Civil Eats

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. Read More

Last month, the University of Minnesota caused a stir when it decided to postpone the release of a film that focuses on the effect agriculture is having on U.S. waterways from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Troubled Waters–a film directed by Larkin McPhee for the University’s Bell Museum of Natural History, part of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences–was held up, according to University Relations (the university’s PR office) to “allow time for a review of the film’s scientific content.” Yet ace reporting by Molly Preismeyer at the Twin Cities Daily Planet revealed that the film’s team had already thoroughly fact-checked the film, and followed the review process utilized by the PBS science program NOVA. Attempts to get the university to outline a standard procedure for research-based films were not fruitful. Then the story shifted once again when Dean Allen Levine told Minnesota Public Radio that the film “vilifies agriculture.”

Even though the University caved under pressure and allowed the scheduled premiere of the film to take place on October 3 and on October 5 on a local television station, the story of Troubled Waters has developed into a debate on academic freedom and the role a university’s donors should play in its research priorities. Read More

On Friday in an unprecedented move with the USDA, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into the farm business. The investigation began a 7-state probe into how Monsanto treats its customers, our nation’s farmers.

I recently had the honor of presenting for our nation’s top producing farmers in Chicago at the Top Producer Seminar, sponsored by Cargill and Pioneer. I was scheduled to present with Monsanto’s VP of Sustainable Yield, but a few days before the presentation was told that he had moved to China and that there was no one to take his place. I then had the privilege of spending the afternoon in an incredibly insightful discussion with the farmers, many of whom are Monsanto’s customers, who are remarkable fathers, grandfathers, and businessmen. Read More

“And it means ensuring that the policies being shaped at the Departments of Agriculture and Interior are designed to serve not big agribusiness or Washington influence peddlers, but the family farmers and the American People.”  President-elect Barack Obama, December 17, 2008, Chicago, Illinois.

The message was one of hope, the words of a newly elected President echoing the Populism of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the promise of John F. Kennedy.  It stopped there, the delivery of the promise fell short. Read More

Author Michael Pollan is no stranger to controversy. He has broadened the discussion of what we eat, where and how it is grown, big vs. small, organic farming vs. conventional. When he speaks some in the audience will love him, some will not. Read More

The Global Harvest Initiative, founded by agribusiness interests DuPont, Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, and John Deere, will meet today beginning at 9:00 am for a daylong symposium at which the focus is said to be on finding “ways to sustainably double agricultural output to meet rapidly growing global demand as anticipated by the United Nations.” Are big corporations finally seeking to do what is right by the nearly billion people who are currently food insecure in the world, or is this another instance of corporate green washing bought into by our politicians? Indeed, this so-called initiative needs a bit of parsing. Read More

Beyond the thirty-year experiment in free-market ideology having been judged a failure in financial markets, one thing is clear: as Kerry Trueman reminded us in a recent post, unfettered capitalism has also been bad for our health, and indeed the safety of our food.

Last week, The New York Times reported that this administration has said it will take a harder line on anti-trust legislation, in diverse sectors of the economy including agriculture.  Perhaps its premature to tell what this will look like, but enforcing the laws that we already have on the books would be a great start to building a better food system. Read More

Three recent news articles about manipulative agribusiness actions have me almost giddy with excitement. After years of having agribusiness dictate the direction of the food system, it has now taken a reactionary stance. Read More

Our very bizzy Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, has partnered with the Disney corporation to use the characters from Pinocchio to promote the USDA’s Food Pyramid, as part of his goal to reduce childhood obesity in America. New television, radio, print, outdoor, and online ads have been created by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment to remind families of the value of healthy eating and exercise. But Bizzy V’s trip to Fairytale Village is one of his more misguided policy plans. (Yes, that’s Ag Secretary Vilsack in the pic, in a private moment…) Read More

For months, I’d been planning to see the French television documentary The World According to Monsanto (Le Monde selon Monsanto, also to be released in spring 2009 in book form), made for the French-German network Arte by the journalist Marie-Monique Robin, which premiered in France March 11, 2008.  Having plenty of reasons to despise Monsanto (Agent Orange, PCBs, global food domination) I thought that this film would only confirm what I knew about the giant agribusiness firm, which controls between 70%-100% of the GM market share for various crops.  Well, I was wrong.  There was more to fear, and seeing it all on film made it more concrete. Read More

This is the second and final portion of my interview with Dan Imhoff, the author of Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to the Farm Bill, a book about the outcome of the 2008 Farm Bill and what we can do to effect change despite business as usual in Washington. He will be taking part in Slow Food Nation’s Food for Thought panel series, and is co-author of the Vision Statement for Agriculture and Food Policy for the 21st Century, being presented at SFN August 28th.

Part 1 of this interview can be found here.

Paula: What would a different, better version of the Farm Bill look like?

Dan: First of all, farmers would have to be enrolled in some kind of stewardship program before they can get anything at all, and they should be rewarded for how well they farm, instead of how much in commodities that they are putting into the pipeline. And why direct giveaways [for things like waste mitigation]? I mean these are big corporations, why can’t they be loans, why don’t they have to be paid back? I mean they are just complying with the Clean Air and the Clean Water Act, these are things that, if they are treated as industries, which they really are, they would have to be doing with there own money. There has to be some kind of responsibility. Are you helping to preserve the land, maintain it so that we can pass it on to the next generation? Are we doing research, finding beneficial ways to grow crops, for when we are not going to be able to afford petroleum-based fertilizers? Are we starting to build the infrastructure for a regional food system we are going to desperately need when oil tops off at $500 per barrel? Are we rewarding farmers for growing a diversity of crops, actually contributing to producing healthier food that can be fed to the kids in our schools?

Paula: Do you see agribusiness lobbyists as the main obstacle to a fairer Farm Bill and a better system?

Dan: Agribusiness lobbyists and the inability to enforce the anti-trust laws that we already have on the books are two huge obstacles, absolutely. I would say there is a real lack of a vision, getting back to what you asked earlier about the objectives, I don’t think there are clear objectives for a healthy food and farming system like you might think, that there are “ten principles” that everyone who walks into the USDA looks at on the board and goes, “better food, better farmlands, healthier future for America.”

Paula: You discuss the industrial agriculture system as unsustainable in your book, Food Fight. Do you think it is possible to feed as many people that are on the planet without the use of industrial agriculture?

Dan: Yeah, I think increasingly, you see that there are some pretty good studies that say that it is the small, diverse systems that can either equally produce or out produce most industrial systems. I think we will increasingly see that the cost of maintaining those industrial systems, the fertilizers and long distances and all the chemical inputs [becoming] unaffordable. I would hope that regions all across the country are starting to have meetings to say that this is the kind of food system that we want, so in three years time, they can go to their elected representatives. Because that was really a big part of what was absent in the discussions this time, long term planning, region by region. I think extremely quickly we are going to have to have a far more regionally based production capacity. And I don’t think people are aware of just how quickly things can change. How quickly the cost of energy [and] severe storm events can influence the food and farming sector.

Paula: You are producing the Vision Statement for a new Food, Farm and Agriculture Policy, being presented at Slow Food Nation. Could you give us a taste of that proposal?

Dan: We will try to make the point that a healthy food and agriculture system is the basis of a secure country and a secure world. And the current system that we have is not sustainable, it is out of balance and it is breaking down. We can see that in the food riots, escalating food prices, and in parts of the country where they’ve re-plumed the hydrology to industrially farm corn so that [the land] can no longer absorb water in huge flood events. And I think that what we need is, I hope, some kind of vision that says it’s our duty, as citizens, as parents, as farmers, as eaters, to try to make the healthiest food system we can, that we can pass on to the next generation. One of the things that was severely absent in this Farm Bill was the voice of the medical community. The medical cost of the obesity crisis is four times what we are spending on the commodity programs. Just think if we started to think differently, if we started to think of healthy food as preventative medicine. Ultimately it’s going to save us costs in other areas. We should be investing in our health, first and foremost, because I think in the long run it will save us money and it will do so much more to help us to feel healthy as a nation.

Paula: What can the average citizen do?

Dan: Just learn as much as you can. Don’t let your representatives off the hook. Vote with your fork, eat like an activist, and just try as best as you can to bring your goals for the planet in line with your diet and how you vote and how you live your life.

Photo by Jan Tik