Showing posts with label corn subsidies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corn subsidies. Show all posts
3/17/2010
3/06/2010
1/21/2010
Monsanto's Corn Link to Organ Failure
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/monsantos-gmo-corn-linked_n_420365.html
7/07/2009
It's About Food
The Sustainable Sandhills film series will focus on food topics with several FREE screenings of King Corn this summer: Fayetteville on July 14; Harnett County on July 28; and Lee County on August 4 (see the Calendar of Events section below for specific times and locations).
The award-winning FOOD Inc. will be coming to the CAMEO Art House Theatre in Fayetteville on August 8-9, and to the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines on August 13-14. We'll be featuring these FOOD Inc. events in our next eBlast. Thanks to both of these fine independent theaters for bringing FOOD Inc. to our region!
The award-winning FOOD Inc. will be coming to the CAMEO Art House Theatre in Fayetteville on August 8-9, and to the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines on August 13-14. We'll be featuring these FOOD Inc. events in our next eBlast. Thanks to both of these fine independent theaters for bringing FOOD Inc. to our region!
7/04/2009
IS IT Organic?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070203365.html?hpid=topnews
6/24/2009
6/12/2009
King Corn Coming to SCC!
REMINDER
Moore County Sustainable Film Series
Thursday, June 18th, 6:30-8pm | Sandhills Community College, Dempsey Student Center, Clement Dining Room
Our Next Film: “King Corn: You Are What You Eat” - Click here for movie trailer.
Sustainable Sandhills will be showing the third film in our Film Series focused on sustainability-related topics. The desire of Sustainable Sandhills is to heighten public awareness of pressing sustainability issues and to encourage community dialogue following each film. The next film in our sustainable film series is the award winning documentary, “King Corn”. The film documents two best friends from college that plant and acre of corn and follow it into our food system. I think everyone will be surprised as to what they find. You truly are what you eat! “King Corn” will be shown Thursday, June 18th, at Sandhills Community College's Dempsey Student Center, upstairs in the Clement Dining Room from 6:30-8:00 PM.
The Film Series is held on a bi-monthly schedule, alternating with the Sustainable Sandhills Moore County Community Action Team Meetings. Each film will be aired from 6:30-8:00 PM at the same location, and the remaining 2009 revised schedule is as follows: August 20th, October 22nd, and December 10th.
Bring the family! All ages are invited to attend and it’s FREE!!! We look forward to seeing you there!
Moore County Sustainable Film Series
Thursday, June 18th, 6:30-8pm | Sandhills Community College, Dempsey Student Center, Clement Dining Room
Our Next Film: “King Corn: You Are What You Eat” - Click here for movie trailer.
Sustainable Sandhills will be showing the third film in our Film Series focused on sustainability-related topics. The desire of Sustainable Sandhills is to heighten public awareness of pressing sustainability issues and to encourage community dialogue following each film. The next film in our sustainable film series is the award winning documentary, “King Corn”. The film documents two best friends from college that plant and acre of corn and follow it into our food system. I think everyone will be surprised as to what they find. You truly are what you eat! “King Corn” will be shown Thursday, June 18th, at Sandhills Community College's Dempsey Student Center, upstairs in the Clement Dining Room from 6:30-8:00 PM.
The Film Series is held on a bi-monthly schedule, alternating with the Sustainable Sandhills Moore County Community Action Team Meetings. Each film will be aired from 6:30-8:00 PM at the same location, and the remaining 2009 revised schedule is as follows: August 20th, October 22nd, and December 10th.
Bring the family! All ages are invited to attend and it’s FREE!!! We look forward to seeing you there!
5/13/2009
HFCS, It's Everywhere. Read the Label
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2008/dec2008_Metabolic-Dangers-of-High-Fructose-Corn-Syrup_01.htm
3/10/2009
2/14/2009
High Fructose Corn Syrup + Mercury
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/02/14/Most-Common-Source-of-Calories-in-US-is-LOADED-With-Mercury.aspx
9/07/2008
7/29/2008
Meat--Do We Need It?
http://www.abcarticledirectory.com/Article/Diet---Is-meat-really-good-for-us--What-happens-when-we-eat-meat--Find-out--/84183
6/29/2008
The Way We Eat
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html
5/25/2008
Are You Manipulated by Corn?
http://allalongtheedge.blogspot.com/2008/05/michael-pollan-omnivore-next-dilemma.html
5/08/2008
Small Farms Hugely Affected by Farm Bill
Small farmers have huge stake in farm bill debate
For the co-owner of Windrose Farm, the ideal measure includes better funding of so-called specialty crops and aid for those with a desire to work the land.
By Barbara Spencer, Special to The Times
May 7, 2008
THE GOLDEN time at Windrose Farm comes just before sunset. The oak-covered hills behind us are illuminated with a golden light. No matter how long the day has been or how much work is still to be done, the farm is glowing with life. It is the perfect time to walk and observe spring.
The longer we farm, the more we are affected by our location, soil and climate. Our choice of what to grow is more and more driven by our belief in terroir, the true nature of a place. This act of farming has changed our values and increased our connection to the earth.
This is also the time of the new farm bill. Originally, the Agriculture Adjustment Act, which was created in 1933 when 60% of American workers were involved in agriculture, was intended to control the supply of farm product and to guarantee a fair price. The goal was to keep farmers and their workers employed and one way to achieve this was to take some land out of production and compensate farmers for lost revenue. Later, programs were added for soil conservation and land preservation.
Today this is a $350-billion program that includes income and price supports, environmental conservation, loan credits, agricultural research, marketing and education projects. Support and programs for the organic farming industry, as well as for fruit and vegetable farmers, could come in this year's bill, currently being negotiated between the House and the Senate (the 2002 bill, which would have expired last October, has been extended several times).
Still, the vast majority of the funds are used in support of the main commodity crops: cotton, corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, sugar beets and dairy, with $5.2 million for direct payments to a small number of commodity farmers.
Rarely has federal money or attention gone to the farms that grow the crops sold directly to consumers at farmers markets, such as salad greens, strawberries, fresh market tomatoes or apricots. The foods we grow at Windrose Farm are considered by the government to be specialty crops. (Actually, most anything you would recognize on your plate would qualify as such.) And these foods traditionally have not been included in the farm bill funding.
So this year's bill could be groundbreaking. This is thanks to two influences: the growth of corporate organic farming and a groundswell of pressure from small farmers and consumer groups.
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/food/la-fo-onside7-2008may07,0,395721.story
For the co-owner of Windrose Farm, the ideal measure includes better funding of so-called specialty crops and aid for those with a desire to work the land.
By Barbara Spencer, Special to The Times
May 7, 2008
THE GOLDEN time at Windrose Farm comes just before sunset. The oak-covered hills behind us are illuminated with a golden light. No matter how long the day has been or how much work is still to be done, the farm is glowing with life. It is the perfect time to walk and observe spring.
The longer we farm, the more we are affected by our location, soil and climate. Our choice of what to grow is more and more driven by our belief in terroir, the true nature of a place. This act of farming has changed our values and increased our connection to the earth.
This is also the time of the new farm bill. Originally, the Agriculture Adjustment Act, which was created in 1933 when 60% of American workers were involved in agriculture, was intended to control the supply of farm product and to guarantee a fair price. The goal was to keep farmers and their workers employed and one way to achieve this was to take some land out of production and compensate farmers for lost revenue. Later, programs were added for soil conservation and land preservation.
Today this is a $350-billion program that includes income and price supports, environmental conservation, loan credits, agricultural research, marketing and education projects. Support and programs for the organic farming industry, as well as for fruit and vegetable farmers, could come in this year's bill, currently being negotiated between the House and the Senate (the 2002 bill, which would have expired last October, has been extended several times).
Still, the vast majority of the funds are used in support of the main commodity crops: cotton, corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, sugar beets and dairy, with $5.2 million for direct payments to a small number of commodity farmers.
Rarely has federal money or attention gone to the farms that grow the crops sold directly to consumers at farmers markets, such as salad greens, strawberries, fresh market tomatoes or apricots. The foods we grow at Windrose Farm are considered by the government to be specialty crops. (Actually, most anything you would recognize on your plate would qualify as such.) And these foods traditionally have not been included in the farm bill funding.
So this year's bill could be groundbreaking. This is thanks to two influences: the growth of corporate organic farming and a groundswell of pressure from small farmers and consumer groups.
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/food/la-fo-onside7-2008may07,0,395721.story
3/03/2008
Forbidden Fruit--- and Vegetables
March 1, 2008, New York Times
Op-Ed Contributor
My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)
By JACK HEDIN
Rushford, Minn.
IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.
But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.
As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity farm program. As I’ve looked into the politics behind those restrictions, I’ve come to understand that this is precisely the outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets started.
Last year, knowing that my own 100 acres wouldn’t be enough to meet demand, I rented 25 acres on two nearby corn farms. I plowed under the alfalfa hay that was established there, and planted watermelons, tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a community-supported agriculture program.
All went well until early July. That’s when the two landowners discovered that there was a problem with the local office of the Farm Service Administration, the Agriculture Department branch that runs the commodity farm program, and it was going to be expensive to fix.
The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.
I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.)
In my case, that meant I paid my landlords $8,771 — for one season alone! And this was in a year when the high price of grain meant that only one of the government’s three crop-support programs was in effect; the total bill might be much worse in the future.
In addition, the bureaucratic entanglements that these two farmers faced at the Farm Service office were substantial. The federal farm program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me to grow fresh organic vegetables.
Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets.
That’s unfortunate, because small producers will have to expand on a significant scale across the nation if local foods are to continue to enter the mainstream as the public demands. My problems are just the tip of the iceberg.
Last year, Midwestern lawmakers proposed an amendment to the farm bill that would provide some farmers, though only those who supply processors, with some relief from the penalties that I’ve faced — for example, a soybean farmer who wanted to grow tomatoes would give up his usual subsidy on those acres but suffer none of the other penalties. However, the Congressional delegations from the big produce states made the death of what is known as Farm Flex their highest farm bill priority, and so it appears to be going nowhere, except perhaps as a tiny pilot program.
Who pays the price for this senselessness? Certainly I do, as a Midwestern vegetable farmer. But anyone trying to do what I do on, say, wheat acreage in the Dakotas, or rice acreage in Arkansas would face the same penalties. Local and regional fruit and vegetable production will languish anywhere that the commodity program has influence.
Ultimately of course, it is the consumer who will pay the greatest price for this — whether it is in the form of higher prices I will have to charge to absorb the government’s fines, or in the form of less access to the kind of fresh, local produce that the country is crying out for.
Farmers need the choice of what to plant on their farms, and consumers need more farms like mine producing high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables to meet increasing demand from local markets — without the federal government actively discouraging them.
Op-Ed Contributor
My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)
By JACK HEDIN
Rushford, Minn.
IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.
But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.
As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity farm program. As I’ve looked into the politics behind those restrictions, I’ve come to understand that this is precisely the outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets started.
Last year, knowing that my own 100 acres wouldn’t be enough to meet demand, I rented 25 acres on two nearby corn farms. I plowed under the alfalfa hay that was established there, and planted watermelons, tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a community-supported agriculture program.
All went well until early July. That’s when the two landowners discovered that there was a problem with the local office of the Farm Service Administration, the Agriculture Department branch that runs the commodity farm program, and it was going to be expensive to fix.
The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.
I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.)
In my case, that meant I paid my landlords $8,771 — for one season alone! And this was in a year when the high price of grain meant that only one of the government’s three crop-support programs was in effect; the total bill might be much worse in the future.
In addition, the bureaucratic entanglements that these two farmers faced at the Farm Service office were substantial. The federal farm program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me to grow fresh organic vegetables.
Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets.
That’s unfortunate, because small producers will have to expand on a significant scale across the nation if local foods are to continue to enter the mainstream as the public demands. My problems are just the tip of the iceberg.
Last year, Midwestern lawmakers proposed an amendment to the farm bill that would provide some farmers, though only those who supply processors, with some relief from the penalties that I’ve faced — for example, a soybean farmer who wanted to grow tomatoes would give up his usual subsidy on those acres but suffer none of the other penalties. However, the Congressional delegations from the big produce states made the death of what is known as Farm Flex their highest farm bill priority, and so it appears to be going nowhere, except perhaps as a tiny pilot program.
Who pays the price for this senselessness? Certainly I do, as a Midwestern vegetable farmer. But anyone trying to do what I do on, say, wheat acreage in the Dakotas, or rice acreage in Arkansas would face the same penalties. Local and regional fruit and vegetable production will languish anywhere that the commodity program has influence.
Ultimately of course, it is the consumer who will pay the greatest price for this — whether it is in the form of higher prices I will have to charge to absorb the government’s fines, or in the form of less access to the kind of fresh, local produce that the country is crying out for.
Farmers need the choice of what to plant on their farms, and consumers need more farms like mine producing high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables to meet increasing demand from local markets — without the federal government actively discouraging them.
2/15/2008
1/12/2008
2/01/2007
It's the Fuel
Mexicans stage tortilla protest
Tens of thousands of Mexicans join a march in Mexico City to protest against the rising price of tortillas. [see U.S. corn conversion to ethanol]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/2/hi/americas/6319093.stm
Tens of thousands of Mexicans join a march in Mexico City to protest against the rising price of tortillas. [see U.S. corn conversion to ethanol]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/2/hi/americas/6319093.stm
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