You’re familiar with the classic situation of somebody who gets hoodwinked because they didn’t read the small print. Well, it looks like we’ve got some purveyers of very, very small print (so small that it’s not even there) here in Missouri. These are the folks who devised and are promoting the proposed Missouri Constitutional Amendment 1 (House Joint Resolution Nos. 11 & 7). This is the August 5 ballot language that voters will see:

Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to ensure that the right of Missouri citizens to engage in agricultural production and ranching practices shall not be infringed?The potential costs or savings to governmental entities are unknown, but likely limited unless the resolution leads to increased litigation costs and/or the loss of federal funding.

However, the Linn County Reader informs us that :

… although the official ballot language voters will see when they go to the polls next month gives no indication of this, the Fair Ballot Language that voters won’t see when they go to the polls on Aug. 5 states, “A ‘yes’ vote will amend the Missouri Constitution…subject to any power given to local government under Article VI of the Missouri Constitution.” Instead, the voters will see official ballot language that reveals nothing about the impact of Amendment One on the ability of local government to regulate CAFOs.[…] If Constitutional Amendment One passes, you will be left without any ability to provide reasonable health and welfare safeguards for neighbors living in the rural areas of your county.”

If you doubt that all is not what it seems, note that Missouri GOP Senator Roy Blunt, a.k.a. Monsanto’s man in Washington, came out recently for the Amendment, dubbed yet another “Montsanto Protection Act” by one writer who is concerned about the proliferation of genetically modified foods and the dominance of the biotech sector in agriculture.  Blunt straightaway set about trying to assuage fears that rather than protecting the “family farms” that supporters are piously evoking in their pro-Amendment 1 TV ads, the bill is intended to protect powerful corporate factory farms whose questionable agricultural practices might be vulnerable to regulation and so-called “nuisance” suits that threaten the bottom-line for the Blunt-friendly big-guys.

The fact that Blunt is the latest pro-Amendent 1 batter up speaks for itself, as does the likely source of the amendment:

A year ago, the North Dakota [right to farm] measure was a topic for discussion as legislative agriculture chairmen from across the U.S. gathered for a conference in Vancouver, Canada. The event by the State Agriculture and Rural Leaders Association was financed by dozens of agriculture businesses, including Archer Daniels Midland Co., Cargill, DuPont Pioneer, Deere & Co. and Tyson Foods. Among those present was Missouri Rep. Bill Reiboldt, a farmer who sponsored the right-to-farm amendment referred to this year’s ballot by the Republican-led state Legislature.

If you’re interested in why one would oppose what seems on the surface to be an almost meaningless reiteration of support for farming, this video of former Missouri Lt. Governor Joe Maxwell speaking against the bill spells out the ways that Amendment 1 not only threatens the family farm, but the safety of our food supply:

Among other points Maxwell makes, he  suggests that Amendent 1 could result in weakening the protections for the family farmer that were spelled out in the 1975 Family Farm Act. As he noted elsewhere:

This amendment is about ensuring the largest multi-national corporation constitutional rights here in Missouri so they can do whatever THEY want to us neighbors out in the country. […]. What other industry has constitutional protections to do whatever they want and strips the local voice, either at the local level, the county level or even at the statehouse from being able to put in safeguards for neighbors out in the country?

Not only will supporters of this stealth legislation not answer these questions, they would prefer that you not even realize that anyone is asking.

The post “Right to farm” amendment in MO: The invisible small print appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Over the past 20 years, the pork industry in the United States has increased productivity and cut costs through industrialization.  The process of pork production, once dominated by over hundreds of thousands small independent hog farmers, has become more concentrated in order to take advantage of economies of size. The reduction in the number of smaller, distributed farms results in a more efficient industry that is dominated by a few large and intensive operations.

However, this change has had complex environmental, economic, and political ramifications.  In general, the livestock sector affects many natural resources and the increased intensity of hog farming in specific geographic regions amplifies these effects.  The increasingly concentrated levels of hog waste pollute surrounding regions and emit dangerous greenhouse gasses, such as methane, that contribute to ozone depletion. Further, many of the industry leaders in large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have significant financial clout and political connections. This power, coupled with particular financial interest in a loosely regulated pork industry, makes impartial public policy improbable, as industry interests directly compete with those of small, low-income communities and comparatively weak environmental advocacy groups.

North Carolina’s pork farming and processing industry illustrates this common struggle.

Although hog farming has always had a presence in North Carolina, the industry experienced exponential growth in the 1990s. The hog population increased from 2.6 million to 8 million from 1988 to 1998 and North Carolina’s pork production rapidly surpassed the Corn Belt’s, as it became the nation’s second-largest hog farming state after Iowa. Following the nation-wide pattern of increased concentration of large operations, from 1983 to 1997, the number of hog farms in North Carolina decreased by 78 percent, despite a five-fold increase in hog population. Nearly all of the state’s pork industry’s growth was from industrial-scale enterprise, and resulted in a critical reduction of the number of independent farmers.

However, the explosion of the North Carolina pork industry also brought a welcome economic stimulus and remains a crucial part of the state’s economy, as the industry employs many farmers who lost their livelihood in the struggling tobacco industry. And despite the reduction of independent farmers, total employment in the state’s hog farming industry increased by 16% from 2001 to 2006. The industry provides a windfall of approximately $1 billion annually for North Carolina in the form of tax revenue.

When the community of Tillery in Halifax County, N.C. was told that they should expect to see 410 new hog farms in NC by the end of 1997, they decided to act. Citizens mobilized a grass-roots movement called HELP [Halifax Environmental Loss Prevention], and began their fight for environmental justice.

Tillery is a poor, black, and rural area and is a “prime target for hog expansion.  Traditionally, poor marginalized citizens are less prone to voting, and corporations that open in those areas are less likely to suffer political consequences from constituent backlash. Nonetheless, the movement gained momentum and attracted the support of environmental advocacy groups to make their voices heard in legislation.

Even with the support of local organizations, citizens were still weak compared to powerful pork producers. The NC Pork Producers political action committee, the Pork PAC, spent significant amounts of money to fight industry regulation. In 1994, 92 out of 170 state representatives received campaign contributions from the committee. Wendell Murphy, owner of Murphy Farms, contributed $150,000 to candidates. The revolving door between North Carolina legislators and pork executives is substantial; many legislators are or were hog producers.  Wendell Murphy was a state representative for five years and a senator for three. Former Senator Lauch Faircloth, who served on the congressional Environment and Public Works Committee from 1993 to 1996, was once also a wealthy hog farmer.

However, citizens had their own way of giving legislators an incentive to favor environmental protection.  Organizations such as HELP, environmental advocacy groups, and the media informed constituents of the industry’s detrimental effects. Thanks to the democratic process, large campaign contributions are not what ultimately keep legislators employed, and eventually enough angry constituents reached state congressmen.

Significant numbers of letters to representatives prompted legislators to pass stricter regulation and to budget $1.5 million to fight hog pollution. The citizens also successfully convinced commissioners to establish a committee to analyze the health consequences in the region. Soon thereafter, the committee passed a livestock ordinance that stopped three out of the seven hog farms who previously had plans to open in Halifax County. HELP continues to inform other communities of the environmental injustice practiced by hog farms and has done so through town meetings and  “hog roundtables.”

Halifax County was the first local government to increase hog farm regulation. By the late 1990s 14 North Carolina counties followed suit.  In 1997, a state statute was modified by North Carolina House Bill 515 to give counties the power to pass zoning amendments to control hog farm location, giving counties the ability to create large buffer zones between farms and communities to protect citizens from local water and air pollution.

Ultimately, HELP won the hog farm fight in Eastern North Carolina.  HELP’s efforts remain a best practice for instilling a citizenry lobby that is powerful enough to fight big-business interests. Their success cannot be understated, as a successful citizenry lobby may be the only force strong enough to give environmental interests a fighting chance.

The post Hog Hell: How a citizen lobby influenced policy in North Carolina appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I’m going to admit it.  I’m privileged.  And it has nothing to do with what’s sitting in my bank account.

The privilege I’m referring to is the food I eat and the ingredients I cook with. Vegetables of all colors and varieties, apples, pears, peaches, plums, melons, grapes, berries, locally produced wines, beer, vodka, and cheeses. All can be found within a twenty-minute radius of my back door here in Columbia County in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Close to home

Even now, in chilly March, I’m privileged to be able to travel a scant 3.6 miles to WildWood Farm to purchase fresh produce. There, Warren, a retired plant pathologist, and Lenny, a retired schoolteacher, tend their one-half acre field and a 20 x 40–foot greenhouse, harvesting a yearly crop of approximately three-to-four- thousand pounds of specialty organic vegetables and greens.  Warren and Lenny’s careful selection of seed stock and their skill as small-scale growers yield the most deeply flavored produce I’ve ever tasted.  One word in particular captures the taste treat of their bounty: freshness.

From farm to table:  a journey of more than 1,500 miles

Unfortunately, for most Americans it’s not easy to eat fresh. If you’re eating supermarket fare, most of it travels long distances via an industrial food network that transports consumables that could never honestly be labeled “fresh.”  Fifteen hundred miles is the average distance from field to table for bland-tasting supermarket foodstuffs harvested prior to peak ripeness and then packed on refrigerated planes, trains, ships, and semi-trailer trucks.

Consider two examples: a carton of strawberry yoghurt and an industrially farmed carrot.  A 2005 study in Iowa found that the milk, sugar, and strawberries in a container of yoghurt collectively travel 2,211 miles just to get to the processing plant—even before the yoghurt is transported to supermarket shelves and packed into children’s lunch boxes. The carrot is a bit closer to home.  It travels a mere 1,838 miles from dirt to salad bowl.

Consider another astounding fact about the food that ends up on our plates.  The typical American meal contains ingredients grown in five countries outside the U.S.—even though we have 470 million acres of our own arable land in cultivation. In the last decade alone, food imports from China, South America, Europe, and the Middle East have quadrupled.

With food miles measured in the thousands from farm to distributor to consumer, the use of fossil fuels to feed our hunger for year-round produce is staggering. An astounding one-fifth of our total consumption of fossil fuels is devoured by the planting, fertilizing, chemical spraying, distribution, processing, and packaging of foodstuffs. In California alone food imports arriving by plane—such as fruits, nuts, and vegetables—release 70,000 tons of CO2, which equals the equivalent of 12,000 additional cars on the road.

How far our food travels from farm to table has become an issue of national import as we’ve become more aware of the relationship between the gluttonous burning of fossil fuels and its role in climate change.

 The world is going urban

Demographic change across the globe will also force a change in how we think about our food supply. According to a study published by the World Health Organization, for the first time in history, more people live in cities than in the countryside. Every year the number of urban residents across the globe is increasing by a jaw-dropping 60 million.

Although the U.S. has an urban growth rate that is lower than in the developing world, every year one million acres in the U.S. are lost to cultivation due to urbanization, suburban sprawl, expanding transportation networks, and industrial expansion.  The future is clear. More people clustered in cities farther from food sources, and fewer families growing their own food as they leave the land for city dwelling.  As cities grow to make room for an ever-increasing population, fertile land is gobbled up by urban sprawl.  Add to the mix escalating fuel costs and environmental degradation, and you have a perfect storm that demands radical change—the necessity for a more sustainable model.

 The imperative for local food

The growth of farmers’ markets nationwide is proof of widespread support for local sourcing.  In 1970, there were 340 farmers’ markets.  Today the number is 7,175 and growing. Consumers are buying at local markets because they’re finding that locally produced food in season is similar or lower in cost than supermarket fare. The local carrot—harvested within 100 miles of consumption—beats out the industrially farmed carrot not just in lower-transportation costs but even more importantly in taste and food value.  Recent nutritional studies confirm that fresh foods retain more nutrients, vitamins, and minerals.

Although local food production represents less than 1 percent of total food production in the U.S., it’s growing at an annual rate of about 10 percent.  In 2002, locally grown food was worth $4 billion.  This year, it is estimated that locally grown food could top out at $7 billion.  And those billions are vital to sustaining local communities as local-food dollars flow directly back into the local economy.

 Ultra-local startups

We’re now at the start of a second-wave of sustainable food production. It’s been labeled ultra- or hyper-local.  Both names refer to food grown either on-site at food retailers or in close proximity to food-distribution centers.

Pioneering ultra-local entrepreneurs have held their fingers to the wind, taken a measure of the ever-increasing cost of transportation, and concluded that the tipping point for financial viability for ultra-local may be now.

 A handful have jumped into the game.  Among them are Gotham Greens and BrightFarms of New York, Sky Vegetables of Needham, Massachusetts, and PodPonics of Atlanta.

Gotham Greens operates a 15,000 square-foot hydroponic greenhouse located atop a warehouse in an industrial area of Brooklyn.  The company grows nine varieties of lettuces and four types of herbs that are distributed to supermarkets and restaurants across the metropolitan New York area.  The success of their first greenhouse has led to the construction of a second that will be dedicated to growing tomatoes.

BrightFarms designs, finances, builds and operates hydroponic greenhouses on-site at supermarkets.  The greenhouse is built on a supermarket’s roof or a nearby building at no cost to the retailer. A one-acre BrightFarms greenhouse is capable of growing up to 500,000 pounds of produce using up to 14 times less land and 10 times less water per pound. The first of BrightFarm’s greenhouses has opened at a McCaffrey’s Market in Pennsylvania. Five national chains, including Whole Foods, are currently in negotiation with the company.

Podponics, based in Atlanta, calls their model a “local everywhere” approach because it is a “modular system that may be installed anywhere from Atlanta to Abu Dhabi.”  Theirs is a modular system using recycled shipping containers converted into controlled-environment growing pods.  Podponics is currently supplying a variety of lettuces to local restaurants in the Atlanta area from their facility located near the Atlanta International Airport.

Two California retailers, Bi-Rite of San Francisco and Woodlands Market, are pursuing a slightly different path toward urban-food sustainability by farming their own produce.  Whether you’ll be buying food from a local field, from a rooftop greenhouse or a retired shipping container, it seems that the privilege of truly fresh food at an affordable price may be coming in the not too distant future to a supermarket near you.

The post Ultra-local food: the proximity principle appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The 160-acre family farm is a thing of the past. While just 40 years ago, many square miles of the Iowa landscape were divided into farm quadrants, today’s family run farm is about 1,200 acres. As a young photojournalist in the early 1970s—a city kid from Baltimore who knew nothing about farming—I had an idea for a project to document the fast-approaching end of that small-farm, small town, one-room-schoolhouse era.

Conveniently for me, my wife’s family owned a 160-acre farm near Tennant, Iowa—a tiny town about 30 miles east of Council Bluffs. Like others living in that four-family-per-square-mile world, theirs was a life of hard work and dedication to family and community, and I wanted to document the way things were then on the farm and in town. It was like an anthropology project: you knew it would never be there again, so you wanted to capture it as best you could.

What you see here are some of the images that came out of that project.

Epilogue

In November 2010, we sold the farm. Two months later, we came back to see the old place. The home and outbuildings documented in these images had already been completely razed and replaced by a cornfield.

The post Family farm: A photojournalist’s archive appeared first on Occasional Planet.

As childhood obesity approaches an epidemic, medical professionals, nutritionists, and parents are starting to pay attention to what kids are eating at school. Unfortunately, it’s mostly processed, pre-packaged foods, high in fat, salt, sugar and preservatives. But, there’s one program that’s restoring some sanity—and good nutrition—to school lunch menus around the country.

The National Farm to School Network is a collaborative project of the Center for Food & Justice (CFJ), and the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC). Founded in 2007, Farm to School brings healthy fresh food from local farms directly to local school cafeterias. Beside providing delicious fresh fruits and vegetables, the program teaches students about how food is produced and instills healthy eating habits that can last a lifetime. It supports community-based agriculture, strengthens family farms, helps reduce childhood obesity. and mitigates the environmental impact of transporting food long distances. Not only do kids enjoy nutritious farm fresh food, they learn that their food choices have consequences—for their bodies, the environment and their communities.

Currently, there are approximately 2,224 Farm to School programs spread across 45 states with 2,105 school districts involved.

Here is some information from the Farm to School website:

Farm to School programs are good for children

• The choice of healthier options in the cafeteria through Farm to School meals results in consumption of more fruits and vegetables with an average increase of one serving per day, including at home.
• Farm fresh products taste better, and it has been shown that children prefer them to non-local products.
• Farm to school programs can help improve children’s health and help alleviate current childhood health problems like obesity and early-onset type II diabetes

Farm to School programs are good for schools

• Schools report a 3 to 16 percent increase in school meal participation when farm-fresh food is served, thus bringing more funds into the schools.
• Less price fluctuation occurs over the course of the year because the products are not sourced from different venues across the country that charge different prices.
• Local produce can actually cost less than highly processed versions currently delivered to schools.
• Farm to school programs are known to facilitate education about nutrition, food and agriculture in and out of the classroom.

Because of the program’s success, there are six bills in Congress trying to work their way into the Child Nutrition Reauthorization that include funding for Farm to School:

H.R. 4710 Farm to School Improvements Act of 2010—Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ)–would provide $50 million in mandatory funding for a competitive grant program supporting Farm to School programs at USDA.

H.R. 4333 Children’s Fruit and Vegetable Act of 2009—Representative Sam Farr (D-CA)—this comprehensive bill is aimed at supporting salad bars in school, increasing funding for equipment, and also includes language similar to Rep. Holt’s language in support of Farm to School

H.R. 5456 National Farm-to-School Act of 2010—Representative Betty McCollum—would authorize discretionary funding for a competitive grant program supporting Farm to School programs at USDA, and encourages the use of existing USDA programs to support Farm to School efforts.

H.R. 5209 Healthy Communities through Helping to Offer Incentives and Choices to Everyone in Society Act of 2010—Representative Ron Kind—this comprehensive bill is aimed at combating obesity and includes language authorizing Farm to School programs

S. 3123 Growing Farm to School Programs Act of 2010—Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT)–would provide $50 million in mandatory funding for a competitive grant program supporting Farm to School programs at USDA.

S. 3144 Healthy Food in Schools Act of 2010—Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)—this comprehensive bill is aimed at supporting salad bars in school, increasing funding for equipment, and also includes language similar to Rep. Holt’s language in support of Farm to School

The post The National Farm to School Network appeared first on Occasional Planet.