On The Brink of Change: 2012 Farm Bill

Why Food? Seems like a simple enough question, but you will be surprised, hardly anything we see on the shelves of super markets today has any resemblance to actual real food: it comes in vacuumed pack, pre-portioned packages of sterility and convenience. Yet, what does it mean to actually eat food, to touch it, see it, cook it and feel it? We are so divorced from what comes to our plate that we are willing to take produce at face value. Such an attitude leads consumers to settle for food that is Chlorinated and Irradiated, unaware that despite the band-aid sterility such items necessitate toxic treatments in order to render them even remotely fit for human consumption. Small farms are the only real assurance consumers have to assure themselves that the labels present any form of transparency; everything else is a carefully calculated, carefully orchestrated and a highly governed system of smoke and mirrors.

Obviously, the final solution is to buy local, shop at farmers markets, enlist in a CSA programme and shop directly from your friendly neighbourhood farmer. However, this is not as straightforward as one would hope for. The pastures green that once thrived upon the amber waves of grained kissed nation is dwindling faster than you can say recombinant bovine somatotropin.

According to Farm-Aid, 330 American farmers leave their land each week. 330 of the most hard working individuals you will ever have the good fortune to meet are giving up on the only job they have known for 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the majority of their lives. That is 17, 160 individuals per year: an absolutely staggering amount.

Why? Why this mass exodus? What are we doing as a society that would possibly drive -I would consider- the back bone of America out in droves. I will tell you : The current farm bill and the practices it promotes.   

Author Dan Imhoff, “Although the committee proposal includes important reforms to the commodity title, we are deeply concerned that it would continue to give away subsidies worth tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to the largest commodity crop growers and agribusinesses even as it drastically underfunds programs to promote the health and food security of all Americans, invest in beginning and disadvantaged farmers, revitalize local food economies and protect natural resources.” (Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to the Next Food and Farm Bill).

Whether you are democrat, republican, moderate or Monster Raving Looney party (for my UK friends) the health of your person, your progeny and your environment ought to weigh heavily on your mind. If you however do not actually give a proverbial you should perhaps stop reading and go crack yourself a Bud and go play beer pong.

In 1933 President Roosevelt passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act in order to help a struggling nation emerge from the Depression by creating policies that aided national issues such as rural poverty and hunger. This was a visionary Bill to rescue agriculture and support a starving nation. So why is it today that we are looking at two major health crises that despite appearing as disparate are in fact interconnected by our current farming policies and legislature?  Food Insecurity and Obesity. Namely, because the Food Bill remains more or less the same as it did 80 years ago, thus allowing for large agribusiness such as Monsanto to maintain an oligopoly on farming, reducing crop diversity and blanketing the landscape with mono-crops such as corn and soy. During the 60’s 70’s and 80’s, the bill provided incentives to farmers to either get big or get out. Small rural farms and agricultural communities were greatly ignored. Unfortunately the current draft of the upcoming legislature leaves the money and the power in the hands of Big Agribusiness.  In 2012, 1 in 7 Americans signed up for food stamps, despite the highest commodity prices in history, rural communities are falling deeper into debt. In 2010 17.8% of individuals living in rural communities were living below the poverty line. In order to feed themselves and their families they turned to cheap highly processed food loaded with high fructose corn syrup and GMO-ed soy.

The monetary proposals of this year’s bill would provide hundreds of billions of dollars per year for agriculture that could, if fairly and wisely proportioned provide the landscape and means that could aid in the obesity crisis, target water pollution from chemical and animal waste run off, prevent the possibility of another dust bowl and support the expertise and ingenuity of a new wave of farmers and ranchers whose land stewardship ideals will benefit future generations.

According to Dan Imhoff and Michael Dimock (president of roots of change and chairman emeritus of Slow Food USA), in order to promote real farming and challenge the Monoculture giants who are destroying our landscape and monopolising good growing and livestock fields with round up resistant mono crops, at least four fundamental shifts must occur:

Supporting Food, not feed. Crop subsidies and federal insurance currently are used for disproportionately favourable to commodity crops used for animal feed, or for to produce over processed food. This leads to a distinct lack of available fresh and affordable produce for most Americans and the likelihood Americans will ingest more packaged food. Combined with a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program including incentive programs for fruit and vegetable purchase that would reduce diet-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Such a program would save trillions of dollars in health cost in future decades.

Focusing on safeguarding the land. As with original bill, government investments should promote the maintenance and good stewardship of the land and waterways. Currently the farm law only supports a minimal amount of requests from farmers seeking to cost share dollars for projects that would protect water and soil quality and endangered species.

Adding labour to the equation. A labour policy to protect the 6 million farmworkers must be implemented. Currently there is nothing in place in the 1000 page document that prevents exploitation of workers.

Increasing research.  The new bill must emphasise the importance of helping food producers and businesses promote practices to end obesity, hunger, water and soil scarcity and species degradation. The bill needs to provide a platform for ingenuity and innovation

The farm bill’s renewal allows such tremendous opportunity to change the face and shape of agriculture. However, the current bill is a dinosaur, a relic that does nothing but support the very factors that are harming our health, or environment and our animals. YOU have the power to change this nation, one food choice, one meal and one vote at a time. Get informed, take a stance and as always instigate some good eatin’ y’all. Always with love THE EPICUREAN. 

Greenway Farms

What happens when a sheriff and an attorney retire?  Maybe loll in the florida sunshine, drive an RV across America,  or put their feet up and catch up on all the books they promised themselves they would read but never had the time. For this sheriff, Kerry Dunaway and his attorney wife Robin it was  none of these.  They built a farm - Greenway Farms, in Roberta GA.  Both from farming stock they returned to their roots.  Interesting how that happens! For me I suppose I too have returned to my roots.  My dad was a butcher and a slaughter man and his father was the same and raised a few pigs on the side.  I might not be slaughtering and butchering my own pigs but my heart is in farming.  Add to this my passion, from a very young age, for animal welfare and you have The Activist half of Vital Awareness, dedicated to improving the lot of factory farmed livestock through awareness, and supporting the movement to return to real farming practices (the 'old' ways I guess).  This is exactly what I experienced at Greenway Farms, the 'old ways'.  A small farm devoted to sustainable and humane methods of raising animals and crops - the Dunaways know that you only get out what you are prepared to put in  - that's why they are a zero waste farm, what comes from the land goes back into the land with a lot of help from their vermiculture - the worms.  The Dunaways make a wholesome compost, with a Canadian peat starter, worm fodder, fruit and vegetable snacks, and some scraps of newspaper for a worm treat (kinda like the equivalent of worm twinkies)...and of course lots of worms and patience.  It will take about 12 months for the worms to eat their way through the organic matter in their bed and poop it out (I think thats how worms make compost!)

So what do they do with their compost  - grow a wonderful array of vegetables which the Dunaways eat, sell, and 'can'.  The runts of the veggies go to the livestock and...you guessed it to the worms too (a picture perfect cycle).  

Even the local Piggly Wiggly is on board  - instead of throwing the over-ripe un-sellable fruits  and vegetables in the dumpster they donate to The Worms of Greenway Farms. In fact such is the contribution that the Dunaways have a page on their website in honour of Piggly Wiggly.  The Dunaways are in the process of building up their livestock.  They have poultry and laying hens, meat goats, and pork. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the pigs as they were already in Greenway customer freezers - however I did get to see the three acre woodland that these pigs had had all to themselves to forage root and do whatever it is that pigs should be doing.  The hens have plenty of pasture and are the perfect definition of what it means to be free range.  We have touched on labeling and how misleading it is (deliberately so)  - we will cover it in more detail in a later blog.  So back to the free range chickens, as Kerry put it "these hens could catch a bus up to Atlanta for food if they wanted to" - but as I said they know which side their bread is buttered and have no intention of moving to Atlanta.

Currently the Dunaways are building what is for them the perfect herd of goats - how are they doing this? The old-fashioned way of true animal husbandry.  They are breeding from the does and selling on the bucks, and through selective breeding are creating the characteristics for a herd that will suit their needs, farm, customers and geographical position.  When I say this is a no waste farm I truly mean it, there is usually milk left over by the breeding does after they have fed their young - I am  sure a good deal of it makes its way to the Dunaways table but the superfluous gets made into handcrafted soap.  Oh and one more thing, the farm has a sawmill operation (the office and mobile hen house were built from the lumber on Greenway Farms) and the left over odds and ends of lumber are burned and the ash spread on the farmland and pasture as a potash fertilizer.  

The Dunaways are working with other small farmers to get a chicken processing facility built, so that as a co-operative they can share the costs of building and the over-heads of running a processing plant.  This means that chickens will be raised, slaughtered and processed within just a few square miles - this is very exciting for the small poultry farmers in middle GA.  This leads me to the topic of the BIG poultry producers of N Georgia - we know who they are! The Dunaways are keen not to head-butt with the industrialized chicken producers because in any head-on fight there will only be one winner and it won't be the small farmers eking out a living from the land.  

As we at Vital Awareness contend (and I believe that the Dunaways are in agreement) the only way to change the supply is through demand; we have to get consumers to vote with their food dollar as to how they want their food to be produced, so that we can move away from factory farming and get the animals off the concrete and onto the pasture.  How do we do this? We can do it through awareness on four fronts thereby harnessing most consumers (depending on their concerns) - one: pasture raised meat tastes better, two: its better for one's health, three: it is better for the environment, and four: (in particular for me The Activist) from an animal welfare point of view it's the only humane method of raising livestock destined for the food chain.  

TOGETHER - the real farmers and the consumers can make a difference; collectively we can change the face of the food industry - but ultimately the buck literally ends with the consumer, without our help the real small famers of the U.S.A. don't stand a chance.