Perhaps no one represented the American work ethic more than the dairy farmer. Early morning hours and hard physical labor, often conducted in solitude while ankle deep in muck. Families working together to get the job done. They have long proudly supplied a demand for their community, and like most farmers, are clearly not in it for the money.

Today however, the American dairy farmer also represents the frustration and economic hardship evident across our nation. Increasing volatility in the price of milk paid to farmers, higher feed costs, corporate consolidation in the supply chain, organic milk farms scaling up, and questionable government policies all have farmers shedding a few tears. The life is so unappealing that the number of American families remaining in milk farming has plummeted from roughly 165,000 20 years ago, to less than 50,000 today.

Behind the innocent glass of milk lies an intriguing story that’s not so black and white: Many farmers are losing money, organic milk is in short supply,  anti-trust lawsuits have been filed, and legislative reform is on the agenda. Farmers, processors, distributors, and retailers are engaged in conversations like never before. And cows. Don’t forget about the cows.

Please join us for the next Kitchen Table Talks in San Francisco on Tuesday, February 21 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm at 18 Reasons, as we discuss the current state of the organic dairy industry.

When: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Time: Food and drink at 6:30. Discussion from 7 – 8:30 pm
Where: 18 Reasons (3674 18th St., San Francisco, 94110)
Tickets: $10 Brown Paper Tickets. NOTE: A limited number of sliding scale tickets will be available on a first come, first serve basis at 7 pm on the night of the event.

Joining us in conversation will be:

Leslie Butler, Department of Agricultural Economics at U.C. Davis. Leslie holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University. He regularly testifies at state and national hearings regarding dairy policy, and has published numerous articles on dairy production and economics marketing and policy.

Mike Griffin, West Region Pool Manager, Organic Valley. Mike was born and raised in Petaluma, CA. After his first year of college, he began his journey into farming, and never looked back. His vast  experience over 30 years at Clover Stornetta as a truck driver, distribution foreman, plant manager and in public relations, ultimately led him to Organic Valley in 2011, the nation’s largest cooperative of organic farmers.

Richard Hughes, owner Westfield Jersey’s in Bodega, CA. Richard was a self-proclaimed “city boy,” until he turned 15 and a 4-H project began his life long journey and commitment to dairy farming.  In 1976, Richard and his wife purchased a 182-acre ranch just outside of Bodega. They currently have around 100 Jersey cows, have completed the transition to organic farming, and provide milk to Straus Family Creamery.

Bob McGee, CFO/COO Straus Family Creamery, Marshall, CA.

Kitchen Table Talks is a joint venture of Civil Eats and 18 Reasons, a non-profit that promotes conversation between its San Francisco Mission neighborhood and the people who feed them. Space is limited, so please RSVP. Seasonal snacks and refreshments generously provided by Bi-Rite Market and Shoe Shine Wine.

The Just Label It campaign today launched a new video by Food, Inc. filmmaker Robert Kenner that empowers consumers to fight for their right to know what is in their food. The video, “Labels Matter,” is the result of collaboration between the Just Label It campaign and Kenner’s new project, FixFood, a social media platform that aims to empower Americans to take immediate action to create a more sustainable and democratic food system.

To date, more than 450 consumer, healthcare, environmental and farming organizations, manufacturers, retailers have joined the Just Label It campaign, which has generated more than 500,000 consumer comments calling on the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to label GE foods.  (We wrote about the launch of Just Label It here.) The video seeks to garner more consumer awareness and participation by galvanizing one million consumers to comment to the FDA by mid-April, the date that the FDA’s public comment period ends.

“Labels Matter” tells the story of three women who share a belief in the right to know, but for entirely different reasons. Heather Donatini is a pregnant woman who knows she is feeding her developing baby, as well as herself, with every bite. Luann Clark recently had heart surgery and has to closely monitor what she eats. Robyn O’Brien is a mother whose child developed an allergic reaction to breakfast. “As a mother of children with food allergies, the labeling of GE foods is especially important, as it would provide essential and possibly life-saving information for the food allergic population,” said O’Brien, founder, Allergy Kids Foundation. (We’ve written about Robyn’s important work here and here.)

As the video connects with each woman, Kenner shows how the U.S. compares to other developed nations, including the European Union, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia, and even China, where genetically engineered (GE) foods are labeled. The video notes that the vast majority of Americans (90 percent in most studies) believe GE foods should be labeled.

Gary Hirshberg, Chairman of Stonyfield and a founder of Just Label It, collaborated with Kenner to produce the video. “While the pros and cons of GE foods is debated, an entire generation is growing up consuming them,” he said. “Until we have no doubt that GE crops are safe to eat, consumers should have a choice about whether we want to eat them. GE foods must be labeled. Consumers need to know.” Hirshberg recently published “Label It Now,” the first consumer guide to GE foods available at online booksellers. All proceeds of the e-book go to the Just Label It campaign.

The drumbeat for mandatory GE labeling is getting louder, as the FDA decides whether to approve GE salmon and a proposal advances at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deregulate corn engineered to be resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D, a major component in Agent Orange. You can join in asking the FDA to allow consumers the right to know what’s in their food.

FoodCorps is growing—expanding the number of states we’ll be working in next year and expanding the number of service members who are creating community and creating change. We created FoodCorps with two goals in mind: Addressing a public health crisis and providing a training opportunity for all of growing interest in careers in food and agriculture. Becoming a FoodCorps service member is a way to launch your career in food and farming while helping kids get healthy.

Rachel is one of 50 future food systems leaders who started their terms of service this past August as the first ever class of FoodCorps service members. So far this year, these service members have reached over 20,000 children in 10 states. They are addressing the nation’s painful and costly childhood obesity epidemic using our three recipe ingredient for change: Hands-on nutrition education, growing and tending school gardens, and getting healthy local food onto school cafeteria trays.

Here is what Rachel had to say about her experience this year:

Being the new “garden lady” at a school in small town is cause enough for conversation. Add in the University of Georgia logos that emblazen the coffee thermos I take to school with me every day, and I stick out even more in the sea of Arkansas Razorback gear that comes standard for most of the students and teachers at my school. Serving for FoodCorps has brought me to the town of Marshall, Arkansas, where I spend my days gardening with students from Marshall middle and elementary schools.  The school is a part of the Delta Garden Study, a childhood obesity prevention research project based out of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute.

When teaching outside, it is important for me to begin by getting a grasp on what the day will hold. My morning starts with a garden walk-through and a meeting with my garden program specialist to plan what garden work we will tackle with our classes for the day. Rolling with the punches does not even start to describe the level of flexibility you need as a FoodCorps Service Member. Your greenhouse will flood, grasshoppers will eat your newly planted kale seedlings, and snow might cover your leaf lettuces in less than an hour. Overcoming these and other challenges have proven to be learning experiences for me and my students over the course of my service term.

If a tasting is on the agenda, I collect my cooking supplies and ingredients before the start of classes for the day. The sight of students gathered around a folding table helping to prepare braised greens, salad, pesto, or even corn and squash fritters is a common one in our classes. Hands-on nutrition education is just as important as the act of gardening.

After talking with my supervisor about the activities of the day, we head to our first class. When my school became a part of the Delta Garden Study, they agreed to adopt a garden-based science curriculum for their middle school science courses. Between sixth, seventh, and eight grades, I work with eleven classes of students. My supervisor and I work with our science teachers to strike the balance between in class science instruction and the outside garden and nutrition connections.

As the “garden lady,” I try to help my students think about learning in a different way, and I get to see firsthand the need to devote more time in our school day to discussing topics like healthy eating. Thanks to FoodCorps I have the opportunity to be a part of that dialogue on a daily basis. My service has given me the privilege of being a part of my students’ lives. Every time we work together in the garden, whether it is to plant, harvest, cook, or even winterize our greenhouse, we illustrate to students that food–where it comes from and how you cook it–is central to health.

Sitting in my organic chemistry class during undergrad, I never envisioned that I would soon become an expert in hosing off kids’ boots at the end of muddy garden work session, explaining the nutritional benefits of pesto over the din of my food processor, or reinforcing the concept of density by making balsamic vinaigrette. But at the end of every day, I am astounded at how lucky I am to experience alongside my students the wonderment that comes with growing and cooking food.

Recruitment for next year’s class begins this week. You can read more at our Web site: www.foodcorps.org or watch our video (produced by Ian Cheney, co-creator of King Corn) on YouTube here.

It’s hard times right now. Looking around, from city to small town, there are empty buildings everywhere. For lease signs loom in windows, brand new office buildings stand deserted and never used. It all seems like such a waste of resources and energy and a sad reminder of the pace our economy has slowed to. In the face of this hardship,  ideas such as The Greenhouse Project in Central Wisconsin offer respite. A group of passionate people, working on a volunteer basis towards providing “opportunities for participation, education, cooperation, and action to support a local food economy in Central Wisconsin” have banded together and successfully started renovations on a dilapidated 38,000 square foot property in downtown Stevens Point. The vision is to create a self-sustaining, multi-faceted production and education center, where rural farming techniques can coalesce with a thriving urban community ready to learn about them.

Central Rivers Farmshed is a non-profit organization, made up of a network of people that strive to connect the local community to their food. Their main beliefs are pure and simple: “Food should be grown in a sustainable manner; People should know how to buy, grow, harvest, preserve, and prepare local foods; The public should know local farmers; Farmers should know who eats their food.” Farmshed is responsible for a number of undertakings, including a comprehensive local food guide called the Farm Fresh Atlas. Under this mission, the organization banded together with the Central Wisconsin Resiliency Project, the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, and North Wind Renewable Energy to finally create and launch a physical reference for their ideologies.

The ambitious Greenhouse Project is coming to fruition with the help of bestselling author and local resident Patrick Rothfuss. He came aboard, purchasing the foreclosed property and providing the green light to Central Rivers Farmshed, the new leaseholders, to break ground. Four main tenants–soil, energy, food, and incubator–are the focus of the endeavor. Compost production, renewable energy systems, sustainable agriculture, and food business incubation and support are what the future holds.

Interim Executive Director, Layne Cozzolino says that the space “will house 11,000 square feet in production greenhouses, a community kitchen, gathering space, and learning center. Through expansion of current programming, The Central Rivers Farmshed will use the space to deepen our community’s relationship with food in all forms: from growing, to processing, preserving, cooking, and finally eating.”

Reclaiming spaces by converting a concept into a physical reality has the potential to positively change communities and create growth and local involvement in a sustainable way. To donate to The Greenhouse Project, click here.

Watch a video about the project here:

Photo 1: Media Loom

While the mainstream media has tried to paint Occupy Wall Street as a bunch of wild eyed-hippies, for many of us who live in small towns in rural America and fight to reform food and agriculture, we know better. Which is why many of us traveled from as far as Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maine to join with OWS to occupy food, farms and the land.

Family Farmers are the 99 percent!

It’s not for nothing that one Hudson Valley farmer carried a sign (one of my favorites) that said: “Civilization was built on Agriculture, not a Trading Floor!”

Unfortunately, due the rampant collusion between Republicans, Democrats and Wall Street, civilization may end on the trading floor if things continue as business as usual in our economic and political capitals.

Even though it took the massive mortgage crisis and economic collapse to wake the American people up to the vast harms caused by unchecked corporate power, farmers have been acutely aware of these issues for decades, if not centuries; one only has to remember that our nation was founded by an alliance between urban rebels in Boston and Virginia farmers.

In the tradition of uniting urban and rural, the Farmers March was planned as “a celebration of community power to regain control over the most basic element to human well-being: food. The food system has been taken over by multinational corporations to the detriment of communities, ecosystems, local economies, and soil all over the world,” said Paula Winograd and Seth Wulsin, members of the Occupy Wall Street Food Justice group. 

Taking on Economic Injustice in The City

According to AlterNet, more than “500 rural farmers, urban farmers, food laborers, community activists and former occupiers” showed up for the beginning of the day at an East Village community garden, which began with Bronx urban farmer Karen Washington telling an energetic crowd of her journey over the past two decades to create a healthy food environment for her neighborhood.

Washington, who helped found the City Farms Markets, a series of community-run farmers markets, was stunned to hear that “food was a privilege and not a right”. So she set out to change that, mainly by putting her hands in the dirt, planting seeds and feeding her community. Through her work in the Bronx, Washington is helping combat the major issues of obesity, diabetes and lack of access to healthy food faced by underserved communities.

Washington announced proudly, “I’m an urban farmer. I grow food. I feed people’s body and mind.”

Confronting Corporate Concentration from the Prairie to the Plains

Over the past three decades, the U.S. has adopted economic policies promoted by Wall Street investment banks and agribusiness monopolies that have led to massive concentration in food and agriculture. Today market concentration is so great that only four firms control 84 percent of beef packing and 66 percent of pork production, which has resulted in forcing more than 1.1 million independent livestock producers out of business since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.

No one knows that better than Colorado and Kansas rancher Mike Callicrate, who has been at the forefront of the battle against giant meat cartels in cattle country since the 1990s when he became a lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against IBP, now owned by Tyson Foods.

As a result of poorly designed federal policies and failure to enforce antitrust legislation, a hallmark of Reagan laissez faire attitude towards economic policy and justice, Callicrate has watched an entire generation of family livestock farmers liquidated from farming, including more than 600,000 independent hog farmers and 500,000 cattle producers since 1980.

The crowd gathered at La Plaza Community Gardens was stunned when Callicrate told them just how out of touch the federal government is with protecting family farm agriculture when he mentioned that in the lawsuit he was originally involved in, he and other cattlemen were awarded $1.28 billion for IBP “rigging the market and stealing their cattle” but the judge reversed the decision. Even worse is the fact that when the Supreme Court had a chance to oversee tougher legal protections for family farmers, it balked, choosing to hear the Anna Nicole Smith case over the plight of America’s cattlemen.

This fact was brought home recently when the White House and the USDA refused to stand up for fair market livestock rules for family farmers known as GIPSA, which would have protected them from unfair and discriminatory contracts and implemented a packer ban on the ownership and sale of livestock, something President Obama promised on the campaign trail. Instead, the Obama administration failed to stand up for family farmers and instructed the USDA to gut their own rules to appease the Industrial Meat cartels and out of touch members of Congress.

Fighting for Seeds and the Future of our Democracy

Even worse than livestock is the concentration in the seed industry. Today one company (Monsanto) controls the patents on genetically engineered seeds for corn, cotton, soybeans and sugar beets that are planted on more than 90 percent of the acres of commodity crops farmed in the U.S., which means an estimated 80 percent of the processed food American’s eat contain GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and as a result of their manipulation of our regulatory system, most Americans have no idea what they’re eating.

In an effort to protect the rights of organic farmers and the integrity of our agricultural seed stock, Maine organic potato farmer Jim Gerritsen joined the Public Patent Foundation’s lawsuit against Monsanto and as President of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association is the lead plaintiff, along with 83 other organizations, including Food Democracy Now!.

Gerritsen made his first trip to New York City to join the Farmers March to share his concern about the loss of organic seeds to genetic contamination and the threat this poses to farmers, eaters and our food supply.

Farmers March to Zuccotti Park/ Join Occupy Wall Street in Solidarity at Liberty Square

In what can only be described as a sacred renewal of our nation’s most basic democratic rights, rural family farmers joined with urban farmers and food justice activists on a soulful three mile march, winding from the La Plaza Cultural Community Garden through the East Village, the Bowery, Chinatown and the Financial District to reach the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, Zuccotti Park, now appropriately renamed Liberty Square.

Hundreds of fellow Occupiers awaited the crowd as they marched through the metal barricades, now lining the park into an emptied square cleared of tents only weeks before with the famous OWS drummers playing as people gathered in a Circle of Solidarity and farmers and activists shared their stories. One of the most memorable was Wisconsin organic dairy farmer Jim Goodman, who talked about milking cows, feeding people and standing up for democracy.

As twilight gathered over Liberty Square, citizens eager to plant real food and justice in their communities took part in a traditional seed swap, exchanging tomato, beet and kohlrabi seed from the Hudson Valley Seed Library, open pollinated seed from the Turtle Tree Seed, and Gerritsen’s organic wheat and corn from Wood Prairie Farm in Maine.

For those who attended the Farmers March, feelings of hope and solidarity lasted well into the night and following days, reminding us that as Americans, a diverse set of individuals that believe in liberty, freedom and justice, we must continue to stand together, rural and urban, farmer and eater, to advocate through our right of peaceful assembly to reclaim, rebuild and transform our nation to protect our health, our land and our democracy. As many signs at Occupy Wall Street camps across the country remind us: “The Beginning is Now!”

And while the mainstream media toes the line that Occupiers don’t have an identifiable plan of action that they can grasp, you can bet your organic seeds that the folks who put on and showed up to the Occupy Wall Street Farmers March not only know the root of the problems with our food supply, but are already working on building solutions as well. For many of us 99-percenters, urban, rural, eaters and family farmers, we find hope that a new generation of activists is joining the call to action in reforming our food, farms and democracy.

Originally published on Huffington Post

Farmers have been through this before–our lives and livelihoods falling under corporate control. It has been an ongoing process: consolidation of markets; consolidation of seed companies; an ever-widening gap between our costs of production and the prices we receive. Some of us are catching on, getting the picture of the real enemy.

The “99 percent” are awakening to the realization that their lives have fallen under corporate control as well. Add up the jobs lost, the health benefits whittled away, and the unions busted, and the bill for Wall Street’s self-centered greed is taking a toll.

It’s not the immigrants, the homeless, the unions, or the farmers that have looted the economy and driven us to the brink of another Great Depression. The public is catching on.

When Occupy Wall Street (OWS) welcomed the Farmers March to Zuccotti Park in New York on December 4, a natural rural-urban alliance–the Food Justice Movement, gardeners, farmers, seed growers, health care workers, and union members–was formed at Wall Street’s back door.

Change can come only when you confront your oppressors directly on their turf. That makes them uncomfortable, it gets attention, and it wakes up the distracted public.

The Occupy movement is doing exactly what the prominent student activist Mario Savio spoke of in 1964, when he declared: “There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop–and you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from running at all.”

The people who are now forming a movement to occupy the food system agree with this sentiment too.

The food system isn’t working. People eat too many calories, or too few. There’s too much processed food on our plates. Too many Americans lack access to food that is fresh, nutritious, and locally grown. This is the food system that corporate America has given us. It’s the food system it’s selling to the rest of the world.

Clearly, this system doesn’t have the best interests of the public at heart. Nor does it consider the interests of farmers or farm workers or animals or the environment. It has one interest: profit.

We all have to wake up.

Farmers need access to farm credit, a fair mortgage on their land, fair prices for the food they produce, and seeds that aren’t patented by Monsanto or other big corporations. Consumers need to be able to purchase healthy and local food, and to earn a living wage.

The parallels are pointedly exact. It may be the Wall Street banks that are controlling our lives, or it may be Monsanto, Cargill, DuPont, Kraft, or Tyson’s. The system isn’t working.

Why do agribusiness profits continue to grow while farmers struggle to pay their costs of production and more Americans go hungry? We can’t feed our people if we are forced to feed the bank accounts of the one percent.

Agribusinesses insist that we have the responsibility of feeding the world. Growing more genetically engineered corn and soy isn’t going to feed the world, nor will it correct the flaws in our food system; clearly it has created many of them.

The world can feed itself, without corporate America’s science-experiment crops and expensive chemicals. The world’s people can feed themselves if we let them–if we stop the corporate land grabs and let them develop their own economies for their own benefit.

The message from the Occupy movement needn’t and shouldn’t be a specific set of demands. It should be about asking the right questions.

Wall Street, the government, and corporate America need to answer one basic question: Why did you sell us down the river?

Originally published on OtherWords

*Editor’s Note: Please join us at Kitchen Table Talks in San Francisco this Thursday to discuss the Occupy movement.

It’s been a long time since farmers congregated in downtown Manhattan–around 350 years, to be exact. The folks who populate Wall Street and rural America don’t cross paths much these days. It’s easy to forget that Wall Street used to be rural America; in 1644, the area contained so many cows that the Dutch colonists had to erect a cattle guard to keep them from straying. Livestock farmers literally established the boundaries of Wall Street.

Today, the bronze bull–that icon of the OWS movement–is the lone farm animal you’ll find in the financial district. And the barricades are back, but only to keep Zuccotti Park’s mic checkers in check. That surprisingly fertile concrete plaza has yielded a bumper crop of grassroots activists, to the discomfort of (most of) the 1 percent and the shills who bill them. But the voices of farmers–a.k.a. the 1 percent that grows the food that 100 percent of us eat–have been largely missing from this movement to reclaim our democracy, despite the fact that food has become a commodity that enriches a few at the expense of the many.

That all changed this past Sunday, though, when a group of farmers from around the country marched to Zuccotti Park accompanied by their allies: food justice activists, community gardeners, and other advocates for a more equitable, ecologically sound, re-localized food system.

The march, organized by Occupy Wall Street’s food justice committee and Food Democracy Now, began with a rally at La Plaza Cultural Community Garden in the East Village, where hundreds of folks gathered to hear fiddlers and drummers give the event a festive kickoff, followed by a panel of urban and rural farmers.

Speakers included: Karen Washington, urban farmer and the founder of City Farms Markets, who grew up just blocks away from the community garden; Mike Callicrate, a Colorado rancher and a lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the world’s largest beef packer; Severine von Tscharner Fleming, the filmmaker behind Greenhorns and a farmer who’s worked tirelessly to promote the young farmer movement; Jalal Sabur, a founding member of the Freedom Food Alliance, which unites black urban communities with black rural farmers; renowned permaculture expert Andrew Faust; Jim Goodman, a Wisconsin dairy farmer who organized a “tractorcade” to Madison earlier this year to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union legislation; and Jim Gerritsen, a Maine organic farmer who is president of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association and the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against Monsanto.

Gerritsen, who was recently named one of “25 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World” by Utne Reader, noted that he had “never had a reason” to come New York City before. Now, at age 56, he came to tell organizers that “Occupy Wall Street is the conscience of America,” adding that “rural America stands behind you.”

A movement that’s been denigrated by some as a motley mob of lazy, dirty hippies got a boost from hardworking Americans who’ve chosen one of the most demanding, least lucrative vocations imaginable–producing our food. Don’t tell these folks to get a job; the majority of small family farmers have to hold down at least two jobs just to make ends meet or get health care.

Jalal Sabar expressed his desire to foster a deeper awareness of the issues facing both urban and rural farmers:

A lot of times the farmer in Iowa doesn’t know that the kid in the hood is getting stopped and frisked every day … I understand that farmers can barely survive, that they have to work a job outside of the farm … We want to make sure that the foodies understand what the farmworkers go through.

Sabar also pointed out that land grabs, a problem seen as occurring mainly in developing nations, are happening here as well. He cited the recent raid on the Morning Glory Community Garden in the South Bronx by the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development. (On Saturday, a protest by Occupy The Bronx at the site of the ransacked garden resulted in several arrests.)

Severine von Tscharner Fleming addressed another kind of land grab that’s threatening our farmlands: fracking. In the wake of Hurricane Irene, which destroyed many local New York state crops, von Tscharner Fleming described the way representatives from natural gas companies had turned up promptly, checkbooks in hand, pressuring desperate farmers to lease their drilling rights. She echoed last week’s devastating New York Times exposé, “Learning Too Late of the Perils in Gas Well Leases,” by saying:

Those of us who are running farms in different parts of the region are having to compete with the drillers and are then surrounded by the tanks and the effluent and the pipelines and the huge rigs of trucks, the millions of gallons of contaminated, radioactive water that are pumped out of these wells and the fumes that are in the wind and when you’re trying to grow gorgeous produce it’s not so wonderful.

Dairyman Jim Goodman availed himself of the peoples’ microphone to explain his motivation to attend the march:

“We were told in the ’60s that there comes a time when the machinery becomes so odious … that you have to throw yourself into the machinery and make it stop.

They tell me I must feed the world. But I’m not going to. I want to feed you. I want the world to feed itself. And they can. They’ve been farming longer than we have. They’re smarter, they’re younger, they’re stronger, they’re women, they’re people of color.

The corporations want them out, they want the good land. They give them the poor land. And then they say, “See? They can’t feed themselves.” A self-fulfilling prophecy.

… Take the power away from Wall Street! Remake Washington.”

The rally culminated in a seed swap with farmers and gardeners exchanging packets of heirloom, open-pollinated seeds, including some donated by the Hudson Valley Seed Library founders, who’ve done so much to revitalize New York’s regional seed trade and inspired similar endeavors around the country.

Kneeling on the pavement there at Zuccotti Park, sorting through the seeds under the glow of the twinkly holiday lights, we couldn’t help feeling that the Farmers’ March was marking the beginning of a greater affinity between city and country folks. Here’s hoping the farmers won’t wait another few centuries to come back to our neck of the woods.

In the 10 weeks since that momentous spark in mid-September, what began as an audacious protest, call to action, and singular act of civil disobedience on Wall Street, has quickly taken root worldwide. Capturing the hearts of those negatively impacted by the current economic and political system, speaking passionately for the disenfranchised, and uniting arms in solidarity with protest movements around the world, the Occupy movement has become a lightning rod and catalyst stimulating a long needed dialogue. Economic and social justice, corporate control and profiteering, and systematic corruption are just part of that discussion.

On Thursday, December 15, 2011 please join us in San Francisco for the next Kitchen Table Talks for a thought provoking and stimulating exploration of the context, implications, actions, and promise of Occupy for the food movement.

When: Thursday, December 15, 2011; 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Food and drink at 6:30 pm; Discussion at 7:00 p.m.

Where: Women’s Building, 3543 18th St. (between Valencia and Guerrero Streets), San Francisco

Tickets: $10, available at Brown Paper Tickets
A limited number of sliding scale tickets will be available on a first come, first serve basis at 7:00 p.m. on the night of the event.

Joining us in conversation will be:

Raj Patel, thought leader, writer, academic, and activist who has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and now protests against both. Raj is currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for African Studies and a fellow at The Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First. In addition to numerous scholarly publications, he regularly writes for The Guardian, and for many mainstream publications. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and The Value of Nothing, is a New York Times bestseller.

Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety, is a public interest attorney, activist, and author. He has been involved in public interest legal activity in numerous areas of technology, human health and the environment for nearly 25 years. He is author of Your Right to Know: Genetic Engineering and the Secret Changes in Your Food and editor of the highly-acclaimed Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture. His articles on law, technology, social, and psychological issues have also appeared in numerous law reviews, technology journals, popular magazines, and newspapers across the country, and he has been featured in numerous documentaries including the film The Future of Food.  In 1994, the Utne Reader named Kimbrell as one of the world’s leading 100 visionaries.  In 2007, he was named one of the 50 people most likely to save the planet by The Guardian-U.K.

Sarah Treuhaft, Associate Director, Policylink. Sarah collaborates with local and national partners on research and action projects and authors policy briefs and reports to advance Policylink’s social equity mission. Sarah has worked on food policy and was a member of the team that successfully advocated for the creation of a national Healthy Food Financing Initiative. Her most recent publication is America’s Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model, co-authored with Angela Glover Blackwell and Manuel Pastor. Sarah was a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa.

Kitchen Table Talks is a joint venture of CivilEats and 18 Reasons, a non-profit that promotes conversation between its San Francisco Mission neighborhood and the people who feed them. Space is limited, so please RSVP. Seasonal snacks and refreshments generously provided by Bi-Rite Market and Shoe Shine Wine.

The 2008 Farm Bill included reforms to protect small and medium-sized farmers who raise cattle, hogs, and chickens from unfair treatment at the hands of meatpackers and poultry companies. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration proposed rules (known as the GIPSA Rule, after the agency) to protect poultry and hog farmers from unfair contract terms–like retaliating against poultry and hog growers who speak out about abuses–and ensured that cattle and hog producers could get a fair price from meatpackers for their livestock.

Nearly three years later, the fair livestock rules have been shredded and there is plenty of blame and shame to go around. The Obama administration failed to show leadership on this issue and reneged on President Obama’s campaign pledge to “fight to ensure family and independent farmers have fair access to markets, control over their production decisions, and transparency in prices.”

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack caved to meatpacker money and power by issuing significantly watered down rules–after nearly 18 months of foot dragging to issue the final rules at all. USDA’s final proposal indefinitely postponed any efforts to protect independent cattle and hog farmers and issued a much weaker set of protections for contract chicken and hog farmers. Many Democratic Senators on the Agriculture Committee–including Chairman Debbie Stabenow from Michigan–stood on the sidelines and refused to stand up for livestock producers in their states.

But the final attack came from the duplicitous House Republicans who included sneaky language in the agriculture appropriations bill that prevents USDA from finalizing or developing any rules on livestock markets and only allows the pending rules to address a few of the crucial reforms to poultry contracts. This essentially means that House Republicans, who claim to believe in a “free-market,” have empowered the meat industry to rig a competitive market through unfair and anti-competitive practices that are widespread in the livestock industry. While they mouth support for family values, small businesses, and the family farmer, their failure to allow the fair livestock rules to be implemented is two-faced and un-American. The policies they have supported by doing so will drive even more small and midsized independent producers out of business and increase the monopoly power of the meatpackers.

By prohibiting USDA from finalizing the fair livestock rules, House Republicans didn’t just vote against a new regulation that would have prohibited commonplace abuses in the meat industry. They voted against the family livestock producer by signing off on:
• Unfair and deceptive practices
• Abusive contracts
• Retaliation against farmers who speak out about abuses
• Sweetheart deals for factory farms that receive higher prices for livestock than independent farmers
• Secrecy so diabolical that it forbids the USDA from providing farmers with sample contracts that have fair terms and pricing.

Farmer and consumer advocates will not give up the battle to prevent the rapacious meat industry from destroying family farms and the future for a sustainable food system. The next farm bill must ensure that farmers are paid fairly and prevent meatpacking and food processing companies from running roughshod over farmers and consumers. It’s time for those who talk about the market with reverence, but who support non-competitive practices, to stop being hypocrites. Our coalition is hopping mad and don’t think for a minute we are going to let Big Meat and complicit politicians get away with this outrage.

Not a lot of people know much about the Food & Farm Bill, which normally comes up for congressional review and reauthorization every five years. And yet, it is the primary piece of legislation that determines our nation’s food and agricultural policies from production to distribution at an annual budget of $57 billion or $284 billion over five years (2008 figures). In this new era, where citizens have shed their complacency or fear to take on the monolithic structures of government and corporate power, a small group of Kalamazoo, Michigan food activists and professionals have decided to begin studying and understanding the Food & Farm Bill so that they can talk to and influence policymakers, two of whom will play a key role in this year’s appropriations.Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow is chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, which has jurisdiction over agriculture programs, nutrition programs, and rural development. Rep. Fred Upton of the Sixth District (southwestern Michigan), is a member of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, a.k.a. the Super Committee, which is charged with issuing a formal recommendation on how to reduce the deficit by at least $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.

The coalition also wants to build a healthier, more food-secure Kalamazoo County by determining what local food-oriented groups have in common and how they can share their resources. Their first meeting was held on Thursday, November 10 at the Kalamazoo Public Library.

Chris Dilley, People's Food Co-Op

“We want to start a conversation about the Food & Farm Bill regarding its funding, farming, and access policies,” said Chris Dilley, general manager of the People’s Food Co-Op and one of six initiators of the coalition. ”It is one of the areas to be reviewed by the Super Committee to expedite the legislative process a little differently,” he said. “It normally takes two to three years to write and appropriate each five-year Food & Farm Bill. “Nearly all of the money under the current 2008 Food & Farm Bill was to be spent on four areas: nutrition (67 percent), farm commodity support (15 percent), conservation (9 percent), and crop insurance (8 percent), according to last December’s Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.

“Of the $284 billion in projected total five-year net outlays for programs under the farm bill—including revenue and cost-offset provisions in the bill—about $189 billion was expected to support the cost of food stamps and certain other nutrition assistance programs, $42 billion was expected to support commodity crops, $24 billion was expected to support mandatory conservation programs, and $22 billion was expected to crop insurance,” said the CRS report.

“Several programs are at risk of being cut off in the Super Committee’s deliberations,” said Donna McClurkan, a coalition representative of the Michigan Farmers Market Association. “Nutrition is the biggest chunk and it includes SNAP benefits (food stamps) for poor people. However, access to food is an issue for all people. Conservation is another where we’ll likely see cuts.”

The Food & Farm Bill also determines what food is served in school cafeterias and the level of support farmers receive for sustainable and organic farming, a big issue for the coalition. McClurkan added that the Food & Farm Bill first appeared during the 1930’s Depression to protect farmers, pricing, and land but that it has morphed into providing compensation for commodity crop producers. The 684-page document is very unwieldy to handle so she referred people to two sources that help explain it:

A Web site by Connecting Food and Tech Innovator.

A video with Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, who discusses how massive subsides are paid to industrial farmers and how citizen groups can help advocate and improve this important legislation.

The group is guided by principles in the Michigan Good Food Charter, which has 226 statewide signatories of organizations and individuals who seek to provide a food system that is healthy, green, fair, and affordable to all. “Michigan is well-poised to influence food and farm policy in this country,” said McClurkan. “It has a rich and diverse agricultural heritage.”

Michigan grows over 150 different crops, second only to California. It has a first-class land grant university, greenhouses, good soil, fresh water, community-supported agriculture (CSA), and small farmers. “This is energy we can rally around,” she said. After a brief overview of the coalition’s mission and purpose, participants were divided into four groups to talk briefly about major aspects of the Food & Farm Bill:  (1) Food System Infrastructure, (2) Local Foods in Institutions, (3) Farms- Resources-Environment-Conservation, (4) Food Access and Vulnerable People.

At the wrap-up it was decided to broaden community participation, plan some public activities, and invite local political officials to its discussions. Other leaders of the coalition included Paul Stermer of Fair Food Matters, Phyllis Hepp of Kalamazoo Loaves and Fishes, Ken Dahlberg of the Michigan Land Trust, Mike Rowe of Bronson Hospital. Among the 45 participants attending were farmers, college students, food advocates, dietitians, food service professionals, MSU Extension, and health care providers.

Originally published on The Huffington Post