Klein refers several times to “rural subsidies,” once referring to the “raft of subsidies we devote to sustaining rural life.” But Klein does not explain what he means by “rural subsidies.” And when he quizzes Vilsack on what justifies subsidizing rural people, Vilsack doesn’t challenge him to unpack it.

That results in a critical gap in the conversation.

If by “rural subsidies” Klein means farm commodity subsidies, that should be isolated and taken head on. Klein is right to question and challenge the current structure of farm commodity subsidies. Current farm programs provide unlimited benefit to the largest farm operators.

It cannot be said, however, that these subsidies are devoted to sustaining rural life. In fact, the system is literally undermining the economic and social foundation of rural communities.

The subsidies accrue to only a small portion of the rural population. A 2007 report from the Center for Rural Affairs, Over Subsidizing and Under Investing, shows how badly skewed USDA investment is toward very large farm operators and away from investing in programs that build a future for all of rural America.

The report found that the USDA spent nearly twice as much to subsidize just the 20 largest farms in each of 13 leading farm states examined as it invested in rural-development programs to create economic opportunity
for the three million people living in 1,400 towns in the 20 most-struggling rural counties in the same 13 states.

Current policy encourages big farms to get even bigger. Fewer farmers means fewer people in rural America. As farms consolidate, the population in the countryside declines. As the farm population declines, small towns also decline as less farmers need supplies and services. Rather than sustaining rural life, the current farm commodity system subsidies the
decline of rural life.

All other USDA rural development programs combined (rural broadband, rural small business, value added market development, etc.) account for a mere a fraction of one percent of all USDA spending.

The Center for Rural Affairs is proposing a modest investment of $100 million per year for rural development in the 2012 farm bill. That would be a several-fold increase over current investment in non-farm rural development and would still represent less than one-half of one percent of farm spending allocated by the farm bill and one-sixth of one percent of total funding allocated by the farm bill.

In addition to attacks on the broken farm commodity system, it has also become popular to attack other investment in rural areas as unfair subsidies. Spending on roads in rural areas is a popular target. In a later post, Klein takes just that jab. But the argument there is not much stronger.

Certainly, we invest in roads located in rural areas. Those roads are used often by urban people driving from one urban center to another; the mere physical location of the road in a rural area says very little about who benefits.

We also invest in infrastructure in urban areas, including rather expensive airports, stadiums and rail lines. And there is an entire federal department dedicated to urban development.

But the entire debate quickly becomes vapid when viewed in these terms. I don’t begrudge New Yorkers or Chicagoans their infrastructure. And it does little good for them to begrudge my community’s basic infrastructure needs.

It is better to focus on the type of development and the sorts of values we should incentivize. We live in a nation that ought to invest in building strong communities and healthy and sustainable economies that benefit the people who live in them. Different communities have different needs.

Incentives that drive the consolidation of wealth and limit opportunity for everyday people ought be avoided. That is as true of farm commodity subsidies that accrue to people in rural areas as it is of misguided financial policy that enriches investors while leaving working class people in Philadelphia or Miami stuck in an unaffordable mortgage.

Incentives that create economic opportunity for everyday people and help us to become more sustainable ought to be supported and pursued. Again, that is as true of federal programs that support soil and water conservation on farms and wind power development in rural areas as it is of investment in mass transit it more urbanized communities.

In his final post on the topic, Klein expresses surprise at the debate his initial post has stirred. But it is not surprising. The underlying narrative that everyone should live in cities because that is most efficient or is what will make us richer or smarter is a neoliberal analysis that rests on too many unchallenged assumptions about what is best for people,
communities and our democracy.

If you eat beef, or take milk and sugar in your coffee (and even if you don’t), here is why you should care: The move could put organic foods at risk for contamination and make it more expensive.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has attempted to stave off further litigation and quell the mounting antagonism between farmers growing GM seed and organic farmers by proposing “co-existence” between the two.

Part of Vilsack’s plan for co-existence includes using buffers between organic and GM fields and even placing geographic restrictions on the growth of GM seeds. This is the first time such a discussion had been broached by the USDA. New York University professor and food movement leader Marion Nestle called the move a “breakthrough,” and we also ran an op-ed pushing for co-existence as the lesser of two evils here on Civil Eats.

But Vilsack’s co-existence plan seemed to put President Obama’s pro-business agenda at risk. In fact, David Axelrod put the kibosh on the idea with a bad pun, encouraging “everyone to ‘plow forward’ on a plan for genetically produced alfalfa,” according to Maureen Dowd.

Monsanto, the company behind 95 percent of GM sugarbeet seed and all of the GM alfalfa seed, had fought against the deal behind closed doors.

Worries were expressed about our biotech credibility abroad should we discuss any fallibility at home. But in a nod toward co-existence, Monsanto spokesman Tom Helscher told the AP on Monday, “Since the advent of biotech crops, both biotech and organic production have flourished. We have no reason to think that will not continue to be the case.” What Monsanto execs don’t mention publicly is that co-existence is not possible, and as patent holders to the gene traits in their GM seeds, they have the right to sue farmers whose fields become contaminated by these traits.

“Certainly, on a commercial-scale crop, over time, you are going to get contamination,” said Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The provisions [in the EIS] will certainly reduce contamination, and they may delay it to some extent, but they’re not going to prevent it.”

Aside from the transfer of genetic material through pollen, there are many other ways in which it has proven impossible to contain the risk of contamination. And unfortunately, there are plenty of real examples in which contamination has already happened.

There are well-documented cases with papaya in Hawaii, corn in Mexico, canola most recently in North Dakota, and creeping bentgrass, which pollinated grasses 13 miles away in Oregon. A test plot of a GM rice was even responsible for contaminating long grain varieties in five states in 2006, five years after Bayer CropScience had abandoned trials of its LL601 rice, costing the industry $2 billion.

In 1999, a corn variety called StarLink–which was not approved for human consumption–contaminated half of the Iowa corn harvest. Whether batches of corn meant for animal consumption were mixed with corn for human consumption on accident or through cross-pollination–we will never know exactly what happened. What we do know is that our current regulatory process has significant–in many cases, insurmountable–problems, and the concept of co-existence is merely a smoke screen that will create more of the same.

This is why deregulation has huge implications for organic farmers as well as consumers. The USDA does not test for contamination after deregulating a biotech crop. In the StarLink case, it was a non-profit group that found traces of the corn in taco shells. This means that the impetus will be on organic farmers to test their own crops, further increasing food prices. Worse, organic food could become more limited in availability if contamination becomes a widespread issue.

“Today, there are many committed consumers who want to know their farmer, feed their families wholesome dairy products, and be assured that their food isn’t contaminated by GMOs,” said Albert Straus, an organic dairy farmer from California who has spoken out against GM alfalfa. “If the organic feed supply for dairy cattle is contaminated with GMOs, farmers will no longer be able to offer truly organic milk to consumers, and everything we have worked to build will be compromised.” Straus Family Creamery has been voluntarily testing its feed for GMOs since 2006, and carries the Non-GMO Project Seal on its label.

In addition, organic farmers fear economic loses in export markets–places like the European Union and Japan, where products containing traces of GM foods are consistently rejected. In addition to risks in the field, it is not uncommon for organic crops to be transported in rail cars, on boats and in truck beds where GM or conventional crops have also been transported. This means that a crop that has been tested by the farmer can still be contaminated later. With no protections in place, the organic farmer bears the majority of the risk.

The reason Japanese and EU consumers are driving the purity tests on crops coming from America is simple: When GM foods are sold in places like the EU or Japan, they are labeled as such. And this really is the critical issue. American consumers want to know what they are eating, but the industry doesn’t want to be forthcoming because letting the market decide would mean resistance to GM foods.

“We don’t challenge consumers on whether they want a red car or a blue car,” said Gurian-Sherman. “But when it comes to choosing what they want to eat, the people that are supporting this technology seem to be greatly offended that the market in Europe and other places is doing what markets are suppose to do.”

Letting the market decide would also mean more support for organics, which would force the USDA to protect that market–and thus our food supply–more conscientiously. Therefore, pushing for transparent labeling on food containing GMOs could be the first step in protecting our food supply from genetic contamination.

This will not be the last battle fought to preserve an agricultural product from contamination. In fact, any day now the FDA will be issuing a ruling about the first genetically altered animal–the GM salmon.

Meanwhile, here are a few things you can do to defend organic against the threat of GM food.

Government regulation of corporate practices has apparently been much on President Obama’s mind lately. He recent penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed vowing to review federal regulations to make sure they weren’t too onerous on business. In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, he illustrated his concern about the complexity of federal regulation by pointing out that two different agencies regulate wild salmon. “And when it’s smoked, I understand it gets really complicated,” he added. Ha, ha.

In other words, Obama is trying to establish himself as an eminently reasonable, pro-business sort of president — you know, not the sort of fellow who would let things like the Wall Street banking meltdown, the Upper Big Branch coal-mine disaster, the BP oil spill, or any other notorious lapse in government oversight stand in the way of the business of doing business.

Obama’s instantly famous “salmon joke” has me looking into how the government regulates salmon farms — those vast factory-style pens concentrated mostly off the coast of Washington state. I’m not done with research and won’t be until next week, as I’m preparing for a trip tomorrow to California to speak at the Edible Communities conference in Santa Barbara. The initial results of my research: government oversight of salmon farms consists mainly of encouraging them to produce as much salmon as possible.

This afternoon, my farmed-salmon research and trip prep were rudely interrupted by an unexpected regulation-related announcement: the USDA has decided to approve the use genetically modified alfalfa without any restriction.

The decision marks a sharp reversal: USDA chief Tom Vilsack had hinted strongly that he would place geographic restrictions on the growing of GMO alfalfa, to protect organic alfalfa growers from the threat of GMO contamination. He even floated a fancy name for the policy: “coexistence,” as in GMO crops and organic crops all just getting along. Even such a relatively mild restrictive policy would have broken with the longstanding USDA practice of giving GMOs a free pass.

Food-industry critics applauded. “I see real progress here,” NYU professor Marion Nestle wrote at The Atlantic. “At least — and at last — USDA recognizes the threat of GM agriculture to organic production.” She declared Vilsack’s even considering restrictions a “breakthrough.” The biotech industry, meanwhile, reacted to the specter of regulation of a GMO crop with fury, backed up by farm-state senators.

Thursday’s announcement marks a full USDA cave-in to the biotech industry’s demands — and evidence that Obama wants to be seen as a friend to business, even at the expense of the public interest.

In the interests of time, I’ve dropped in my take on GMO alfalfa from a few weeks ago, in which I argue that the stuff should be banned outright:

The industry is demanding that the USDA allow unrestricted planting of the alfalfa, which mainly serves as feed for cows. Alfalfa represents a lucrative opportunity for Monsanto, because it’s a massive crop, covering about 20 million acres, about 7 percent of U.S. cropland.

Yet there are a couple of glaring problems. Alfalfa is a prolific pollinator, meaning that GM alfalfa can easily cross-breed with non-GM alfalfa. If organic producers find their crop contaminated with GM material, they risk losing their organic certification and, likely, their livelihoods. The organic dairy industry, which relies on a steady supply of organic alfalfa, would also be imperiled.

The second problem is so-called “superweeds” — weeds that develop resistance to Roundup, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide. Such weeds are already rampant in the South, where Monsanto’s Roundup Ready cotton holds sway, and are moving into the Corn Belt, which is blanketed by the tens of millions of acres with the agrichemical giant’s corn and soy seeds. The rise of superweeds is unleashing a virtual monsoon of dodgy poison cocktails onto affected farmland.

Do we really want to subject organic growers and dairies to possible contamination and loss of their livelihoods, plus risk unleashing superweeds on another 20 million acres?

Evidently, for Vilsack, the answer is yes.

It’s worth checking out this recent Food & Water Watch report on the gusher of cash the biotech industry spends on D.C. lobbying. The industry spent more than a half billion dollars on lobbying between 1999 and 2009, FWW reports. In 2009 alone, the GMO giants dropped a cool $71 million pushing its agenda. It’s also worth noting the number of Monsanto-related people now working in key policy positions in the USDA.

Originally published on Grist

Vilsack had this to say in his kick-off speech:

The opportunity to truly transform a field of science happens at best once a generation. Right now, I am convinced, is USDA’s opportunity to work with the Congress, the other science agencies, and with our partners in industry, academia, and the nonprofit sector, to bring about transformative change.

It is hard to reject the idea that our country needs more research on agriculture — specifically, more science-based knowledge from which to make political and regulatory decisions around food. But as his speech continued, Vilsack placed the focus on technology as our aegis. And while technology is not a bad thing, there are still many questions left unanswered that USDA could and should be focusing on — questions that the agribusiness lobby quite possibly doesn’t want answered, as the outcomes could force the public and our politicians to take a harder look at just what it means to build a truly sustainable food system.

NIFA will be headed by a controversial choice, Roger Beachy — formerly of the Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO, which receives funding from Monsanto, and was part of the lobbying effort to create NIFA in the mold of the National Science Foundation. Beachy joins a team that already includes Rajiv Shah, formerly of the Gates Foundation. The re-branding of CSREES worries sustainable food advocates who fear US research priorities could shift with the private sector’s coaxing further towards a more biotechnology-oriented focus in an attempt to end world hunger, even though more viable solutions to hunger — a problem of distribution and not yield — exist on the ground that are both cost-effective and ready to implement now in the developing world.

The government’s job is to to give unbiased science center stage, so that we can assess and make informed decisions about agriculture moving forward — decisions that are in our collective interest as a nation, not just in the interest of one sector of our economy. To begin, the USDA must extend 100% funding to formula grants at land grant universities again, thereby replacing the current practice of “matching funds” [pdf] — requiring these institutions to find a matching donor for between 50%-100% of the grant from outside of the government — which usually ends up being a private industry source. And what might the industry be interested in funding? Shareholders hope they will support things that have the potential to increase the bottom line, instead of research that investigates the way our food system is affecting us, which could detract from it. This is how the industry has controlled the types of research being conducted since matching funds were instituted in 1999 (as an amendment to the National Agricultural Research, Extension, and Teaching Policy Act of 1977).

Vilsack also stated in his speech that in creating NIFA, “we will be rebuilding our competitive grants program from the ground up to generate real results for the American people.” In thinking about how to better focus the government’s efforts on agricultural research in order to truly benefit the American people, I thought I’d reach out to some key thinkers on agriculture, and find out what they would like the USDA’s new research body, NIFA, to be focusing on. Here were their answers:

Biologically focused organic agriculture—which uses neither chemical fertilizer, pesticides nor GMO crops—provides broad ecological services while it sequesters carbon to fight global warming. We need research that documents the greenhouse-gas mitigation aspects of organics, conducted at the whole-farm level to capture the cascading biodiversity benefits of organic systems. This work should be focused on the three most appropriate, farmer-identified organic techniques per bioregion in the 10 most agriculturally significant areas of the U.S. Tied to this multi-disciplinary, 10-year study should be data collection on soil water-holding ability, biological diversity and productive capacity, in order to qualify and quantify the corollary benefits that come with increases in soil organic matter.
Tim LaSalle, CEO, Rodale Institute

Since I just spent more time than I care to think about sitting through hearings on the proposed Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, I think I would say that USDA should be focusing its research more on scale appropriate food safety programs — and exploring what we really know about risks posed by wildlife, the use of vegetated buffers and other practices that some private food safety programs have targeted.  It seems like USDA could serve a useful role in finding ways for diversified, organic, and small farms to prove that their methods can coexist with food safety requirements.
Patty Lovera, Assistant Director, Food & Water Watch

We need to be studying how best to protect agriculture from the effects of climate changes, which is to say, how can we make farming more resilient?– which is further to say, how can we successfully diversify our monocultures?
Michael Pollan, Author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma

There are both areas of research that USDA is neglecting as well as a lack of investment in research examining agricultural systems and practices that are critical to addressing the research challenges that Secretary Vilsack outlined in his speech at the NIFA event on Thursday.  On the former, areas of research that USDA is neglecting include long-term agroecosystem trials; the characteristics, barriers, and opportunities for the growth and development of local and regional food systems; public plant and animal breeding (all the non-biotech plant and animal research); organic agriculture; the sustainability of biofuel and bioenergy production; and rural development, just to name a few. While several of these have dedicated funding streams, they pale in comparison to other research programs and the overall research budget at USDA.

On the latter, the Administration on Thursday defined a surprisingly narrow approach to addressing the challenges to overcome with the help of agricultural research. Vilsack laid out significant challenges — including ensuring global food security through productive and sustainable agricultural systems, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and improving public health and reducing childhood obesity — and NIFA is structured into separate institutes around these challenges and others. But the tools that Vilsack, Research Undersecretary Shah, and NIFA Director Beachy identified as key to solving these problems were extremely limited to biotechnology, nanotechnology, and computer simulations. Without investing in the development of technologies and practices of sustainable and organic agricultural systems, USDA’s research agenda will fall far short of meeting its objectives and will continue to support an agricultural system that contributes to — rather than mitigating — these challenges.
Ariane Lotti, who focuses on Agriculture Research Policy at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

Organic and sustainable-systems agriculture is still woefully underfunded and misunderstood. Likewise, research and education directed towards regional food-system integration is still only getting a trickle of support. Good programs and projects do exist within the agency, but they are still marginal in the scheme of things. These commitments and investments by the research agencies have to be much more significant if alternative systems themselves are going to be scaled upward and outward.

Why does it matter if the Vice President from the trade association representing pesticides and other agricultural chemicals takes over the Office of Agricultural Affairs at the USTR? Well, because that office, according to the USTR website “has overall responsibility for negotiations and policy coordination regarding agriculture.” That means he would oversee the office dedicated to:

Free Trade Agreements (FTA) and World Trade Organization (WTO) Development Agenda (Doha) negotiations on agriculture, operation of the WTO Committees on Agriculture and on Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures, agricultural regulatory issues (e.g., biotechnology, cloning, BSE, nanotechnology, other bilateral SPS issues, and customs issues affecting agriculture), monitoring and enforcement of existing WTO and FTA commitments for agriculture (including SPS issues), and WTO accession negotiations on agriculture market access, domestic supports and export competition, and SPS matters.

The Chief Agricultural Negotiator is essentially a ‘spokesperson’ for American agriculture (perhaps the ‘bad cop’ to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack’s ‘good cop’) who is in charge of selling our agricultural products abroad — products of a synthetic agriculture that is dependent on too many oil inputs, too much water and a stable climate to persist as the norm into the future. Here is an official job description for the Chief Agricultural Negotiator from the website Progressive Government:

The Chief Agriculture Negotiator for the United States conducts critical trade negotiations and enforces trade agreements that relate to U.S. agricultural products and services. Also works to expand the access for America’s farmers and agricultural producers to overseas markets and is responsible for directing all U.S. agriculture trade negotiations anywhere in the world. This includes multilaterally in the World Trade Organization (WTO), regionally in the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and bilaterally with various countries and groups of countries such as Australia, Central America, Chile, Morocco, and the South African Customs Union. The ambassador also resolves agricultural trade disputes and enforces trade agreements, including issues related to new technologies, subsidies, and tariff and non-tariff barriers and meets regularly with domestic agricultural industry groups to assure their interests are represented in trade. He or she also coordinates closely with U.S. government regulatory agencies to assure that rules and policies in international trade are based on sound science.

What might a former employee of CropLife think is sound science? And what might his agenda be for expanding our markets abroad? I’m sure Siddiqui is already a regular at agricultural industry meetings, and will be ready and willing to say just what they’d like to hear. (Before CropLife, Siddiqui also served in the Clinton administration under former Ag Secretary Dan Glickman, the Ag Secretary best known for taking part in the sign-off of GM seeds as ‘substantially equivalent’ to other seeds, thus an argument for why they should not be labeled.)

Here is a little bit more about CropLife from Sourcewatch:

The image [the pesticide industry] presents is one of a hi-tech, efficient, responsible, and green industry that is already thoroughly regulated to assure the safety of its products. While the industry quietly pursues an anti-regulatory agenda to assure no pesticides would be removed from the market, its trade association claims its aim is to “promote increasingly responsible, science-driven legislation and regulation.”
…
In March 2004, CropLife poured funding into a campaign to defeat a Mendocino County ballot initiative – known as Measure H – that would make the country [sic] the first to ban genetically engineered crops. In the lead up the the vote CropLife contributed over $500,000 – more than seven times that of the initiative supporters – to defeat the proposal. Despite the massive campaign against the initiative, the bio-tech industry suffered a humiliating defeat. The measure passed by a margin of 56% to 43%.

In other words, the Obama administration has chosen someone from an organization dedicated at all costs to chemical-based agriculture to represent our trade interests abroad. All in the name of selling more Round-Up and GM seed, as well as siphoning off our excess commodities to China for their growing CAFO industry, all for our own short term economic interests.

While organic dairy farmers have faced a decrease in overall sales due to the recent world financial meltdown and tight budgets on the home front as a result, the current drop in milk prices is impacting mainly conventional and small to mid-size family dairy farmers — the worst crisis most dairy farmers have faced in their entire careers.

Without immediate action from President Obama, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and members of Congress, this current crisis could be the launching point for the final liquidation of the independent family farmer.

Plunge in Milk Prices + High Costs of Production = Final Liquidation

According to the USDA, the average cost of production for milk is $24.08 per hundredweight (cwt or 100 pounds), while the price dairy farmers were paid for their milk in April sunk to $10.78 cwt.

This means that dairy farmers are earning less than half of what it costs to produce their milk. Imagine having your salary cut in half and still trying to cover the same monthly bills. Even worse, feed and fuel prices are starting to go up in the past few months.

For farmers, most of whom work too long of hours and are paid too little money, this is the perfect formula for a final liquidation of one of the last remaining independent segments of ag production. For years, small and medium-sized farms have relied on their dairy cows to stay relatively free from domination by factory farms and corporate agribusiness. But no longer.

The Past Revisits the Future – 1998 Eight-Cent Hogs

What we are witnessing today with dairy farmers has happened before and is part of a historic trend that must not be allowed to continue. As Chris Petersen, President of Iowa Farmers Union and an Iowa family hog farmer, said recently, “First they consolidated the turkeys and chickens, then the hogs and now they’re coming after dairy.”

Petersen spoke at a rally for dairy farmers held on May 30th in Manchester, Iowa, where some 150 family dairy farmers from across the country gathered at a small town livestock exchange, some traveling from as far away as New York and Pennsylvania, in an effort to draw attention to the ongoing crisis.

As a hog farmer who survived the 1980’s farm crisis, Peterson is painfully familiar with the impacts that industrialized agriculture and consolidation have had on family farmers and rural America.

For many Iowans, the current crisis in dairy is eerily reminiscent of 1998, when prices hog farmers were paid for hogs dropped to 8 cents a pound, virtually wiping out an entire generation of hog farmers during a single market downturn.

In 1997, the year before the crash, there were over 122,000 hog farmers across the U.S. Today less than 65,000 remain. In Iowa, the nation’s leading hog producer, there were over 18,000 hog farmers in 1997, while less than 8,300 exist today, with most animals in this sector now raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) or factory farms.

For those who missed the consolidation of livestock in the 1950’s and 1960’s when it happened to the chicken growers, and then the 1980’s and 1990’s when they came for the hogs, this year will be the final sell-off of the family dairy farmer. The final sector reliant on livestock will at last be captured.

In addition, the industry trend towards animal confinement that has taken off in the past decade in dairy will increase significantly if these small and mid-sized farmers are allowed to fail.

Increasing consolidation in the dairy industry has also played a factor in the current crisis, creating an uncompetitive market for dairy farmers. Just one cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) controls 40% of milk produced in the U.S., severely limiting competitive pricing for farmers. But not only does DFA have undue market power, they also have a history of market manipulation and were fined $12 million last year manipulating the milk prices in the commodities market.

U.S. Faces Catastrophic Loss of Dairy Farmers in 2009

Leading farm advocacy groups such as Farm Aid and the National Family Farm Coalition are estimating the potential loss of 20,000 family dairy farmers as a result of the current milk crisis. If action isn’t taken soon in Washington DC, America could lose up to 30% of U.S. dairy farmers — possibly more — as they strain under the monthly cost of debts, which are piling up each month.

Meanwhile, banks have already started cutting off farmer’s access to loans across the country and have increasingly begun seizing herds when farmers can’t make payments.

In a phone call received last week, one farmer told how a neighboring dairy farmer in eastern Iowa had lost his farm. The 550 head family dairy farm was seized last month, forcing a father and his two sons off the farm. Only five years ago, the father had expanded their operation so he could eventually turn the farm over to his sons. Now that dream is gone. To make matters worse, the bank seized the last trailer full of cows on a Friday and the youngest son got married the following day, a wedding that turned from a celebration into a tragedy.

The same farmer who related this story said that he had received a call from his banker who was coming to visit his farm the next day, with no reason given. The farmer said he was current on his payments, but wasn’t sure if his credit would be cut off like it had to several dairy farmers he knew across Iowa.

Stories like this are becoming increasingly common in rural America, especially in dairy country – states like California, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin.

The loss of so many family dairy farms could launch the next Great Depression for rural America’s economies. As farmers are forced off the land once again, as they were in the 1980s, the businesses and communities that rely on them stand to lose their tax and customer base.

Crashing the Farmer’s Price for Free Trade

While cyclical problems of supply and demand and have caused numerous market collapses in the past, a closer look at the dairy crisis exposes deeper fundamental problems in the dairy sector.

Currently the chattering political class in Washington DC keep repeating the line that the current crisis is due to “overproduction,” but an inspection of dairy imports and exports tells a different story

A recent post from John Bunting, a New York dairy farmer who writes for Milkweed and runs, tallied the imports of milk protein concentrate or MPC and found a record increase in imports in the first quarter of 2009. Between January and March of this year imports of milk protein concentrates (MPCs), not including casein and other dairy products, increased a whopping 24.59% according to the USDA Foreign Agricultural Services.

MPCs are broken-down proteins and fats created by milk being processed at high temperatures and contain tasty things like bacteria and somatic cells. More problematic are the fact that MPCs are considered a glue additive and while not actually approved as a food additive by the FDA, Bunting calls them “technically an illegal ingredient,” can be found in such things as baby formulas, sports drinks, yogurt, pizza and ice cream.

If that doesn’t sound too bad then remember that these foreign milk-like substances are coming from China, India and a host of other countries that don’t have very stringent food safety regulations. Think milk from China, melamine in baby formula, etc – not a good strategy for food safety.

Another interesting trend pointed out by Bunting is the loss of dairy exports by the U.S. during the first quarter 2009, totally over $638 million over the same quarter in 2008. On top of this, Leslie Hatfield reports over at the Huffington Post that according to the National Milk Producers Federation dairy imports into the U.S. “have risen from $80 million to almost $3 billion in the last 10 years.”

So if we have record imports of milk products that compete against our own farmers on their sales in the U.S. and then they have a net loss approaching a billion dollars in trade that takes away from further potential sales, plus a massive increase in imports over the past 10 years, then what we really don’t have is a “surplus” of milk – but a serious trade deficit when it comes to milk products that is pushing American’s dairy farmers to the brink this year.

Additionally, for the month of March, Bunting reports that dairy exports fell by 32.9%. Even with Vilsack’s recent implementation of the new dairy export program, it’s hard to imagine making up that $638 million in time to save the thousands of dairy farmers that will be forced to shut down their barns by the end of this year.

Loss of Family Dairy Farms = Death of Rural America’s Economies

It’s estimated that dairy farmers are currently losing up to $200 per cow, per month. Since dairy processing and dairy farms have one of the largest economic multipliers of any segment in agriculture, with each cow generating $17,000 per year in economic development in the form of jobs, goods and services created, the loss of a single 85 head dairy farm will drain a local economy of nearly $1.5 million in economic activity.

For the eastern Iowa county that lost a 550 head dairy farm last month, that’s $9.4 million flushed out of the local economy forever.

Unfortunately, the number of dairy farms being forced out of business is just beginning. In the next few months, as more banks cut off additional loans to farmers, these numbers are going to climb to record levels for the dairy industry.

A recent conversation with a dairy industry worker revealed the loss of 10 additional dairies across Iowa in the last 6 weeks – totaling another 3,060 dairy cows or $52 million erased from small town local economies across the state.

And while $52 million is chump change for Wall Street banks, which are churning through government bailout cash faster than a five-legged mule, losing a third of U.S. dairy farms this year will be catastrophic for our rural communities.

For people who are having a hard time understanding how bad this will be: This could be rural America’s last stand for independent family farm agriculture. Increasingly, family farmers, rural Americans and farm advocates are pleading with President Obama, Secretary Vilsack and Iowa’s Senator Tom Harkin to do something about it before it’s too late.

Every day, every delay, costs America another farmer. And our farmers are not a renewable resource that can be grown and planted in a single season.

If up to 30 percent of dairy farmers are forced to go into foreclosure, the U.S. could see over 3.1 million of the nation’s 9.3 dairy cows sold off and potentially liquidated. A quick calculation shows the current dairy crisis, if allowed to continue, will blow a $52.7 billion hole in rural America’s economy – most likely more, as the ripple effect will send a shockwave through small towns and businesses across the country.

Rural America is Too Big to Fail

While Senators and Congressmen lined up in Washington during the past year to offer Wall Street a sweetheart deal for making a mess of the U.S. and global economy — erasing a lifetime of earnings for tens of millions of investors because of years of excessive greed — and then reluctantly bailed out Detroit for the sins of auto execs, politicians have done relatively little to help dairy farmers who are facing the crisis of a century.

Sure, Secretary Vilsack has made several small attempts to jumpstart the system, with a few stopgap measures, including $150 million in Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) payments — which provided farmers who previously signed up for the program a meager $1.51 per cwt subsidy; the USDA’s March purchase of 200 million pounds of surplus nonfat dry milk for use in domestic feeding programs; and a recent use of the Dairy Export Incentive Program (DEIP) to subsidize 92,000 tons of dairy products destined for overseas. However, these steps have done almost nothing to stem the tide.

Unfortunately, none of these actions have translated into higher milk prices. Most U.S. dairy farmers see these attempts as worse than the usual band-aids farmers have been thrown in the past because it allows politicians to pretend they’ve actually solved the crisis when really it’s getting worse every day.

Conversations with dozens of dairy farmers from across the country reveal that the government MILC checks are barely able to cover costs of electricity, let alone feed bills, which have grown by up to 10 percent in the past four weeks.

“We’re not asking for a bailout, we’re just ask for a fair price,” says Jerry Harvey, a third generation Iowa dairy farmer who milks 70 cows in Promise City, Iowa.

And as many farmers across the country are now saying, if Washington thinks there are banks too big to fail, wait until Americans have to rely on food from foreign countries, which have much looser food safety regulations, to feed their families.

All these farmers are asking for is a fair price for the food they produce for American consumers, it’s time some folks in Washington start putting their heads together for a sustainable solution. The cost of failure for America’s dairy farmer is not something the U.S. can afford.

It’s almost difficult to choose which one is the worst of the monster problems with the Disney/USDA partnership. First, there’s a terrible problem with Pinocchio in general. As a film, Pinocchio is a bizarre acid trip with a wildly complicated and disturbing subtext, more a prettily drawn nightmare than anything else. It’s a violent tale of man-boy love that involves a singin’ & dancin’ cricket, a murderous whale, a goldfish, a mute cat, a fairy, and a Coachman who lures little boys to Pleasure Island. The lead character, Pinocchio, is literally a spineless creature devoid of all moral fiber who is repeatedly drawn into all manner of excruciating situations in which he always makes the wrong choice. And Pleasure Island is filled with “real” boys who are gambling, smokin,’ drinkin’ and committing acts of vandalism. They’re eventually turned into donkeys who go to work in salt mines. When it debuted in 1940, Pinocchio became enormously popular primarily for its then-astonishing technical brilliance in animation, rather than because it was a bracing tale of redemption and love.

From a contemporary standpoint, Pinocchio has little to offer children in terms of life lessons–and it certainly offers no lessons about food (unless being swallowed by a whale somehow qualifies…). And as a role-model character for children to identify with, Pinocchio is just bad, bad, bad throughout the flick. So it just has to be asked: Why choose a lying, naughty puppet to attempt to get children to eat more healthfully? What kind of whack message does this send? And here’s another excellent point: Pinocchio dies in the Disney film. He doesn’t turn into a Real Boy because he eats healthy food, he dies. He’s brought back to life as a Real Boy by the Blue Fairy. There’s no food involved. Hey, where’s the Religious Right when you need ‘em?

Second, direct marketing anything to children with storybook/film/TV characters has been the subject of grave debate for at least a decade. Many studies have pointed to the deleterious effects of consumerism on children, and the long and continuing association of popular/animated characters with unhealthful foods is gradually being phased out by forward-thinking corporations that have responded to parents’ demands. The Disney company itself dropped McDonald’s from its character-food partnerships last year. Is it really wise to renew the use of characters to promote any kind of eating? And this “policy” also goes against Ag Secretary Vilsack’s own statements that food should be regarded as energy. If food is energy and thus utilitarian, what’s wrong with teaching about food as food? Why do we need naughty animated characters to get in on the act? Why do we need to romanticize food at all? Most children know so little about food in general–how it’s grown, how it’s prepared–that adding in twisted animated creatures seems like an exceptionally perverted way to get this point across. But maybe Vilsack has other goals here. Vilsack’s nom as Secretary of Agriculture was hotly protested by all those who worried about his deep connections to Big Ag and industrialized corporate food giants, in particular Monsanto. How much of Disney’s food atheir theme parks and resorts is sourced from Big Ag giants like Monsanto and Dupont, Cargill or Archer Daniels Midland? How much of Disney’s food is processed, laden with pesticides, non-sustainable, or genetically engineered? Partnering the USDA with Disney gives both sides a free pass to continue to explore and exploit least-favorable food and ag practices, doesn’t it? All under the guise of healthy eating for children, of course.

Third, the Food Pyramid as the best model for healthy eating is still the subject of great debate. The government recently flipped the pyramid on its side and added an exercise element to it after years of criticism, to account for the fact that the pyramid just ain’t that great. In comparison to the government sponsored food advisories in other countries, the US falls very short. But perhaps a lying puppet can promote exercise, too? Or maybe the Blue Fairy? She flies around a lot…. And, too, there are at least twelve different versions of the US Pyramid in existence, which are based on regional, socioeconomic and cultural differences. Is a lying white boy puppet really the right character to reach the children most at risk for obesity about healthy eating, if we put aside the very idea that the film this campaign is based on is entirely morally bankrupt?

Lastly…Bizzy V is privileged to be the Ag Secretary for the most scrutinized eater on the planet, so what’s wrong with Brand Obama? Not Obama-shaped cookies, necessarily, but the idea that what The Obamas eat can have a positive impact on the rest of the country. And while there are all kinds of reasons that much of the Obamas’ private eating should remain private, a single photo of Barack and Michelle holding fresh veggies would go much further than Pinocchio characters promoting “healthy” eating. Brand Obama has caused a huge bump in the sale of American products around the globe, and we know school kids loooove Bam and Michelle…. It’s a far better idea than using animated characters from a questionable fictional source.

Very happily for both Bizzy V and Disney, March 10 just happens to be the 70th anniversary of the animated film version of Pinocchio, so both sides of the devil’s partnership get lots of excellent publicity; the movie is being released on new tek platforms next week, so look for a flood of Pinocchio-related hysteria. As ever, Bizzy V continues to disturb and delight Ob Fo, but the partnership of Disney with USDA is more dangerous than it is hilarious. An excellent line from the film, uttered by The Coachman, could apply to Bizzy V: Give a bad boy enough rope, and he’ll soon make a jackass of himself. Policies like the Food Pyramid/USDA partnership are the worst kind of jackholedom.

*A little film that’s even more scary than Pinocchio: From Freedom Underground, a brief history of Vilsack & Agribusiness. Narrator Jack Blood gravely dislikes Barack, but everything onscreen about Vilsack is true. Click here to watch.

*H/T to Bonnie at The Ethicurean and Jill Richardson at La Vida Locavore for ongoing inspiration…

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told several consumer groups yesterday in a conference call that he will ask the meat industry to voluntarily follow stricter guidelines for new package labels designed to specify a food’s country of origin. If the industry does not comply, the administration will write new rules, reported the AP.

Mandatory country of origin labeling (also known as “COOL”) for meats, fish, produce and peanuts went into effect on September 30, 2008. President Obama ordered a review of the rule before it becomes permanent, which had been scheduled for March 16. Vilsack said he would like to see labels that would give consumers a clearer idea about the origin of the animal or food and also said the regulation should cover more foods.

In general, consumers have overwhelmingly demanded COOL, with nearly 92 percent of Americans agreeing in a Consumers Union poll that imported foods should be labeled by their country of origin.

“COOL gives consumers a tool they can use during a food safety crisis,” said Jean Halloran, Director of Food Policy Initiatives for Consumers Union. “For example, when California leafy greens were implicated in cases of e. coli illnesses, if COOL had been in effect, consumers could have purchased Canadian spinach without worrying.”

While COOL is a huge step forward, there are large loopholes that the majority of consumers have wanted closed. For example, Congress exempted meat and poultry sold in butcher shops and fish sold in fish markets—some 11 percent of all meat and fish— from country of origin labeling. (For a nifty guide as to what’s been defined as COOL and what’s not, check out Consumers Union’s COOL Tool.)

In addition, the rule exempts processed food, and the Bush Administration interpreted that very broadly, to include roasted, salted, and smoked food and mixed ingredient foods, like fruit salad. Vilsack has proposed narrowing that definition. He’s in good company, as a recent CU poll found that 95 percent of consumers want processed foods to be labeled by their country of origin.

The leading opponents of the law have been grocery stores and large meatpacking companies—many of whom mix U.S. and Mexican beef—and other businesses involved in getting products to supermarkets. Supporters of the law were not happy with the Bush administration’s version of the rules, which they said allowed meat companies to be vague about where an animal was born, raised and slaughtered.

Yesterday, Vilsack told Congress Daily he planned to send a letter today asking meat companies to label each product with more information than that required in the Bush rule, which the new administration has had under review. Accordingly, USDA is planning on labels indicating the country in which the animal was born, the country in which it was raised, and the country in which it was slaughtered.

The move comes as Obama is headed on Thursday to Canada, a key meat exporter to the U.S. The Canadian government has criticized strict labeling rules on meat in the U.S., fearing that American consumers would prefer homegrown beef, and is likely to raise objections to Mr. Vilsack’s plans.

Canada would resume its World Trade Organization complaint against U.S. labeling rules for meat and fresh produce if Obama decides to change them, Canadian Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz told Bloomberg news. “Should the Obama administration continue on with protectionism, we will then re-ignite our WTO challenge,” Ritz said.

In regard to the trade sensitivities, Vilsack told Congress Daily that President Obama would personally deal with trade issues during his visit to Canada and indicated that any final decision on changes to the labeling rule would be made at the White House.

Uncertainty about what changes will be proposed was heightened this morning when USDA abruptly canceled a press teleconference on the issue, which had been scheduled for 10 a.m. ET.  We will keep our readers updated as the news on COOL develops.

UPDATE: Friday 2.20.09 Vilsack announces the implementation of COOL [PDF]

Image: podchef

I tried to picture Michael Pollan in Vilsack’s chair, answering the same questions. The US Senate Agriculture Committee would have been outraged by his answers — the answers we collectively discuss and generally support in the sustainable food community.

Only when food consumers and farmers growing for local consumption create a political movement that elects a lot of Congresspeople and Senators will we have a shot for change in Washington.

The hearings confirmed Obama’s judgment in appointing Vilsack — an understanding that the Department of Agriculture will not be seedbed for the change we seek.

They also present us with a very clear picture of the scale of the challenge before us.

We need to develop a political framework for the Local Food Revolution that enables the thousands of grassroots food initiatives to come together in an effective political movement. This is easier said than done.

In my experience, most grassroots food and small farming efforts are decidedly non-partisan in nature. Politics only reluctantly enters into the equation, often in the struggle over food safety regulations and land tenure.

By some measure, the Local Food Revolution is deeply libertarian in its implicit attitudes — personal choices good, government bad. Foodies don’t want to get involved in the messy political process — particularly if it involves challenging the power of a few agribusiness corporations and a handful of rich farmers who currently control agriculture policy.

We have no political framework to challenge this corporate power; witness the inability of Congress to even know where the first $350 billion of the bailout went.

In the past, most of our political effort has gone into stopping particular USDA initiatives and in trying to influence the Farm Bill every five years. This strategy while good as far as it goes, is not up to the challenge before us.

So what do we do?

We need a proactive vision of our economy with healthy local food and clean local energy systems at its center.

We need to challenge the current agricultural and political paradigm through a national campaign to re-localize our food and energy systems.

This is NOT a return to some romantic, idealized vision of the 19th Century. Michael Shuman described the change this way (in his book Going Local).

“It is easy to dismiss the principle of self-reliance by pointing to many complex products that communities cannot manufacture on their own. The goal of a self-reliant community, however, is not to create a Robinson Crusoe economy in which no resources, people or goods enter or leave. A self-reliant community simply should seek control over over its own economy as far as is practical.”

Key words in this change are: self-reliance, resilience, community, local control, harmony, and balance.

I propose we organize a political movement — intentionally and broadly — including health care, energy, education, and economic development in the equation as well as local food — around re-localization of the economy. This is not a new idea. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance has pursued this vision for at least three decades.

Tip O’Neil used to say, “all politics is local.”  Well, yes.

Peak Oil activists have moved beyond their doomsday message to the next step and created a Transition Movement — transition to a post-petroleum economy and society living on 90% less petroleum than we do currently. They present this change as an opportunity to renew and regenerate our society and culture — a positive, better future being the end result. Such a hopeful vision should, in my opinion, be at the center of re-imagining of our effort to change public policy.

Read these books, if you haven’t already:

EF Schumacher — Small is Beautiful (particularly the Buddhist Economics essay)
Rob Hopkins — The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience
Albert Bates — The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook
Michael Shuman — Going Local

These books don’t provide all the answers. They just raise the right questions and values. The way we challenge the conventional agriculture death spiral occurring in Washington is to fundamentally change the political game. Re-localization builds on the deep libertarian roots of the Local Food Revolution while challenging the global economic paradigm in a non-partisan, bi-partisan way.

[Editor: For a dip into the field, see Annie Myers' research on the movement forming among young farmers]