Agricultural budget cuts got you down?

This April we are working with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) to send one of our Slow Food on Campus leaders, Erin, to Washington DC to meet with her Representative.

This April we are working with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) to send one of our Slow Food on Campus leaders, Erin, to Washington DC to meet with her Representative. She will head to Congress with her local farmer to share her concern about H.R. 1, a bill that unfairly targets programs that serve sustainable and organic farmers.  It makes steep cuts in agricultural research, extension and farm credit.  It makes deep cuts to funding provided in the 2008 Farm Bill for conservation and would terminate programs that serve beginning and minority farmers without making any cuts to commodity or crop insurance funding.

In short: it unfairly targets agriculture and programs that are essential to good, clean and fair farmers. These cuts would destroy critical programs that make sustainable farming viable, programs like SARE  and VAPG.

You can stand up for good, clean, and fair farmers. You can help send Erin and her local farmer to DC to let their representatives know how important these programs are to our food system by clicking here.

Can’t donate right now, but still want to let Congress know how important these programs are?

Contact your Senator now and ask them to oppose H.R.1, the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act: click here to go to NSAC’s web site where you can find info on how to contact your Senator as well as more background on these cuts.

Thank you!

Recent GE approvals face wide-ranging criticisms

Earlier this year the USDA stunned the food and farming community by unexpectedly approving three new genetically engineered (GE) foods. Here’s a recap of some of the main concerns around these additions to our food system.

by Emily Vaughn

Earlier this year the USDA stunned the food and farming community by unexpectedly approving three new genetically engineered (GE) foods. Here’s a recap of some of the main concerns around these additions to our food system.

The green-lighted foods are herbicide-resistant sugar beets and alfalfa and a type of corn tailor-made for ethanol production. While the latter two are not intended for human consumption, they’ll still impact people-food.  The corn and alfalfa are extremely likely to cross-pollinate with their organic or non-GE relatives.  Cross-pollination would render nearby fields of sweet corn unsuitable for human consumption, and disqualify milk or dairy products from receiving the organic label if the cows are accidentally fed GE-tainted alfalfa.  The proposed buffer zones that could be required to surround GE alfalfa plots aren’t enough to put organic farmers at ease.

The sugar beets have yet to pass an environmental safety test, but were given the go-ahead for planting this season in order to avoid a shortage of sugar (50% of table sugar in the US is beet-derived).  As if that’s not bad enough, the herbicide that the beets (and the alfalfa) are engineered to tolerate is becoming less effective as surrounding weeds are developing a resistance to the chemical. Agribusiness’s claim that this generation of GE crops is reducing our reliance on chemical inputs is looking thin.

On top of gene drift concerns, it’s looking like corn-based ethanol isn’t the green energy solution we were hoping for; ethanol faces increasing criticism for being energetically inefficient and for driving up food prices worldwide.

More after the jump

We are all farmworkers

President Josh Viertel joined over 900 people for a march to demand that Stop & Shop and its parent company Ahold do their part improve wages and working conditions for farm workers in the tomato fields of Immokalee, Florida.

by Slow Food USA President Josh Viertel

Yesterday I joined over 900 friends for a two-mile march in the snow through Boston. We were there to demand that Stop & Shop and its parent company Ahold do their part improve wages and working conditions for farm workers in the tomato fields of Immokalee, Florida. The march was organized by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers with support from allies, including the Student/Farm Workers Alliance.

The CIW and its allies are asking major supermarkets to sign on to the same agreement that fast food companies and college food service companies have signed through their Campaign for Fair Food. The CIW has posted a photojournal from the march here and a video here.

Below is a copy of the remarks I made at the opening rally:

I am here today because the food movement cannot be separate from the farm workers movement. We are one.

Gerardo Reyes was born in Zacatecas, Mexico. [Gerardo is a farm worker, an organizer with the CIW, and a friend.] I grew up in Tarrytown, NY. We are the same age.

This post originally appeared on The Atlantic Food Channel. To read the rest of it, please click here.

Bees feed us: now they need our help

Honeybees are under attack but despite years of research the culprit for colony collapse disorder (CCD) has yet to be identified.

Click here to sign our bee petition.

Honeybees are under attack but despite years of research the culprit for colony collapse disorder (CCD) has yet to be identified.

What we do know is that there’s probably not just one thing causing the massive die-offs, but several factors interacting to cause a perfect, lethal storm.

What difference does it make?

 
• Roughly 30% of our food gets brought into the world by honeybee pollination
 
• The increased yield and quality of crops that have been visited by honeybees adds $15 billion to the annual US agricultural economy.
 
• The impact of another year of 40% losses of honeybee populations will be devastating to food production, food prices, and biodiversity. 

How can I help?
LEARN more about CCD by: 1)  hosting a screening of Vanishing of the Bees. The filmmakers of this award-winning documentary, narrated by Ellen Page, have offered significant discounts on screening licenses to Slow Food members.  Email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for more information.  2) Download this one-page information sheet on the importance of bees to our food system. Also, you can download a screening guide for the film by clicking here.
 
SIGN the petition. The EPA recently pledged to take a closer look at one of the factors that watchdog organizations like Beyond Pesticides and Pesticide Action Network believe to be a contributing cause of CCD. Together we can hold the EPA accountable to its promise to dig deeper into some of the likeliest causes of CCD, like a new class of agricultural pesticides. If you’d like to gather petition signatures on your own—at a screening, or outside your supermarket—and send them to us, you can download a petition sheet by clicking here.
 
PLANT a bee friendly habitat in your garden or windowsill with pollen- and nectar-rich flowering plants like sunflowers, berries, gourds, and most herbs.
 
REDUCE your usage of insecticides and herbicides around the home. They may get rid of pests, but they can also harm “non-target” insects such as honeybees.
 
SUPPORT your local beekeepers, and producers of rare honey. Learn about honey varieties in your area and those on the US Ark of Taste.

The threat that this phenomenon poses to our food security and our economy is grave.  We can’t just swat this problem away.

Thanks for being a part of the solution. And if you haven’t yet signed our petition to the EPA, click here.