Dan Imhoff2013-05-25T11:44:53-04:00Dan Imhoffhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=dan-imhoffCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Dan ImhoffGood old fashioned elbow grease.Bag the Ag Gag Billstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30181752013-04-08T13:55:03-04:002013-04-08T13:50:58-04:00Dan Imhoffhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-imhoff/
"Ag gag" laws have been put forth by the meat industry to criminalize the reporting of animal cruelty by anyone -- journalists, activists, or whistleblowers. They are intended to prohibit the release of videotapes or photographs that document what happens inside factory farms and meat processing facilities, often with the threat of jail time. The real goal of these laws is to "chill" a person's resolve to make public any illegal behavior such as beating or torturing captive animals, often using the police to seize their materials.
Whistle blower intimidation laws incite the ultimate cynicism about politics. For instance, the California bill is titled, "Duty to Report Animal Cruelty," when in fact, its true aim is to squelch dissemination about the brutality of factory farming. If passed, AB 343 would require would-be whistle blowers to submit any visual evidence to law enforcement within 48 hours of taking a photograph or video or be subject up to a $500 fine. It also encourages the submission of any proof to the owner of the animals.
This would effectively force reporters to forfeit their anonymity. A worker might face retaliation from an employer. A journalist might not have time to adequately pursue a lead. Offending operators would be alerted that they are under suspicion. Meanwhile, industry maintains the appearance that it cares about animal welfare.
Big agricultural lobbies are desperate to avoid the kind of public relations disaster that befell the Hallmark Meat Packing Company. In 2008, secret cameras showed downer dairy cows being chained, dragged, and electrically prodded to slaughter at Hallmark's facility in Chino, California. Such illegal practices were exposed by a disillusioned plant worker and the Humane Society of the United States. The USDA's Commodity Procurement Branch, which distributes beef to the National School Lunch Program, was one of Hallmark's biggest customers. The ensuing news coverage resulted in the largest recall of meat products in history and the ultimate closure of the plant.
Kansas, Montana, and North Dakota already have laws making it punishable to photograph an agricultural operation without consent of the owner. Utah, Missouri, and Iowa passed ag gag laws last year. In Iowa, where recent undercover videos have shown blatant animal abuse at egg and hog facilities, a first offense can land you in jail for up to a year. A second offense is considered an aggravated misdemeanor with up to two years jail time.
What's happening in California is part of a nationwide effort. Already this year, whistleblower suppression laws similar to California's have been filed in Arkansas, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, and Wyoming.
The timing of this legislative push is extremely troubling. The federal government's budget sequestration could significantly reduce funding for USDA meat inspectors. The system is already challenged to keep up with continual changes in production lines that process animals at ever-increasing speeds. That means even as the government has less resources for oversight, industry is working to suppress whistle blowing.
Why is the meat industry on the defensive? Even perfectly legal practices are often distasteful to the public. In the face of rising public awareness about genetically modified crops, contaminated eggs, downer animals, etc., the meat industry has been jolted into anti-democratic tactics to muzzle its critics.
Newly elected California Assemblyman, Jim Patterson (23rd District), introduced AB 343 to the state legislature with the backing of the California Cattlemen's Beef Association. While it might appease the powerful California meat lobby, this law would go against the will of California's majority. Most citizens want animals to be raised more humanely. California's Proposition 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, passed with 63 percent of the vote. Restrictions on animal cages are slated to go into effect January 1, 2015.
When government fails to fulfill its regulatory oversight, citizens -- including the news media -- often have no choice but to become their own watchdogs. There is a noble American tradition of journalism related to food production concerns. At the turn of the 20th century, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle described appalling conditions in Chicago's slaughterhouse district. Its publication greatly influenced new laws to regulate food safety and meat processing. Now is the time to turn the tide against a national assault on greater transparency and meaningful reform in the food system.
Dan Imhoff is the author of numerous books on food and agriculture, including Food Fight, CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories, and Farming with the Wild.]]>Four Ways the Farm Bill Makes Me Crazytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13981352012-04-02T17:45:01-04:002012-06-02T05:12:01-04:00Dan Imhoffhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-imhoff/
A rational, coherent blueprint for a healthy national food supply might be too much to ask. But after years of studying the Farm Bill, I'd be thrilled to see a dent made in four of its most glaring conflicts of purpose.
1. Don't subsidize what you don't want people to eat.
In broad strokes, the Farm Bill generally has three primary thrusts: 1. Nutrition spending like SNAP (formerly called food stamps), emergency food assistance, and school feeding programs; 2. Subsidies for commodity crops and income support for farmers; 3. Land, soil and ecosystem conservation. These first two are like trains on separate tracks running in completely different directions. (Come to think of it, so are the second and third. They will be addressed below.)
In early 2011, the USDA replaced its Food Pyramid with My Plate, a simple graphic representation of the food groups recommended. My Plate's message is clear: A healthy plate should be at least half full of fruits and vegetables and another 30 percent should comprise whole grains. The last 20 percent of the plate is reserved for proteins. A serving of low-fat milk or yogurt rounds off the serving recommendations.
If there were a matching USDA Subsidy Plate, however, its message would be: Fill your plate with meat and processed foods. Nearly two-thirds of the corn, over half of the soybeans, a great deal of the cottonseed and cottonseed meal, and even some of the wheat produced in the U.S. are fed to livestock. The remainder of the corn and soybeans are either processed into biofuel or industrial food ingredients. And these are the crops the Farm Bill primarily subsidizes. Fruits, vegetables and nuts--the very items the USDA wants us to eat most of--are known as "specialty crops" and currently receive only a small fraction of farm subsidies despite their high nutritional values. Well over 60 percent of commodity subsidies flow to crops fed to animals.
It's the industrial beef, hog, chicken and dairy operations that win out; subsidies mean they get cheap feed. According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the meat, egg and dairy sectors were the beneficiaries of the majority of the $246 billion in subsidies given to U.S. food producers between 1996 and 2009.
2. Don't pay polluters.
Massive dairies, hog and poultry factories and other livestock feedlots house thousands (often tens or even hundreds of thousands) of animals. Some produce as much waste as the sewage system of a small city. The difference is that animal feeding operations don't install municipal waste treatment plants to clean up their messes.
And yet this type of food production has been supported for a decade by a Farm Bill program called the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. EQIP, as it's called, must spend 60 percent of its budget on livestock producers, many of whom are the worst, environmentally speaking. And what are they spending that money on? Manure lagoons and waste trafficking.
EQIP started as a conservation program, meant to help small livestock producers keep animal waste out of creeks and waterways. But now, thanks to lobbying, the massive animal farms can be reimbursed for up to 75 percent (capped at $300,000 per owner) of their costs for animal waste storage and hauling and compliance with laws like the Clean Water Act. Should we have to pay livestock operators to comply with basic laws? Should our tax dollars build the infrastructure for massive meat, egg, and dairy factories?
Meanwhile, EQIP funds to organic farming projects are capped at $20,000 a year per operator.
3. Don't subsidize overplanting.
Nothing in the Farm Bill--nothing--continues to be more counterproductive than the complete disconnect between commodity crop subsidies and conservation programs. On the one hand, subsidies encourage farmers to plant in every inch of soil, crop insurance programs eliminate farmers' economic risks, and disaster bailouts encourage plowing even on marginal lands in areas prone to flooding and drought. On the other hand, the U.S. Department of Agriculture directs less than 7 percent of its overall spending toward conservation, much of that to right past wrongs and to clean up problems stemming from over-farming.
Consider, for example, that even as 1.7 million acres were enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program in South Dakota between 1985 and 1995, more than 700,000 acres of grassland were converted to crops--primarily corn and soybeans (already in excess supply). This absurd process only accelerated during the last Farm Bill, as even grasslands used for hay and pasture were transformed into corn fields. Such a dichotomy makes Farm Bill conservation programs seem more like a distraction than a coordinated national stewardship strategy.
In the case of the Wetlands Reserve Program--arguably the Farm Bill's most successful conservation effort to date--only wetlands previously impacted by agricultural development are eligible for funding; you can't use the money to save pristine ecosystems (unless they're attached to land damaged by farming or ranching).
4. Don't farm corn for fuel.
The drums are finally beating against ethanol subsidies and tax breaks that suck up $7 billion per year in tax dollars. It's about time. For years Congress has mandated that gas be blended with ethanol to push our fuel supply further. And yet, we're practically spinning our wheels backwards. It takes about two-thirds of a gallon of petroleum products to sow, fertilize, irrigate, harvest and process a gallon of corn ethanol. That's minimally cutting our dependence on foreign oil.
In fact, in 2010 a full 36 percent of the U.S. corn crop was turned into ethanol. That only displaced about 8 percent of what we put in our gas tanks. Americans could save that much gas with a 1.1 mpg increase in the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks. Here's a kicker: Ethanol-laced gas actually lowers fuel efficiency by 3 to 4 percent.
America faces numerous and complex food- and farming-related challenges in the years to come: curbing the obesity epidemic, halting the loss of habitat, stopping disease outbreaks like e. coli, bringing up the next generation of farmers and ranchers, and many more. The Farm Bill is our chance to right things that are wrong with the food system. Even small amounts of well-directed funding can do a great deal for a beginning farmer education program, habitat restoration effort, or local food project. It would help if the Farm Bill could stop fighting itself. And maybe then it can start to align along one sensible strategy: Create economically and environmentally healthy farms to grow healthy and affordable food.
Dan Imhoff is the author of Food Fight: The Citizen's Guide to the Next Food and Farm Bill, updated for the ongoing 2012 Farm Bill debate. See foodfight2012.org.]]>Honoring The Food Animals On Your Platetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8260162011-02-21T16:03:28-05:002011-05-25T17:31:17-04:00Dan Imhoffhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-imhoff/
Consider the modern turkey. It is far removed from the wild, native bird that the pilgrims roasted for those original Thanksgiving gatherings. Today's conventional turkey, the Broad Breasted White, is an entirely industrial creature. It is bred to grow freakishly quickly and raised on grain inside massive buildings. Most male turkeys, or Toms, become so breast heavy, they can barely stand up -- and certainly can't reproduce. Artificial insemination is the only way this man-made species survives.
Such mass-production meat factories -- called "concentrated animal feeding operations," or CAFOs -- exist for most of the animal food products Americans buy: cows, pigs and chickens. At least 90 percent of food animals in the U.S. are raised this way, and other countries are rapidly adopting the CAFO model as well. These enterprises are a perverse inversion of our idea of family farms with pigs rolling in the mud, cows grazing in pastures, roosters crowing from fence posts, and farmers interacting with the animals. At CAFOs, vast numbers of animals--100,000 cows on a feedlot, 30,000 chickens in a broiler shed, 1,000 hogs in a windowless warehouse--are confined in pens or cages, often kept alive with regular doses of antibiotics.
See photos from Dan Imhoff's book, CAFO:
As CAFOs take over the food system, it is clear that there is already plenty of animal protein in our diets. Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese each year, for example, largely because of the flood of cheap milk coming from dairy CAFOs. This is three times the per capita consumption of the 1970s. Cheese is the largest source of saturated fats in our diets, which tend to raise cholesterol levels and are linked to heart disease. Dairy products, meat, poultry, and eggs don't have to be nearly so cheap or abundant -- and yet we are raising 10 billion food animals in the United States every year.
The high costs of factory-farmed foods are being paid for by the animals, rural communities, taxpayers, and the environment. Large-scale animal operations generate the sewage output comparable to a small metropolis. The waste oozing from these highly concentrated production systems fouls the air, land, and water. Sadly, if you purchase animal products from fast food restaurants, supermarkets, big box stores, or other mainstream outlets, there is a strong chance that you are eating at the expense of someone else's community well-being.
You don't have to become a vegan or vegetarian to opt out of this system that might best be described as "organized irresponsibility." (Those are certainly viable options, however.) Some of the country's best small farmers are demonstrating that traditional methods of livestock production are practical and economically viable. They are raising locally adapted breeds of livestock on pastures where the animals eat a more natural diet, grow more slowly, and naturally socialize. These animals are also raised without routine doses of antibiotics and growth hormones, essential tools in industrial CAFO production. Third-party certification organizations such as Animal Welfare Approved have established standards combined with regular audits to encourage such humane production practices.
Still, labels can be confusing, and some like "natural" and "healthy" are misleading. The best way to know where your food comes from and how it was produced is to know your farmer.
The other way to reduce the role of CAFOs is to scale back the amount of meat we consume. Many individuals are simply orienting their meals around more grains and vegetables with smaller portions of higher quality, sustainably sourced meats, dairy, and eggs. Another groundswell is the Meatless Monday campaign, which has already been embraced by chefs, restaurants, food services, k-12 schools, and college campuses.
Attending to the conditions under which your food is raised is a profound way of giving thanks to the animals that nourish you daily. It can also lead to some of the most satisfying meals you've ever shared or tasted.
Daniel Imhoff is an author, independent publisher, and homestead farmer and the editor of CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories (Earth Aware Press, 2010). His other books include Food Fight: The Citizen's Guide to a Food and Farm Bill (2007) and Farming with the Wild: Enhancing Biodiversity on Farms and Ranches (2003).
]]>Republican Senators Take Aim at Small Farmers, Urban Consumers, and Locavorestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6164202010-06-17T17:48:47-04:002011-05-25T16:50:20-04:00Dan Imhoffhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-imhoff/Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food." This initiative distributes grant money and loans with the goal of strengthening local food chains and linking consumers with farmers.
The Senators accuse USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan of diverting urgently needed funds from rural communities in favor of: 1) "specialty crops" (the government's term for fruits, nuts, and vegetables, of which the USDA recommends each of us eat at least five servings a day); and 2) small growers and organic farmers (who the Senators stereotype as hobby producers "whose customers generally consist of affluent patrons at urban farmers markets.")
They conclude that:
American families and rural farmers are hurting in today's economy, and it's unclear to us how propping up the urban locavore markets addresses their needs. Given our nation's crippling budgetary crisis, we also believe the federal government cannot afford to spend precious rural development funds on feel-good measures which are completely detached from the realities of production agriculture.
The not so subtle subtext of this letter is that to be a "real" farmer, you must be engaged in "production agriculture." One can only assume this means corn, cotton, wheat, rice, and soybean production -- the five primary commodity crops grown across hundreds of millions of acres in factory fields, propped up by the lion's share of $15-plus billion in yearly USDA farm bill payments. In their view, the small producers benefiting from the Know Your Farmer program are not just do-gooders raising organic heirlooms for elite urbanites. They're sucking away subsidies that should be going to the nation's real farmers. Never mind that there are now more than 5,000 farmers markets across the country; or that an average of 10 million Americans shop at one on any given Saturday during the harvest season; or that farming organically is extremely hard and valuable work.
Here's the bottom line. The Know Your Farmer program has spent a reported $65 million total so far with plans to invest another up to another $1 billion in loans from the stimulus program. This is peanuts compared with the $60-plus billion in USDA commodity subsidies that production growers presently receive over a five-year period.
Since Senator Chambliss is the ranking minority member of the Agriculture Committee, he and his fellow scribes must be aware that the U.S. is now considering paying Brazilian cotton growers $147.3 million this year because of former production agriculture subsidies that were in violation of World Trade Organization rules. You read that right -- Brazilian farmers. The Wall Street Journal recently decried this as madness.
Such divisive political framing sets clear distinctions for how we talk about farmers, food, and our agriculture and nutrition policy. It might also backfire by fueling the fires of public opinion that have been rallying around healthy food production and raging against USDA subsidy programs. It is obvious to an increasing number of citizens and legislators that these programs:
Divert billions of dollars to commodity agribusinesses whether they have actually suffered losses or not, whether they grow crops or not, with few funding caps, and few social or environmental mandates that would provide a public benefit to taxpayers in return;
Support industrial crops that are more suited for animal feed, processed foods, and biofuels rather than a healthy, diverse diet;
Flood the market with cheap, processed ingredients that contribute to a growing crisis of obesity and other diet-related epidemics.
Are these the feel-good measures McCain, Chambliss, and Roberts want us to get excited about?
Instead, they single out a long-overdue and modest attempt to repair links in broken local food chains and educate the public about the importance of knowing your farmer and where your food comes from. Revitalizing local food production can impact the every day lives of citizens -- Food Stamp recipients, for example, who can use their Electronic Benefits Transfer cards to buy organic produce at farmers markets; or public school kids that enjoy fruits and vegetables grown by productive farmers in their areas; or small livestock producers that can now process their pasture raised meats with the aid of mobile slaughtering units.
Why don't the Senators want us to know our farmers or care about where our food comes from? Maybe it's because they are clinging to the decades-old "Get Big or Get Out" story line that defines how the majority of the country's food is presently produced. This is the tragic story of 50 years of USDA policies that swept millions of family farmers from the American landscape and gave agribusiness the unimaginable powers they wield today over our entire food system.
Knowing your farmer and knowing your food will become the primary story of the next fifty years of food production. It is the story of saving local agriculture and local farmers before they disappear altogether. In saving regional food production, we become healthier, more engaged, more secure citizens. With quite a bit of leadership, and a comparatively minuscule budget, Vilsack and Merrigan are actually trying to restore relationships and rewrite the stories of decentralized modern farming.
If Senators McCain, Chambliss, and Roberts cared about the health and vitality of rural communities they might be better served to embrace the inevitable re-diversification of the food supply. It certainly deserves its fair share -- and then some.
Farm Policy.com Report
]]>Feed Your Children Welltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2814772009-09-10T16:47:03-04:002011-05-25T14:00:22-04:00Dan Imhoffhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-imhoff/
The Child Nutrition Act is up for reauthorization by September 30. This is a federal government policy that sets the rules and standards and uses tax dollars to -- among other things -- provide a daily reimbursement for school lunches. Right now this amounts to $2.57 for a free lunch, including labor and ingredients. It is nowhere close to what most school districts need to put healthy foods on our cafeteria tables and reward all the people who make that possible. Congress will soon consider adding one dollar per meal to the reimbursement, and this still might not be enough.
Today's National School Lunch Program, which is a major part of the five-year spending bill called the Child Nutrition Act, provides meals to 30 million children. Many young Americans depend on school meal and snack programs for a great majority of their daily caloric intake.
Back in 1946, when the National School Lunch Program began, the idea was to support excess commodity agriculture that could then be used to feed children. But in the years since the mid-1940s, American agriculture has undergone a radical transformation. Family farms gave way to a massive food industry that has flooded the market and our school lunch programs with intensively subsidized commodities and processed foods that are high in sugars, starches, and unhealthy fats and oils.
This cheap calorie delivery system -- funded for the past few decades through both the Farm Bill and the Child Nutrition Act -- has become a key player in a growing crisis: the Supersizing of our kids. One in four children are now overweight and obese. The projections for not addressing this situation -- learning to eat better and adopt healthy lifestyles -- are frightening. Future health care costs related to this nutritional epidemic could literally swamp local, state and federal government coffers in coming years. And that is just the financial perspective.
It's often easy to get lost in the billions and trillions, in the alphabet soup and acronyms of government legislation. Bills can seem so complex and tedious it is sometimes hard to understand how they affect us personally. One of the beauties of the National School Lunch Program is that we can look around in every community and see our kids who depend on these programs.
This year the US arm of the international movement known as Slow Food is circulating a petition asking for some very reasonable changes to the Child Nutrition Act:
• $1 increase in the reimbursement per meal
• Grants for Farm-to-School and school garden projects to educate every single child in the country on where food comes from, and get the culture back in agriculture
• Financial incentives for schools to purchase as many fruits and vegetables as possible from local farmers to keep that money in the community, and to shorten the distance our food has to travel before it reaches our children's cafeteria tables.
All this makes sense and deserves our support if only for one single reason. Children need proper nutrition to be good students. They can't make it through an afternoon of focused attention without healthy food. This is actually a national security concern. We can't afford to be a nation of under-achievers.
The concept of feeding all of our children well, of teaching them about the beauty and complexity of food production through school gardens and local Farm-to-School programs which actually put fruits and vegetables on their tables, should be a community as well as a national priority. But in order for that to happen, Congress needs to authorize more funding for the program. We should see this long overdue increase to the Child Nutrition Act as a down payment on a new generation that will have a lifetime of good eating habits engrained in them. The idea of healthy foods as preventive health care -- perhaps even as medicine -- is a concept that can and should change the world.
For information on a HR 1324, a bill introduced by Lynn Woolsey relating to the Child Nutrition Act, click here.
Dan Imhoff is the director of Watershed Media, publisher of the newly released book, "Smart by Nature," a collaborative project with the Center for Ecoliteracy.]]>Chile's Salmon Farms Verging on Breakdowntag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2298362009-07-11T15:37:52-04:002011-05-25T13:35:19-04:00Dan Imhoffhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-imhoff/
Salmon are not indigenous to Chile, but grown in crowded cages installed in the bays and estuaries of the country's otherwise beautiful southern fjord region. These "farmed" Atlantic salmon are fed a steady diet of wild fish--perfectly edible for humans, but more profitable when converted into "value-added" finfish. The approximately three pounds of wild fish needed to produce each pound of farmed salmon has caused some people to refer to finfish aquaculture operations as "reverse protein factories." Equally alarming, salmon farms have become excessively dependent upon toxic pesticides to combat sea lice and antibiotic medicines to thwart infections that can run rampant among the high concentrations of rapidly growing, penned fish--not unlike industrial-scale hog, poultry, and cattle CAFOs on land.
But these are no longer working. According to industry source Intrafish, Chile's 2009 salmon output could decline by as much as 87 percent from last year--a drop from 279,000 metric tons in 2008 to between 37,000 metric tons and 67,000 metric tons. The cause is the widespread outbreak of a virus known as infectious salmon anemia (ISA). When the virus first appeared in 2008, many offshore aquaculture companies moved their production farms further south in Chile, into waters still unaffected by ISA. Instead of lessening the problem, the industry actually spread the virus into the southern waters.
The Chilean government and regulatory agency are now implementing measures to address the crisis, but their efforts, for the time being, have been too little, too late. Chilean salmon stocks have been devastated, and this is expected to send ripple effects throughout the world's food supply. A 20 percent shortfall in the global supply of farmed Atlantic salmon is predicted for this year and perhaps 2010 as well. The human toll in this saga is also significant, as the salmon industry has become a primary employer in the southern region of the country, and could lead to the unemployment of as many as 15,000 people.
Experts had been cautioning for years about the hazards of unsanitary conditions and overcrowding in industrial salmon cages. The first widespread die-offs due to ISA began to mount early in 2008, but the industry declined to take protective measures to guard against further spread of the infection. Critics have called for improved conditions by limiting the number of salmon in the cages and by spreading the farms farther apart from one another to avoid transfer of disease and to lessen the concentration of harmful chemicals, antibiotics, and other adverse affects of large-scale fish production.
Unfortunately, this has not been the only alarming news in 2009 about Chilean aquaculture. In February, the Pew Environment Group obtained documents from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revealing that the Chilean salmon industry has been using antibiotics prohibited on fish destined for the United States. Apparently, the FDA notified the three companies guilty of using the unapproved drugs that they can no longer use them on fish raised for the U.S. market. But questions remain whether or not the FDA will enforce these restrictions, and if so, how they will go about ensuring that the banned substances are not used.
Concerns over antibiotic overdosing and its potential to create antibiotic resistant disease organisms that could harm humans may become less of an issue if the Chilean salmon industry suffers an even further decline. Many are calling for a dismantlement of the industry. Others caution that without real reforms it could implode of its own unsustainable production practices. At a minimum, we should take this as one more in a long series of wake-up calls that our concentrated animal food operations -- whether on land or at sea -- need to be urgently reconsidered, before they are all on the verge of collapse.
Pew Press Release on Unapproved Chemicals
Pew Letter on Unapproved Chemicals
New York Times article on Chilean Salmon Virus
New York Times article on Chilean Salmon Industry Rehabilitation efforts
]]>Deep Ecology Champion Arne Naess Passestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.1605522009-01-24T08:40:16-05:002011-05-25T13:00:22-04:00Dan Imhoffhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-imhoff/
I cross country skied with Naess when he was in his mid-80s. On a sunny spring day, we strided and poled three or four miles to the Peter Grubb Hut at the base of Castle Peak, not far from Donner Pass. We stopped occasionally to take in the sweeping views of the Sierra Nevada, and Naess fanatically checked his pulse. At the hut, he insisted on shadow boxing and fooling around with my friend, the outstanding Norwegian skier, Jon Erik Brondmo, and me. In addition to his childlike high energy, I had this feeling that Arne had a special lens onto the world, that he was sensing and relishing in layers of aliveness that the average person could not see or experience.
Perhaps this is what helped him to discern the important differences between "Deep Ecology," which addresses the root causes of biodiversity loss, and "Shallow Ecology," that attempts to remediate environmental problems with end-of-pipe fixes. Naess very clearly stated his concerns about the growing human population, the rise of affluence and technology, and the reverence for all of the earth's species. Among his more notable quotes, I remember him saying that he was a pessimist for the 21st century but an optimist for the 23rd century, when he envisioned that extreme changes in the human population, in ecological and social justice, and other developments would once again turn us toward a more harmonious way of life. But Naess believed in personal responsibility and urgency. "Every week counts. How terrible and shamefully bad conditions will be in the 21st century, or how far down we fall before we start on the way back up, depends on what YOU and others do today and tomorrow. There is not a single day to be lost. We need activism on a high level immediately."
Below is the 8-Point Deep Ecology Platform drafted by Arne Naess and George Sessions:
1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: inherent worth, intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
2. Richness and diversity of life-forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
4. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
5. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
6. Policies must therefore be changed. The changes in policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
7. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent worth) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.
Read the New York Timesobituary.]]>Ripe for Change?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.1557792009-01-07T12:14:49-05:002011-05-25T13:00:22-04:00Dan Imhoffhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-imhoff/
The American public's demands for a radical new direction in the country's food and farm policy are beginning to gain some rather serious volume. It's a new year, a new administration is assembling, and the unrequited expectations of the last eight years are being vocalized: in key newspapers, on the blogosphere, among community organizers, and at dining tables around the country. We are experiencing a shift in the global gestalt, not only around the possibility and need for change, but in the places where such reforms have to start.
People want our unhealthy food and agriculture system made healthy. And it doesn't look like they'll be giving up any time soon.
At the Slow Food Nation in San Francisco in 2008, the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture was unveiled, an eloquent call and 12-point checklist for a 21st century approach to food and farm policy. Thousands of people signed on immediately. And the declaration is gathering steam as it makes its way around the country.
In December, the Iowa-based group Food Democracy Now drafted a letter to the Obama Transition Team recommending potential candidates for the vacant Secretary of Agriculture position. Within a week, that letter gained over 60,000 signatures. A core group of sustainable food advocates talked with the Obama Transition Team to express the severity and urgency of a potential food system meltdown. But it remains to be seen if that testimony will actually be taken seriously by the new administration, with former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack as USDA chief. In the mean time, Kim Severson of the New York Times wrote a full-page article about the Food Democracy Now effort, which is well worth the read. Will the Obama's till up a few acres of the White House's precious lawn to plant a vegetable garden? It doesn't seem that much to ask.
Journalist Christopher Cook -- in a recent piece for the Christian Science Monitor -- put forward a "nine-point platform for food reform." He calls for the new administration to include food and agriculture projects in the forthcoming stimulus package, asking for "change we can eat."
Just this week, Wes Jackson of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, and our sustainability laureate, Wendell Berry, published an opinion piece in the New York Times calling for a Fifty-year Farm Bill. The United States, Jackson and Berry argue, must quickly move from highly erosive and toxic monocultures of corn and soybeans that blanket the country, to a more perennial landscape. That is, farming systems that maximize soil and water protection by providing as much permanent ground cover as possible. Jackson and Berry call for a two-pronged approach: transitioning back to hay, pasture, and grazing rotations that allow the "farming to fit the land"; and a revolution in perennial grains that could reduce the need for plowing, toxic pesticides, and heavy doses of fertilizers.
Because the Farm Bill is renewed every five to seven years, and because its billions of dollars in farm owner incentives actually determine many of the rules of our modern food system, federal policy can become both a driver and road map for that long term goal. In fact, using a fifty year Farm Bill Road plan, we could begin to plot out a half century of sustainable food policy. Instead of "Getting Big or Getting Out,"--the cold war-era blueprint for the past fifty years of agribusiness domination--we could "Go Perennial by the Next Centennial."
My hope is that this surge in popular understanding of the importance of our food system to the very survivability of our society is not merely swept up in the winds of change blowing across Washington at this very moment. Rather, I hope these efforts are only the seeds of something much larger, a movement that will grow to millions of concerned citizens. Millions of citizens who may be willing to make small contributions to an organization dedicated to demonstrating the power of a new movement--civic agriculture. Maybe then the needs of the people and the land and the future will begin to take precedence over the greed and ambition of corporate agribusinesses now standing in the way of healthy food and agriculture.