad view that Frances Moore Lappé has always embraced.

Any movement that focuses too narrowly on food is bound to fail when 46 million Americans live below the poverty line. Without a fundamental commitment to social justice, the estimated 1–2 percent of Americans who eat organic food will be indistinguishable from the 1–2 percent who control almost all of this country’s wealth and power.

The corporate monopolies and monopsonies, the contempt for labor unions, the capture of federal agencies, the corruption of elected officials, the lies routinely told to consumers, the disregard for the environment and for public health—none of these things are unique to the food industry. You will find them in the oil, chemical, media and financial industries, among many others. They have become commonplace in the US economy. They are signs of a much larger problem, of a society where a handful of corporations choose the lawmakers, dictate the laws, control production and distribution, widen the gulf between rich and poor.

Groups like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Edible Schoolyard Project, the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and Slow Food USA are doing essential work, trying to improve the lives of people at the bottom of society. Food is a good place to start when seeking to make change. But it’s only a start. I hope that the food movement will continue to grow and thrive. More important, I hope that it will become part of a larger movement with a broader vision—a movement committed to opposing unchecked corporate power, to gaining a living wage and a safe workplace and good health for the millions of Americans who lack them.

This story originally appeared in The Nation.
Copyright © 2011 The Nation – distributed by Agence Global.

We're on TV!

TV, the drug of the nation*, will be playing our particular brand of substance known as In Search of Good Food
on
September 9th on Channel 27 (Comcast & Astound) at 8pm.

If you're in the Bay Area, try to catch it!

*a song reference

Volunteer Steward needed for Alemany Natives

Help Alemany Farm:
Find over 70 species of San Francisco native plants, enhancing the habitat resources for birds, butterflies, herps & other species, at the center of the farm, while also providing opportunities for visitors to learn about native plants, local ecologies, and how to increase habitat value in agricultural practices, landscaping, and in the urban environment.

As the volunteer managing the area may be leaving the city, we need committed, reliable, and inspired people to volunteer to manage this area asap! If interested, please contact Iris at alemanynatives (at) gmail (dot) com, 415-312-2214

Also, check it out in person and come by the 3rd Sunday workdays from 1:00-4:00. Next ones: Aug 21 and Sept 18 at Alemany Farm, 700 Alemany Blvd, San Francisco

See some photos of the area taking shape here.

To Profit or Not?

In case you missed it, I wrote an article last month for civil eats entitled:
"To Profit or Not To Profit on the Food Movement?"

It's an examination of the two threads of motivation I see in food activists in the Bay Area, and whether they can be made more mutually compatible and successful.

Enjoy, and please remember you can read many other such essays/posts at
http://insearchofgoodfood.blogspot.com/p/best-of-this-blog.html

Biosafety Alliance Conference!

Invitation to conference:

Justice Begins with Seeds

September 14 to 17th 2011

The Women’s Building and other locations in the Mission District, San Francisco
California Biosafety Alliance www.biosafetyalliance.org


About:

We are at a time of many crises. And in the face of all the global challenges before us, the domination of the food supply, and the contribution of the current food regime to climate change, numerous environmental crises, humans rights abuses and displacement of people to name a few, makes it perhaps the most pressing issue before us.

To control food is to control people. To destroy topsoil is to destroy the most elemental thing upon which we all depend. And to convince people that this system is the only way and that there is no other option is one of the most pressing myths before us that needs to be shattered.

The conference: Justice Begins with Seeds will be a space for movement building to actively address the the symbol of the corporate food regime: genetically modified food, address the many layered implications of GE/GMO food, and build strategic coalitions and deeper collaborations amongst diverse stakeholders more widespread political action addressing GMOs in varying levels throughout the state of California.

The conference will focus on hands on workshops and panels on how to build alliances, how to start a rights based campaign, and how to get involved with GMO labeling initiatives throughout California. People from different organizing contexts will have the space to discuss, share strategy and build the movement to address the corporate food regime.


The conference is timed strategically to follow the Heirloom Seed Exposition in Sonoma and to precede the annual Food Justice Coalition Conference which will take place this year in Oakland. With this, we see this event feeding into upcoming events and pushing the issue of GMOs back onto the radar screen, while encouraging people to actively take on the issue politically.


Keynote:

Vandana Shiva: Navdanya


Plenary panelists:

Ignacio Chapela: UC Berkeley
Miguel Altieri: UC Berkeley
Anuradha Mittal: Oakland Institute
Gayle Mclaughlin: Mayor of Richmond
David Campos: San Francisco Supervisor
Marcia Ishii-Eiteman: Pesticide Action Network
Eric Holt Gimenez: Food First
Carl Anthony: Breakthrough Communities
Jeffrey Smith: Institute for Responsible Technology
Mari Margil: Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
Dave Henson: Occidental Arts and Ecology Center

The California Biosafety Alliance is a cross sector, multilevel and inter-ethnic alliance of individuals and organizations working together to engage in broader outreach around genetically modified (GMO) food issues and to bring together strategic coalitions of diverse stakeholders to advocate for a GMO free food supply, as a means of pushing for a shift from an industrial food model, to a model of local resilience. GMOs are a symbol that represent the industrial food system and a key point that needs to be addressed in order to address and shift away from the industrial food model.

Our vision is to get the multi-faceted number of issues with GMOs, ranging from health, to social justice, to environmental destruction, to a major contributor to climate change though topsoil degradation and numerous un-factored externalities, to corporate consolidation, to enter the framework of various groups that have not traditionally focused on the issue of GMOs as a central theme and point that needs to be addressed to push for a systemic shift in the current corporate food regime.

Workshop and Panel Tracks:

1 Local global connections:
GMO movements, trade policy, low-income and food access--systemic problems, global connections, land grabs, human displacement and immigration, past GMO campaigns and perspectives, global perspectives on food and farming, IAASTD report and global policy.

2 Biocultural diversity: from soil to plate: what is and what can be
Food sovereignty and small farmers successes, monoculture and soil degradation, land management, problems with GMO 'co-existence', farm practices: dry farming, carbon farming: restoring topsoils, agriculture and climate change: how agriculture contributes to climate change, and how it can solve climate change, resistance and resilience through diversity, peasant perspectives.

3 Food, health and policy:
Legal issues, policy, health issues and our right to know, emerging GMO issues, current legal challenges, deregulation of GMOs, issues of patents, health implications of GMOs, Roundup and health and environmental impact, food access, etc.

4 Building the Movement: resistance and alternative structures
Our democratic right to know, organizing and effective campaigns, passing local ordinances, rights based organizing, learning from what was and moving forward, storytelling and movement building, grassroots experience from other contexts, lobbying, pressuring business, educational strategies, working with local politicians, etc.

Your participation will build the conference and the results obtained will be your achievements.

If you would like to submit a proposal for a panel or workshop, please get in contact.

The California Biosafety Alliance

www.biosafetyalliance.org