Beyond Localism
Check out this important new writing based from Post Carbon Institute on research by the USDA and Michael Bomford from Kentucky State University shows how the goal of buying locally may not be enough to tackle the fuel-intensive farming practices that currently dominate the food system. Check out Michael Bomford’s research here.
Distribution Infrastructure
An article dealing with technological solutions that may help small regional food distribution initiatives recently came to my attention. I encourage anyone concerned with moving from farmers market style distribution to coordinated “food hubs” to check it out here. The challenge of scaling-up is one of the biggest hurdles local foods producers, consumers and advocates will face in trying to refashion the distribution side of the food system.
Nuestras Raices farmers market in Holyoke MA, featured in Farm Together Now. By Anne Hamersky
Farm Labor Tractorcade to Madison, WI March 12
This Saturday, farmers will be riding their tractors into Madison in solidarity with the struggle for labor rights and a just state budget. Rural communities will be unjustly affected by proposed cuts to education, BadgerCare, as well as Gov. Walker’s decision to eliminate funding for the Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin program.
The tractorcade is sponsored by Family Farm Defenders and Wisconsin Farmers Union. Tractors will take John Nolan Drive into Madison starting around 9:45 am and circle the state capitol between 10:00 am and 11:00 am. The tractor parade will be followed by a rally at the capitol. Speakers include Joel Greeno and Sarah Lloyd, both Dairy Farmers, Tony Schultz, a Vegetable and Beef Farmer and Jim Hightower, a national commentator and former Texas Agriculture Commissioner.Farmers are encouraged to wear green and all are encouraged to bring placards, cow bells, and other signs of solidarity.
Donate here to help offset farmers’ expenses for driving their tractors to Madison. Any farmers interested in joining the parade contact: John Peck at Family Farm Defenders. 608-260-0900 familyfarmdefenders@yahoo.com
Food Sovereignty – The Video
Farm Together Now recently teamed up with the National Family Farm Coalition to make a video about Via Campesina’s seven principles of food sovereignty. The video features members of the NFFC from across the country:
- Margot McMillen, Missouri Rural Crisis Center
- Bob St. Peter, Food for Maine’s Future
- Daniel Teague, Mississippi Association of Cooperatives/Federation of Southern Cooperatives
- John Peck, Family Farm Defenders, Wisconsin
- Dena Hoff, Northern Plains Resource Council, Montana
- John Kinsman, Family Farm Defenders, Wisconsin
- Ben Burkett, Mississippi Association of Cooperatives/Federation of Southern Cooperatives
The Principles include:
1. Food: A Basic Human Right. Everyone must have access to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full human dignity. Each nation should declare that access to food is a constitutional right and guarantee the development of the primary sector to ensure the concrete realization of this fundamental right.
2. Agrarian Reform. A genuine agrarian reform is necessary which gives landless and farming people – especially women – ownership and control of the land they work and returns territories to indigenous peoples. The right to land must be free of discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, race, social class or ideology; the land belongs to those who work it.
3. Protecting Natural Resources. Food Sovereignty entails the sustainable care and use of natural resources, especially land, water, and seeds and livestock breeds. The people who work the land must have the right to practice sustainable management of natural resources and to conserve biodiversity free of restrictive intellectual property rights. This can only be done from a sound economic basis with security of tenure, healthy soils and reduced use of agro-chemicals.
4. Reorganizing Food Trade. Food is first and foremost a source of nutrition and only secondarily an item of trade. National agricultural policies must prioritize production for domestic consumption and food self-sufficiency. Food imports must not displace local production nor depress prices.
5. Ending the Globalization of Hunger. Food Sovereignty is undermined by multilateral institutions and by speculative capital. The growing control of multinational corporations over agricultural policies has been facilitated by the economic policies of multilateral organizations such as the WTO, World Bank and the IMF. Regulation and taxation of speculative capital and a strictly enforced Code of Conduct for TNCs is therefore needed.
6. Social Peace. Everyone has the right to be free from violence. Food must not be used as a weapon. Increasing levels of poverty and marginalization in the countryside, along with the growing oppression of ethnic minorities and indigenous populations, aggravate situations of injustice and hopelessness. The ongoing displacement, forced urbanization, oppression and increasing incidence of racism of smallholder farmers cannot be tolerated.
7. Democratic control. Smallholder farmers must have direct input into formulating agricultural policies at all levels. The United Nations and related organizations will have to undergo a process of democratization to enable this to become a reality. Everyone has the right to honest, accurate information and open and democratic decision-making. These rights form the basis of good governance, accountability and equal participation in economic, political and social life, free from all forms of discrimination. Rural women, in particular, must be granted direct and active decision-making on food and rural issues.
Teaching Teens how to Grow Food
DJ Cavem Moetavation is an environmental and youth advocate as well as an internationally known hip-hop artist.
Check him out engaging youth in a Denver Public School.
DJ Cavem works as an Eco-cultivator with Blue and Yellow Logic, a Denver based company which aims to turn empty urban lots into flourishing gardens.
The goal of Blue and Yellow Logic is to mobilize urban communities to engage in the sustainability movement.
DJ Cavem touring his garden.
North West Coast Events Feb 18-25
Farm Together Now book events in the northwest with author Daniel Tucker
- Friday 2/18 Seattle with Industrial Harvest‘s Sarah Kavage; University of Washington/Acequia Institute’s Devon Pena, Community Alliance for Global Justice‘s Heather Day, Seattle Tilth‘s Edward B. Hill, Alleycat Acres‘ Kate Kurtz, Skokomish Tribe “First Foods Sovereignty” Project’s Delbert Miller, and Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin. Moderated by Onepot/30 Project’s Michael Hebb. Co-Sponsored by Elliott Bay Books and Town Hall Seattle (facebook invite)
- Saturday 2/19 Olympia (facebook invite)
- Monday 2/21 Portland with Tryon Life Community Farm who are featured in Farm Together Now (facebook invite)
- Friday 2/25 San Francisco with Amy, Anne, Corinne and Brian from Farm Together Now (facebook invite)
Farm Together Now: A portrait of people, places and ideas for a new food movement
By Amy Franceschini & Daniel Tucker, with a foreword by Mark Bittman
Photography by Anne Hamersky & Illustrations by Corinne Matesich
Design by Brian Scott
Published by Chronicle Books (December, 2010).
We want to change the way the food system works! Farm Together Now meets with people across the country who are challenging the conventions of industrialized farming and exclusive green economies.
This part-travelogue, part-oral history, part-creative exploration of food politics will introduce readers to twenty groups working in agriculture and sustainable food production in the U.S. Throughout 2009 the authors visited twenty farms from coast to coast, talking to farmers about their engagement in sustainable food production, public policy and community organizing efforts. Interviews and photo essays with each farm/garden/project illustrate the inspiring histories, unique characters and everyday struggles of life on these farms. It is through sharing diverse voices from the contemporary farm that this book will inspire and cultivate a new wave of agrarians. Half of the author’s profits will be put into a fund to encourage like-minded documentary projects.
+ We are happy to share the news that GRIST picked their top 10 food books of 2010 and Michael Pollan picked Farm Together Now. He says: “My favorite book of the season is Farm Together Now: A Portrait of People, Places, and Ideas for a New Food Movement, by Amy Franceschini and Daniel Tucker. It consists of interviews with a wide range of farmers (and activists) who you haven’t heard of. Inspiring without being romantic in the least, it advances the whole conversation about sustainable agriculture and access.”
Tour details here https://farmtogethernow.org/events/ and on attached flier (including dates in Seattle, Olympia, Portland and San Francisco)
A few tickets left for SF dinner discussion
Farm Together Now is teaming up with 18 Reasons in San Francisco to host a dinner discussion on Thursday Feb 24th. There are a few tickets left, all the info is here.
Central Illinois Sustainable Farming Network
If you are interested in learning more about the sustainable farming community of Central Illinois, join the Central Illinois Sustainable Farming Network on March 5, 6pm. Come out to meet local farmers and to learn about sustainable practices over a dinner featuring locally grown food. CISFN’s mission is to promote the development of local food systems throughout the state through farmer support and training. This event will be the first annual meeting for this network and it will be held at the Station 220 New American Bistro in Bloomington, IL. The guest speaker is Lynn Miller, founder, editor and publisher of the Small Farmer’s Journal. Mr. Miller has been involved in small-scale, sustainable agriculture for over 30 years. Registration is $35 per person.
Round-up of recent reviews of FTN
Press for Farm Together Now:
- Treehugger (by Matthew McDermott): Inspirational, informational and just a pleasure to hold, thumb through, or sit with and read more slowly, Farm Together Now catalogs the diversity of small farms and food producers across the United States…Most of the time I have nits to pick with most books that come across my desk for review, but with Farm Together Now I just don’t…[it] belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in sustainable farming and wanting a glimpse of what the future of food may well look like.” (read the full review here).
- Farmbrarian: “Everyone needs to eat, and these stories illustrate how food issues permeate all aspects of society. Read Farm Together Now and get to know those who are making great strides towards improving access to clean, healthy food, achieving social and environmental justice, and preserving food and farming traditions. You’ll gain a greater understanding of the impact individual efforts can have on improving our food system. An even greater impact can be made if we work to farm together–now!” See the full review here.
- Real Food For All blog: Chef Kurt Michael Friese says: “Enter Farm Together Now. Here we find not rock stars but real people, true agrarians in the old sense of the word who understand that food, farms and fertility actually matter in a post-industrialized world. Twenty in-depth interviews with farmers of all types from across the country, accompanied by the illuminating and personal photography of Anne Hammersky, make for a revealing set of portraits – an album of the evolving American farm…These stories provide a convincing argument for the proposition that there is indeed life beyond chemical and confinement farming, and that the solution to the problems of agriculture lies in many strong hands working together to bring food to their neighbors.” (read the full review here)
- GRIST.org: We are happy to share the news that GRIST picked their top 10 food books of 2010 and Michael Pollan picked Farm Together Now. He says: “My favorite book of the season is Farm Together Now: A Portrait of People, Places, and Ideas for a New Food Movement, by Amy Franceschini and Daniel Tucker. It consists of interviews with a wide range of farmers (and activists) who you haven’t heard of. Inspiring without being romantic in the least, it advances the whole conversation about sustainable agriculture and access.”
- The Chicago Reader (by Martha Bayne): “From the rural Nebraska family man who started a co-op of sustainable meat growers to the young members of God’s Gang who started out raising worms and tilapia in the Robert Taylor Homes and now grow vegetables on borrowed land in Michigan, Tucker and Franceschini’s subjects share a deep, articulated commitment to social and environmental justice and political change. ” (see full review)
- Bay Area Bites (by Sarah Henry) (see the review)
- The Greenest (by Derek Denckla) Urban Farming Roundup
- Mecozy (by Kerstin Svendsen) Farm books and bills
DC Event with National Family Farm Coalition
FTN Featured farmer Joel Greeno of Family Farm Defenders
Tomorrow night there is a DC release party for Farm Together Now at Busboys & Poets. I am happy to be joined by one of the farmers featured in the book: Joel Greeno (Family Farm Defenders) as well as the inspiring John Kinsman (Family Farm Defenders) and Dena Hoff (Northern Plains Resource Council). The event is co-sponsored by National Family Farm Coalition, a national network based in DC founded in 1986 and representing 24 grassroots groups across 32 states.
- Washington DC Farm Together Now release event details:
- Friday 1/28/11 6:30pm-8pm @ Busboys & Poets 2021 14th St, DC (RSVP on Facebook)
Farm Together Now - The Book and Blog 