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.

Last Friday, August 27, USDA and the Department of Justice hosted the fourth in a series of historic workshops on corporate concentration and lack of competition in agriculture; this time the topic was livestock. With more than 500 ranchers, farmers, workers, and concerned consumers turning out for an evening public forum and an estimated 2,000 people in the audience the next day for the official hearing, it was a chance to generate some long overdue public attention on the vital issue of who is in charge of our food supply.

Four companies process 83 percent of U.S. beef—that’s four out of every five beef cattle. It’s the same story with pork, where four companies process 66 percent of the pigs. This type of market domination leads to price manipulation that discriminates against small-scale farmers and ranchers, increased risk of food contamination, and the continued loss of small farms throughout rural America.

This is what the livestock hearing was all about: a chance to air these grievances to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. I was there to represent Food & Water Watch and we teamed-up with groups like the Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) and Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF), who rallied their members to attend the hearings.

In his opening remarks, Vilsack said he was “deeply concerned” about the impact consolidation is having on rural America and if the number of meat processors, feedlots, and producers continues to shrink, “consumers will suffer as well.” Unfortunately, consumers are already taking a hit in their pocketbooks, health, and ability to have real options to choose from when it comes to buying food.

That last one is something that’s really been driven home recently–that consumers are impacted by consolidation too. When a handful of giant meat companies dominate the market, they make the decisions about how, where our food is raised–and by whom. These decisions do matter. Issues like using hormones and antibiotics to raise livestock, or feeding them genetically modified corn are too important to be left to the four agribusiness giants that control the meat industry. As the recent recall of eggs has shown, if a large processor compromises on food safety, the risk they choose to take affects huge numbers of people and just because there are a lot of different labels on the packages, doesn’t mean those products actually come from lots and lots of different producers.

The question everyone is asking now is: What’s next?

A hearing in Washington, D.C. in December will be the culmination of this series, and the topic is the consolidation of retail, an important driver of the bad economics that have changed our food system–literally from farm to fork. After this final hearing, we need USDA and DOJ to take everything they’ve learned over the course of this year and make real change. Hopefully, they will move a lot faster than the agency’s track record to date.

Congress enacted the Packers & Stockyards Act in 1921 to address market manipulation, price fixing, and other unfair practices in the meatpacking industry.  But almost 90 years later, the USDA has never really enforced it. The 2008 Farm Bill spelled out how the USDA should apply the law’s provisions to livestock markets–they basically instructed the agency to define what is unfair.  Once they define what is unfair, then the agency can finally take action against the companies who engage in unfair practices. Finally, this June, USDA proposed a rule to define how they can use this almost 90-year-old law.  Predictably, the meat industry reacted strongly, unleashing a wave of criticism on the Hill, in the ag media, and at the hearing in Fort Collins last week.

We now need to make sure USDA follows through and finishes this long overdue rule.  It’s something the agency can do without waiting for the hearing process to end, and it would be a huge first step toward addressing the challenges faced by independent farmers and ranchers that we heard about in Fort Collins last week.  You can tell USDA not to waste any time and finish the rule on fair livestock marketing practices.

The Senators accuse USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan of diverting urgently needed funds from rural communities in favor of: 1) “specialty crops” (the government’s term for fruits, nuts, and vegetables, of which the USDA recommends each of us eat at least five servings a day); and 2) small growers and organic farmers (who the Senators stereotype as hobby producers “whose customers generally consist of affluent patrons at urban farmers markets.”)

They conclude that:

“American families and rural farmers are hurting in today’s economy, and it’s unclear to us how propping up the urban locavore markets addresses their needs. Given our nation’s crippling budgetary crisis, we also believe the federal government cannot afford to spend precious rural development funds on feel-good measures which are completely detached from the realities of production agriculture.”

The not so subtle subtext of this letter is that to be a “real” farmer, you must be engaged in “production agriculture.” One can only assume this means corn, cotton, wheat, rice, and soybean production—the five primary commodity crops grown across hundreds of millions of acres in factory fields, propped up by the lion’s share of $15-plus billion in yearly USDA farm bill payments. In their view, the small producers benefitting from the Know Your Farmer program are not just do-gooders raising organic heirlooms for elite urbanites. They’re sucking away subsidies that should be going to the nation’s real farmers. Never mind that there are now more than 5,000 farmers markets across the country; or that an average of 10 million Americans shop at one on any given Saturday during the harvest season; or that farming organically is extremely hard and valuable work.

Here’s the bottom line. The Know Your Farmer program has spent a reported $65 million total so far with plans to invest another up to another $1 billion in loans from the stimulus program. This is peanuts compared with the $60-plus billion in USDA commodity subsidies that production growers presently receive over a five-year period.

Since Senator Chambliss is the ranking minority member of the Agriculture Committee, he and his fellow scribes must be aware that the U.S. is now considering paying Brazilian cotton growers $147.3 million this year because of former production agriculture subsidies that were in violation of World Trade Organization rules. You read that right––Brazilian farmers. The Wall Street Journal recently decried this as madness.

Such divisive political framing sets clear distinctions for how we talk about farmers, food, and our agriculture and nutrition policy. It might also backfire by fueling the fires of public opinion that have been rallying around healthy food production and raging against USDA subsidy programs. It is obvious to an increasing number of citizens and legislators that these programs:

1) divert billions of dollars to commodity agribusinesses whether they have actually suffered losses or not, whether they grow crops or not, with few funding caps, and few social or environmental mandates that would provide a public benefit to taxpayers in return;

2) support industrial crops that are more suited for animal feed, processed foods, and biofuels rather than a healthy, diverse diet;

3) flood the market with cheap, processed ingredients that contribute to a growing crisis of obesity and other diet-related epidemics.

Are these the feel-good measures McCain, Chambliss, and Roberts want us to get excited about?

Instead, they single out a long-overdue and modest attempt to repair links in broken local food chains and educate the public about the importance of knowing your farmer and where your food comes from. Revitalizing local food production can impact the every day lives of citizens––Food Stamp recipients, for example, who can use their Electronic Benefits Transfer cards to buy organic produce at farmers markets; or public school kids that enjoy fruits and vegetables grown by productive farmers in their areas; or small livestock producers that can now process their pasture raised meats with the aid of mobile slaughtering units.

Why don’t the Senators want us to know our farmers or care about where our food comes from? Maybe it’s because they are clinging to the decades-old “Get Big or Get Out” story line that defines how the majority of the country’s food is presently produced. This is the tragic story of 50 years of USDA policies that swept millions of family farmers from the American landscape and gave agribusiness the unimaginable powers they wield today over our entire food system.

Knowing your farmer and knowing your food will become the primary story of the next fifty years of food production. It is the story of saving local agriculture and local farmers before they disappear altogether. In saving regional food production, we become healthier, more engaged, more secure citizens. With quite a bit of leadership, and a comparatively miniscule budget, Vilsack and Merrigan are actually trying to restore relationships and rewrite the stories of decentralized modern farming.

If Senators McCain, Chambliss, and Roberts cared about the health and vitality of rural communities they might be better served to embrace the inevitable rediversification of the food supply. It certainly deserves its fair share—and then some.

Originally published on the Huffington Post

Governments, seeing biotechnology as a huge economic engine, embraced the technology. University research was shifted almost exclusively to biotech crops. GM was the wave of the future, bankers encouraged planting GM crops to guarantee a “profitable harvest”. Crop insurance premiums were lower for farmers planting GM. Everyone bought the story.

In a recent opinion piece in the Wisconsin State Journal, former Secretary of Agriculture, John Block, touted the virtues of GM crops and credited them with producing higher yields, lower pesticide use and solving the ever growing problem of world hunger. Current Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, plugged GM at last week’s USDA Outlook Conference. Problem is, the promises are just good stories. The believers are missing the truth.

Weeds have become resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup and insects became resistant to the toxins produced by their GM corn. As GM was planted on more acres, overall pesticide use went up, not down. A University of Kansas study found that GM crops actually had lower yields than their conventional counterparts. Even as the problems of GM crops become more apparent, the cost of GM seed continues to rise. Many farmers are backing away from GM, but finding non-GM seed is difficult, considering Monsanto controls roughly 90% of the corn and soy genetics in the U.S.

With corn and soy well under their control, Monsanto now hopes to gain USDA approval for Roundup resistant alfalfa. A perennial crop, alfalfa is the fourth most widely grown crop in the U.S. and again, Monsanto sees profit. The contamination of non-GM and organic alfalfa, the potential for further reduction of bee populations, among other problems, seem of little consequence.

Feeding the world? GM will not do it, even former Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro admitted, “The commercial industrial technologies that are used in agriculture today to feed the world… are not inherently sustainable.”

Still, Monsanto bills itself as a leader in global sustainability, ignoring the fact that true sustainability cannot be achieved when your driving goal is the next quarterly profit report. The world stands a better chance of feeding itself by using and improving upon farming methods [PDF] that have been relied upon for centuries. In Africa, if indigenous crops, long adapted to their environment, were put forward as the solution to hunger, studies show that the population could have adequate food supplies and at times, cash income from sales of surplus crops.

So, why do so many continue have faith in the story, when the evidence is against them? GM crops do not yield as promised. A USDA report [PDF] shows that farmers actually loose income by planting GM crops.

Seed costs are unreasonably high, as are the fertilizers and chemicals that are absolutely required to grow GM. Researchers continue to reject GM foods citing concerns of their serious health risks.

GM will not feed the world [PDF] The GM story as told by the Biotech giants paints the future as a happy and prosperous place: Farmers are profitable, everyone is well fed and the environment is protected.

The real GM story is not so happy. It is a story of market control, environmental degradation and deceived farmers and consumers.

Of the 50 or so food and farm conferences I’ve attended in the last several years, the Drake Forum for America’s New Farmers: Policy Innovations & Opportunities held March 4-5 in Washington, D.C., rises to the top. Actual farmers — not just commodity crop growers but innovative “agripreneurs” like Xe Susane Moua from Minnesota and Rosanna Bauman from Kansas — got to tell the USDA what they needed to survive.

But were policymakers listening? Many of the invited speakers with a political row to hoe seemed to be concerned about one segment of farmers in particular. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack kicked off the conference with the message that to preserve and grow rural America, which is the heart and soul of this country, we need to stop thinking about big versus small and start thinking more inclusively. He shared the usual dismal statistics — the increased unemployment in these areas, the lower per-capita income, and how more than 57% of rural counties have shrunk. All to say, what we’ve been doing to conserve and grow rural America isn’t working.

Among the alternative strategies the administration has launched recently is the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative, intended to shore up the shrinking numbers of farmers. There are tremendous opportunities to build on local and regional supply chains through connecting local products to local consumption, Vilsack noted, but then quickly followed with “it’s not the only answer, though.”

Bill Even, South Dakota’s Secretary of Agriculture, picked up that thread. He began by asking the Republicans in the room to raise their hand: a paltry 5 out of 200 shot up. After praising the USDA’s Know Your Farmer initiative for helping to reconnect society to the soil, he got to the message that he repeated throughout his 10-minute speech: “Don’t disparage one type of agriculture” — by which he meant conventional, large-scale industrial “production” agriculture. Quoting his mother, he said that “blowing out someone else’s candle doesn’t make yours burn brighter,” and echoing Vilsack, he ended with how “this is a big tent for all types of agriculture.”

I presented at the Drake Forum on behalf of beginning farmers (along with Zoe Bradbury, a young farmer and Grist contributor) and to share how Farm to School programs offer a new, stable market for farmers and an opportunity to teach agriculture literacy to youth. After Dan Durheim from the American Farm Bureau Federation made comments along the same lines as Even and Vilsack, I felt it necessary to make a pointed comment to the closing plenary:

There seems to be a common thread throughout this panel, that started off with the Secretary’s welcoming remarks that there’s plenty of room at the USDA and in food and farm country for all types of agriculture, and to not be down on certain practices. But if we had done that in the 1860s, we never would have abolished slavery because slavery “worked” for plantation owners. When atrazine is creating infertile rural populations, it’s not about “blowing out a candle” — it’s about putting out a fire.

I found the chutzpah to make that comment because I had Even’s children in mind; he had mentioned his 16-year-old son in his remarks. Being a Midwesterner, however, I felt the need to tell him later that I wasn’t attacking him personally, just the logic he used to come to what I thought was a short-sighted conclusion, to which he responded, “yeah, you kind of threw me under the bus.”

Even had started his presentation with, “To understand where someone stands, you need to know where they stood,” so I outlined my own rural conservative roots and told him I come from a farming family. I wanted him to see that I am not just some liberal academic pointing fingers at farmers, but that we share in many ways a common background from which I have diverged. While yes, there “is room for” all types of agriculture, I believe we must acknowledge that some types of agriculture are broken — making us and our land sick, and draining our rural communities of youth.

Even said he agreed with me. That if agriculture doesn’t make sense “economically, scientifically, or socially, then it has to change.”

He said he was meeting Tuesday in South Dakota with a group called “Ag Unity,” which he implied is to bring opposing groups working in their proverbial rural silos together. But the only description I can find of Ag Unity is for “an umbrella group of some 20 agriculture-related groups” that sounds a lot like they’re all hailing from the same side of the commodity-focused production fence.

Phrases like “big tent” and “ag unity” make for good speeches but bad policy when it comes to the next generation of farmers. Real unity is about finding common ground for “mother nature and the workers, the reapers and the threshers, the seedlings and the raindrops, the bakers and the truckers, the ranchers and the farmers, the butchers and inspectors, the cows and special cheffers,” as the fifth graders from Elysian Charter School sang in “Who Put That Burger on Your Plate?” (the winning video in last year’s “Real Food Is” winning Farm to School contest). And that’s going to take leadership that’s not afraid to level the growing field through targeted procurement and research funding.

Originally Published on Grist

Photo: cwwycoff1 via Flickr

In his State of the Union address last Wednesday, President Obama covered a lot of ground. His primary goal was to focus on job creation, but he left out one important occupation–in a nation where the average farmer is 57 years old, we need farmers. He mentioned the obesity crisis, noting that the First Lady would be dedicating her efforts there, and then made this comment about doubling our trade in goods and commodity crops in the next five years:

To help meet this goal, we’re launching a National Export Initiative that will help farmers and small businesses increase their exports, and reform export controls consistent with national security. We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are.  If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores. But realizing those benefits also means enforcing those agreements so our trading partners play by the rules. And that’s why we’ll continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea and Panama and Colombia.

He has thus far stuck to his word. According to the USDA, $234.5 million is being given to 70 U.S. trade organizations to help promote American food and agricultural products abroad (you can see who this money is going to, from the Cotton Council International, which received a whopping $20 million, to trade reps for perishables like the California Prune Board, which received nearly $3 million). The Farm Bureau is thrilled that this administration is poised to aggressively pursue trade agreement negotiations with other countries as it clearly benefits big producers. So is Republican senator and erstwhile Bush Jr. Secretary of Agriculture nominee Mike Johanns from Nebraska, who had this to say:

With unemployment at 10 percent, we should be pursuing every possible avenue to promote good opportunities for job growth and business investment. Our businesses, farmers, and ranchers produce the highest quality products in the world and deserve an opportunity to compete on a level playing field.

The problem is that places like South Korea have expressed that they don’t want our goods if they contain hormones, antibiotics or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Worse, though, is that our products are not traded on a “level playing field,” but instead are sold at an unfairly low prices in developing countries, made falsely cheap by our subsidy system. Developed world subsidies have been the prime barrier to negotiations at the Doha Development Round trade talks, which began in 2001 and continue to this day with no agreement–which many consider a victory for developing nations. And while Obama seeks to cut subsidies in his budget, it will be an uphill battle, especially without a stricter definition for who is a farmer.

Ben Lilliston, Communications Director for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy had this to say about the administration’s plan for increasing trade:

The goal of doubling commodity trade is not feasible or wise. This emphasis on export markets is odd given that it runs directly counter to a lot of the Administration’s work to support local food systems. And expanding exports would definitely come at the expense of local food systems. The reality is that we’ve tried to expand agriculture exports for the last 50 years. That goal represents a lot of what is wrong in U.S. farm policy: a push to lower commodity prices–to make us more competitive internationally; an emphasis on just a few commodity crops; and support for large-scale operations over smaller, more diversified farms. An emphasis on exports has benefited multinational agribusiness firms, but not farmers either in the U.S., or in other countries. U.S. agribusiness companies have a several decade record of exporting commodity crops like corn, soybeans, rice and wheat at prices below the cost of production–a practice known as dumping. The result has been devastating to poor countries trying to develop their own food production. The loss of food production in many poor countries is a major contributor to growing hunger around the world. What makes the proposal so strange is that the Administration has to know this is not possible. Even agribusiness companies–who I’m sure love the proposal–know it’s not possible to reach.

Here is what trade agreements looks like in action: as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), U.S. corn sold cheaper than it could be produced, putting millions of Mexican farmers out of business–simultaneously quashing the diversity of the corn varieties and genetically contaminating locally grown corn with GMOs. As a result, these jobless farmers have made their way across the border to pick fruits and vegetables in America (often in slave-like conditions), or work mind-numbing jobs in slaughterhouses. But NAFTA’s destructive legacy runs deeper still. Last October, Mexico was ordered to pay the corn-processing giant Cargill a $77 million dollar fine for imposing a tax on high fructose corn syrup in an attempt to protect their domestic sugar farmers.

Vilsack’s op-ed focused on rebuilding rural America. However, when dollars leave the farm community headed to corporate multinationals for seed, chemicals and equipment, and the products produced on the farm are not food but commodities that then leave the community too, how can broadband and increased trade be anything more than band-aids for rural America? In the face of facts like climate change, to which agriculture contributes at least 30% of carbon emissions, decreased water availability and uncertain oil resources, trade veils the real problems facing the food system. What we need is balance: balanced opportunities in rural areas, a balanced ecosystem with diversified crops that feed local populations, and a balanced number of farmers to knit that community together. More farmers means more jobs, more stewardship of the land, and better quality food–and as a result, a thriving rural economy.

Up next, watch for the administration to start pressuring Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) to release his hold on Islam Siddiqui, Obama’s nominee for Chief Agricultural Negotiator, who’s pesticide lobbying past is not behind the pause. Indeed, who else but a Big Ag lobbyist could they get to take on such a mission seemingly bound for disaster?

During a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, President Obama gave himself a letter grade of B+ for his first year in office. But all the same, an ad hoc consortium of food safety professionals, food safety advocates, and food safety writers say he deserves some coal in his Christmas stocking. Food Safety News, the best online publication for all aspects of the safety of the global food supply, is running a list of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice this year in food safety. The list was created after polling those mentioned above, including your intrepid blogger. There was an overwhelming consensus that large chunks of coal should be deposited in the Christmas stockings of both President Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for the failure to name someone to lead USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, which monitors meat, poultry and eggs.

Sure, the President and Sec. Vilsack inherited huge problems…but after almost a year in office–and multiple Class I (you could die) recalls for contaminated beef–where’s the FSIS Under Secretary? Perhaps Santa himself will be delivering a sprightly, smarty-pants elf from Toyland, to monitor the nation’s food supply in 2010? Because elves might be the only individuals who can pass the conflict-of-interest test…which is the “official” reason no one has been appointed as Under Secretary for Food Safety. The President also gets some coal for attempting to let free trade trump food safety issues, and for his lunch visit to the aptly named Ray’s Hell Burger, which had been cited for food safety violations for under cooking its burgers. The FDA is also awarded coal on the naughty list, because it’s been engaging in the dubious activities cited below, and the entire Senate warrants mention, too.

The “Nice List” will be published tomorrow–and the President and Sec. Vilsack are on that list, too–but here’s the Naughty List:

NAUGHTY: President Obama for NOT appointing a new permanent U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Food Safety. ALSO NAUGHTY: USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack for making excuses about it. (See “FSIS Remains Leaderless,” Oct. 16, 2009)

NAUGHTY: The Senate for being too slow on health care reform to pass meaningful–and decades overdue–food safety legislation before the Holidays. (Ed. note: The House passed food safety legislation in July)

NAUGHTY: Secretary Vilsack and White House for trying, in the name of free trade, to roll over Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s (D-Conn) efforts to assure that the US does not permit poultry processors from shipping raw poultry meat from the US to China for processing and shipping back to the US for sale until USDA has determined that China’s inspection program is equivalent to ours. (See “Deal Reached on Poultry Imports,” Sep 27, 2009)

NAUGHTY: The FDA staff that keeps appealing to consumer advocates, “don’t set us up to fail,” when consumer advocates push for more inspection. They never say, “help us get the law and resources we need to protect people.”


NAUGHTY: J. Patrick Boyle of the American Meat Institute for trying to dynamite the Senate food safety bill even though it doesn’t have anything to do with the meat industry.

NAUGHTY: State public health department officials attending the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference in October who put industry profits ahead of public health.

NAUGHTY: Weston A. Price Foundation for more denial of outbreaks and giving consumers false information about raw milk safety.

NAUGHTY: FDA for its failure to control ridiculous health claims like Kellogg’s claiming that Cocoa Krispies are a “Smart Choice” because it “helps support your child’s immunity.”

NAUGHTY: Some raw milk, small and sustainable agriculture advocates who confused the entire food safety debate by making and circulating false claims about the food safety bills. It really is about food safety, and is not a gigantic conspiracy by Monsanto to wipe out organic and backyard farms!

NAUGHTY: Washington State University for removing Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” from the Common Reading Program. (The book was restored after monetary interventions by Bill Marler.)

NAUGHTY: The FDA for caving to political pressure and backing down on oyster regulations. (See “Under Pressure, FDA Puts Oyster Policy On Hold,” Nov 14, 2009)

NAUGHTY: President Obama and Vice-President Biden for ordering undercooked hamburgers for the Press Corps at a DC restaurant with less than stellar inspection reports.

NAUGHTY: Stewart Parnell, President of Peanut Corporation of America, for asking for nearly $1 million from his bankrupt business for his own criminal defense fund after shipping peanuts his own tests showed were contaminated with Salmonella that sickened over 700 and killed at least nine. (See “PCA Executives To Divide $875,000,” Dec 11, 2009)

NAUGHTY: FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations and the U.S. District Attorney in Georgia for moving so slowly with the criminal investigations of the Peanut Corporation of America and its executives, including Stewart Parnell. (See “One Year Later, Still no Charges for PCA,” Nov 07, 2009)

Originally posted on Obama Foodorama.

“The story we learned about over the weekend is unacceptable and tragic. We all know we can and should do more to protect the safety of the American people and the story in this weekend’s paper will continue to spur our efforts to reduce the incidence of E. coli O157:H7. Over the last eight months since President Obama took office, USDA has been aggressive in its efforts to improve food safety, and has been an active partner in establishing and contributing to President Obama’s Food Safety Working Group.

Bah, humbug. What’s your plan, Tom?

• Launched an initiative to cut down E. Coli contamination (including in particular contamination from E. Coli O157:H7) and as part of that initiative, stepped-up meat facility inspections involving greater use of sampling to monitor the products going into ground beef.
• Appointed a chief medical officer within USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service to reaffirm its role as a public health agency.
• Issued draft guidelines for industry to further reduce the risk of O157 contamination.
• Started testing additional components of ground beef, including bench trim, and issuing new instructions to our employees asking that they verify that plants follow sanitary practices in processing beef carcasses.
• Designed the Public Health Information System (PHIS) in response to lessons learned in past outbreaks.

“USDA is also looking at ways to enhance traceback methods and will initiate a rulemaking in the near future to require all grinders, including establishments and retail stores, to keep accurate records of the sources of each lot of ground beef.”

Double “Bah, humbug.” As I said on Twitter just now, this is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic sort of stuff. As long as the industry is able to set the terms of its own regulations and do things like maintain bizarro “trade secrets” protections on key elements of our food safety system (not to mention base their business on corn rather than grass), real reform is impossible. Back to the drawing board, Tom.

h/t Bill Marler. Originally published on Beyond Green

On a recent Sunday evening, nearly a hundred and fifty people decided to drive out to Brentwood, Ca to have dinner and enjoy the harvest hospitality at the Brookside Farm.  Farmer Welling Tom was busy running about – harvesting fruit for the small vegetable stand set up on the edge of the orchard where his mom Anne would sell some pears before being called over to help serve the grilled fish and meats that accompanied their local bounty.

Far from being a polished corporate event, we sat on hay bales in the orchard as we talked and feasted.  Chefs from around the Bay Area provided dishes to share, mingling with customers Welling and Anne had met at the various farmers markets they attend.  The true feeling of local community was evident in every bite, every conversation.

When people try to talk about the value of local food – the value that doesn’t necessarily relate to dollars or sense – this is it.  There can be no monetary value placed on evenings like these; they can’t be created by marketing budgets or new research and development programs or new strains of genetically modified wheat.  Evenings like this 0ccur when a community comes together to celebrate a family choosing to work the soil they’ve lived on for 35 years by hand.

And yet, this is also part of the problem.  Surrounding Brookside Farm’s 10 acres is an ever-encroaching suburban sprawl, as century-old fruit and nut orchards are ripped out in favor of mini-mansions and big box stores.  As the Bay Area housing market heated up in years past, development roared ahead at a feverish level as farmers were offered larger and larger sums to sell their land for new houses and malls.  Sadly, the market fell even faster when the bubble burst last winter, and now many of those new houses stand empty.  But the deeper tragedy is not the lost property value.  It is that the orchards and open farmland that preceded these empty houses can not easily be replaced.

This very issue – farmland preservation – was the topic of a recent letter sent by the American Farmland Trust (AFT) to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.  “Protecting farmland for future agricultural use is of utmost importance to every citizen of the United States” the letter reads.  The letter brought attention to the federal Interim Final Rule regarding the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program (FRPP).

A statement released by the AFT reads:

“The states who signed the letter represent over 70 percent of all the acreage protected under state farmland protection programs,” says Bob Wagner, Senior Director of Farmland Protection Programs for AFT. “The states recognize that the federal government has been a key partner in helping protect farmland since 1995, and they are offering improvements to the FRPP program so that it can be most effective and efficient.”

This issue could not be more important, and the time for increased preservation needs to be now.  As the economy has slowed, the cost of keeping land protected for agricultural use is a fraction of what it was last year – and this price will only increase as the economy recovers.

The demand for development never ends, and at each turn the message is, “We just need a little more housing, but you can save the rest.”  But then the next year, it’s “Just a little more for a small mall we need to build,”  and then “Well, we need to build….”  and so on.  Meanwhile, all forms of open space disapears and we are left with the proverbial “asphalt jungle.”

Reflecting on these issues, Chef / Owner Peter Chastain of Prima Restaurant in Walnut Creek recently recalled a day, perhaps 30 years ago, when you could look east from the Berkeley hills and see only orchards and ranches and rolling green fields.  Today, all that has been replaced by suburban development.

Thoughtfully, Chef Peter said “Now, our job as cooks is to rediscover the connections to the land through our work, and in the process try to awaken people’s awareness of those connections through the food we serve.”

Connecting to the land through our food – it’s the most natural thing in the world.  But the land needs to be there to connect with, and that’s something worth protecting.

For example, did you know that in 2006, 83.5% of beef-packing was controlled by 4 companies, same goes for 66% of pork packing, 58.5% of the chicken processing and 55% of turkey processing. Similar numbers exist for the seed companies, the grain processors bringing animal feed to feedlots and HFCS to most of the packaged foods in the supermarket, and the supermarket retailers themselves. Numbers this high indicate a lack of competition.

For more information on trusts in the agricultural sector, please take a look at a recent post I wrote on the subject.

And also, the Justice Department invites interested parties to submit comments on what should be discussed and considered at these meetings by December 31st, 2009 to: agriculturalworkshops@usdoj.gov Agendas and schedules for the early 2010 meetings will be forthcoming on the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division website: www.usdoj.gov/atr

h/t Tom Laskawy of Beyond Green and Grist