Farm Bill Passes in House…Senate next?

Yesterday the (Food and) Farm Bill passed in the House and is poised to pass in the Senate today. As we mentioned last week, Bush is ready to veto but the numbers in the House vote suggest that they will easily be able to override his veto.

For good coverage, see:

• the San Francisco Chronicle
• Grist
• NY Times

Also, a great resource has continued to be the Community Food Security Coalition email updates (these guys actually have reason to be happy since some of the positive parts of the Bill that got bundled in are provisions for community food projects–good news!).

Chicago Lifts Foie Gras Ban

In the New York Times Dining section today, I read this:

Chicagoans can feast on foie gras once more. The Chicago City Council just repealed the ban on its sale that it put in place two years ago.

Now I know that many of my vegan friends will go ballistic on me when I say that this is a good thing, but this is a good thing. The animal rights groups who supported this measure did so because they saw it as a layup, and easy target. Who would oppose a ban on something only rich, snobby, hoity-toity gourmands consume.

Besides the measure being silly government intervention, it reminded me of the folks who say they won't eat veal because they heard it was cruel as they pull up to the KFC drive thru.

Banning foie gras saves a few ducks and geese. Wanna make a difference? Ban CAFOs. You needn't stop eating meat (unless of course you want to, that's entirely up to you), just stop eating feedlot meat. Get your beef, pork and chicken from the farmer down the road, from the farmers market, from a CSA. Trust the source, and you'll trust the food.

Food Policy Here at Home

by Slow Food USA staffer Jerusha Klemperer

Again and again at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development sessions on Agriculture, representatives from other countries reported that U.S. agriculture policies, such as subsidies, are negatively impacting poor farmers around the world.

And so–where stands this U.S. (Food and) Farm Bill of ours?

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Sunday that "the President has been to the left of the Speaker [Pelosi]." This surprising reality is well explained in this overview, which also points out that "as the commodities boom accelerated over the winter, boosting farm income to new records, the disconnect between the farm bill and economic reality grew more bizarre."

An opinion piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls the state of affairs "topsy-turvy," offering that "Ferd Hoefner, policy director for the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which opposes large-scale corporate farming, estimates that a married farm couple could earn $2.9 million before getting kicked off the federal dole," calling on GW to veto the whole darn "massive, bloated [GW's words]" thing.

But that would mean starting from scratch with a brand new President, of course.

More notes from the U.N.

by Slow Food USA staffer Jerusha Klemperer

As this article from last Friday's Wall Street Journal reports, the U.S. has proposed 770 million additional dollars of food aid to address the growing food crisis. The U.S. delegate to the U.N. reported this in his remarks on Monday to the Commission on Sustainable Development, although he (as well as many other delegates) also emphasized that while giving aid is a nice thing, we, as a global community, need to address food security in a more long term way.

The U.S. delegate also stressed the need for "science-based" approaches to food security, and he was not alone. A British Ag Professor who presented on a panel on Tuesday made the case for the positive potential of biotech, i.e.: GMOs as the solution to many nutritional deficiencies in the developing world and GMOs as a way to increase production. He spoke out VERY harshly again the anti-GMOers, saying that Africa cannot feed itself without GMOs.

Interestingly, one thing everyone there can agree on: climate change is real, and is having real effects on agriculture, especially in Sub Saharan Africa. For better or for worse, climate changes' effects have become so incontrovertible that gone are the days when anyone could get away with challenging its veracity.

Report from the U.N.

by Slow Food USA staffer Jerusha Klemperer

Greetings from inside the United Nations where I am observing sessions of the Commission on Sustainable Development; this particular two-year cycle of the CSD is focusing on some important issues for Slow Food including Land, Agriculture, Rural Development, Biodiversity, Drought and Desertification.

I am here on behalf of Slow Food USA in order to understand how it is that global policy recommendations are determined for being responsible stewards of the land while also addressing the increasingly important issue of food (in)security. This year the conversation feels especially pressing and energized given everyone's concerns about the global food crisis.
The CSD was established as a way to ensure effective follow-up of the Earth Summit that was held in Rio in 1992. It meets every year in NYC, in 2-year cycles, with each cycle focusing on a different cluster of topics. The first year is for review and discussion; the second year is for creating the directives and language for moving forward. Civil Society (i.e. "regular people") is invited to participate by sharing case studies, lessons learned, and real-life problems from the field. This will help the commission to link good practice to supportive policies and identify areas for collaborative action.

I'll be here, on and off, for the next two weeks, and will be popping onto the blog to share updates with you all. Stay tuned…

More on the Fast/Slow conundrum

You may recall that last week we were musing about what happens when good small business sell themselves to big ones, and when fast food adheres to slow principles. We just came across this article in the L.A. Times from last month, which explores the inherent contradictions in a store that promotes sustainable food and green living being gigantically big and using a massive amount of electricity. Isn't there a place, even in Pasadena– the land of urban sprawl– for something slower? Smaller?

Fighting for Farmland

It's happening all over the country, faster than we can keep track: farmland is being eradicated in favor of housing developments, malls, and highways. A week or so ago the Skagit Valley Herald, in Northern Washington state, reported that the city of Mount Vernon is eyeing the 1,500 acres of farmland in the riverbend area in order to accommodate its population growth.One person who's not taking this news quiely is Slow Food Skagit Valley convivium leader Carol Havens, who wrote in to the editor and pointed out thatAs agricultural land and oil resources diminish, our future will be very different from our immediate past. The most important aspects of a community will not be the size of its houses or the dollar value of its industry. Most valuable will be the quality and proximity of food-producing farmland.Read the whole letter here.

Global Food Crisis

The UN has scheduled a 2-day meeting in Bern, Switzerland, to discuss solutions to the escalating global food crisis. It will surely also be a hot topic of conversation when the Commission on Sustainable Development begins meeting at the UN next week; the main topics up for discussion include rural development, land, biodiversity, and desertification (more on this meeting in the coming weeks, since one of our staffers will be attending).

And over at The Nation, an interesting take on it all, with this sentiment from Wisconsin dairy farmer Jim Goodman:

"So,they finally figured out, after all these years of pushing globalization and genetically modified [GM] seeds, that instead of feeding the world we've created a food system that leaves more people hungry. If they'd listened to farmers instead of corporations, they would've known this was going to happen."

And, over at Grist, some interesting quotes and ensuing comments on the origins of the crisis–origins about which, at this point, we can only educatedly speculate.

Peppers and Tulips

The New York Times has been running an excellent series of articles called "The Food Chain: A Moveable Feast," the latest of which ran this past Saturday. In the paper edition it was called "Would You Like Some Carbon with your Kiwi?" (um, no thank you), and it discusses the EU's plan to tax fuel for international freight. And so, the EU continues to be ahead of the curve (er, ahead of the US) in its commitment to reducing greenhouse gases.

Reading about the transfer of foodstuffs back and forth across the globe, we were reminded of a passage from Carlo Petrini's Slow Food Nation, called "Peppers and Tulips." He describes going to a favorite restaurant in Asti, in 1996, and being saddened to discover that his usual dish–peperonata made with the local peppers of Asti–no longer had its wonderful flavor. When he asked the chef about this difference, the chef reported that nobody in Asti was growing these peppers anymore because it was cheaper to import them from Holland.

Driving home, despondent, Carlo passed some greenhouses, the very greenhouses that likely used to grow peppers. Going inside to talk to the farmer, he asked what was now growing there. The answer?

"'Tulip bulbs! And after we've grown the bulbs, we send them to Holland where they bring them into bloom!'"

More from Immokalee

For those of you who may have just received your copy of the latest Snail magazine, you may have read, with interest, about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers ("Would You Like Some Justice with That?," The Snail, Spring 2008). They were recently the focus of a Senate hearing on working conditions for tomato workers. Eric Schlosser continues to be an outspoken voice in the fight for a fair wage for these tomato workers, trying to highlight that this is a human rights issue (as well as a food/ag/business issue).

Find out more about CIW and their current campaigns in this story in The Nation as well as here on the SFUSA blog.