We all have a need to feel at ease and in harmony with ourselves and the environment we live within. Many of us discover that it isn’t material things that provide this. In my own life, I have observed that well-being and satisfaction are achieved through compassion, the giving of oneself, serving others, and sharing. We aren’t material beings; we are filled with spirit. . . . Kikuyus used a gourd, in which they carried porridge or beer, as an offering or gift. Whoever received the gourd would polish it with oil before returning it. Over time, the gourd would become beautifully
varnished by this repeated polishing. The deeper the color of the gourd, the more generous you had been—and the more connected you remained to the world around you. . . .

These gestures of giving capture both the spiritual and the practical elements of gratitude and respect for resources. Our connections to the planet and each other are reinforced simultaneously. The spirit of not wasting, because we assign value to something, is found in many traditions, but not often expressed. We could benefit from spending more time polishing our gourds for each other.

National Sustainable Agriculture
Only once every 5 years do you have the opportunity to truly transform our food and farm system through the federal farm bill.

On Monday the Agriculture Committee leadership proposed to rewrite the food and farm bill in 2 weeks from today – yes you heard that right, 2 weeks – this is usually a year plus process and they want to do it in 2 weeks?! This would be the fastest food and farm bill decision-making process in history.

Please act today for a chance you have only once every 5 years to reform our food and farming system and protect our natural resources.

If you care about the health of America’s soil, water, and land; promoting organic practices and conservation; helping a new generation of struggling small and mid-sized farmers get their start; rebuilding local and regional food systems; or developing new markets and healthy food access – now is the time to speak up. If you want to see a healthier, more secure, environmentally sustainable, and prosperous America – now is the time to speak up.

This proposal would wipe out over 40 percent of the funding increases for conservation and environmental initiatives achieved in the 2002 and 2008 food and farm bills, setting the clock back and “un-greening” the farm bill. Moreover, it is unclear what the proposal would do to the fair and healthy farm and food system programs won in 2008 with your help, but in need of being renewed in the new farm bill. It could potentially wipe out all of those gains as well.

It just takes a minute to call:
• First check if your Senator and/or Representative sits on the Senate Agriculture or House Agriculture Committee
• If your Senator or Representative sits on either of these three committees: call the Capitol Switchboard and ask to be directly connected to your Senators’ and Member of Congress’s office: 202-224-3121. Or go to Congress.org and type in your zip code, then click on your Senators and Member of Congress’s name and the contact tab for their phone number.
• If the line is busy, please leave a brief message on the voicemail.

The Message: I am a constituent, calling Senator/Representative _____ to deliver this message (use one or more of these talking points):

• The proposed farm conservation cuts are too big and should be reduced. In particular, the Conservation Stewardship Program funding should be retained and Wetlands Reserve Program funding should be restored.
• Farm commodity program reform should include caps on the amount of subsidy any one farm can receive. Loopholes allowing multiple subsidy payments to single farms should be closed. Conservation requirements should be attached to all forms of revenue and crop insurance subsidies.
• The farm bill must reinvest at least $1 billion a year in innovative, job-creating programs for rural economic development, local and regional food systems, renewable energy, organic farming, and young and beginning farmers.

*According to published accounts, the leaders of the Agriculture Committees are proposing cuts of $6.5 billion to conservation programs, $5 billion to nutrition programs, and $15 billion to commodity subsidy programs. The conservation cuts would be on top of the $2 billion already made by Congress in the appropriations process.

——————–

From Hunger Action Network

Call you Congress member today (202 224-3121) and tell them:

No deficit reduction plan can work if it does not rebuild our economy by protecting Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment insurance and other basic safety net programs. And it must create jobs. Such a plan must have increased revenues from upper-income households and profitable corporations, and savings from cutting unneeded military spending.

The Senate is about to take up a Agriculture Appropriations bill, in which the Republicans will seek to make cuts to the food stamp / SNAP program. Senator Gillibrand, whom we talked to last week, is leading the fight nationally to protect SNAP, so all she needs is a call to thank her (202 224-4451). Sen. Schumer, whose staff we met with this week, says he is also opposed, but a call to him would help convince him to take more of a leadership role. He is not signing onto a letter that Gillibrand is circulating to protect SNAP(202 224-6542)

The tougher fight is expected in the House, where the House leadership supports steep cuts in food stamps and other low-income programs.

You could also include in your message support for a Farm Bill that invests in healthy food, strong conservation programs and family farms, not corporate agribusiness.

———————–

The Farm Bill Is a Food Bill

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rajiv-narayan/the-farm-bill-is-a-food-b_b_1020469.html

Where the farm bill allocates resources to funding food stamps on one hand, it also incentivizes the purchase of unhealthy foods. In the most recent farm bill updates, it appears as though the back-room appropriations are moving in the favor of subsidies. While both direct payment programs and nutrition programs are looking at cuts, a mechanism for replacing subsidy cuts with a new funding regime has already surfaced. Unfortunately for the food side of the farm bill, it’s become increasingly difficult to advocate for change. In the past, the farm bill has been traditionally held to industry interests. Now, the super committee process may shut out democratic input altogether if the bill is written in the coming weeks by a handful of legislators for the purpose of bypassing floor debate.

Because the farm bill is so rarely written, it becomes important to reclaim its status as a food bill. Even if parts of the package are at odds with the part of the bill that works to create a healthy food system, the latter still comprises 70 percent of the legislation. It remains to be seen whether the super committee process will allow some food for thought.

——————————————————–

Farm Bill Battle Heats Up

http://www.kfgo.com/agri-business-news.php?ID=9424

WASHINGTON (DTN) – Fights began breaking out Tuesday among agriculture interests over what the super committee might do with the farm bill, even though no one knows how the leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees are planning to move ahead with the proposal that they sent to the super committee on Monday.

One of the fights over super committee ag cuts and farm bill plans is whether to cut spending on food programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., Senate Agriculture ranking member Pat Roberts, R-Kans., House Agriculture Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and House Agriculture ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., sent the super committee a letter Monday saying they would agree to up to $23 billion in farm program cuts over 10 years, and that they will send the super committee a more detailed proposal by Nov. 1 on what they are seeking.

———————–

Key farm groups back revenue plan

DANIEL LOOKER 10/19/2011 @ 4:58pm Business Editor

http://www.agriculture.com/news/policy/key-farm-groups-back-revenue-pl_4-ar20037

Three influential farm groups Wednesday urged the House and Senate agriculture committees to replace the main existing commodity programs with a revenue-based risk management plan that would pay for some losses not covered by crop insurance.

Today’s letter to the chairs and ranking minority members of the ag committees was signed by the American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers Association and National Farmers Union.

All three have their own farm bill proposals but they’ve united behind the idea of replacing existing farm programs, including the often criticized direct payments, with a program helps farmers only when they have losses in revenue.

The groups said that federal budget realities “make it imperative to find a viable risk management approach that can replace several existing programs, including Direct Payments, Countercyclical Payments, SURE, and the ACRE program.”

“…under a revenue-based program, compensation for losses that exceed a certain threshold would only be made as they are incurred, on all production, and only on a portion of the loss,” the groups point out. “This stands in contrast with the current Direct Payment program under which farmers receive payments regardless of whether they produce a crop or incur a loss. Also, many producers participate in the crop insurance program at levels that require losses of 30 percent or more before they are compensated. With the elimination of other elements of the farm safety net, a program is needed to offset part of these losses should they occur.”

They also voiced “strong support” for keeping the existing crop insurance program. Any revenue program “should be designed to complement rather than overlap or replace this key part of the farm program safety net,” they said.

We join millions grieving for Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai. She altered the course of our lives, and our one solace is in knowing that she has changed — and will continue to change — the lives of millions of others. She taught us about the work of hope.

In the early 1970s, Wangari — the first woman PhD in biological sciences in East Africa — saw the Sahara desert creeping south into Kenya. In just one century, the country’s forests had shrunk to less than five percent of what they once were. Wangari knew that Kenya’s entire ecosystem was threatened, with devastating results.

So Wangari decided to take action. On Earth Day 1977, she planted seven trees to honor seven women leaders in her country, and with that act, launched the Green Belt Movement. When she began, the Kenyan forestry service, established under the British, scoffed at her. “What? Untrained village woman planting trees to reverse the encroaching desert? Oh no, that takes trained foresters!”

“The foresters were not amused,” Wangari told us, with her signature grin, when we met her in Kenya to learn about her movement firsthand in 2000. “I told them, ‘We need millions of trees and you foresters are too few, you’ll never produce them. So you need to make everyone foresters.’ I call the women of the Green Belt Movement foresters without diplomas.”

In the intervening decades, the Movement’s tree-planting village women turned Wangari’s seven trees into 45 million across the country. And the Movement’s “kitchen garden” campaign brought greater food security, too. “When you go home,” village elder Lea Kisomo, told us, looking straight into our eyes, “tell your people that we Kamba people had lost our culture, especially our food security, but now we are going to regain it. What we’ve lost, we’re getting back.”

But as we talked with Green Belt Movement members in their homes, we realized that our first impressions of Wangari’s real impact was wrong — or not wrong, exactly, but not big enough: Yes, the Green Belt Movement was about reforestation, but as Wangari engaged further in the work, she realized that in order to protect forests, a transformation was needed in the minds of the members: In this way, the true battle is not about the environment, as such; the real battle takes place inside, when “ordinary people” make that internal shift — as terrifying as it might be — to realize their power.

“We broke the code,” Wangari told us as we sat with her in a Green Belt Movement guesthouse. “We told the women: ‘Use the methods you know, and if you don’t know, invent.’ They would use broken pots. They would put the soil and seeds there and watch as they germinate. If they germinate, well and good; if not, try again.”

In other words, she told the women to trust themselves.

As the result of her work, tens of thousands of village women who had been taught to defer to chiefs, husbands, colonial authorities, multinational corporate marketers, and to disparage their own traditions and common sense gained courage. They learned to say: We have the solutions. We can take responsibility. We can transform our villages and our nation — and our world.

Saying good-bye to Wangari as we left Kenya in 2000, we were inspired, but worried: her movement’s resources were shaky, a big international donor had just pulled out and she and her leadership were under threat from government retaliation. Shortly after we returned home, Wangari was jailed — not for the first time — for her resistance to illegal logging.

We could never have imagined, let alone predicted, the changes that just a few years would bring: In 2002, Wangari swept into Parliament, out-polling her nearest opponent 50 to 1. Soon, she was named Deputy Minister of the Environment, and women danced for joy in the streets of Nairobi. And then, in 2004, we heard the remarkable news: Wangari had been honored with the Nobel Peace Prize.

In Kenya we met many women wearing the Green Belt Movement’s simple t-shirt adorned with the slogan: “As for me, I’ve made a choice.” So simple, yet so powerful, are those words: To create the world we want, Wangari always embodied, we must choose to act, even if there is no evidence assuring success — even if we face ridicule, oppression, and loss. Hope, she taught us, is not for wimps. It is not what we find in evidence, it is what we become in action.

And so, as we grieve along with countless others around the planet, we remember these simple words of the Movement and what the planet calls us to do: Not to be assured that we will succeed, but that as Wangari did with those seven trees in 1977 — and for the rest of her life — that we make the simple, profound choice to act.

Check out Rainforest Action Network’s report on the link between picture books and rainforest destruction. Among 30 children’s books tested, 60 percent contain fibers that can be traced back to forests in Indonesia. Ironically, some of these books are actually about rainforests and the environment.

Read “Turning the Page on Rainforest Destruction” and take action. Join us in sending a petition telling U.S. publishers to stop using paper made from rainforest destruction and start using recycled materials instead.

Thanks for all who joined. You can check it out here.

For the first time ever, the World Social Forum is being held in the Amazon, and will gather the largest Indigenous delegation in the history of the forum. Levana and Andrea are representing RAN on the ground at the WSF and will be taking an active role within an international Amazon delegation, comprised of Indigenous allies/networks such as COIAB, COICA and international NGO allies such as Amazon Watch, Amazon Alliance, IFG (International Forum on Globalization, BIC (Bank Information Center) and many others. We’re very excited to be participating and co-coordinating one of the most visible actions at the forum—the “Human Banner.” (see below)

Our participation in the WSF is a great opportunity to launch the year by reconnecting with allies from all around the world, frontline communities impacted by soy, palm oil and agrofuels, as well as playing a crucial role in bringing attention to the Amazon, Indigenous rights, rainforest issues generally, and the importance of making forests a top priority in the upcoming climate negotiations.

Here’s what we’ll be doing on the ground:

Human banner:
Prior to the mass march of nearly 100,000 people that officially opens the WSF, we will be supporting our Indigenous allies in sounding the alarm in defense of the Amazon and its inhabitants. We are working with the Amazon delegation to organize at least 1,000 people or so to participate in a human banner near the Amazon River. We will be using human bodies to spell out “SOS Amazonia”, indicating the need to focus on protecting the Amazon, and its inhabitants, particularly given its fundamental significance in climate stabilization. This will be photographed by award-winning photojournalist, Lou Dematteis and videographed by Antoine Bonsorte, from a helicopter. Joining them in the helicopter and on the ground will be photographers and journalists from major media outlets/wires such as AP, AFP and Al Jazeera, as well as Brazilian media.

Other events and meetings at the World Social Forum:
The Amazon delegation is sponsoring several events and workshops at the World Social Forum. We’ll be actively participating and/or recruiting our allies to participate in the following events:

· Jan 28, “State of the Amazon”, panel and a media briefing where Andrea will serve as a spokesperson and talk about the Rainforest Agribusiness campaign and agribusiness impacts in the Amazon.

· Jan 29, Challenging IIRSA (Integration of South American Regional Infrastructure) Workshop, where Levana and Andrea will be leading a session on corporate campaign strategies to use in challenging national and regional “development” projects

· Jan 29, Indigenous Rights in Action Workshop focusing on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

· Jan 29, Brazilian Amazon Now and Forever focusing on the Amazon and Climate Change

· Jan 30, Action for the Amazon, a strategy session to prepare for the Amazon Forum taking place in Manaus, Brazil in July.

Andrea will be speaking at a couple of other workshops, including:
· REDVIDA panel on food, water and climate change

· The launch of a Global Women’s Network on Right to Livelihood which is seeking to link issues of agriculture, food sovereignty, seeds, climate change, land, water and forests to issues connected with livelihoods.

If you have any questions about our work at the WSF or after, please do not hesitate to ask. Thanks!

Leila

I’m writing to extend the invitation to join Rainforest Action Network on a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit the Brazilian Amazon and bear witness to the impacts of U.S. Agribusiness’ impacts on Indigenous and local communities and the Amazon rainforest. The delegation of RAN supporters and close allies will take place from January 16–28, 2009. The journey begins in the heart of the Amazon –Manaus-, travels through the soy plantations of Santarem, and ends where the Amazon meets the Atlantic Ocean –Belem. Space is limited, so please RSVP by November 15. See below for more detailed information on the journey or go to www.ran.org/amazon09.

As you know, RAN’s Rainforest Agribusiness Campaign is challenging one of the fastest growing threats to the Amazon: the rapid expansion of soy plantations by U.S. agribusiness giants ADM, Bunge and Cargill. The spread of soy plantations is fueling the destruction of the world’s largest tropical rainforest, which is one of the planet’s most biologically and culturally diverse ecosystems.

We’ll travel by riverboat on the Amazon River from Manaus to Santarém; stay at a comfortable eco-lodge in the heart of the Amazon; commune with Indigenous and local leaders, allies, activists, soy workers and frontline communities; and witness the impacts of U.S. agribusiness in and around Santarém. We’ll go on exciting excursions and participate in informative presentations led by the Rainforest Agribusiness team and our allies. For those of you who have a little extra time, we encourage you to join RAN staff, our allies and 80,000 people from around the world at the World Social Forum –the alternative to the World Economic Forum- which will take place in Belém, Brazil, from Jan 27 to Feb 1, 2009. For more information, visit www.forumsocialmundial.org.br

Please join us for this once-in-a-lifetime experience to join RAN staff and committed activists on a journey to one of the most magical and threatened places on earth. Become a deeper part of the solution to the protect the Amazon and the Indigenous and local communities working to protect this global treasure.

If you have any questions about the trip please do not hesitate to contact me at Leila@ran.org or 415-659-0532. You can also contact Branden Barber, RAN’s Development Director, at branden@ran.org or 415-659-0539.

I look forward to hearing from you and hope that you can join us on what will be a journey of a lifetime.

For the forests and the future,
Leila Salazar-Lopez
Rainforest Agribusiness Campaign Director

Rosehips

I also returned to read my colleague, farmer Jim Goodman’s, powerful reporting on the floods that swept through his community. [Read his diary at Living La Vida Locavore from Daily Kos blogger Jill Richardson.]

Meanwhile, though mainstream papers like the Financial Times are calling for a moratorium on corn-based ethanol, our country’s headlong rush and multi-billion financing of this environmental and social blunder continues unabated. [I talk about this with some esteemed colleagues and media heroine Laura Flanders on Grit.tv. Check out the conversation on Grit.tv and let us know what you think!]

Last week, thousands of indigenous people and small farmers in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul peacefully blocked roads, railways and invaded dams to draw attention to the global food crisis and policies that favor agribusiness over small farms. Despite the non-violent nature of their actions, six of the participants protesting in front of a Bunge soy-crushing facility were attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets, suffering severe injuries.

Rainforest Action Network is calling on us to take action and hold Bunge accountable for these actions.

You can click here for more information on how to take action, including joining the RAN action to fax Bunge CEO Alberto Weisser’s office, demanding that he take action to prevent attacks on peaceful demonstrators.

One of the most popular (or at least the most public) forms of climate change mitigation, pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, has been the big push for tree planting. Flying on Virgin Atlantic? Offset your travel with trees. Picking up an Enterprise Rental Car? Offset your emissions with some trees.

But get this: That tree planting might not be so neutral for Mother Earth.

As John Paull, a researcher from Australian National University, said in one of today’s sessions: Many of these forestry efforts use massive doses of chemicals to grow those saplings and maintain those forests.

If you think forest certification systems are the answer to the pesky problem of pesticides in forestry, both the Forest Stewardship Council and the Pan-european Forest Certification Council allow chemical use.

[Correction: In the original post, I said that the PEFC would also allow genetically modified trees, according to Paull. But in a General Assembly decision in 2007, the PEFC adopted rules that GMO material cannot be included in certified material. Our thanks to a helpful blog reader.]

Paull quotes the Forest Stewardship Council standards, which state in Standard 6.6a: “Strive to avoid the use of chemical pesticides.” But the Forest Stewardship Council also directs foresters to comply with local law. So while the chemical Simazine is banned under FSC standards, for instance, in Australia the country-wide exemption for the chemical overrides this ban.

Furthermore, forestry chemicals are typically aerially sprayed, making it that much harder to contain contamination making it that much more likely that chemicals spread into waterways and other places we don’t want them to go.

Many of the chemicals used in forestry are also used in combination with each, increasing their potential toxicity and the question-mark factor about their potential to cause harm.
So what chemicals are in use? Paull listed them off: During pre-planting and at the early growth stages, herbicides like Atrazine can be combined with as many as twenty-five others to increase their impact. Faunacides, like 1080, that target browsing animals are also common. (At this point, Paull displayed images of some of these warm and fuzzy guys: “Are we going to heal the planet by killing wallaby’s or possums?”) Then, there are the insecticides that target native insects and, finally, the fungicides that can be applied for up to fifteen years, or more.

Quoting Mencken, Paull said, “For every complex problem there is a simple solution, and it’s wrong.” In other words, our strategy of tree planting as a carbon offset might seem a simple answer, but when we’re turning to chemical forestry, it may not be the eco-solution we’re hunting for.

Paull’s solution was an organic forestry certification. But while we may be far from achieving such a certification system, we at least can pressure the forestry certifying bodies to toughen up their positions. As Paull said, “Carbon offsets using chemicals in our forestry is trading on a lie, and the lie is that we can heal the planet with pesticides.”

Well, it turns out we don’t have to look too far. Forests in the southern parts of the United States are also being decimated to service our fast food addiction. Clearcut forests in our country’s south are supplying 60 percent of the nation’s paper demands and 15 percent of global demand, according to a recent study.

And it’s the paper demands of our fast food chains – think napkins, cups, wrappers – that have been among the biggest drivers of this loss. Thanks in large part to Big Gulps, Big Macs, Whoppers, and Chalupas, nearly half of the forested acres in the south have been decimated in the past several hundred years, from 356 million acres to 182 million acres today.

A new campaign by the Dogwood Alliance NoFreeRefills.org is targeting fast food chains to demand they reduce their impact on the environment.

We can do our part, too. Here are some tips for ways we can help decrease demand on our precious forests:
1. Use a travel mug or stainless steel water bottle rather than using disposable cups
2. Bringing your own bags to the grocery store or farmers market. You’ll save trees and carbon.
3. When you eat out, bring your own containers to carry leftovers home in. To-go-ware makes a nice stainless steel product.