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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

I posted a link on Twitter and a farmer who saw my post responded with these Tweets:

Do you really think your “factory farm map” is accurate? Really?

As a farmer is it [sic] insulting!

I was sorry that a farmer anywhere would find the map insulting. It’s not designed to disparage all farmers.

In fact, the map (and I think it actually could make this point more clearly) is not a map of all farms and farmers in the U.S. It is only plotting those factory farms in each county with very high livestock densities (you can see the detail here in their methodology page). (Personally, I think it would be a simple/helpful change for viewers to be able to click on the Key “Severe” etc. and instantly see what those levels mean).

The Factory Farm Map helps to make publicly available USDA data more usable and transparent. And the map helps to show, for instance, the concentrations of giant livestock operations that are polluting the environment in certain regions. The map also will hopefully help spark conversation about U.S. farm policy that forces farmers to get big to make a living.

I found the other “experts” posts interesting and the commentary sharp. Was surprised to read Joel Salatin say this, though:

5. All of the negatives associated with meat, dairy, and poultry consumption stem from non-pastured production models and/or monospeciation. This includes both nutritional problems (i.e. colon cancer from red meat) to environmental considerations (i.e. irrigation water required to grow grain). This also includes humane farming considerations. In addition, far more herbivores (bison) existed in the Americas 600 years ago than exist today: The notion that methane from burping herbivores causes climate change is both unscientific and ridiculous.

Take a look at the rebuttal over at the Center for a Livable Future.

The dozens of contributors read like a who’s who of the sustainable food movement, among them ranchers, journalists, public health advocates, and more. Among them:

Wendell Berry ways in on “Renewing Husbandry: The Mechanization of Agriculture is Fast Coming to an End”

Robert F. Kennedy pens a chapter called “Farms to Factories: Pillaging the Commons”

Grist’s Tom Philpott writes “Squeezed to the Last Drop: The Loss of Family Farms”

And I contributed a chapter on the link between livestock and the climate crisis.

But it’s not all doom-and-gloom, contributors were also asked to share a vision for the future and in “Putting the CAFO Out to Pasture” you learn about how we might work toward a humane, equitable, and sustainable food system. Imagine that.

A coffee-table book format volume, including full-color photos of The CAFO Reader will be out this fall. (Just don’t serve feedlot burgers to your guests while you’ve got this one lying around).

Any conflict of interest there, you think?

Maybe a little?

The bloggers in question, who write the pork, knife and spoon blog, say that their funding doesn’t change their editorial line. They just love pork. It’s that simple.

But my eyebrows got a little more of a raise when the bloggers visited a CAFO hog farm – hand-picked by the industry, mind you – and waxed poetic about how lovely it was.

Read below for my comment, which should be posted to the site, too:

“I’ve long heard the line from the pork industry – which funds your site and set up your visit – that hogs appreciate being separated from their young, lest they roll over on ‘em.

I’m not so sure. As Bonnie Powell notes, hogs are at least as social as dogs and I’ve visited plenty of sustainable hog farms where families of pigs were co-existing happily – no mom’s killing their babies. But that kind of operation requires a different scale of production, one that’s not possible in the CAFO model.

What’s missing from your description of this one particular CAFO is not only a critical eye to these inhumane conditions, among others, but to the broader environmental and social context of these operations.

Sadly, we have reams of evidence that hog CAFOs are energy-intensive, polluting factories that have led to illness and death for workers as well as community members who must live near them. The industry has also been repeatedly found in violation of environmental regs. In 1997 alone, Smithfield, the nation’s largest hog producer, was fined $12.6 million for knowingly violating the Clean Air Act. Livestock production, including hog CAFOs, are now such a worrisome player in the global climate change that the United Nations Environment Program has advocated for reducing the production of meat and dairy in CAFOs.”

Want to hear a different story about CAFOs? Check out this documentary by UK journalist Tracy Worcester and read The CAFO Reader.

Or, maybe you just need the visual reminder.

How about this

Versus this

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

A new report concludes that reduced-meat menus in hospital food service led to reduced greenhouse gas emissions and substantial cost savings.

“One of the most compelling aspects of this evaluation is the greenhouse gas emissions reductions,” says co-author of the report, Roni Neff, PhD, MS, Research and Policy Director at the Center for a Livable Future and a faculty member at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. “If the four included hospitals continued what they were doing for a year, they would collectively cut over 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions from meat purchases. That’s like saving over 100,000 gallons of gasoline or growing over 23,000 trees for 10 years.”

Health Care Without Harm and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, released the report this week. “Balanced Menus: A Pilot Evaluation of Implementation in Four San Francisco Bay Area Hospitals,” is the first US examination of the impact that reduced-meat menus in hospital food service have on climate change.

- posted by Kate

According to an article over at Meatingplace, Bon Appetit has “exceeded its carbon footprint goals for the year by reducing beef purchases by 25 percent, cheese by 10 percent, tropical fruit by 50 percent and total food waste by 20 percent.”

A representative from Bon Appetit said: “Chefs are able to offer the usual cheeseburgers to diners who want them, and still reduce the amount of beef they purchase. This reduction is a key component of the program because regardless of how far it travels, or how the animals are raised, beef and cheese come from methane-emitting ruminant animals and methane is a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than CO2.”

–Deepa

According to an article on “The Pig Site,” the EU Parliament said “changes in behavior by consumers and the consideration of targets for reducing agricultural emissions should accompany regulations to cap industrial greenhouse gases and improve energy efficiency.” The 80-page report also reiterated the EU’s plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020.

A step forward, right? Well, the assembly also took a huge leap backward when they decided to DELETE a piece of the report that demanded a cut in global meat consumption, especially in wealthy countries. Why the hesitation? Read the article and tell us what you think.

– Deepa

Juliette Jowit, from the British rag The Guardian, reported on a plan to eliminate meat from hospital menus across the UK. The action would be part of a larger strategy by the National Health Service (UK) to lower carbon emissions and save money, which could then be redirected into patient care.

Check it out here.

The National Health Service was inspired by a study they conducted last year through which they discovered that their emissions alone account for approximately 3% of the country’s s total emissions. If the NHS was a country, this emissions toll would rank them the planet’s 81st worst emitter in 2004.

The NHS has proposed both long- and short-term changes, from “urging people to drink less bottled water to more phone-in surgeries by GPs to the food: The NHS is planning to limit meat and dairy on hospital menus. David Pencheon, director of NHS’s sustainable development unit, said, “We’d like higher levels of fresh food, and probably higher levels of fresh fruit and veg, and more investment in a local economy.”

Sounds good to us.

The filmmakers fly to remote locations and give the locals their first taste of a Burger King burger as they discuss so-called “American culinary culture” and refer to the United States as the “land of fast food.”

Niles asks, “What is the point of this film? And what about the health and climate impacts of this type of food? I doubt that the crew took the time to tell them that if they actually ate the whole Whopper they consumed 40 grams of fat. They also probably failed to mention the greenhouse gas emissions tied to animal production (18 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions according to the U.N.) or the other environmental pollution problems associated with mass-produced animals. And I wonder if they bothered to note that the beef they were eating was probably confined in its own feces for the better part of its life.”

Misdirected advertising concept? We thought so, too.

Oprah’s show includes speakers from across the spectrum, including Wayne Pacelle (president of the Humane Society of the United States and the original sponsors of the Proposition 2 legislation) as well as Prop 2 critics. Proponents of the bill say Prop 2 would ensure more humane treatment of poultry in the state. Opponents counter that it would make production more expensive, putting farmers out of business and driving up costs.

Pacelle sums up Prop 2 this way: “This is just about basic decency,” he said. “It’s about, if animals are going to be raised for food—and that’s certainly the case in this country—then the least we can do for them is allow them to move. I mean, what’s more basic than allowing animals with legs and wings to move around?”

The average American consumes approximately 254 eggs a year. 95% of egg-laying hens are raised in caged facilities. Human decency and common sense indicate that we should care about the quality and size of these cages, to ensure a better quality of life for food-producing animals and a better quality of the food we’re consuming.

You can watch a really great online slideshow about the show and learn how to be ever-more “conscious” consumers.

We’re glad to see the message is getting out there.

Now, for the backlash.

He told The Observer that we should each practice a non-meat diet at least one day a week, and then gradually reduce our meat intake over time.

(See #3 on our list Ten Ways to Take a Bite out of Climate Change.)

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that meat production is responsible for one fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and that at the rate consumption is increasing we will double that production by 2050.

“In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity,” Pachauri told The Observer. “Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there.”

Pachauri also stressed that we need to make changes in every sector the economy in relation to climate change. Diet is just a starting point.

Check out the full report in English (China translation coming soon): www.brightergreen.org/files/brightergreen_china_print.pdf

Here’s Mia’s press release:

New York–based policy action tank Brighter Green’s new report, Skillful Means: The Challenges of China’s Encounter with Factory Farming, explores the emerging superpower’s “livestock revolution,” which is having serious impacts on public health, food security, and equity in China—and the world. The Beijing Summer Olympics are showcasing a resurgent nation, which only two generations after a devastating national famine is eating increasingly high on the food chain. In the past ten years, consumption of China’s most popular meat, pork, has doubled. In 2007, China raised well over half a billion pigs for meat.

Given that every fifth person in the world is Chinese, even small increases in individual meat or dairy consumption will have broad, collective environmental as well as climate impacts. Increasingly, what the Chinese eat, and how China produces its food, affects not only China, but the world, too.
“When I was a child, every person was allotted one pound of pork a month,” says Peter Li, a professor of political science at the University of Houston in Texas who grew up in Jiangxi province in southeast China says in Eating Skillfully. “We could not eat more than that. You could not get it. Now, though, more people have access to more meat and want to eat a lot of it.”

In yuan terms, meat is the second largest segment of China’s retail food market. China has also opened its doors to investments by major multinational meat and dairy producers, as well as animal feed corporations, including Tyson Foods, Smithfield, and Novus International. Western-style meat culture has gone mainstream. Fast food is a U.S. $28-billion-a-year business in China. McDonald’s, a major sponsor of the Olympics, had more than 800 restaurants in China, with at least a hundred more set to open by the time the games began. Four McDonald’s are operating in Olympic venues, including the press center and the athletes’ village.

“China is not yet a bone fida “factory farm nation” like the U.S.,” says Mia MacDonald, Brighter Green’s executive director and co-author of Skillful Means. “But the strains of its fast-growing livestock sector are becoming harder to ignore. In the U.S., a re-examination of the multiple human, environmental, economic, and ethical costs of factory farming is taking place. Such a process needs to get underway in China—before it’s too late.”

Although these realities won’t be fully obvious to the millions of people cheering on the Olympic athletes in China and across the globe, they demand attention:
• China’s livestock produce 2.7 billion tons of manure every year, nearly three and a half times the industrial solid waste level. Run-off from livestock operations have created a large “dead zone” in the South China Sea that is virtually devoid of marine life.
• In northern China, overgrazing and overfarming lead to the loss of nearly a million acres of grassland each year to desert.
• Diet-related chronic diseases now kill more Chinese than any other cause, and nearly one in four Chinese is overweight.
• More than 90 percent of some bacteria in Asia can no longer be treated effectively with “first-line” antibiotics like penicillin—due to their overuse in farmed animals.
• China can still feed itself. But this is likely to change as its meat and dairy sectors expand and intensify. The Chinese government is looking abroad, not only to international food markets but also to Africa, Latin America, and other parts of Asia for land on which to produce food for people and feed for livestock.
• In 2008, China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2). Per capita emissions of CO2 in China have more than doubled, from 2.1 tons of CO2 equivalent in 1990 to 5.1 tons today. Meat and dairy production have a direct relationship with global climate change: fully 18 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions stem from the livestock industry.

Even though the Chinese government seems set on emulating industrialized nations’ meat and dairy culture, a small but growing number of Chinese non-governmental organizations and individuals are questioning this path. To them food quality, not quantity, is important, along with issues of sustainability and animal welfare.

In the talk, “Global Warming: The Impact of Meat Production and Consumption on Climate Change,” Pachauri will focus on industrial farming’s impact on the environment and the impact of our industrialized diet on climate.

In London in September? Get your tickets now: here.

You can read more about the impact of agriculture on climate change in CIWF’s report ‘Global Warning: Climate change and Farm Animal Welfare.’

We’ll report more in September!

“Our favorite question: If meat causes more carbon emissions than cars, what should we do? Al said, “It is true that it would be healthier for us as if we consumed less meat.” How come that hasn’t been a more prominent? “I myself am a meat eater and perhaps that has something to do with it.” We’ve got to walk before we run, Al said. “None of us are perfect.”

Take a look at our Eat section to get some decrease-the-meat suggestions.