Help Stop Terminator's Return!

La Via Campesina Call to Action - July 2010

Four years after the moratorium on Terminator technology was reaffirmed by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), proposals to develop and commercialize ‘genetic-use restriction technologies’ (GURTs) are back on the agenda for policymakers and the biotechnology industry. Terminator is a threat to food sovereignty and agrobiodiversity: ending the moratorium on Terminator will increase control of seed by transnational corporations (TNCs) and restrictions on farmers’ rights to save and plant harvested seed. Additionally, pollen from genetically-modified (GM) crops with Terminator will contaminate non-GM and organic crops, and native plant species.

GURTs (herein referred to as ‘Terminator’) are genetic engineering technologies that seek to control plant fertility. First-generation Terminator (also called ‘suicide seed’) was developed jointly by the US Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pine Land Company in the 1990s to protect the intellectual property of US agricultural biotechnology TNCs. GM crops produce sterile seeds to prevent farmers from replanting harvested seed with patented DNA. Due to international public outcry from farmers and civil society worldwide, Terminator has never been commercialized anywhere, and Brazil and India have national moratoriums prohibiting it. In 2000, the CBD recommended a de facto moratorium on field-testing and commercial sale of Terminator seeds. In 2006, pressure from La Via Campesina and its allies helped to strengthen this moratorium in Curitiba, Brazil.

That year, US-based TNC Monsanto Company, the largest seed company in the world, acquired Delta and Pine Land, along with the intellectual property rights to Terminator. Since then industry, the US and European governments and ultra-rich philanthro-capitalists have ramped up rhetoric on the need for Terminator and other biotechnologies to adapt to the climate, energy and food crises. Various false solutions are being proposed to sell the lie that techno-fixes allow rich countries to continue consuming resources and emitting carbon dioxide, unabated: GM crops for cellulosic and second-generation agrofuels; geoengineering ‘climate ready’ GM crops and trees with increased albedo (reflectivity) and resistance to drought, heat and salt; monoculture plantation forests of GM trees to industrially produce biochar for carbon sequestration; and GM algae and marine microbes for carbon dioxide sequestration. Monsanto is proposing that monoculture plantations of its Roundup Ready soybeans qualify for carbon credits under so-called “no-till” agriculture. All of these false solutions create new markets for agricultural biotechnology and ‘extreme genetic engineering’. To read the full action alert, click here

State Is Not Yet In Need of Sale Ban On Raw Milk

Editorial, St. Cloud Times (St. Cloud, MN) - July 5th, 2010

Buyers and sellers, know and follow the law. State authorities, stay focused on enforcing the law. Legislators, don't rush to pass any new laws. Those are our suggestions as authorities look into problems stemming from the consumption and possible illegal sales of raw milk. This being the heart of dairyland in Minnesota, many area residents likely are following with interest the state Agriculture Department's probe of up to three farms involved in raw milk issues. To read the full editorial, click here

Coverage of the USDA/Dept. of Justice Dairy Anti-Trust Workshop

Held in Madison, WI June 25th, 2010

Free Speech Radio News Segment, produced by Molly Stentz of WORT Community Radio in Madison, which aired on over 100 stations across the U.S. on Fri. June 25th, 2010. http://www.fsrn.org/audio/dairy-industry-anti-trust-hearing-madison/6985

Wisconsin Public Radio segment by Kirk Carapezza which aired on Mon. June 28th, 2010 To read the transcript, click here

Does Dean Foods Have Unfair Advantage?

By: Jessica Vanegeren Capital Times (Madison, WI) 7/7/10

Sassy Cow Creamery just celebrated its second anniversary. Last year, looking to get its name out there, the dairy landed a contract to supply milk to a high-profile Madison event. All went smoothly and the dairy was looking forward to a repeat performance this year. But this spring the family-owned, Sun Prairie-based dairy was outbid by Dean Foods, a $12 billion company that now controls 57 percent of Wisconsin’s milk market. To read more, click here

Farmers Plead For Help As Milk Prices Destroy Profits

Hundreds Gather For Hearing at UW-Madison

By Rick Barrett Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 26th, 2010

The current system leaves dairy farmers with little or no profit, several said at a U.S. Department of Justice hearing on antitrust issues in the dairy industry. The hearing attracted hundreds of farmers from around the country to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "What we are hearing is a consistent message, which has not always been the case. Dairy producers, large and small, are hurting," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said at the hearing. To read the full story, click here

Farmers Call For Federal Probe Of Dairy Industry

By: Scott Bauer Associated Press 6/25/10

MADISON, Wis. — Dairy farmers large and small from all over the country urged federal regulators Friday to investigate their industry and help determine why the prices that they're paid for milk aren't keeping pace with what consumers are charged at the store. That united position, which comes among sinking dairy prices and increasing costs, wasn't there a year ago and speaks to the depths of the problem, said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The departments of Agriculture and Justice organized the hearing that attracted more than 500 farmers, lobbyists, politicians and others. To read the full story, click here

State Officials Look to Feds for Dairy Industry Support

By Andy Szal WisBusiness.com 6/26/2010

Top Wisconsin lawmakers today asked the federal government to seek stronger anti-trust standards and greater price transparency to help the state's struggling dairy industry. Gov. Jim Doyle, both the state's U.S. senators, Madison U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin and state Agriculture Secretary Rod Nilsestuen each joined a workshop held in Madison by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Justice. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney hosted the event, the third of five forums held around the country to address anti-trust issues in agriculture. To read the full story click here

At Madison Forum, Farmers Call for Federal Probe of Dairy Industry

By Jane Burns Wisconsin State Journal , June 26th, 2010

For all the complex issues raised at Friday's workshop on competition in the dairy industry, the question at the heart of it was a simple one: What is happening? That's how U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., broke it down to a crowd of about 600 at Union Theater on the UW-Madison campus. The event drew farmers, producers, lobbyists, politicians and economists to discuss a dairy industry that has seen rising production costs and massive milk price fluctuations in recent years. To read the full story, click here

Farmers Brainstorm Before USDA Workshop

By: Jeff Angileri

Channel 27 WKOW TV News, Madison, WI 6/24/10

http://www.wkowtv.com/global/story.asp?s=12705345

Farmers from across Wisconsin are expected to come to the capital city for an historic workshop on the lack of competition in agricultural markets. USDA Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Senators Herb Kohl and Russell Feingold, Representatives Ron Kind, Steve Kagen and Tammy Baldwin, and Governor Jim Doyle will participate in the USDA/DOJ workshop, scheduled for Friday morning at 9 a.m. at the UW Memorial Union. Farmers are already calling it a historic meeting. They hope to convince the government to break-up large dairy companies, that they say, are putting small farmers out of business. Dairy farmers say after more than a year of historic low milk prices, they're in dire economic straights. "Farmers are either not able to pay their bills, or they're in a state of bankruptcy or foreclosure, or one step away," said Paul Rozwadowki, Stanley dairy farmer. To read more, click here

Farmers Will Face Industry Giants At Dairy Workshop -

Gannet News Story 6/23/10

WASHINGTON — For dairy farmer Paul Rozwadowski of Stanley, Wis., this Friday won't begin with the usual chores of milking cows and tending fields. Instead, Rozwadowski will travel to Madison, Wis., to participate in a workshop on competition in the dairy industry co-hosted by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Justice. The town-hall-style event is a response to charges from farmers and legislators that giant dairy cooperatives and processors are crushing small farmers. To read the full story click here

A Chance to Tell D.C. How To Get Farm Policy Right

By: John Nichols

Capital Times 6/23/10

Farm and food policy is usually made in Washington, where the politicians who call the shots often know less about producing milk or growing grain than the average 6-year-old in Wisconsin. Sure, we have an advantage. Wisconsin has always been a farm state. Many Wisconsinites grew up on or near farms, or are the children or grandchildren of people who did. It’s in our nature, and in our culture, to care about family farms, local dairies and cheesemakers, and the food chain, which, in our state at least, is still something we can see and touch. Unfortunately, as Washington insiders make more and more decisions with an eye toward rewarding big agribusiness companies and tipping the scales against working farmers, Wisconsin’s agricultural sector is taking hits. And the hardest hits to Wisconsin farmers and consumers are coming from the politicians who have not just allowed but often encouraged the consolidation of control over food production in the hands of a handful of multinational conglomerates — conglomerates that manipulate food markets not to enrich working farmers or feed hungry people but to pay off speculators who have never been near farm country. To read the full story click here

Dean Foods Accused as Dairy Farmers Say They Are Getting Milked

By: Alison Fitgerald

www.Bloomberg.com 5/27/10

At Harold Howrigan’s dairy farms in northern Vermont last year, the red ink was flowing almost as fast as the milk. The dairyman was losing nearly $100 per cow each month because the price for 100 pounds of milk fell to $11, well under the $18 cost of production. “It was bad. People had to borrow money just to make ends meet,” says Howrigan. Prices have recovered some, though not enough to pay down the new debt, he says. These are tough times for America’s 60,000-odd dairy farms, thanks to a decade-long deflationary trend in prices and a particularly severe downturn last year, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its May 31 issue. Industry sales fell 30 percent in 2009, to $24.1 billion, from the year-earlier period, according to the Agriculture Department. Congress, which spent $350 million on emergency dairy price supports last year, has taken notice. So has the Justice Department, which is scrutinizing the market power of the biggest dairy cooperatives and food companies to assess the effect on prices. Along with the USDA, Justice Department officials will hold a June 25 hearing in Madison, Wisconsin, on dairy market concentration. Meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is reviewing complaints of price manipulation in the spot cash market for cheddar cheese, which also affects the price of milk. To read the full story, click here

An Open Letter on Haitian Agriculture to Hugh Grant, President and CEO of Monsanto

By Peter Costantini

As you are no doubt aware, your offer to donate hybrid corn and vegetable seeds has stirred up quite a controversy in Haiti. I'd like to call your attention to an article I wrote on this issue recently for Inter Press Service. While I was in Haiti for the month of May, I had a conversation with Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the head of a major Haitian peasant organization and a leader of the international confederation La Via Campesina. He criticized your donation from a perspective on seeds and agriculture based on a very different world view that might be worth your time to understand.

Your company blog says that the idea to donate seeds to Haiti came to you and Executive Vice President Jerry Steiner at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. As you worked the crowd at that upscale ski resort, the place must have been crawling with Corporate Masters of the Universe and Brilliant Thinkers, who congregate yearly there to deliberate on the world's problems and how to solve them. But -- going out on a limb here -- I'm guessing there were not many Haitian Peasant Farmers. To read the full letter, click here

Family Farm Defenders Opposes Corporate Takeover of the Earth’s Biodiversity

Supports Farmer Allies in Haiti as They Defend Their Food Sovereignty by Rejecting Monsanto’s Seeds

As part of a Via Campesina’s call for international solidarity in defense of food sovereignty, Family Farm Defenders in the United States wishes to express its strong support for the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) and other farmer allies in Haiti as they take direct action on June 4th, World Environment Day, to rid their country of unwanted chemically treated hybrid seeds imported by Monsanto. To read the full press release click here

For more background on this food sovereignty struggle in Haiti, visit: http://www.truthout.org/haitian-farmers-commit-burning-monsanto-hybrid-seeds59616

Contact Congress to Stop Genetically Engineered (GE) Alfalfa!

Sen. Leahy and Rep, DeFazio are circulating a Congressional sign-on letter in the House and Senate, asking the USDA to maintain the ban on Genetically Engineered Alfalfa.

Monsanto has appealed an earlier federal court ruling to the Supreme Court in hopes of overturning the current injunction against commercial release of its Round-Up Ready alfalfa. Numerous consumer advocates, family farmer groups, and environmental organizations have opposed approval of GE alfalfa from the beginning. In particular, approving GE alfalfa poses a serious threat to the economic future of both the organic dairy and honey industries due to irreversible contamination. As herbicide resistance spreads, conventional farmers will also be forced to use more dangerous herbicides to control weed alfalfa in other crops. Unfortunately, USDA has decided that these impacts are insignificant and largely dismissed the concerns of farmers and consumers.

Contact your Senators and Representative Today!

Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Senator or Representative's office. Speak with the agriculture staff person or leave a message, asking them to sign on to the "Dear Colleague Letter to USDA about Banning GE Alfalfa."

For more info on this issue, visit: http://www.nationalorganiccoalition.org/GMO/congressionalalertbackground.pdf

Landgrabbing Comes Home to the U.S.

Pinstripes, Pitchforks, and Profits

By Carey Gillam

Reuters, 5/4/10

BOSTON – Many firms in Boston’s financial district invest in things you can’t touch: currency futures, index options, credit derivatives and so on. But on the 17th floor of a high-rise office tower here, more than a 1,000 miles from the nation’s Midwestern farmbelt, buttoned-down strategists at Hancock Agricultural Investment Group are wagering serious money, if not quite betting the farm, on corn, soybeans and other crops. No, it’s not commodity trading. Hancock, a unit of Manulife Financial Corp, has so far ploughed more than $1 billion into actual farmland, mostly in the United States. It is among many large and small private equity firms, hedge funds, asset managers and other investment groups hoping to harvest long-term profits from the soil. To read the full article, click here

Family Farm Defenders Accuses Monsanto of Violating Anti-Trust Rules and Seeking to Monopolize the Food System

Educational Leaflet Outside Monsanto's Mobile Technology Unit on the UW Campus Aims to Expose Corporate Propaganda

For Immediate Release: April 27, 2010

Contact:

John Peck, executive director Family Farm Defenders #608-260-0900

John Kinsman, #608-986-3815, Paul Rozwadowski #715-644-5079

Wed. April 28th 11:00 am - 1:00 pm UW-Madison Stock Pavilion (1675 Linden Dr.)

Family Farm Defenders will be leafleting outside Monsanto's Mobile Technology Unit at UW-Madison's Stock Pavilion over the noon hour on Wed. April 28th to let visitors know that patented biotechnology is not a panacea - in fact, it could be downright dangerous. Monsanto is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to defend its commercialization of Round-Up Ready alfalfa from organic farmers, environmentalists, and consumer advocates who charge Monsanto with widespread genetic contamination, environmental pollution, and unacceptable health risks to livestock and people.

Dairy farmer, Paul Rozwadowski, who farms near Stanley, WI, blames Monsanto for his difficulty in finding conventional corn varieties that he has used for decades. "The prices of available seed have skyrocketed these last few growing seasons as more and more patented traits are stacked on top of each other. Monsanto is poised to take over the industry," warned Rozwadowski. The recent demise of Kaltenberg Seeds in Waunakee, WI after 100 years in business reflects this runaway consolidation of the seed industry.

John Kinsman, another WI dairy farmer near Lime Ridge, noted that if Monsanto's technologies were so great they would sell themselves and they would not have to resort to spending millions on advertisements on public radio and television or by sending tour buses to land grant colleges. "Monsanto has become rather notorious for promoting dangerous products that hurt farmers, consumers, and the planet - whether it is Agent Orange, Aspartame, rBGH, or Round-Up, " noted Kinsman. "The truth is that no one wants to buy this stuff anymore, so they have launched this green wash campaign to repackage themselves as a sustainable agriculture corporation. What a sham."

Family farmers and their allies hope that by handing out educational materials outside the Monsanto Mobile Technology Unit any potential visitors will come away with a more critical perspective on a corporation whose only real interest is in generating more profits, not in reducing chemical use, providing healthier food, or protecting the earth.

For more on Monsanto's dominance in the seed industry, read the 3/11/10 New York Times article by clicking here

Open Letter to Oxfam America on its Stance Supporting Biotechnology

In response to a recent position publicized by Oxfam America in support of agricultural biotechnology as a viable solution for addressing poverty faced by resource poor and subsistence farmers in developing countries, the Oakland Institute along with the African Center on Biodiversity (South Africa), Bharatiya Krishak Samaj/Indian Farmers Association (India), Center for Food Safety (US), Coordination Nationale des organizations Paysannes CNOP/ National Coordination of Peasant Organizations (Mali), Grassroots International (US), and Thamizhaga Vivasayigal Sangam/Farmers Association Of Tamil Nadu (India) sent an open letter to Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam International and Ray Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. To read the full letter, click here

Via Campesina Actions to Mark International Day of Peasant Struggle!

Family Farmers Join Urban Consumers to Expose Corporate Control of the Food System -

Call Upon the U.S. Justice Dept. to Take Anti-Trust Action Against Agribusiness Giants

For Immediate Release: April 14, 2010

Contact: John E. Peck, Family Farm Defenders #608-260-0900 or #608-345-3918

Fri. April 16th 12:00 Noon - 2:00 pm Informational Leaflet Board of Trade/ CME Group (141 W. Jackson) in Chicago

Fri. April 16th 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm Local Food Potluck and Food Sovereignty Talk Messhall (6932 N. Glenwood Ave.) in Chicago

Sat. April 17th 8:00 am - 12:00 Noon Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food and Free Seed Give-Away Dane County Farmers Market (N. Hamilton corner at the State Capitol) in Madison

In solidarity with similar actions around the globe, family farmers and urban consumers will converge on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange/ Board of Trade on Fri. April 16th at 12:00 Noon to expose the corporate manipulation of global commodity markets that is responsible for the current food /farm crisis. This event is part of the International Day of Peasant Struggle which is coordinated each year by Via Campesina, the largest umbrella organization for family farmers, farmworkers, pastoralists, fishing folk and indigenous communities in the world, and whose target is corporate agribusiness.

"Unbeknownst to most, there is no competition behind much of the food people buy," noted John E. Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders. "Just a handful of commodity speculators working for the food giants manipulate the market for cheddar cheese and fertilizer to pork bellies and soybeans at the CME. Within minutes their bids are translated into global food prices that adversely affect farmers and consumers alike, from Johannesburg to Janesville. We can no longer accept the government turning a blind eye to such corporate corruption. Monopolizing seeds or animals does not serve the public's interest, and is a fundamental violation of food sovereignty."

Because the CME is a private corporation, it is not subject to the transparency and accountability rules typical of democratic government. In this respect, the CME fits well with that of other global trade regimes such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) – all of which are run by unelected officials who ostensibly police themselves. While the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has oversight of the CME, it seldom intervenes. The primary obligation of the CME remains generating dividends for its investors. In 2008 the CME reported revenues in excess of $2.5 billion, handling over a billion contracts worth $1,000 trillion dollars. While some actual pit trading still occurs in Chicago, over 70% of CME activity now happens quietly behind the scenes through its Globex electronic trading platform. The CME and its various subsidiaries - the Chicago Board of Trade, the New York Mercantile Exchange - are also venturing into new derivative markets such as carbon credits. This pollution trading is now being used to subsidize land grabbing, factory farms, biotech crops, agrofuel plantations, and other 'false solutions" to climate change throughout the global south.

In particular, dairy farmers will be in Chicago to call upon President Obama to aggressively pursue existing lawsuits involving market manipulation that have been on hold since the Bush administration. “The recent $12 million fine levied by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) against Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) for price fixing at the CME is just the tip of the iceberg. Even the U.S. Dept. of Justice has admitted that collusion among the dairy giants is worse than Enron.” warns Joel Greeno, WI dairy farmer and vice president of Family Farm Defenders. “Family farmers are now receiving half of what they got a year ago for their milk, but U.S. consumers have seen hardly any change in the store. The situation is worse than during the Great Depression, and if this illegal activity doesn’t stop we’ll have no family farmers left and end up importing all of our dairy products, such as melamine contaminated milk protein concentrate (MPC)."

Those who can not attend these various events marking the International Day of Peasant Struggle can still get involved. Concerned citizens should participate in the agricultural anti-trust workshops being held across the U.S. by the Dept. of Justice this year - the next one in the Midwest focusing on the dairy industry is scheduled to take place in Madison, WI in late June. People can also contact Pres. Obama and their elected officials in Congress, urging them to take strong immediate enforcement action against corporate control over our food/farm system.

Cornucopia Institute Action Alert!

Rescue Local/Organic Farming in the Food Safety Bill!

Urgent — Call Your Senator Today

Next week, as early as Tuesday, April 13, the U.S. Senate is expected to vote on a sweeping overhaul of federal food safety law – S. 510. The House food safety bill passed last year (HR 2749) included several measures that threaten small-scale organic producers, including a registration fee of $500 and blanket application of complicated monitoring and traceability standards — regardless of one’s farm size.

There’s no doubt that industrial agriculture needs better oversight. But, family-scale local and organic farms are probably the safest in the nation –they are part of the solution, not part of the problem — and need to be protected!

Now is your chance, as a supporter of sustainable family farming, to help fix these problems! Senator John Tester (D-MT), a certified organic farmer himself, is proposing an amendment to S. 510 that would exempt small-scale farmers and food processors from the most burdensome regulations.

We need your help TODAY, please call your U.S. Senators in support of these proposals.

The vast majority of recent food safety scandals in the U.S. — E. coli on fresh spinach, melamine in dairy products, Salmonella in peanut butter — were all linked to industrial agribusiness practices, and these large-scale operations clearly warrant more federal food safety oversight and strict enforcement action. What is NOT needed is a “one-size-fits-all” approach that poses unfair costs and onerous reporting on local and organic farmers.

Safer, healthier food options provided by local, organic, and sustainable farmers should not be punished for their responsible work with expensive and complicated new rules. These rules may make industrialized food production safer, but offer no real food safety gains to consumers of local and organic foods. Small-scale operations are already subject to adequate regulation by local and state agencies. Smaller farm size inherently poses less risk (they are almost always owner-operated), and direct marketing also offers consumers better quality food with more transparency and accountability — and easy traceability.

Taking Action is Easy:

Call your Senators today, and tell them that you support Senator Tester’s amendment to S. 510.

To reach your state’s Senators,

1. Search his/her phone number online: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

2. Or call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Sample Talking Points:

Specific talking points you can share with your Senators from Tester’s proposed amendment to S. 510 include:

With respect to the hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls, add the following new section to Section 103:

      (l) EXEMPTION FOR CERTAIN FACILITIES – This section shall not apply to a facility for a year if the average annual adjusted gross income of such facility for the previous three-year period was less than $500,000.

With respect to traceability, add the following new section to Section 204:

      (f) EXEMPTION FOR CERTAIN FACILITIES – The traceback and recordkeeping requirements under this section shall not apply to a facility for a year if the adjusted gross income of such facility for the previous year was less than $500,000.

With respect to the produce standards, add the following new section to Section 105:

      (g) EXCEPTION FOR DIRECT MARKET FARMS – This section shall not apply to farms whose annual value of sales of food products directly to consumers, hotels, restaurants, or institutions exceeds the annual value of sales of food products to all other buyers.

Thanks for your support of organic, local and sustainable farmers!

To see the letter sent to the U.S. Senate which Family Farm Defenders signed (along with 80+ other groups) click here

Taxpayer Subsidized Manure Digesters Stimulate Factory Farm Pollution

Capital Times (Madison, WI) March 14, 2010

By: John Kinsman, organic dairy farmer near Lime Ridge, WI, and president of Family Farm Defenders

What is the latest taxpayer-subsidized economic stimulus scheme? Why, manure digesters on factory farms, of course! At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last December, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack unveiled plans to promote manure digesters as a way to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent. The trick is that you have to be a factory farm to qualify. In his State of the State address in January, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle announced his latest round of tax credits for factory farm expansion, including a whopping $6.6 million for two manure digesters in Dane County catering to just a handful of mega-dairies. Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk has also been pushing for $1 million in her budget for these digesters. The real tragedy is that manure digesters actually make global warming worse while “solving” a manure problem that would not even exist if cows were allowed to graze on pasture rather than being confined indoors. To read the full oped article, click here

Solidarity with Climate Change Protesters

As many of you may know, the largest protest in Danish history, involving over 100,000 people supporting climate justice, occurred in Copenhagen during the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP15). Throughout the COP15 conference, Danish police detained over 2000 people and certain organizers of the climate justice protests are still facing a variety of charges. Via Campesina, one of the major organizers behind several of the COP15 protests just released this action alert below.

Those concerned about civil liberties and human rights are encouraged to contact the Danish Embassy in the U.S. and urge them to drop ALL charges against the remaining climate justice organizers, including Australian Natasha Verco and U.S. citizen, Noah Weiss.

Embassy of Denmark, 3200 Whitehave St., Washington DC 20008 tel. 202-234-4300 fax. 202-328-1470

Feel free to use whichever points you wish to make from the Via Campesina letter - to read the full letter click here.

For more on Natasha and Noah's cases, visit: http://www.aclimateforchange.org/profiles/blogs/something-is-rotten-but-not

Being an official Via Campesina observer to COP15 and having personally witnessed the heavy-handed police response, I would say this sordid episode does reflect very poorly upon the reputation of the Danish government in terms of respecting political dissent and freedom of expression.

Thanks for your solidarity - John Peck

Another Grassroots Victory for Food Sovereignty!

Amish Farmer Wins Livestock-Registration Case

By Bruce Vielmetti - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 3/9/10 http://www.jsonline.com/newswatch/87184992.html

An Amish farmer in Clark County has won his fight against the state's livestock registration law, which he argued violates his religious beliefs. The case against Emanuel Miller Jr. of Loyal was the first in the state against an Amish farmer over refusal to obey the 2005 mandatory livestock registration law, aimed at controlling outbreaks of disease. It requires owners of premises where livestock is kept to register the location, number and type of livestock with the state. Paul McGraw, the assistant state veterinarian, said he expects the state to appeal the Miller decision. To read the full story, click here

Hundreds attend Raw Milk Hearing in Eau Claire on Wed. March 10th

For news coverage of the hearing, click here

Wisconsin is at the center of a growing battle over food sovereignty including the right to have access to unpasteurized dairy products, including raw milk. Current state law bans the outright sale of raw milk, though there are several disputed exemptions (such as cow share programs). Recently, the WI Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) has been cracking down on Wisconsin raw milk providers, triggering massive public outcry. Three farms have been formally charged, and two more are under investigation along with a buyers club. While DATCP continues to ignore other serious food safety concerns, certain officials appear hell bent to deny consumers and farmers the right to legally exchange a product that is widely available in other states and around the world.

Legislation to legalize the sale of raw milk and raw milk products is now before the Wisconsin General Assembly (AB 628) and the Senate (SB 434). You can contact your elected officials to express your opinion in support of legalizing raw milk by calling the Legislative Hotline and asking for their number: #608-266-9960

Some talking points on this issue include:

1. Consumers and farmers deserve the right to sell raw milk under the principle of food sovereignty. DATCP's actions against dairy farmers are restricting this freedom.

2. Legalizing raw milk will help many Wisconsin dairy farmers to stay in business since through direct sales they will earn 4-5 times as much as from the corporate controlled fluid milk market. Last year alone farm income in WI dropped by over 50% and hundreds of dairy farmers are now on the verge of bankruptcy.

3. The bills will improve rural economies as raw milk is the catalyst for other on-farm sales and value-added processing. Consumers are willing to travel great distances to obtain raw milk and will often buy other local food products.

4. Passage of the bills will improve the state's overall economic outlook as people from neighboring states recognize the superior quality of WI dairy products and will spend other money while traveling to WI to legally purchase raw milk.

For more info contact:

Janet Brunner 715-285-5331 janet@midvalleyvu.com

John Peck 608-260-0900 familyfarmdefenders@yahoo.com

Pete Kennedy 703-208-3276 pete@ftcldf.org

Corporate Agribusiness Helps Scuttle Climate Justice

Published Capital Times (Madison, WI) Dec. 29th, 2009 also republished on Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/Tuesday, 29 December 2009

By: John E. Peck, executive director, Family Farm Defenders, and member group of Via Campesina

As the old saying goes, with crisis comes opportunity, and that certainly was the mentality of the corporate lobbyists that descended in droves on the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. In fact, the largest nongovernmental organization there was the International Emissions Trading Association, a front group representing 170 companies and hosting 66 events. Sadly, many government officials and even some nonprofit groups have fallen for this sleight of hand, mistaking an old-style protection racket for newfound corporate responsibility. To read more, click here

Traders failed in Copenhagen

The future lies in people’s hands

Press release - Dec. 19th, 2009 - La Via Campesina

The Copenhagen climate talks ended up in failure. Governments of the world showed themselves incapable or unwilling to make the changes necessary to find a just solution to the climate chaos. The talks have been driven by self interest and trade “solutions” that have so far proven useless and even damaging.

Josie Riffaud, a leader of the farmers movement Via Campesina said: “Money and market solutions will not resolve the current crisis. We need instead a radical change in the way we produce and we consume, and this is what was not discussed in Copenhagen”. The governments of the industrialized and industrializing countries showed themselves to be unwilling to tackle the model of development which has created and economic and environmental disaster. To read more click here

Reclaim Power March in Copenhagen - Dec. 16, 2009

Police Clash With Climate Justice Activists Seeking to Enter U.N. Climate Change Conference

Thousands of activists converged from several directions this morning in an attempt to enter the Bela Center where the U.N. Climate Change Conference is essentially under lockdown. Police used baton charges, guard dogs, and pepper spray to prevent people from entering. Three activists did manage to cross a canal using an improvised inflatable pontoon bridge, but were promptly pepper sprayed and dragged off to detention, as were many others trying to climb the perimeter barricade. Some 200 civil society representatives who were inside the Bela Center at the time of the march's arrival and attempted to leave to join their colleagues outside were also attacked by police. The U.N. has now restricted access to just a few hundred nongovernmental representatives, denying access altogether to accredited observers from some groups such as Friends of the Earth and Via Campesina. Over a hundred heads of state will apparently be "negotiating" more business as usual behind closed doors...

To read the Via Campesina press release supporting the Reclaim Power Action, click here

For various interviews with Via Campesina leaders in Copenhagen, visit: http://www.openleft.com/user/Natasha%20Chart

Resistance is Ripe - Tues. Dec. 15th Day of Action for Climate Justice and Food Sovereignty

The solutions being discussed by the UN Climate Conference continue to allow big energy consumers to pollute with impunity while paying others to implement projects supposed to capture carbon. They do not address the huge social and ecological depth owed by the industrialized countries to the countries of the Global South. The current food system is responsible for over 32% of the greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time the practices of agri-businesses make millions of small farmers loose their land and livelihood. It is unfair to use the benefits that small farmers provide to the environment as an excuse to keep polluting as usual. For the full declaration of the Climate Agricultural Day action click here

Family Farm Defenders Joins Via Campesina Delegation at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark

Adds Voice to Other Grassroots Groups from Across the Globe in Demanding Real Climate Justice, Not False Solutions from World Leaders

For Immediate Release: Dec. 12th, 2009

Contact: John E. Peck, executive director Telephone: (0045) 60-429-444 email: familyfarmdefenders@yahoo.com

Close to 100,000 people participated in the “System Change Not Climate Change” rally today in Copenhagen, building grassroots pressure in anticipation of the arrival of over 100 heads of state, including U.S. Pres. Obama, next week for the final negotiation session of the U.N. Climate Change Conference. John Peck of Family Farm Defenders based in Madison, WI was among those who participated as part of the Via Campesina contingent, joining peasant farmers, fishing folk, and indigenous leaders from dozens of other countries to demand real climate justice and not more false solutions.

Since the leak of a draft text by the UK-based Guardian newspaper on Dec. 8th, which basically argued that the global north should have the right to pollute twice as much as the global south and should be allowed to evade domestic emission reductions through carbon trading, many observers here worry that the U.N. climate change negotiations have already been hijacked by corporate interests based in the wealthiest nations. Industry lobbyists are pushing for official approval (and taxpayer subsidies) for the likes of nuclear energy, biotech crops, agrofuels, hydrodams, factory farms, and biochar as supposed “solutions” to climate change, even though none of these would offset existing pollution sources and most would, in fact, make the crisis worse.

In contrast, Family Farm Defenders along with Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network among many other allies, is calling for climate justice, with serious emission reductions by the global north along with financial reparations to the global south. In particular, greater support for smallscale diversified sustainable organic agriculture needs to be on the table at the climate negotiations.

For further updates from the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen visit:

http://www.viacampesina.org

http://www.copenblog.wordpress.com

http://www.indymedia.dk/

http://climatevoices.wordpress.com/

Via Campesina Video Footage From Various Copenhagen Actions:

http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/focuspuller/videos/VIA_CAMPESINA_13dec_ACTION.mp4/view

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kto3LduGyTo&videos=Y9Dc68SOBN8

http://www.actforclimatejustice.org/2009/12/hit-the-production-march-video-unprovoked-police-aggressionarrests/

http://www.silobreaker.com/climate-change--small-farmers-can-cool-the-world-5_2262810566865190918

La Via Campesina Takes Action Against the Agro-Export Industry

Dec. 13th, 2009 - 12:00 Noon - Axeltorv/Vesterbrogade, Copenhagen

La Via Campesina will highlight the huge impact of industrial agriculture on the climate as well as on people's lives and lands all over the world at the Axelborg building in Copenhagen on the 13th of December. The Axelborg building at the crossroads between Axeltorv/Vesterbrogade in Copenhagen represents much of what is wrong with the world's food and agricultural system.

Axelborg is the headquarters of the Danish Agriculture and Food Council – which includes the Danish Meat Council who represent Danish Crown and Tican – the big players in industrialized meat production in Denmark.

Denmark exports over 85% of the pork it produces to markets all over the world. This excess is produced mainly by “putting...soybeans through pigs”, as the incumbent Danish Commissioner for agriculture Marian Fischer Boel has said.

This type of intensive production is based on imported soy which is transported thousands of miles, grown on lands in the south which have been cleared of forests and their inhabitants, which use huge amounts of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides - cannot be green-washed. It is part of a transnational system of production and distribution which has used up the worlds resources at an unprecedented rate in order to create huge wealth for a tiny minority.

Agriculture in Denmark has been driven by this philosophy for many years – leading to an unprecedented concentration of land ownership, industrialization of production and a clear orientation towards production for export. This process has been disastrous for many Danish peasants. Danish rural communities have been destroyed and the environment degraded and polluted. Danish peasants in Frie Boender want to send a clear message – that the policies of the Danish agro-export industry are a concrete example for Europe and the rest of the world of how NOT to manage your agricultural systems.

The agribusinesses which profit from these processes are heating up the earth, destroying livelihoods and eradicating the very kind of peasant agriculture which offers real solutions.

Sustainable peasant production and food sovereignty can cool the earth, protect biodiversity and relocalize production and consumption – reducing transport and energy use. The family farmers and peasants of La Via Campesina from all over the world are coming to Copenhagen to show that the time of the current model – endless growth, waste, profit and environmental and social destruction – is over: and that Food Sovereignty is the only just, sustainable and existing way to feed the world.

Information and Interviews with farmers' leaders from around the world:

Boaventura Monjane and Isabelle Delforge: + 45 50598325

Fergal Anderson: + 45 50598429

The Story of Cap and Trade

By Carol Schachet, Grassroots International

December 12th, 2009

As the Climate Summit in Copenhagen plods onward, various so-called solutions to global warming are being tossed around: Alternative energy, Cap and Trade, adaptation and mitigation, and many more. It can be hard to make sense of them, and even more difficult to unpack the myths from the realities. Fortunately, Annie Leonard, who brought us “The Story of Stuff” offers a new video to explain the Story of Cap & Trade.

The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill. Host Annie Leonard introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the "devils in the details" in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake offsets and distraction from what’s really required to tackle the climate crisis. If you’ve heard about cap and trade, but aren’t sure how it works (or who benefits), this is the film is for you.

To watch the video, follow this link: http://www.grassrootsonline.org/news/blog/story-cap-and-trade

Notes from Copenhagen: Panel with Secretary Vilsack Emphasizes Agrofuels, GM Os

Dec. 10th, 2009 blogpost by Anne Shattuck, Food First

At an event today at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, along with the Danish Minister of Agriculture, the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, a representative from the Brazilian government and the president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, an industry group made up of mostly larger scale farmers, discussed food security in the context of climate change....Some of the most interesting commentary however came from US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. “We must be committed to technology,” he declared. Vilsack repeatedly referred to GMO technology, 2nd and even 3rd generation agrofuels, and incorporating agriculture into offset markets. To read more click here ?

Why We Left Our Farms to Come to Copenhagen

Speech of Henry Saragih, general coordinator of Via Campesina -

Opening of Klimaforum - Copenhagen Dec 7, 2009

Tonight is a very special night for us to get together here for the opening of the assembly of the social movements and civil society at the Klimaforum. We, the international peasant movement La Via Campesina, are coming to Copenhagen from all five corners of the world, leaving our farmland, our animals, our forest, and also our families in the hamlets and villages to join you all. Why is it so important for us to come this far? There are a number of reasons for that. Firstly, we would like to tell you that climate change is already seriously impacting us. It brings floods, droughts and the outbreak of pests that are all causing harvest failures. I must point out that these harvest failures are something that the farmers did not create. Instead, it is the polluters who caused the emissions who destroy the natural cycles. So, we small scale farmers came here to say that we will not pay for their mistakes. And we are asking the emitters to face up to their responsibilities. To read more click here

Will Jatropha Invade Mozambique?

Via Campesina Confronts the Global Agrofuel Industrial Complex

By: John E. Peck, executive director, Family Farm Defenders

A version of this article appeared in the Jan. 2009 issue of Z Magazine.

On Oct. 19th 2008, at the opening ceremony of the Fifth International Via Campesina Conference in Maputo, Mozambique, over 600 representatives from 50+ countries were gathered to hear a welcome address by the President of the Republic of Mozambique, Armando Emilio Guebuza. While Pres. Guebuza had some encouraging remarks about the future potential of peasant agriculture, his suggestion that jatropha was a solution for Mozambique’s energy crisis was not well received by many in the audience. Jatropha is but one of a whole host of crops (including maize, soya, canola, sugarcane, cassava, sunflower, palm, coconut, and castor among others) now being aggressively promoted as feedstock for the global agrofuel industrial complex. Such crops, often genetically engineered, grown in monoculture plantations, and destined for export markets, hardly deserve to be called “biofuels” since they have no life affirming qualities and undermine all the basic principles of food sovereignty. read more

"We will not die quietly" - Maldives President, Mohamed Nasheed, to global climate negotiators, 11/9/09

What's Wrong With Carbon Trading - A Brief Introduction

By Oscar Reyes

environmental editor of Red Pepper Magazine and researcher with Carbon Trade Watch, a project of the Transnational Institute

Carbon trading is allowing industrialised countries and companies to avoid their emissions reduction targets. It takes two main forms: “cap and trade” and “carbon offsetting.”

What is cap and trade?

Under cap and trade schemes, governments or intergovernmenal bodies set an overall legal limit of carbon emissions in a certain time period (“a cap”) and then grant industries a certain number of licenses to pollute (“carbon permits”). Companies that do not meet their cap can buy permits from others that have a surplus – typically, because they have been given an overly generous allowance in the first place. They can also purchase “offsets.”

What are carbon offsets?

Carbon trading runs in parallel with a system of carbon offsets. Instead of cutting emissions themselves, companies, and sometimes international financial institutions, governments and individuals, finance “emissions-saving projects” outside the capped area to generate carbon credits which can also be traded within the carbon market. The UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is the largest such scheme with almost 1,800 registered projects in developing countries by September 2009, and over 2,600 further projects awaiting approval. Based on current prices, the credits generated by approved schemes will cost around $35 billion by 2012.

Although offsets are often presented as emissions reductions, what these projects do at their hypothetical best is to stabilise emission levels while moving them from one location to another, normally from Northern to Southern countries. In practice, this “best case” scenario is rarely seen, with the result being that offsetting increases emissions whilst also exacerbating social and environmental conflicts. environmental editor with Red Pepper Magazine and researcher

To read more click here

Obama's Hollow Rhetoric - The Trail of Broken Promises

By Jim Goodman, organic dairy farmer near Wonewoc, WI and board member of Family Farm Defenders

The message was one of hope, the words of a newly elected President echoing the Populism of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the promise of John F. Kennedy. It stopped there, the delivery of the promise fell short. We have gotten a New Deal, albeit one that is more protective of those who caused the economic and agricultural crises than of those who suffer from them. We have also gotten a new version of “The Best and the Brightest” in the Obama Administration and their faulty counsel extends beyond war into food and trade policy. The campaign promises were not worth the notepads they are written on. The promises were broken and business at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will carry on much as it did during the Bush Administration. To read more click here

Family Farmers Protest Factory Farms Outside Dec. 1st Dairy Business Association (DBA) Meeting in Madison

Madison-based journalist, Steve Furay, has posted an article with photos from the protest here: http://common-breath.com/?p=454#more-454

Raw milk all right?

By Matthew DeFour

Wisconsin State Journal, Sun. Dec. 6th, 2009

Madison residents Melinda Starkweather and Joe Plasterer believe their children couldn’t tolerate dairy products until they tried raw, unpasteurized milk. Kristina Amelong, who owns an alternative medicine clinic in Madison, has recommended raw milk to her clients for 10 years as a way to improve their health. And Mary Hayes, a Madison school teacher, trusts the raw milk she bought from Stoughton farmer Scott Trautman because she and her family could visit the farm and pet the grass-fed cows. The state, however, says unpasteurized milk can harbor illness-causing bacteria. After years of lax enforcement, officials are clamping down on raw milk sales. Wisconsin is among the minority of states that ban all raw milk sales, including cow-share arrangements where consumers buy shares in a cow in order to receive the raw milk produced. To read more click here

I Drink Raw Milk (Sold Illegally on the Underground Market)

By Joel Salatin, PolyFace Farm

Forward to the new book by David Gumpert, The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights - available from FFD for $20.00 = $3.00 postage

I drink raw milk, sold illegally on the underground black market. I grew up on raw milk from our own Guernsey cows that our family hand-milked twice a day. We made yogurt, ice cream, butter, and cottage cheese. All through high school in the early 1970s, I sold our homemade yogurt, butter, buttermilk, and cottage cheese at the Curb Market on Saturday mornings. This was a precursor to today’s farmer’s markets. To read more click here

DATCP Continues Misguided Campaign Against WI Family Dairy Farmers

Cracking Down: Officials Order Farm To Stop Selling Raw Milk

The Country Today 10/28/09

By Jim Massey

Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection officials appear to be drawing a line in the sand when it comes to the sale of raw milk to consumers. DATCP officials issued a "summary special order" Oct. 18 requiring Scott and Julie Trautman of Stoughton to stop selling raw milk directly to consumers. The Trautmans milk about 30 Jerseys on their Dane County farm. Scott Trautman said they lost their commercial milk outlet in September, when Foremost Farms USA and the National Farmers Organization stopped picking up their milk. The Trautmans were unable to find another milk handler. "The situation is that there really aren't any other milk trucks going by here," Trautman said. "We needed a direct market for our milk." Trautman said they were selling their milk as "pet milk" before they got the ultimatum from DATCP officials. "We were presented with a subpoena asking for customer information and an order to cease from selling milk immediately," Trautman said. "That's a new thing for (the DATCP). No one can figure out why they need to know who our customers are. We think they're now into a phase where they're intimidating raw-milk customers as well as producers." Trautman said he believes DATCP officials are on a mission to enforce the state's longstanding prohibition against raw milk sales in response to a September incident in Walworth County. Testing confirmed that 35 campylobacter infections resulted from the consumption of unpasteurized raw milk sold by Zinniker Family Farm near Elkhorn. The farm was selling raw milk through a cow-share program. To read more click here

When It Comes to Agriculture, Size Does Matter -

A Rebutal to the Dairy Business Association (DBA) and the Factory Farm Lobby in WI

By: Tony Schultz

Stoney Acres Farm (Athens, WI) and FFD board member

A version of this op ed was printed in the Country Today, 10/14/09

Last week the executive director of the Dairy Business Association Laurie Fischer wrote a seemingly polite yet defensive editorial to many newspapers and media outlets across the state as a response to the increasing attacks against the rise of factory farming and the environmental issues that accompany them. Although the editorial tried to say “size is not the issue” it continually referred to pollution concerns surrounding larger farms and flat-out stated large farms are better for the environment. This is because no matter how much they use neutral phrases like trying to “keep cows in Wisconsin” or say “regardless of size” they are an organization that represents factory farming and the aggressive expansion of that particular type of agriculture. Much of DBA’s funding comes from corporate donors. Its website says they include Land O'Lakes Purina Feed LLC, Pfizer Animal Health, Accelerated Genetics, Wick Builders, Bayland Building, insurers, financial-service firms and a host of other agribusiness interests that view big farms as big accounts that buy lots of stuff. Anyone questioning or challenging them is told to shut up, get out of the way of the natural course of “progress” and portrayed as an enemy of all of Wisconsin agriculture. To read more click here

African Food/Farm Activists Tour Midwest

Spread Message of Food Sovereignty as the Solution to Africa's Hunger Crisis

By: John E. Peck, FFD executive director

While Bill Gates and others may be pushing patented biotech seeds and associated toxic agrochemicals as the "cure" for the current hunger crisis, grassroots voices from Africa are just as busy challenging the "Gene Revolution" and letting the world know that sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty constitute a much better alternative.

From Oct. 15th - 18th, 2009 Family Farm Defenders was proud to host two African food/farm activists whose visit to the U.S. was facilitated by the National Family Farm Coalition and Food & Water Watch. Josphat Ngonyo from Kenya is the founding Director of Africa Network for Animal Welfare and won the Eastern Africa Environmental Leadership Award in 2003. He also sits on Kenya's National Steering Committee responsible for wildlife conservation, is a member of the Global Task Force on Farm Animal Welfare and Trade, as well as an honorary warden with the Kenya Wildlife Services. Joining Josphat, was Seremos Kamuturaki, Chairman of the Ugandan Fisher’s and Fish Conservation Association (UFFCA) and advocate for sustainable fish production. Seremos is also the Vice President of the Agricultural Council of Uganda and Treasurer of the World Forum of Fishermen. When not fishing, his family also grows pineapples and bananas. To read more click here

US Working Group on the Food Crisis Criticizes Global Harvest Intitiative's Failed Ideas to Feed the World

Cites Landmark IAASTD Report Endorsing Agroecological Solutions to Address Hunger

Washington D.C. (September 22, 2009)

The U.S. Working Group on the Food Crisis criticized the new Global Harvest Initiative, backed by Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, John Deere and DuPont, for continuing to advocate a failed approach to feeding the world and addressing global hunger. The September 22 Global Harvest Initiative Symposium on “Agriculture at a Crossroads”—featuring Senator Richard Lugar—claimed to have some of the “best thinkers” in agriculture, food security and hunger. However, it relied heavily on panelists who have consistently pushed chemical-intensive production; unproven biotechnologies that have been linked to farmers’ loss of land, suicides and environmental contamination; and “free trade” in agriculture as the solutions to feeding the world. To read more click here

Judge Hears Testimonies Over Amish Premise ID Dispute

Wisconsin Ag Connection - 09/24/2009

All eyes were on Clark County on Wednesday where its circuit court judge heard arguments over the state's very first case against violators of Wisconsin's Livestock Premise Registration law. Nearly 100 members of the Amish community packed the court room, while dozens of others were standing in the hallway to support Emanuel Miller Jr. of Loyal. He is being charged with failing to comply with the recently enacted premise ID law. The Amish believe the requirement infringes on their religious believes because it could eventually result in the tagging of all animals, or the 'Mark of the Beast.' To read more click here

Family Farmers Welcome Michael Pollan to Wisconsin

Support His Vision of Sustainable Agriculture as the Future of Farming in the State

For Immediate Release - Sept. 25th, 2009

Contact:

Tony Schultz, FFD board member, Stoney Acres CSA Farm #715-432-6285

John Kinsman, FFD president and organic dairy farmer #608-986-3815

John E. Peck, FFD executive director #608-260-0900

Members of Family Farm Defenders and other supporters of sustainable agriculture were on hand last night to welcome Michael Pollan at the UW-Madison Kohl Center for the kickoff event for this year's Go Big Read program. Contrary to the criticisms leveled by some agribusiness groups that Pollan's latest book, In Defense of Food is "immoral" and "unscientific," these Wisconsin family farmers were on hand to let the public know how important his message is to the success of American agriculture in the 21st century.

"We can no longer afford the cost of an industrialized globalized system under corporate control where farmers do not get a fair price and consumers get stuck with unsafe food," noted John E. Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders. "This is why we wish to applaud UW-Madison and Chancellor Biddy Martin for inviting Michael Pollan to campus. Fearless sifting and winnowing for truth is part of UW-Madison's legacy as a land grant college, and the campus needs to seriously discuss its role in supporting a more sustainable agricultural future for the state. For instance, in dairy the fastest growing and most profitable sector is small-scale, organic, and grass-based, yet the lion's share of university research dollars and state taxpayer subsidies continue to go towards expanding livestock confinement operations. Even UW's Babcock Hall continues to sell unlabeled rBGH-induced dairy products while all major retailers and processors have rejected this dangerous technology in droves."

One of the top priorities that came out of the National Organic Action Plan (NOAP) finalized in La Crosse at the Organic Farming Conference this last spring was for land grant colleges to create more sustainable and organic programs with dedicated funding. Sadly, this is not yet true at UW-Madison where the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) in now considering terminating funding for the Center for Integrated Systems (CIAS).

"Factory farming is not environmentally sustainable or economically efficient and this has been shown by UW-Madison's own research thanks to Tom Kriegl at the Center for Dairy Profitability," noted John Kinsman, organic dairy farmer near Lime Ridge and president of Family Farm Defenders. "Michael Pollan has spent much time on many types of farms and his conclusion is similar to our own - that diversified low-input smallscale agriculture can feed the world and provide enough healthy food for all. He is a friend of family farmers and we look forward to the progressive dialogue his visit brings to Wisconsin."

Why Are Farmers Afraid of Michael Pollan?

By: Jim Goodman organic dairy farmer from Wonewoc and FFD board member

Author Michael Pollan is no stranger to controversy. He has broadened the discussion of what we eat, where and how it is grown, big vs. small, organic farming vs. conventional. As he makes a swing through Madison WI this week, speaking at the University and the annual Food for Thought Festival, some in the audience will love him, some will not. Advocates of large scale agriculture see Pollan as the enemy, they believe he stands against everything they see as the future of agriculture. Pollan however is not an absolutist, his basic premise is that people need to think more about their food; where it was grown, how it was grown, was the farmer paid fairly, is it good for you? Pollan wants people to think about cooking, about food freshness and flavor, about the dinner table as more than a “filling station”. Knowing your food is not a radical concept, and it should not be a frightening concept. Knowledge is power, the more we know, the better choices we can make. Farmers should have nothing to hide, and those most upset with Pollan's theories on eating, tout their large scale farming methods as being models of efficiency, environmental protection, animal welfare and safe food. To read more click here

Michael Pollan Talks About His Role as

an Agent for Radical Change in the Food System

By: Bill Lueders Isthmus (Madison, WI) 09/18/2009

Public lecture - In Defense of Food: The Omnivore's Solution

Thursday, Sept. 24, 7:00 pm, UW-Madison Kohl Center.

Court Rejects Genetically Modified Sugar Beets

By: Bob Egelko

San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday, September 23, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO -- The government illegally approved a genetically modified, herbicide-resistant strain of sugar beets without adequately considering the chance they will contaminate other beet crops, a federal judge in San Francisco has ruled. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White rejected the U.S. Department of Agriculture's decision in 2005 to allow Monsanto Co. to sell the sugar beets, known as "Roundup-Ready" because they are engineered to coexist with Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. Sugar beets produce 30 percent of the world's sugar and, according to consumer groups, half the granulated sugar in the United States. This year's planting, centered in Oregon's Willamette Valley, is the first to include a full crop of the Monsanto product. White said the USDA, in concluding that the new crop would have no significant environmental effects, discounted the likelihood that wind-borne pollen would spread to fields where conventional sugar beets, table beets and the beet variety known as Swiss chard are grown. To read more click here

The American Academy Of Environmental Medicine Calls For Immediate Moratorium On Genetically Modified Foods

Full copy of the report can be found at: http:aaemonline.org/gmopost.html

Wichita, KS (5/29/09) - The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) today released its position paper on Genetically Modified foods stating that "GM foods pose a serious health risk" and calling for a moratorium on GM foods. Citing several animal studies, the AAEM concludes "there is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects" and that "GM foods pose a serious health risk in the areas of toxicology, allergy and immune function, reproductive health, and metabolic, physiologic and genetic health." To read more click here

Independent Farmers Feel Squeezed By Milk Cartel

National Public Radio - All Things Considered (8/20/09) by John Burnett

FFD vice president, Joel Greeno, milking cows near Kendall, WI

Behind that pure, wholesome, nourishing glass of milk, there's an insurgency. The price of raw milk paid to farmers has dropped to its lowest level in 40 years. Dairy farms are going under across the country, and a few dairymen have grown so desperate they've taken their own lives. To listen to the full story, visit here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112002639

A transcript of the radio story is also available here

The fight against factory farms in Wisconsin

Large-scale operations become focal points of community opposition

By: Roger Bybee 08/14/2009, Isthmus (Madison, WI)

http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=26640&sid=c0ed71eaf63580bfaa88d12124d1f207

John Peck, only half-joking, suggests Wisconsin's longtime slogan, "America's Dairyland," may need to be updated. The new slogan: "The Land of 10,000 Animal-Waste Lagoons." He also offers this nightmare scenario: "Can you imagine tourists driving up to Door County," asks Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders, a national organization based in Madison, "and having to endure the stench from manure lagoons produced by factory farms?" Peck's vision may sound implausible, like Godzilla rising from Lake Mendota to level the Capitol. Support for small-scale farming seems overwhelming in Madison, with its strong food co-op movement and a thriving Farmers' Market, drawing 10,000 to 15,000 people to the Square to buy fresh produce from small farmers at reasonable prices. But Peck says Dane County, which leads the state in agricultural production, with more than $70 million in sales annually and about 400 farms and 50,000 cattle, faces the specter of an increasingly corporatized and globally based food system. To read more click here

Health Care Debate Must Include Us Farmers

By Jim Goodman Published in the Progressive (July 23, 2009) http://www.progressive.org/mpgoodman072309.html

Farmers often depend on off-farm jobs to provide health insurance, if we can find them. But this takes us away from our calling. And anyway, those jobs are vanishing, and those that remain are cutting their health care benefits. Oh, we can try to find individual coverage, but the price is exorbitant, with extremely high deductibles. Farmers have few options for health insurance, yet we desperately need comprehensive coverage. Farming is one of the most dangerous occupations in America: heavy machinery, large animals, long hours in the sun and exposure to hazardous pesticides can all take their toll. To read more, click here

Press Coverage From La Crosse Dairy Rally!

WisBusiness 7/16/09 USDA's Vilsack hears complaints from small organic farmers By: Gregg Hoffmann

To read full story click here

La Crosse Tribune 7/17/09 - Organic dairy farmers urge enforcement of milk rules By: Steve Calahan http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/Friday, 17 July 2009/news/01farm.txt

To read full story click here

Country Today 7/20/09 - Secretary Pledges Support for All Farms By: Brad Bryan

http://www.thecountrytoday.com/story-news.asp?id=BKKCA0OHL1S To read full story click here

Video of much of Secretary Vilsack’s comments can be found here: http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/Friday, 17 July 2009/news/00lead.txt

Gretta Wing Miller's video of the rally can be seen here: http://vimeo.com/5658874

and is also found on the Cornucopia Institute website here: http://www.cornucopia.org/2009/07/usda-secretary-vilsack-at-organic-dairy-emergency-rally-commits-to-fairnessenforcement-crackdown-on-factory-farms/

WebWire coverage 7/17/09 - Organic Dairy Farmers’ Rally — USDA Secretary Asked to Vigorously Enforce Organic Laws http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=99512

Audio Slideshow: Farmers Share Their Struggle at Organic Dairy Farmers Rally http://current.com/items/90471222_farmers-share-their-struggle-at-organic-dairy-farmers-rally-audio-slideshow.htm

Channel 8 (La Crosse) Thurs. 7/16/09 "Organic Farmers Struggling, U.S. Secretary of Ag. Tries to Give Answers" - reported by Cynthia Schweigert http://www.wkbt.com/global/story.asp?s=10741162

Channel 18 (Eau Claire) Fri. 7/17/09 "Dairy in Distress" with Bruce Drinkman http://www.wqow.com/global/video/flash/popupplayer.asp?clipId1=3965583&at1=News&vt1=v&h1=Dairy+in+Distress&d1=155667&redirUrl=www.wqow.com&activePane=info&LaunchPageAdTag=homepage&clipFormat=flv&rnd=89860178

Channel 19 (La Crosse) Thurs. 7/16/09 http://www.wxow.com/global/video/flash/popupplayer.asp?ClipID1=3962389&h1=Organic%20farmers%20organize%20rally&vt1=v&at1=undefined&d1=70066&Lau

WORT Community Radio (Madison) Tues. 7/14/09 story

http://archive.wort-fm.org/mp3/wort_090714_183001iobytue.mp3

Minnesota Public Radio (Twin Cities) Tues. 7/14/09 story

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/Tuesday, 14 July 2009/organic_dairy/

Sen. Bernie Sanders Cries “Monopoly” in a Collapsing Milk Market

www.grist.org (7/17/09) By: Tom Laskawy

http://www.grist.org/article/sen.-bernie-sanders-cries-monopoly-in-a-collapsing-milk-market/

Earlier this year, the Obama adiministration’s top antitrust enforcer, Christine Varney, announced a new effort to crack down on monopolist practices in industry. Some of us were particularly interested to observe that Varney’s first speech specifically mentioned agribusiness as a top target. This is understandable since, from fertilizer to meatpacking to seeds, four companies or fewer control up to 80% of each of these markets. But right now nowhere are the oligolopolists doing more damage than in the dairy industry, where prices have fallen faster and deeper than any time since the Great Depression. And now, joining ranks with tens of thousands of desperately struggling dairy farmers, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has had enough—he has called on the Justice Department to investigate the dairy giant Dean Foods as a monopolist. To read more click here

Farm Aid Submits Letter to Congress on Dairy Crisis

July 14, 2009

Dear Representative:

America’s dairy farmers are facing an unprecedented economic crisis. Tens of thousands of independent producers are at risk of losing their livelihoods if this crisis remains ignored, while consumers across the country risk having no local sources of fresh dairy. Dairy farmers are losing an estimated $200 per cow each month. Producers are receiving as little as $9 for a hundredweight (cwt) of fluid milk, while their cost of production ranges from $18-$27 per cwt. If trends continue, we may immediately lose up to 20,000 of our nation's 60,000 family dairies and billions of dollars from our rural economies, which are already hurting during this economic recession. To read the full letter click here

Iowa Farm Rally Speakers Call For Fair Dairy Prices

June 2nd, 2009 Wisconsin State Farmer

By: Zena McFadden

Photo: WI dairy farmer and FFD member, Jennifer Bailey, speaks at the rally

Dairy farmers from five states rallied in Manchester, Iowa, Saturday (May 30) asking that the government set a floor on milk prices to cover their cost of production. More than 150 farmers and their organizations, families and supporters spoke from noon until after 3 p.m. about the dire straits that farms and families are in as a result of the 50 percent drop in milk prices paid to producers since last year. “This has reached a crisis point in rural America. It is impossible for dairy farmers to pay their bills and many face losing their farms if something isn’t done,” Jerry Harvey, a dairy farmer from Promise City, Iowa, who helped organize the rally, said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that the average cost of producing 100 pounds of milk this year was well over $16 while the base price paid for Class I milk produced was $10.97. Read more click here

Consumers Farmers Make Themselves Heard as USDA's National Animal Identification System Listening Tour Continues

May 21, 2009

By: Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund

More consumers are stepping up to complain about the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) as the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) continues its national listening tour. During today's stop in Birmingham, Alabama, the USDA's listening tour on animal identification heard from 30 people, 28 of whom spoke out against NAIS with only two speaking in favor of it. It was much the same in Austin, Texas yesterday where the USDA tour heard from some 64 people, 58 of whom spoke against any NAIS or advocated for a voluntary, market-driven program only. The results were similar during the listening tour in Pasco, Washington, on Monday where 26 out of 31 speakers voiced opposition to the program. Read more click here

We Need Food and Farming Regulation Now!

By Will Allen

Organic farmer, Cedar Circle Farm in VT, and author of the War on Bugs

Straight to the Source, Chelsea Green, April 30, 2009

Taxpayers are demanding that government enforce existing regulations and create more stringent rules to limit the excess and greed in banking, insurance, housing, and on Wall Street. But, in the rush to regulate, we can't forget to oversee industrial agriculture. It is one of our most polluting and dangerous industries. Like the financial sectors, its practices have not been well regulated for the last thirty years. Let me run down a few of the major problems that have developed because of our poorly regulated U.S. agriculture. Read more click here

Family Farm Defenders Welcomes Brazilian Activist with the Landless Workers Movement (MST) -

Hosts Family Farm Tour of South Central Wisconsin Wed. May 6th, 2009

Contact info: John Peck #608-260-0900 or #608-345-3918

8:00 am tour departs Just Coffee - 1129 E. Wilson in Madison 1:00 pm Lunch and press event at the Deli Bean Cafe, 266 E Main St. in Reedsburg (608) 524-3373 5:30 pm tour returns to Just Coffee - 1129 E. Wilson in Madison 7:00 pm Hard Times: Brazil's Landless Movement Faces the Economic Crisis - a presentation and discussion with Débora Nunes da Silva of the MST at Rainbow Bookstore - 426 W. Gilman in Madison

Join members of Family Farm Defenders and Débora Nunes da Silva, an organizer with the MST Brazil's Landless Workers Movement for a tour of sustainable family farm operations in south central Wisconsin!

Tour stops include: Troy Community Garden on Madison's northside; Cedar Grove Cheese with its innovative "living machine" waste water treatment system (5904 E Valley View Rd, Plain (608) 546-5284); John Kinsman's organic dairy and forestry operation (2940 E. Hwy K., La Valle, WI (608) 986-3815), Tylka's Hidden Valley Mushroom Farm (S270 Birchwood Road, Wisconsin Dells (608) 253-6804), as well as several Amish operations.

Débora Nunes da Silva lives in Alagoas, in Brazil's Northeastern region. She is a sociologist and key leader in the movement's Sector of Production, Cooperation, and Environment. In Alagoas, a poor state dependent on extensive sugar cane monoculture, Ms. da Silva has organized landless workers for over ten years. She has been involved in the mobilization of families to occupy land, and in the management of encampments and settlements. Ms. da Silva is also active in the political education and training of the movement¹s leaders and organizers, particularly women and youth.

In Praise of Peasants

By: Jim Goodman organic dairy farmer and activist from Wonewoc, WI and a WK Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow

Published April 17, 2009 by www.commondreams.org

On April 17, 1996 1,500 members of Brazil's MST, the Landless Peasants Movement, having been evicted from their farms two years earlier, marched to the state capitol in Para to demand a return of their land so they could again feed their families. Instead of meeting with government officials they were surrounded by police, who, using machine guns, killed 19 and seriously wounded 69. Farmers, peasants, the indigenous and the landless are entitled to land only until the government or the corporate interests find a better use for it. Read more click here

U.S. Family Farmers Mark International Day of Peasant Struggles, April 17th, With A Protest Against Commodity Speculation

Join Other Activists to Expose Corporate Manipulation of Global Food Prices at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)

To view photos from the CME protest, visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32696750@N08/sets/72157617189750424/

For Immediate Release 4/17/09

Contact: John E. Peck, Family Farm Defenders #608-260-0900 Kathy Ozer, National Family Farm Coalition #202-543-5675

Fri. April 17th 11:30 am Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), 30 S. Wacker Dr.

Family farmers and other food justice activists will mark April 17, the International Day of Peasant’s Struggle, with a protest against corporate speculation on agricultural commodities which is behind the global food crisis now threatening the livelihoods of millions of farmers. This action is in solidarity with La Via Campesina, the world’s largest umbrella movement of family farmers, rural workers and indigenous peoples.

Specific demands include:

- Ending unregulated speculation on commodities at the CME, which contributed to the 83% hike in global food prices between 2005 and 2008, adding 75 million more people to the ranks of the world’s hungry We need to invest in sustainable family farmers who actually feed people and conserve fertility and not in financial derivatives that only feed the growth of unstable bubbles of unfounded wealth,” says Stephen Bartlett, a small scale KY farmer and staff member of Agricultural Missions.

-Investigate and punish corruption and manipulation at the CME. The new Obama Administration needs to aggressively pursue existing anti-trust and price fixing class action suits. “The recent $12 million fine levied by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission against Dairy Farmers of America for price fixing at the CME is just the tip of the iceberg. Even the U.S. Dept. of Justice has admitted that collusion among the dairy giants is worse than Enron.” warns Joel Greeno, WI dairy farmer and vice president of Family Farm Defenders. “Family farmers are now receiving half of what they got a year ago for their milk, but U.S. consumers have seen hardly any change in the store. The situation is worse than during the Great Depression, and if this illegal activity doesn’t stop we’ll have no farmers left and end up importing all of our milk.”

-Implement and promote federal economic policies that support family farmers, end hunger, and provide healthy locally produced food, rather than continuing to subsidize corporate agribusiness expansion and commodity dumping. “From climate change to the economic crisis to the food crisis, agriculture should be the basis of the stimulus package,” noted Ben Burkett, president of National Family Farm Coalition and state coordinator of the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives.

For more on the power of the CME and how you can help restore democratic control over this corporate commodity casino, click here.

Via Campesina Statement to the UN General Assembly on The Global Food Crisis and the Right to Food - 4/6/09 in New York City

By Mr. Henry Saragih, General Coordinator of La Via Campesina

Dear Mr. Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr.President of the United Nations General Assembly, Chair of the High-Level Task Force on Food Security, Mr. Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Distinguished Delegates, and Ladies and Gentlemen,

I welcome this Interactive Thematic Dialogue in our global effort in responding to the food crisis. Our dialogue in this chamber is of particular importance for those of us who believe that humankind has the courage and ability to make global governance work for all. Indeed, the food crisis gives us all an opportunity to do something without delay. The food crisis poses a massive threat to humankind. Everyday, significant parts of society around the world suffer directly or indirectly because of the food crisis. La Via Campesina, an international peasant movement, has been working to address the situation globally, with our members in 70 countries—this figure includes over 200 million members worldwide. Given the nature of our movement, undoubtedly the situation of peasants was put high on our agenda. The role of the United Nations in making human rights mechanisms work is particularly important in this respect. I follow carefully how UN Special Rapporteur has progressively shifted the focus of the food crisis from a development-centered model to a rights based concept: a global food crisis is a threat to the right to adequate food. It was thus a historic moment when Mr. Olivier De Schutter emphasized this in the UN Human Rights Council’s session on the food crisis on May 22, 2008. To read more, click here.

Family Farm Defenders Welcomes, Rafael Enrique Colmenárez, Organic Coffee Farmer and Co-op Leader from Venezuela!

Hosts 3/30/09 Family Farm Tour of South Central Wisconsin

On Mon. March 30th, eighteen folks joined Venezuelan organic coffee farmer and co-op leader, Rafael Enrique Colmenárez, for a daylong family farm tour in south central Wisconsin. Mr. Colmenárez comes from Andres Eloy Blanco Municipality, a rural area in midwestern Venezuela also known by the name of its capital, Sanare. This area is considered the birthplace of the Venezuelan agrarian cooperative movement. As president of FONCASA (Sanare Coffee Fund) a community organization that defends the economic and social rights of small coffee farmers, Mr. Colmenárez has been also very active promoting people to people exchanges and fair trade between co-ops in Venezuela and the US. In July 2008 his home town in Venezuela and Dane County formalized a sister relationship. As part of its ongoing work to promote food sovereignty, fair trade, and global solidarity, Family Farm Defenders was proud to welcome Enrique to Wisconsin and to share some successful local examples of sustainable agriculture. Tour stops included: Cedar Grove Cheese in Plain with an explanation of cheese making and tour of living machine waste water treatment system; FFD president John Kinsman's grass-based organic dairy and forestry operation near Lime Ridge; tour (and tasting!) of organic shitake and oyster ear at the Tylka's Hidden Valley Mushroom Farm near Wisconsin Dells, press conference and presentation at the Deli Bean Coffeeshop in Reedsburg, as well as a visit to Brickner's grass-based sheep operation near Wonewoc.

For some photos of the farm tour, taken by Marc Becker visit:

http://picasaweb.google.com/marcbecker2/EnriqueColmenarez

Marc Becker has also posted a short 10 min. video of the farm tour with Mr. Colmenárez.

To watch it, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-6kqj09feQ

The Family Farm Defenders (FFD) 2009 Annual Meeting held in Westby, WI from March 13-15th was a great success!

Close to 100 people attended from throughout the Midwest. Thanks to Valley Stewardship Network (VSN)and Crawford Stewardship Project for their cosponsorship, as well as the Driftless Speakers for bringing our keynote speaker, Prof. John Ikerd, and Via Campesina North America for their support in facilitating the participation by our special visitor from Saskatchewan, Glenn Tait, livestock and grain farmer with NFU-Canada..

A big thank you, as well, to FFD board member, Lori Harms for her excellent on-site coordination, our hosts at Living Waters Bible Camp, Mary White of Honeybee Bakery in Madison who provided delicious local food, as well as Robert Wolf and David Rhodes for their literary contributions.

For a copy of John Ikerd's excellent talk, titled CAFOs, Self-Determination, and Grassroots Democracy click here.

For more on current local struggles against factory farms in the Midwest, check out these resource links:

Judge Upholds Water Quality Restrictions on Rock County Farm, for 12/16/08 press release click here

For a background factsheet on Town of Magnolia and Green-Rock Citizens for Clean Water fight, click here

Part of the discussion at the meeting also concerned the use of federal stimulus money. Many FFD members are justly concerned that these funds will be misdirected towards "development" that only makes the situation worse in many rural areas (for ex. factory farm expansion, methane digesters and agrofuel facilities, biotech incubators, etc.) Here is the website with information on the how Wisconsin will handle federal stimulus money: http://www.recovery.wisconsin.gov/

Dairy Farmers File Class Action Lawsuit

Allege Corrupt Processors Have Stolen Millions Through Filing False Non Fat Dry Milk Prices With USDA

For Immediate Release 3/23/09

Contact: Paul Rozwadowski #715-644-5079 John E. Peck #608-260-0900

Four farmers, including Paul Rozwadowski from Stanley, WI, filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of dairy producers in twenty five states, charging that they were bilked of millions be corrupt processors due to false reporting of nonfat dry milk (NFDM) prices. Other farmer plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Gerald Carlin from Meshopen, PA; Bryan Wolfe from Rome, Ohio; and John Rahm from Versailles, OH. Three out of the four dairy producers are also members of Family Farm Defenders, based in Madison, WI. To read more, click here.

NFFC Letter to USDA Sec. Vilsack on Current Dairy Crisis

March 2, 2009

The Honorable Tom Vilsack Secretary of Agriculture United States Department of Agriculture 1400 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, DC 20250

Dear Secretary Vilsack:

Dairy farmers across America are confronting the most serious economic crisis they have experienced in their lifetimes. The farm gate price for milk has collapsed by more than 50% from one year ago and dropped an unprecedented $5 in one month for February. Farmers now confront $9-$11 per hundredweight (cwt) milk prices while costs of production hover between $20 and $30. Dairy farmers request your urgent attention and action. If nothing is done to halt the current crash in prices, up to 80% of the nation’s dairy farms may be out of business by the end of the year, jeopardizing domestic production and making us more vulnerable to dependence on foreign imports. The National Family Farm Coalition urges you to use your authority to implement the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 (7 U.S. Code) 608c (18) relative to the current farm milk price to ensure a viable domestic dairy infrastructure. Section 608c (18) requires the Secretary of Agriculture to adjust farm milk price within all Federal Orders to “reflect the price of feeds, the available supplies of feeds, and other economic conditions which affect market supply and demand for milk or its products.” If prices are found to be “not reasonable” in reflecting the price of feeds and other factors, the Secretary can explicitly “fix such prices” to reflect these factors. To read more, click here.

Nation's Food System Nearly Broke

By: John Kinsman, dairy farmer from La Valle, WI and president of Family Farm Defenders

Published on Friday, Feb. 27, 2009 by The Capital Times (Wisconsin)

www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/440669

As our government enacts a stimulus package and President Barack Obama announces bold initiatives to stem home mortgage foreclosures, disaster threatens family farmers and their communities.

The government's response to plummeting commodity prices and tightening credit markets leads to the basic question: Who will produce our food? This is a worldwide crisis. U.S. policy and the demand for deregulation at all levels -- from food production to financial markets -- contribute greatly to the global collapse. The solution must be grounded in food sovereignty so that all farmers and their communities can regain control over their food supply. This response makes sense here in Wisconsin and was the global message from the 500+ farmer leaders at the Via Campesina conference in Mozambique in October.

Many U.S. farmers are going out of business because they receive prices equal to about one half their cost to produce our food. How long could any enterprise receiving half the amount of its input costs stay in business? As an example, dairy farmers in the Northeast and Midwest must be paid between 30 and 35 cents per pound for their milk to pay production costs and provide basic living expenses. Until 1980, farmers received a price equal to 80 percent of parity, meaning that farmers' purchasing power kept up with the rest of the economy. Unfortunately, a 1981 political decision discontinued parity, and today the dairy farmers' share is below 40 percent.

"Free trade" and other regressive agricultural policies have decimated farms. We are now a food deficit nation dependent on food imports, often of questionable quality.

Our food system is nearly broke, which is almost as serious as our country's financial meltdown. With fair farm policies, farmers would get fair prices that would not require higher consumers prices. The Canadian dairy pricing system is the best example that proves fair farmer prices can and often do bring lower consumer prices and a healthier rural economy. In addition, excessive middleman profits are taking advantage of both consumers and producers.

As more farmers face bankruptcy, we all face a food emergency. European farmers speak from thousands of years of experience on the importance of family farms when they warn us, "Any time a country neglects its family farm base and allows it to become financially bankrupt, the entire economy of that country will soon collapse. It may take generations to rebuild the farm economy and that of the country."

Despite the magnitude of this food emergency, the "farm crisis" does not appear in headlines, so politicians are not compelled to provide political or financial assistance to something that would likely fail to bring votes. As farmers, we are now only about 1 percent of the U.S. population, and have little power to expose and prevent our demise. However, our urban and rural friends could be vital voices and advocates.

Bailing out the financial giants will not solve the financial crisis in the country, but the right policies and stimulus dollars could prevent a severe food crisis by saving farmers and workers. Furthermore, farm income dollars remain in and multiply at least two to four times in the local economy.

Family farmers have proposed fair food and farm policies that can be implemented at a fraction of the present multibillion-dollar policies destroying us. As the Treasury Department develops plans to distribute the bailout funds, the National Family Farm Coalition and others urge it to require banks receiving funds to treat their borrowers fairly by providing debt restructuring as an alternate to home or farm foreclosure or bankruptcy.

Concerned citizens can call the White House, 202-456-1111, or your members of Congress, 202-224-3121, to urge them to support policies that enable farmers to earn a fair market price; request an emergency milk price at $17.50 per hundred weight; provide price stability through government grain reserves and effective supply management; support the TRADE Act to be reintroduced in Congress; increase direct and guaranteed loans to family farmers; and ensure that the food we raise can be marketed to local schools and institutions, providing a better food supply at a fair price. We need these immediate changes in our food and farm policy.

National Family Farm Coalition Demands That Congress Address the Dairy Crisis as Part of President Obama's Stimulus Package

January 29, 2009

Dear Member of Congress/Senate:

The Dairy Subcommittee of the National Family Farm Coalition, representing dairy farmers from across the country, has warned for over a year about the coming crisis in the dairy industry that is threatening the livelihoods of America’s 60,000 remaining dairy farmers. With Class I milk prices collapsing by $5.02 for February down to $13.97 per hundredweight (cwt) for the Boston market and as low as $12.52 in Chicago, the dairy industry faces its most dire situation since the Great Depression. Already, stories of farmer suicides are being heard as a result of the looming catastrophe in many parts of farm country. California dairy farmers are looking at possibly $9 cwt milk prices when cost of production is at least $20 cwt in California and closer to $30 cwt in many parts of the East. Contrary to popular belief, milk prices have little to do with supply and demand or overproduction. The milk pricing system is based on the deeply flawed Chicago Mercantile Exchange which NFFC has exposed as highly prone to corruption and manipulation. NFFC urges both emergency action to be taken in the economic stimulus package as a way to stabilize milk prices and rural economies while also pressing again for a long-term solution that will finally give farmers a cost of production for their milk. To read more, click here.

Agriculture Does Not Need Business as Usual

Chicago Tribune, 1/20/09, Letter to the Editor

By: George Naylor, soybean farmer in Churdan, IA and former president of the National Family Farm Coalition

I'm sorely disappointed in George McGovern and Marshall Matz's disturbing commentary piece, "Agriculture's next big challenge" (Jan. 4), which makes a failed argument to continue with business as usual for industrial agriculture. Our current fossil-fuel based system has led to severe degradation of the land, while encouraging giant livestock feedlots and factory farms that severely degrade air and water quality. Industrial agriculture has also given us diets loaded with high-fructose corn syrup and cheap fast food. No wonder obesity, particularly among low-income Americans, is now an epidemic. How can McGovern and Matz ignore the broken social system throughout American farm communities and not perceive the human tragedy industrial, Green Revolution agriculture will bring to Asia, Africa, and Latin America? As a corn farmer from a family farm tradition, I would hope that my country through the new Obama administration would champion a vision of family farm agriculture based on food sovereignty principles, where everyone has access to economic opportunity in rural areas and to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food. To read more, click here.

Next Generation Biofuels”: Bursting The New “Green” Bubble

Jan. 15, 2009 Open Letter to Pres. Elect Obama Letter Challenges Unrealistic Promises From an Unsustainable Industry

United States--A diverse alliance of organizations published an open letter [1] today in the U.S. and internationally warning of the dangers of industrially produced biofuels (called agrofuels by critics). The letter explains why large-scale industrial production of transport fuels and other energy from plants such as corn, sugar cane, oilseeds, trees, grasses, or so-called agricultural and woodland waste threatens forests, biodiversity, food sovereignty, community-based land rights and will worsen climate change. With the new Obama Administration slated to take office Tuesday, the letter’s originators warn that if Obama’s “New Green Economy” runs on agrofuels it may trap the U.S. in a dangerous “Green Bubble” of unrealistic promises from an unsustainable industry. To read more, click here.

Project Tractor - Part Two!

Family Farm Defenders is looking for working second hand tractors and other farm equipment for a Spring 2009 solidarity shipment to the Point Coupee Farmers Association in Louisiana! Donations to help cover diesel for trucking to the Gulf are also needed!

A highly motivated group of African American family farmers is hoping to have equipment in time for the 2009 planting season, and Family Farm Defenders is seeking help to make this happen. In 2006 following the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Family Farm Defenders successfully delivered nine donated tractors, plus a disc, rotary hoe, field cultivator, and chisel plow to the Indian Springs Farmers Assoc. in Sheeplo, MS.

Word of this solidarity effort, dubbed Project Tractor, has since reached Lester Williams of Batchelor, LA and Wilbert Walker Sr. of Lettsworth, LA, founding members of the Point Coupee Farmers Association. These vegetable farmers started their careers with nothing but hoes and shovels, but thanks to the strength of their new co-op are ready to expand production and pool their fresh produce to supply local supermarkets and restaurants. Unfortunately, they were hit not only by Hurricane Katrina in Sept. 2005, but also by Hurricane Gustav in Sept. 2008.

What they now lack are small tractors and related implements. Their wish list includes: 110 hp tractors, 50-60 hp tractors, 10-14 disks, bush hogs, rolling cultivators, 1-2 row vegetable planter, 7-8' dirt blade, among other items (for a full list - please contact the FFD office #608-260-0900).

Donations to help defray the cost of diesel and related expenses for delivery from WI to LA are also most welcome (a FFD member has already volunteered to drive the semi-load). Any gift, whether working used tractors/implements or monetary contributions are tax deductible since FFD is a federally recognized 501 c(3) charitable organization.

Checks can be sent to: Family Farm Defenders, P.O. Box 1772, Madison, WI 53703

For more information on Project Tractor Two, please contact:

John Kinsman, FFD President #608-986-3815

Tom Nelson, Madison Diocese Rural Life Office #608-821-3093

John E. Peck, FFD Executive Director #608-260-0900

An article about Project Tractor Two appeared in the Dec. 25th, 2008 issue of the Madison Diocese Catholic Herald, as well as the Jan. 14th, 2009 issue of Country Today.

Thanks for your support of farmer to farmer solidarity!

Family Farm Defenders Reaffirms Opposition to the National Animal ID System (NAIS) -

Urges the State of Wisconsin to Drop Charges Against Amish Farmer Being Targeted for Refusing to Register on Religious Grounds

Critics of Livestock Registration Fear Mandatory ID Chips

By Gil Halsted, WI Public Radio 12/22/2008

(STATEWIDE) An Amish dairy farmer in Clark County is the first person in the state to be prosecuted for not complying with the state's mandatory farm livestock registration rules. But a family farm group says many other farmers have also refused to register because they don't want to implant radio frequency chips in their animals so they can tracked for disease. read more

Legal Update!

Mr. Miller was assigned an attorney by the state at his initial court appearance on 12/17/08 - next step is a lawyer teleconference call on 3/20/09 to negotiate the start of the formal criminal proceeding on 3/29/09. Stay tuned for more details.

For Immediate Release Dec. 16, 2008

Contact: John Kinsman, president #608-986-3815

John E. Peck, executive director #608-260-0900

Family Farm Defenders is encouraging food sovereignty advocates to appear in Clark County Court at 3:00 pm on Wed. Dec. 17th in Neillsville to express their solidarity with the Amish farmer being targeted by the State of Wisconsin in its first effort to enforce mandatory premises registration, stage one of the controversial National Animal Identification System (NAIS). At the request of DATCP, Clark County District Attorney, Darwin Zweig, filed a civil forfeiture complaint against Emmanuel Miller on Oct. 2nd, 2008. If found guilty, Mr. Miller could be subject to a fine of up to $5000.

"This case being pursued against Mr. Miller would set a dangerous legal precedent and only serves to foster an atmosphere of hostility and discrimination against certain rural communities who should be welcomed as part of the future of sustainable agriculture in Wisconsin," noted John E. Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders. "While literally thousands of farmers have refused to comply with the state's mandatory premises registration for many valid reasons, it is painfully obvious that the state has chosen to go after Mr. Miller as a scapegoat in hopes of intimidating others into compliance."

On Aug. 6th, 2008 Mr. Miller and another Amish elder traveled to Milwaukee to speak out against NAIS before the DATCP board meeting, gaining media attention and drawing the ire of government officials. Since 2003 Wisconsin has received millions in federal taxpayer dollars to aggressively implement statewide premises registration for all those who own livestock. Those who have refuses to "voluntarily" comply, including many Amish, have since received threatening government letters, been denied milk licenses, and/or found themselves registered against their will by the state. Under NAIS, the next steps after premises registration will be mandatory RFID chipping and government tracking of all livestock movements.

Family Farm Defenders will be watching this case closely and intends to work with legal counsel to appeal any court decision that would punish any livestock owner, Amish or otherwise, for exercising their religious freedom and food sovereignty in opposition to further implementation of NAIS in Wisconsin.

Family Farm Defenders Responds to 2008 Flood Disaster in Wisconsin -

Distributes over $18,000 in Recovery Grants to 31 Affected Family Farmers Prior to the Holidays

In early June 2008 a series of record rainfalls triggered massive flooding across the Midwest including many parts of Wisconsin. Statewide losses were estimated at $470+ million and in Dane County alone farmers reported nearly $65 million in crop damage. Worse yet, many family farmers and rural communities in southwestern Wisconsin that suffered from floods in 2007 were struck again in 2008. While larger conventional farms often have access to taxpayer subsidized crop insurance programs, this is not true for most smallscale, organic, and sustainable farmers. Family farmers are also not eligible for most federal flood relief programs administered through FEMA.

In light of such potentially crippling disasters, Family Farm Defenders has sought to get relief funds directly into the hands of family farmers as quickly as possible. In the wake of the 2007 flood, FFD was able to raise and distribute over $5,000 to 10 WI family farmers and farmworkers adversely affected. In 2008 FFD greatly expanded its flood recovery effort by distributing over $18,000 to a total of 31 family farmers, CSAs, and market gardeners who suffered serious flood damage (a complete listing of these WI recipients is available upon request).

Such solidarity would not have been possible without the support of many individuals and organizations. In particular, FFD would like to recognize the generous financial contributions from Operation USA, Willy St. Co-op, Farm Aid, National Family Farm Coalition, Slow Food Wisconsin Southeast, Community Pharmacy, Stony Acres Farm, and Saint Bede Monastery, among others. Hopefully, we will not witness another round of flooding next year, but if some disaster does occur, FFD will do its best to respond.

Some 2008 flood relief funds are still available, so if you know of other family farmers adversely affected in WI please refer them to FFD as soon as possible: #608-260-0900

Dairy Farmers Across the Country Condemn National Milk Producers Federation CEO Jerry Kozak for Failure of Vision and Leadership

Dairy Farmers Send Letter to NMPF and Congress Decrying Kozak's Radical Deregulation Agenda that Threatens Farmers' Livelihoods.

For IMMEDIATE RELEASE 12/9/08

Contact: Irene Lin (202) 543-5675 Cell: (202) 421-4544

Washington D.C. (December 9, 2008) - The Dairy Subcommittee of the National Family Farm Coalition sent a letter today to National Milk Producers Federation CEO Jerry Kozak and the House and Senate Agriculture Committees criticizing Kozak’s October 2008 speech. The speech advocated for radical deregulation policies that would eliminate all government dairy programs, allow markets to consolidate and concentrate even more than they are currently and could prove fatal for America’s remaining 60,000 dairy farmers. NFFC Dairy Subcommittee Chairman Paul Rozwadowski, a Wisconsin dairy farmer, said, “The recent meltdown on Wall Street and within our banking industry should have exposed the dangerous fallacy of deregulation and markets running amok, especially when only three or four corporations and cooperatives control the entire dairy market. NMPF has ceased speaking on behalf of the dairy farmer for a very long time now with their pro-globalization, free-trade market extremism that fails to address the roots of the current dairy crisis. Jerry Kozak’s latest disastrous ideas would destroy what is left of our dairy farmers at a time when consumers are demanding local, fresh milk and wary of foreign dairy products from the likes of China.” read more

Food is Different

By Jim Goodman, organic dairy farmer, Wonewoc, WI

Food is an important part of most Holiday celebrations, not just because we need food to live, but, food connects us to our culture, our past and whether we know it or not, our future. Food Is Different: Why the WTO Should Get Out of Agriculture, a great book by Peter Rosset a book everyone who cares about food should read. The book is dedicated to Lee Kyung Hae, the Korean farmer who took his life in protest against the World Trade Organization (WTO) on September 16, 2003 at the WTO protest march in Cancun Mexico. read more

Local Food Can Help End Hunger

By Tim Damos

Baraboo News Republic (Baraboo, WI) 11/11/08

http://www.wiscnews.com/bnr/news/313789

Americans hoping a new U.S. president can revamp a broken agricultural system shouldn't hold their breath, a Brazilian family farm and local food activist says. "It's not the nature of governments to spontaneously bring about change," Rodrigo Lopes told a group of about 30 during a conference Monday night at the Garden Party Cafe in Baraboo. "Their nature is to maintain the status quo. Governments are only susceptible to social forces." Lopes was the guest speaker at the conference, which focused on restoring local food economies. His 25-year-old organization, the Landless Workers Movement, advocates for rational land use and a just global agricultural system. It opposes a corporate model of agriculture. read more

Open Letter From Maputo, Mozambique and the Fifth International Conference of Via Campesina, October 19-22, 2008

Peasant Agriculture and Food Sovereignty are Solutions to the Global Crisis

The entire world is in crisis, a crisis with multiple dimensions. There is a food crisis, an energy crisis, a climate crisis and a financial crisis. The solutions put forth by Power – more free trade, more GM Os, etc. – purposefully ignore the fact that the crisis is a product of the capitalist system and of neoliberalism, and they will only worsen its impacts. To find real solutions we need to look toward Food Sovereignty as put forth by La Via Campesina. read more

To see Photos from the Fifth Congress of Via Campesina visit:

http://picasaweb.google.com/cmsfoodsovereignty/5thIntLConferenceOfLaViaCampesinaMozambique#

World Social Forum TV interview with John Kinsman, president of Family Farm Defenders, on the impact of biotech on U.S. agriculture: http://www.wsftv.net/Members/focuspuller/videos/john_peck.mp4/view

Via Campesina Interviews from Mozambique now Online

The first of several interviews with farm activists from around the world who attended the Via Campesina meeting in Mozambique in late Oct. was aired last Sun. Nov. 16th on Madison, WI community radio, WORT FM 89.9 FM as part of the weekly Third World View program. This particular interview is 25 min. long and features Willy Marbella and Rhoda Gueta of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, or KMP – the largest peasant movement of the Philippines. Anyone is welcome to redistribute and rebroadcast this interview with attribution. Future interviews should be aired in the coming weeks on the same WORT program.

You can listen and/or download the interview through the WORT archive (scroll down to the Third World View 11/16 program): http://archive.wort-fm.org/

Irradiation and Vegetables Don’t Mix!

By: Food And Water Watch (www.foodandwaterwatch.org)

On Aug. 21, 2008 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it will allow fresh spinach and iceberg lettuce to be treated with ionizing radiation. Nearly two years after a major E. coli outbreak was linked to California spinach, which killed three people and sickened more than 200 others in 26 states, it is unbelievable that the FDA’s first action on is this issue is to turn to irradiation rather than focus on how to prevent contamination of these crops. This just illustrates once again how misplaced this agency’s priorities really are. Instead of beefing up its capacity to inspect food facilities or test food for contamination, all the FDA has to offer consumers is an impractical, ineffective and very expensive gimmick like irradiation. read more

Using modern laws to keep Amish ways

Computer chips in cattle violate their beliefs, they say in rare plea

By Tim Jones Chicago Tribune (September 20, 2008)

BLANCHARD, Mich. - It's not like Glen Mast to be confrontational or to draw attention to himself. He is Old Order Amish and is happy to tend his 35-acre farm, build furniture for his children and repair horse-drawn buggies for the Amish in his rural central Michigan community. "I just want to be left alone," Mast says. So it is extraordinary that Mast is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed this month seeking to stop the government from tagging the ears of cattle with computer chips, chips that Mast and others say violate their religious freedom and may represent the biblical "mark of the beast," condemning those who comply to eternal damnation. read more

You Are What You Eat:

The Food Sovereignty Struggle within the Larger Global Justice Movement

by: John E. Peck, executive director, Family Farm Defenders

This article appeared in three parts in the Sustainable Times (July-Sept. 2008)

I have a button that says: If You Are What You Eat, Then I'm Fast, Cheap, and Easy. While this quip is somewhat sarcastic, for many people it is all too true. Whether due to marketing hype, or out of sheer convenience, lots of normally "smart" folks fall down when it comes to choosing what they put in their mouths. The personal is political and this is reflected each time someone votes for "business as usual" by giving their money to a fastfood chain or bigbox retailer. The result is a broken food/farm system that is now abusing animals, exploiting workers, perverting biodiversity, undermining democracy, jeopardizing health, and destroying the planet. If we believe another world is possible, then we need to radically transform our own daily behavior, and this means including food sovereignty as part of our thinking, organizing, and eating. read more

Congress Takes Another Potshot at Family Farmers -

Requiring Animal ID Has Nothing to Do With the Food Safety of School Lunches

by Jeff Pausma, grass-based dairy farmer, Fox Lake, WI

Printed in the Wisconsin State Farmer 8/1/08 and the Progressive Populist 8/15/08

Many parents were appalled when we saw on our television screens a video of workers abusing a downer cow with electric shocks because the cow was too sick to stand up. We were even more horrified to learn that meat from that cow had gone into lunches served by the federal School Lunch Program. The scandal at the Hallmark/Westland plant in Chino, Calif., has sparked interest in the current trend of securing local meat from sources that are grass-fed, organic and come from animals raised humanely. Our kids deserve the safest meat in their food. Sadly, Congress is now considering squashing such efforts to get local foods into the School Lunch Program. read more

Family Farm Defenders Joins Over 70 Other Organizations in Effort to Keep Animal ID Out of the Federal School Lunch Program

On June 25th a letter was sent by over 70 organizations to the House Appropriations Committee asking Congress not to connect the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) to the School Lunch Program. Among the signers is Family Farm Defenders which has been at the forefront of grassroots resistance to premises registration, RFID chipping, and animal tracking - the three stages of NAIS, the first of which is already mandated in Wisconsin.

A copy of the letter to Congress can be found: http://farmandranchfreedom.org/content/files/SignOnLetter080625.pdf

The misguided proposal in the 2009 Agriculture Appropriations Bill would require the School Lunch Program to buy only meat from farms that have been registered under NAIS. This proposal would discriminate against smallscale producers who have chosen not to participate in the largest invasive surveillance project in U.S. agricultural history. In Wisconsin alone over 10% of dairy farmers have refused to register, many for religious reasons such as among the Amish, the fastest growing segment of the state's dairy industry. If passed, this proposal would force many local farm to school lunch programs that have successfully introduced healthier grassfed meat into cafeterias to go back to factory farm suppliers and corporate meatpackers.

"This corporate-driven perversion of the school lunch program is masquerading as a food safety measure, despite the fact that USDA officials have repeatedly stated that NAIS is not a food safety program," noted John Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders. "School children will still be stuck eating dubious meat at taxpayer expense - whether it is from cloned animals, animals force-fed mad cow material or injected with synthetic hormones and antibiotics, or contaminated and irradiated after slaughter. In fact, it is highly debatable whether NAIS even helps keep animals healthier since the best disease prevention option is to keep livestock outside eating their natural foods on pasture."

“The provision favors the most vertically integrated farms that can easily prove that all their meat is from a NAIS-registered farm, as well as confinement operations (CAFOs) that will be able to use group identification under NAIS,” added Kathy Ozer, executive director of the National Family Farm Coalition.

Family Farm Defenders calls upon concerned citizens to contact their Congressional representatives (Congressional Switchboard #202-224-3121) to oppose any NAIS related requirement that would prohibit unregistered family farmers from supplying healthy local grassfed meat to the federal school lunch program.

Farm Bill 2008 - Wasted Opportunity For Change

By: Ben Burkett, President, National Family Farm Coalition

Global food crisis? Consumers demanding more local, sustainable food from family farmers? Public health and environmental concerns over factory farms? The recently passed Farm Bill is an abysmal disappointment for those seeking solutions to these urgent questions. Despite the global food crisis and consumer demands for a healthier food system, Congress chose to stay with the failed status quo that favors industrial factory farms and corporate agribusiness profits over the interests of family farmers and consumers. While some critics of our farm programs targeted their ire towards “millionaire farmers” receiving subsidies, the main beneficiaries of our farm programs were able to escape scrutiny: corporate agribusinesses. read more

Farm Bill Redux - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly!

The Good:

$10 billion for nutrition programs over next ten years, including $1 billion to promote more fruits and vegetables in schools (a belated attempt to get school cafeteria menus in step with the USDA's revised food pyramid)
Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) finally being implemented (passed in the last Farm Bill, but blocked by the Bush USDA at the request of corporate agribusiness and the mega retailers - this latest version, though, contains "flexibility" language...)
Interstate meat sales allowed if the slaughterhouse is state inspected (USDA inspection no longer required)
$100 million for organic programs, including up to $750 cost share per farm to help cover certification costs
$75 million for beginning farmer/rancher programs over 4 years
$33 million for promoting farmers’ markets over 5 years

The Bad:

No farmer controlled strategic grain reserve
No exemption allowed to grow fruits or vegetables on commodity base acreage
No packer ban on livestock ownership
$40 billion for continued commodity payments with a "cap" at $2.5 million per joint operation - ie. the wealthiest farmers will continue to receive the majority of farm subsidies
$2.4 billion for continued EQIP payments with a “cap” at $300,000 over 6 years - i.e. more factory farm subsidies
$34 million to promote U.S. agricultural exports through Foreign Market Development Program
$70 million for biomass”second generation” agrofuel development, new $1.00 per gallon subsidy for cellulosic ethanol producers, plus sugar growers will get taxpayer subsidies along with corn and soybean growers as part of the agrofuel industrial complex

The Ugly:

$1.7 billion in tax beaks for special interests to win over certain key politicians, including:
$400 million in new tax breaks for timber industry ($100 million to Weyerhauser alone!)
$170 million for salmon industry (mostly in CA)
$126 million in tax breaks for race horse owners (mostly in KY)

Latin American Farmers Visit Sauk County

By Nathan Greenhalgh

Times-Press (Reedsburg, WI), May 16th, 2008

Jim Goodman (right), an organic beef and dairy farmer from the Hillpoint area, shakes the hand of Policarpio Ali Cruz, a representative of the FECAFAB coffee producer cooperative of Bolivia at the Deli Bean in Reedsburg (photo caption)

Although downing a cup of coffee in the morning is almost as common as showering in the morning, if you asked most people where their coffee comes from, they'll just say the store. Coffee is one of the most-traded commodities in the world, and the bean in your coffee machine may have traveled thousands of miles before appearing on the supermarket shelf. In an effort to raise awareness about the global implications of coffee choices, Just Coffee, a coffee roasting cooperative based in Madison, and Family Farm Defenders, a nonprofit political advocacy group, brought a delegation of Latin American coffee producers to Sauk County for a tour of farms, the Cedar Grove Cheese factory and meeting local organic farmers at The Deli Bean Cafe in downtown Reedsburg. Just Coffee is not just a company but also political activists for the Fair Trade movement, which advocates the payment of a fair price and implementing environmental and social standards for Third World agricultural producers. "It's definitely better than the alternative," Colleen Coy, a Just Coffee delegation coordinator, said. read more

For a few photos from their visit to WI, visit this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnpecknyeleniforum/sets/72157605221133049/

Oaxacan Political Prisoner, Flavio Sosa, Released!

Many thanks to all those who contacted their Congressional representatives and the Mexican government earlier this year demanding Flavio's release. Your efforts paid off!

Eighteen U.S. farm activists from three states - Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Maine - were in Oaxaca, Mexico from Jan. 10th - 17th, 2008 as part of a solidarity delegation organized by Family Farm Defenders. As you may recall, the FFD delegates, along with representatives of APPO and Via Campesina, attempted to visit Flavio in prison on Jan. 16th, but were denied access. In response, FFD delegates joined leaders of the popular resistance movement in Oaxaca for a well-attended press conference, demanding unconditional freedom for all political prisoners, respect for basic human rights, and renegotiation of NAFTA.

For a 1/18/08 article in Noticias, the major daily paper in Oaxaca, about FFD's failed attempt to visit Flavio Sosa in prison (in Spanish), click here

For a 4/20/08 report by Mexico Monitor on Flavio's release (in English), click here

Since the violent repression of the democratic movement by Oaxacan Gov. Ulises Ruiz, with support of federal troops in May 2006, over 500 people have been detained, many tortured while in custody, and over a dozen people have also been killed, including U.S. journalist and WI native, Brad Will on Oct. 27th, 2006. While Flavio Sosa is now free, there are still other Oaxacan activists in prison and government repression continues. FFD plans to continue our international solidarity campaign.

Gustavo Esteva, one of several Mexican activists who participated in the FFD annual meeting in Oaxaca, has provided an excellent background document: Oaxaca - The Path of Radical Democracy. You can read his analysis here

FFD board member, Stephen (Esteban) Bartlett, who was part of the Oaxaca solidarity delegation recorded interviews, as well as some music, during the trip. This 54 min. audio pogram can be heard at: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=program-info&program_id=26281&nav=prod

A collection of photos from the Jan. 2008 FFD solidarity delegation to Oaxaca can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnpecknyeleniforum/sets/72157603821180927/

Food Shortage Looming if Crop Focus Isn't Altered

By Jim Goodman, organic dairy farmer from Wonewoc, WI, and a 2008 Food and Society Policy Fellow

Originally printed in the Capital Times (Madison, WI) 4/16/08

As a child I was told to clean my plate because there were people starving in China. It seemed silly. How would getting sick help hungry Chinese? That was in the 1950s, the heart of the green revolution. After college I was ready to farm as one of the green revolutionaries. I was ready to feed the world and open the cornucopia to everyone. Now, 40 years later, I admit I was wrong — high-tech agriculture wasn’t the answer. There is still plenty of hunger in the world, and it looks like our daily bread could get a lot more expensive. read more

Speak Out Against NAIS

Letter to the Editor printed in WI State Farmer 3/21/2008

By: John Peck, executive director, Family Farm Defenders

I was extremely disturbed by the recent article extolling the virtues of RFID chips in the WI State Farmer (3/14/08), especially when the sponsoring entities (WLIC, DATCP, UW) all have financial interests in creating demand for this expensive technology. The global RFID market is growing by an estimated 30% annually and will top $7 billion in 2008, so one can only imagine the bonanza once Wisconsin goes beyond premises ID to mandate animal ID. read more

Action Alert!

Stop Monsanto's RoundUp Ready (RR) Sugar Beet!

This coming spring Monsanto plans to unveil its RoundUp ready (RR) sugar beet, designed to withstand heavy doses of the herbicide, glyphosate. In preparation for this announcement, the EPA has already increased the acceptable limit of glyphosate residue in sugar beet roots by 5000%. “Basically, we have not run into resistance,” said David Berg, president of American Crystal Sugar, quoted in the 11/27/07 New York Times, “We really think that consumer attitudes have come to accept food from biotechnology.” read more

Want Milk, Forget Ethanol Tax Repeal

Newsday, Jan. 22, 2008, Letter to the Editor

By: Fred Matthews, FFD board member and dairy farmer (Lafargeville, NY)

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opleta5547193jan22,0,5071548.story?page=2

As a third-generation dairy farmer and one of the remaining 6,500 dairy farmers in New York State, I find ridiculous Sen. Charles Schumer's proposed legislation to help lower milk prices.

Getting rid of the ethanol tariff will neither address the dire crisis of the New York dairy industry nor help consumers. The end of cheap oil has contributed far more to the end of "cheap" milk than higher feed prices associated with ethanol. Fuel costs for processing, manufacturing and shipping milk have spiraled upward for processors, while my farm's cost for a gallon of diesel has gone from $1.68 to $3.40.

Feed costs are just one small aspect of what goes into the price of milk and are not even part of the official formula that determines what price farmers receive for milk. Before the recent boom in milk prices, 2006 was the worst year for New York dairy farmers since the Great Depression. More than 500 went out of business. Though prices paid to farmers collapsed, consumers were still facing rising milk prices as the middlemen-milk processors, handlers and supermarkets-reaped the profits.

If we want to truly address rising food prices, we need a comprehensive energy policy that moves us away from a petroleum-based economy. And we need antitrust enforcement to ensure farmers a fair price to cover their costs of production while protecting consumers from price-gouging.

Schumer should look at the oil companies making record profits and the market power of supermarket chains and agribusiness processors who hold the real sway over retail milk prices.

The Threat of Agrofuels –

Industrialized GMO Monocultures Will Only Hurt Farmers, Undermine Food Sovereignty, and Make Global Warming Worse

By: John E. Peck Executive Director, Family Farm Defenders

As concerns about peak oil mount, many people are declaring agrofuels to be the latest panacea for saving civilization from its impending collapse. Propelling this bandwagon is a whole gaggle of venture capitalists, free trade advocates, farm commodity groups, agribusiness giants, biotech outfits, and – yes – the oil giants and car makers. As detailed in the July 2007 issue of Seedling (available online at www.grain.org), many of the biggest agrofuel boosters are familiar opponents to those now struggling for global justice, food sovereignty, and land reform. read more

Along with several other organizations, Family Farm Defenders recently issued a call for a moratorium on agrofuel development in the U.S. For more info, click here

For a more detailed background document on the need for an agrofuel moratorium, click here

Wisconsin Family Farmers Celebrate Fair Trade Month by Hosting Cocoa Farmers From Ghana!

On Wed. Oct. 11th, 2007 Family Farm Defenders helped welcome two women farmer leaders of Kuapa Kokoo, the largest fair trade cocoa co-op in West Africa with 45,000 members. In the photo to the left John Kiefer shows Cecilia Appianim his dairy farm near Sauk City, while in the photo to the right Cecilia gets to see Cedar Grove Cheese with Camy Matthay and John Peck.

Divine Chocolate USA (http://www.divinechocolateusa.com/) facilitated the Midwest tour of the Ghanaian cocoa farmers, along with our friends at Just Coffee (http://www.justcoffee.coop/), SERRV (http://www.serrv.org/), A Greater Gift (http://www.agreatergift.org/), and the Madison Fair Trade Action Alliance (MadFTAA). You'll find Kuapa Kokoo's fair trade Divine chocolate in our FFD holiday gift boxes, but you can also ask for it at your local store or grocery co-op!

Farmers and Consumers are Both Getting Milked by the Dairy Giants

By: Joel Greeno

Grass-based dairy farmer (Kendall, WI) and vice president of Family Farm Defenders

An edited version of this op ed appeared in the Capital Times (Madison, WI) on 8/2/07 and in the Topeka Capital-Journal (Topeka, KS) on 8/17/07

Despite recent media hype, farmers are not getting rich off record prices in the dairy case. The cost of milk has gone up 50-60 cents in the last few months, with consumers paying close to $4 per gallon in Los Angeles, Chicago and New Orleans. But dairy farmers are still getting less than half of that money - about $1.60 per gallon. Rising fuel costs and ethanol corn demands are partly to blame. Intense drought has also meant wilting pastures and hay crops. For the first time ever the creek that normally waters my cows has dried up, and as a result my milk production has dropped 50% this summer. But the real culprit behind the current dairy crisis remains corporate greed. read more

Joel Greeno (left) and other farmers protest dairy price fixing outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) in Chicago

Pet Food, Human Food – Both Easy Prey for Global Food Giants

By: John E. Peck executive director, Family Farm Defenders

A version of this article was printed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI) on Sat. 5/12/07, in the Contra Costa Times (CA) on Sun. 5/13/07, and in the St. Cloud Times (MN) on Fri. 8/3/07

Back in early March when it was first revealed that pet food across the U.S. contained Chinese wheat and rice gluten laced with melamine, many expected the Bush White House to take swift action, recalling the deadly products and tracking down the source of the contamination for prosecution. Instead, the FDA deferred to industry and its dubious self-policing capacity. The upshot was the death nationwide of thousands of dogs and cats, and the dumping of recalled pet food into livestock rations destined for human mouths. By late April federal officials were doing a second round of damage control, contacting pork and poultry producers in nine states about melamine tainted feedstocks and culling suspected animals. Unfortunately, some livestock could not be recalled since they were already on their way to market and people’s plates.read more

Farmers, Cows, Bees Win Legal Victory Against Monsanto’s Introduction of GE Alfalfa

By: John E. Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders

Back in April 2004 Monsanto submitted a federal petition for commercial introduction of “Round-Up Ready” (RR) alfalfa in the U.S, and after a sixty day public comment period the USDA determined that this herbicide resistant alfalfa variety would have no significant environmental impact, formally approving its commercial introduction in June 2005. By fall 2005 Monsanto had obtained approval for export of RR alfalfa into Mexico, and was working to obtain the same from a host of other countries including Canada, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. On March 12, 2007, though, federal judge, Charles Breyer, of the northern CA district ordered an immediate injunction against U.S. sale of RR alfalfa, having earlier ruled back on Feb. 13th, 2007 that the USDA failed to conduct a full environmental impact study. read more...

On Aug. 6th, 2007 the USDA established a tollfree hotline for farmers to call to find out whether or not GE alfalfa is still being grown in their vicinity, so they can avoid possible contamination. That number is 866-724-6408 and is staffed from 9 am - 5 pm Eastern Standard Time, Monday thorugh Friday (except holidays).

Press Coverage of the Nyélení Food Sovereignty Forum 2007 in Sélingué, Mali, West Africa

Posted 3/8/07 on Madison Indymedia: http://madison.indymedia.org/newswire/display/55643/index.php

Wajid Jenkins interviews Anna Lappe for WORT's Compost Pile 3/8/07 http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=download&program_id=22131&file_id=38386&nav=&session=anonymous

JoAnne Pow!ers interviews John Peck for WORT's Eight O'Clock Buzz 3/5/07 http://lists.wort-fm.org/parchive/mp3/wort_070305_080001buzzmon.mp3

Mali, A Country in Search of Food Sovereignty

Dafne Melo, Special Brasil de Fato Reporter interviews Mamadou Goita, one of the Malian organizers of the Nyeleni Forum and member of the Institute for Research and Promotion of Development Alternatives (IRPAD).read more...

Unconventional Gathering

Supara Janchitfa reports for the Bangkok Post (3/18/07) that the Nyeleni 2007 Forum for Food Sovereignty in Mali was not your usual global conference of diplomats and policy makers; the six-day programme initiated by and for the underprivileged worldwide was marked by a spirit of international solidarity read more...

Real World Radio coverage: http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/rmr/?q=en/taxonomy/term/178

Some mainstream media coverage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6387975.stm http://www.bangkokpost.com/180307_Perspective/18Mar2007_pers009.php http://www.bangkokpost.com/180307_Perspective/18Mar2007_pers010.php

For related news, commentaries and photos on Nyeleni, visit:

Nyeleni 2007: http://www.nyeleni2007.org/

John Peck's photos from the forum: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnpecknyeleniforum/

Getcha Grub On: http://grubbook.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html

Anna Lappe's photos from the forum: http://www.flickr.com/photos/annalappe/sets/72157594553730855/show/

World Hunger Year: http://www.worldhungeryear.org/international/nyeleni_2007.asp

Christina Schiavoni's photos from the forum: http://picasaweb.google.com/maureenkel/MaliAlbum

Grassroots International: http://www.grassrootsonline.org/weblog/labels/Ny=C3=A9l=C3=A9ni.html

Food First http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1652

Report Back from Nyélení Food Sovereignty Forum 2007 – Sélingué, Mali, West Africa

by: John E. Peck

March 5th, 2007

From Feb. 23rd – Feb. 28th I had the exciting opportunity to participate in the Nyélení Food Sovereignty Forum near Sélingué, Mali, in West Africa. I was chosen as one of about 20 invited participants from the U.S. and ended up serving as one of the staff liaisons for the North American delegation (50 people total from the U.S., Canada, Mexico). I think I was mostly chosen for this role because of my African experience and the fact that I could speak French and Portuguese, and understand Spanish.

Thankfully, all the formal sessions were simultaneously translated into English, French, Spanish, and Bambara (the local language) and many of the delegations brought their own translators for other languages (Nepalese, Indonesian, Arabic, Japanese, Hindi, etc.) Alltold, there were over 600 participants from 80+ countries that converged near Sélingué, Mali about a two hour drive from the capital, Bamako, near the border with Guinea. Named after a farmer heroine from West African folklore in order to celebrate the critical role women still play in agriculture today, the Nyélení forum was organized by several international grassroots organizations, including Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth, World Forum of Fisher Peoples, le Reseau des Organisations Paysannes et de Producteurs de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (ROPPA – Network of Farmers and Producers Organization of West Africa) and the World March for Women, to name a few read more...

20 Ways to Promote Local Food Sovereignty

For a list of things you can do at the community level, read more...

Food Sovereignty or Food Dependence?

By: Jim Goodman, organic dairy farmer, Wonewoc, WI

Posted on Feb. 8, 2007 on Madison Indymedia (www.madisonindymedia.org)

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) documents 852 million people world-wide as being food insecure, with approximately 25,000 deaths due to starvation daily. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) states that 11% of US households are food insecure. The FAO states that “food security exists when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active, healthy life”. USDA defines food security as “access by all people at all times to enough nutritious food for an active healthy life”. What happened to “safe” food meeting peoples “food preferences”? Not important according to USDA. Not surprising either, in this society, profits are more important than people. read more...

Second Annual Wisconsin Fair Trade & Local Food Directory is now available!

Family Farm Defenders (FFD), in conjunction with the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice (WNPJ) has just released an expanded 2007 second edition of Wisconsin's first ever statewide fair trade and local food directory.

The nearly 100 page directory includes listings of family farms, locally owned retailers, coffeeshops, restaurants, bakeries, sweat-free apparel stores, as well as bioregional recipes, nutritional information, and educational sidebars.

Spiral bound copies are available for $10.00 each (+$2.00 for postage) from either FFD (1019 Williamson St. #B, Madison, WI, 53703 #608-260-0900) or WNPJ (122 State St. #402, Madison, WI 53703 #608-250-9240).

An online version of the directory is also available for free at: http://www.wnpj.org/

This is a work in progress, so we welcome your feedback! Any suggested additions and corrections to listings for future editions, as well as other comments, can be directed to the FFD office or sent via email to: familyfarmdefenders@yahoo.com

Wisconsin Farmers Add Voice to Call for Peace in Washington DC

Family Farm Defenders and Farms not Arms Demand End to Senseless War

For Immediate Release

Fri. Jan. 26, 2007

Contacts: Randy Jasper Family Farm Defenders #608-553-0596 or #608-475-1534 John Kiefer Family Farm Defenders and Farms Not Arms #608-393-7076 John Kinsman National Family Farm Coalition #608-986-3815 Douglas Stevenson Farms Not Arms #931-626-4035

On Sat. Jan. 27th Wisconsin family farmers will be lending their voice to hundreds of thousands of others in demanding an end to war. Some are making the long trip to Washington DC, while others will be participating in solidarity rallies in Wisconsin, such as the one scheduled for Noon in Madison at the State Capitol.

Family Farm Defenders was among the first groups to join Farm not Arms when it was launched last year at Farm Aid. The mission of Farms not Arms is to oppose the dangerous cycle of war and terror that now threatens our world, and to urge all countries to refocus their resources on ending hunger, fighting disease, stewarding the environment and protecting our farmland.

One member of Family Farm Defenders from Muscoda who is going to DC is no stranger to such solidarity. Last year Randy Jasper helped drive nine donated tractors down to Mississippi in support of black farmers struggling to recover after Hurricane Katrina. “Somehow we need to stop this stupidity,” noted Jasper. “I have friends and neighbors who are now in the military in Iraq and they tell me they have to drive around and basically provoke people to shoot at them so then the military can respond indiscriminately. This is just a waste of our young people.”

John Kiefer, a dairy farmer from near Sauk City and co-chair of Farms not Arms, is also going to DC to lend his voice. “It is a citizen’s and a farmer’s civic duty,” Kiefer explained, “to seek justice when he sees none. It is especially important to get folks in agriculture more engaged in the worldwide peace movement, since there can be no real peace without access to good food.”

Another dairy farmer from La Valle, WWII veteran, and secretary of the National Family Farm Coalition, John Kinsman will be attending the peace rally in Madison. According to Kinsman, "We, the people, do have a choice. Violence only begets more killing. Many of the victims of war are innocent farmers, elders, women and children and by destroying their livelihoods and their land we only make hunger worse and create fresh conflict. We have an obligation to speak out, and foster friendship instead. If people only understood what is really happening, they would join groups like Farms not Arms and bring about a better world.”

Globalization Needs To Have Rules

by Jim Goodman, dairy farmer (Wonewoc, WI)

Posted on Jan. 8th, 2007 on Madison Indymedia (www.madisonindymedia.org)

Perhaps you have noticed? Lots of US auto workers lost their jobs in 2006, lots of workers in other industries as well, farmers, well we don't expect much anymore and even high-tech workers are feeling the pinch. The minimum wage hasn't gone up since 1997 and according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are currently 6.8 million unemployed (over 8 million if you count those who have given up trying to find a job). Am I missing something here? I thought that globalization and the founding of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 was supposed to raise everyones ship. Instead it seems most of us are losing ground. read more...

Bringing Fair Trade Home to the U.S.

by: John E. Peck

Dec. 2006/Jan. 2007 issue of the Sustainable Times (www.sustainabletimes.net)

Ever wondered why the fair trade label only applies to products from outside the U.S.? Why are all the fair trade certifies located thousands of miles away from the producers? How can corporations that are so unfair towards workers, farmers, and consumers in the U.S. get away with selling and promoting themselves as fair trade? What ever happened to the idea of applying fair trade principles in our own backyard?

So, What's the Big Deal if Wal-Mart Makes a Mistake?

by Jim Goodman

Madison Indymedia (www.madison.indymedia.org) Posted 12/4/06

That was the question asked by the host on a recent Public Radio call-in show. Her question to her guest from the Cornucopia Institute was in regard to recent charges that Wal-Mart was passing conventional grocery items off as USDA certified organic. A mistake? I doubt it. Seriously, think about it, you start a big push in marketing a new line of high profit products and one of the first things you do is mislabel your products, “accidentally”? As Jim Hightower would say “Do they think we were born with sucker wrappers around our heads?” read more...

Celebrate Food Sovereignty This Holiday Season!

By: John E. Peck, executive director, Family Farm Defenders

The holidays are when many people happily rediscover that there is still culture left in agriculture. A delicious homemade meal of traditional bioregional fare in a relaxed “slow food” atmosphere is often the highlight of any gathering among friends and family this time of year. In fact, it is almost hard to imagine Thanksgiving without turkey, wild rice, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie – all foods that have become a proud part of the culinary heritage of the Americas. What is sadly missing from many of our holiday celebrations, though, is a hearty affirmation of food sovereignty. read more...

In 2006 the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) and Grassroots International collaborated to produce a brochure on food sovereignty featuring farmers' voices, including members of Family Farm Defenders.

To download the English version of this brochure visit: http://grassrootsonline.org/foodsovereignty.pdf

If you would rather have a copy mailed to you, please call our office #608-260-0900.

Don’t Play With Our Food!

By: Debra Eschmeyer, project director, National Family Farm Coalition

Most everyone has been told to not play with his or her food, yet somehow agribusiness is playing Monopoly with the nation’s food supply. When pouring your next glass of milk, consider who decided what the cow ate and who controls the distribution of profits. One would think the farmer and consumer take the lead roles in managing the supply of safe and healthy food. The farmer should control his or her business while mainly battling unpredictable weather—expecting the price they receive for a quality product to be set by a fair and honest marketplace. However, in today’s market, the lack of competition is wielding just as much force as Mother Nature as witnessed by the recent proposed acquisition of the Chicago Board of Trade by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) to become the CME Group Inc.—combining the two largest U.S. futures exchanges. read more...

Industrial Agriculture is Leading Us Down the Wrong Road

By: Jim Goodman, organic dairy farmer, Wonewoc, WI

Printed in the Capital Times (Madison, WI) on Mon. Nov. 20th, 2006

Also posted 11/15/06 on Madison Indymedia: http://www.madison.indymedia.org/

Self reliance is not a bad thing. While Emerson's thoughts on “Self Reliance” were controversial enough to get him banned from Harvard University, it seems that most Americans have willingly ceded their own self reliance and therefore their right of choice into the hands of corporate America. They have given up choice in media, health care and even food. Granted, not everyone can or wants to raise their own food. I guess as a farmer, that's good for my business, but I do want them to to care, to take part in the decision of what they eat and how it is grown. Just as it is wrong for the corporate media to only offer part of the news, it is also wrong for the corporate food industry to basically say “shut up and eat”. read more...

Tainted Spinach is Just Another Sign of a Sick Food Farm System

By: John E. Peck

Printed in the Capital Times (Madison, WI) on 10/2/06

A longer updated version was also printed in the Oct. 2006 issue of the Sustainable Times: http://www.sustainabletimes.net/

After a decade of repeated outbreaks and warnings, vegetable growers in the Salinas Valley of CA are now reaping a deadly harvest. Over 170 people nationwide have fallen victim to the deadly O157:H7 strain of E. coli bacteria, with one death confirmed in WI, and a voluntary recall of bagged spinach is now underway. While distant DC officials say it is still OK to eat suspect spinach after cooking at 160 degrees for 15 seconds, those CA health experts on the ground are telling consumers to throw it all out. Recent budget and staff cuts at the federal level have left the majority of food safety inspection and enforcement in the hands of city, county, and state agencies. Ironically enough, the Bush administration is now trying to railroad through Congress the "National Uniformity for Food Act” that would take away this local control over food safety and labeling. read more...

Family Farm Defenders Endorses Farms Not Arms!

Pictured are Family Farm Defender members, Kat Becker and Tony Schultz, outside their newly decorated barn near Athens, WI!

On Sun. Oct. 1st, Farms Not Arms held its first national gathering in conjunction with the Farm Aid event the day before in Camden, NJ.

Speaking at the kickoff event were: Farms Not Arms co-chair, Will Allen, and Kate Deustenberg of Cedar Circle Farm in East Thetford, VT; Farms Not Arms co-chair Michael O'Gorman of Agroproductos Del Cabo, Ensenada, Mexico.; National Family Farm Coalition President and Iowa soybean farmer, George Naylor.; President of Organic Consumers Association. Ronnie Cummins and Wisconsin dairy farmer, John Keifer, representing Family Farm Defenders!

For more info on how you can get involved

in Farms Not Arms visit:

http://www.farmsnotarms.org/

Sen. Feingold and Others Call for a GAO Investigation of Dairy Price Fixing at the CME

July 14, 2006

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) is calling on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study if cheese trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is susceptible to price manipulation and suggest improvements that may be needed. Feingold, along with Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), took the lead in writing GAO Comptroller General David Walker requesting the study nearly ten years after price manipulation was uncovered in cheese trading on the old National Cheese Exchange based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. read more...

The Fall of the WTO!

by: Carlos Marentes

Border Agricultural Workers Project (El Paso, TX) Aug. 1st, 2006

On Monday July 24, 2006, the General Secretary of the World Trade organization, Pascal Lamy, officially announced the suspension of the Doha Round talks. Outside the somber WTO headquarters in Geneva, a large group of La Via Campesina, Fisher Folk Federation, and members of other social movement celebrated the failure of the negotiations and WTO. The organizations publicly stated: “The Doha Round cycle is over, now is the time for food sovereignty.” read more...

Katrina Solidarity Continues As Four More Donated WI Tractors Depart for MS Farmer Co-op

For Immediate Release:

June 5th, 2006

Contact: Randy Jasper – Project Tractor #608-553-0596
Joel Greeno – Project Tractor #608-463-7634
Ben Burkett - Mississippi Association of Cooperatives #601-870-4114
John Peck - Family Farm Defenders #608-260-0900

On Mon. June 5th four more tractors from Wisconsin will be heading south to Mississippi to further strengthen grassroots farmer to farmer relationships which grew out of the devastating aftermath of last year’s hurricanes. Two Olivers, a Case, and an International – along with a chisel plow, disc, field cultivator, and rotary hoe – are destined for the Indian Springs Farmers Association in Sheeplo, MS where they will be redistributed to those co-op members desperately in need of working equipment.

Another load of five WI tractors arrived in Hattiesburg, MS on March 31st, 2006 in conjunction with the annual meeting of Family Farm Defenders hosted by the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives. Over fifty activists from across the nation were on hand to celebrate the tractors’ arrival and the ongoing solidarity they represent. Family Farm Defenders was one of the first family farm groups to respond to Hurricane Katrina last year by sending two biodiesel buses with seven volunteers and over 10,000 pounds of food, medicine, and other relief supplies down to communities in MS, AL, and LA.

Project Tractor as it has been called was the brainchild of Joel Greeno, a dairy farmer near Kendall, WI who drove his Allis Chalmers tractor in Farm Aid’s 20th Anniversary parade through downtown Chicago last September and overheard a MS farmer saying he wished he had one of those so he would no longer have to hoe so many rows by hand.

“Family farmers in the south have been struggling for years – first against slavery and racism and now against unfair policies and unjust prices,” said Randy Jasper, a farmer near Muscoda, WI who volunteered to drive down the second load of tractors on his flatbed semitruck. “Hurricane Katrina just added insult to centuries of injury. We can’t depend upon government assistance any more. The real answer lies in coalition building and farmers working together to save each other.”

Tax deductible donations for Project Tractor and other post-hurricane solidarity work can be sent to: Family Farm Defenders, P.O. Box 1772, Madison, WI 53701

Donated tractors bring cheer to farmers hit hard by Katrina

Hattiesburg American Sat. April 1st, 2006
By Rachel Leifer

SHEEPLO - With a halting first belch from its exhaust pipe, a Wisconsin tractor prepared to take its first ride through Mississippi soil.

The McCormick Farmall was one of five dusty but working tractors unloaded Friday afternoon in front of the Indian Springs Farmers Cooperative in the Sheeplo community near Petal. Representatives of the national Family Farm Defenders had hauled them from southwestern Wisconsin to donate to the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives, a coalition of independent farming cooperatives in 11 counties- many of whose members lost equipment and crops to Hurricane Katrina.

At least two of the tractors are expected to stay at Indian Springs - where farmers like Donnie Pen-Travis said they are sorely needed.

"They might be worth $4,000 or $5,000 to you, but to me they're worth a million bucks," said Pen-Travis, 53, who works a plot of land he said has been in his family for five generations. He beamed as fellow farmers from Wisconsin backed the red and orange vehicles off the back of an 18-wheeler before a crowd of about 50 farmers and pro-organic farming activists.

Photo - Darnelle Burkett with John Peck, John Kinsman and Daisy Garrett

"(Katrina) beat my sugar cane to death," he said, adding that he also lost a tractor and three-and-a-half acres' worth of bell peppers and sugar peas to the Aug. 29 storm's winds and rain.

Family Farm Defenders was in the Pine Belt for its annual conference, which is promoting small farmer solidarity against the pressures of agribusiness and the global marketplace.

"We've all been so excited we could do something that was a way of gaining solidarity with all the farmers in the hurricane area," said John Kinsman, 80, president of FFD and a dairy and tree farmer from Sauk County, Wisc.

The group sent two truckloads of food to the Gulf Coast in Katrina's aftermath, and several supporters on hand had spent the winter volunteering in New Orleans.

Farmer Darnella Burkett said the donation and support will help independent Mississippi farmers maintain economically viable, high quality operations even in the face of hurricane damage and pressure to sell their land.

"It's tough, but we've got to try to hold on to this land," said Burkett, 25, who works on her father's Sheeplo farm and sustained significant storm damage to her fields and equipment.

"My daddy always says, hold on to the land I give you - they're not growing any more."

For an online version of this story, visit: http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060401/NEWS01/604010308/1002/NEWS17

Not Charity, But Solidarity!

The 2nd Relief Trip of Family Farm Defenders to the Gulf Coast

by Camy Matthay
organic berry farmer, Brooklyn, WI (4/7/06)

Last week, I traveled south to Mississippi and Louisiana with other members of Family Farm Defenders, a national activist organization made up of farmers and consumers concerned with building a safe and sustainable food system. This was the second relief caravan sponsored by Family Farm Defenders to make the trip to the Gulf Coast. Shortly after the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, Family Farm Defenders had organized the first shipment of 10,000 lbs of food and medical aid from their headquarters in Madison, WI. read more...

The Peoples’ Relief Caravan: Family Farm Defenders to the Rescue!

An Account of Grassroots Relief at Work in the Gulf Coast

Harvest season in the Midwest is hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico. Late August is a busy time in our gardens, with tomatoes to process, corn to pick, and compost to turn. Alongside dedicated friends and family, I help run an organic farm on the city limits of Madison, Wisconsin. This August, 2005, our small collective was working beautifully, canning sauce and husking ears into the night. Satisfied and exhausted by each day’s labor, I was almost oblivious to the rest of the world; but on August 29, the radio in the greenhouse announced that Hurricane Katrina had made landfall 60 miles east of New Orleans, Louisiana. On Thurs. Sept 15th, 2005 seven farmers and other community activists left Madison, WI in two buses loaded down with emergency food, medicine, and other supplies. Their destination - the Southern Federation of Cooperative's relief warehouse in Epes, AL followed by subsequent stops at the Organic Valley "Kickapoo Kitchen" in Waveland, MS and the Veterans for Peace encampment in Covington, LA. read more...

Corporate Agribusiness Exposes

Welcome to Whole Foods – The “Walmart” of Organic

Whole Foods is the largest retail giant in the natural food sector in the U.S. with 168 stores nationwide (plus in Canada and Britain) and annual gross sales now exceeding $4.6 billion. In fact, Whole Foods has grown twice as fast the leading corporate grocer, Walmart, over the last four years. Started in a humble storefront at the corner of 8th and Rio Grande in Austin, TX back in 1978 by self-described “free market” libertarian and current CEO, John Mackay, Whole Foods grew parasitically throughout the 1990s.read more

Know Your Dairy Giants - Dean Foods

Dean Foods has been dubbed the “Microsoft” of the dairy industry for its aggressive expansion and leveraged buyout of competitors. The unprecedented merger with Suiza in 2001 was made possible by Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), which had already sold off its Southern Foods Group fluid milk outfit to Suiza in 2000. In exchange, DFA acquired a third stake in Dean’s fluid milk business and was able to place DFA representatives on Dean’s board of directors. Farmers and consumers all pay the price, though, when the nation’s largest dairy processor is in bed with the nation’s largest dairy producer. read more

Wal-Mart: the Quintessential Suburban Nightmare!

Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer – with 1489 mega-stores, 1397 Super Centers, 532 Sam's Clubs, and 56 neigborhood markets in the U.S alone as of 2003, and close to a tousand more abroad from Argentina to Germany. In fact, Wal-Mart is now the single largest private employer in the U.S. with 1.1 million "associates" and higher earnings than the gross national product (GNP) of 150 countries! In 2003 Wal-mart sold 19% of all groceries in the U.S. and recorded $9 billion in profits. Of the top fifteen richest people in the world, five are Wal-Mart heirs. The Walton family with its $90 billion is ranked among the richest in the world – along with Microsoft’s Bill Gates, and Saudi Royal Prince, Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud. read more...

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