The US Department of Agriculture recently announced that $50 million in grant money was being made available to farmers who wanted to switch from conventional to organic farming practices. USDA Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan made the announcement last week of the grant money being made available.
The funding for the program is through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and fulfills an Obama administration promise to encourage organic farming practices. It could also be a first step in organic agriculture gaining a more widespread acceptance in the federal government and within the farming community.
Just a few days after Michelle Obama invited local fifth graders to help plant the White House Kitchen Garden, the MACA, a group which represents and is comprised of former executives from Dow AgroSciences, Monsanto and DuPont Crop Protection, sent the White House a letter (which can be viewed in its entirety here) expressing their disappointment that she had not “recognize[d] the role conventional agriculture plays in the US.”
But that’s not all. The group went on to provide a dose of propaganda educational information, including little known fact that “technology allows for farmers to meet the increasing demand for food and fiber in a sustainable manner.” Drawing a clear line between technology, undefined, and sustainability does not, in the strictest terms, suggest the group’s total disapproval of organic farming methods.
That outright statement came in an email MACA sent their members shortly after sending the first lady aforementioned letter, in which they said that the idea of an organic garden “made Janet Braun, CropLife Ambassador Coordinator and I shudder.” [italics mine].
President Obama has nominated Kathleen Merrigan for deputy secretary of agriculture. Merrigan, helped develop the USDA’s rules on organic food during the Clinton era. Merrigan has been hailed by sustainable agriculture advocates; however, Senate Republicans are concerned with her organic ties.
As spring is in the air (when the north wind does not blow), I have begun longing for the good times my children and I have at the local farmers’ market and contemplating our participation as vendors this year. I can’t tell you how much we look forward to our weekly adventures at the farmers’ market, and how excited we are if we happen to visit a neighboring town on the day of their market; however, that could all change.
H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 could end farmers’ markets as we know it by requiring growers to register, be subject to inspections of their gardens by federal agents, and maintain safety records related to food production or face large fines.
In two vague bills introduced both in the House and Senate of the US Congress, a vast reorganization of America’s agriculture system aimed at tracking and regulating foods for public safety could endanger organic farms and gardens.
The bills, S.425 and H.R.875, attempt to modernize food safety and regulate and standardize agriculture by creating an agency called the Food Safety Administration, but in the process they could threaten organic farming.
I’m with Stephanie Ernst over at change.org on this one, though: let’s not blame the poor cows. The culprit here is humans’ taste for meat and dairy and the sheer number of cows we have to raise to put beef on all of those plates.
Ginger and chilli are among the plants deemed “hazardous” by Thailand’s Department of Agriculture in a recent announcement.
Instead of only regulating the toxic pesticides used by large-scale agriculture, Thailand’s new law mandates that the plants themselves should be treated as hazardous substances. Farmers take this to mean that even their small-scale organic farms must follow expensive safety regulations, or else face risk of jail time.
Organic farmers are fighting back and threatening to sue the government if the list is not removed from the law.
Results of the 2007 Census released last week counted the 2,204,792 farms in the United States, a net increase of 75,810 farms since the last census in 2002. According to the results, farms started in the last five years have more diversified production, fewer acres, and younger operators who also work off-farm.
Organic, value-added, and specialty production in agriculture are also on the rise.
PepsiCo, owner of the Tropicana brand, has announced the green-quotient it figures accompanies the production of a meager half-gallon carton of orange juice: 3.75 pounds of carbon dioxide. Most of that stems from the emissions of just growing the oranges, which tend to include sizeable doses of nitrogen fertilizer.
What now? Pepsi isn’t sure. According to a report today in the New York Times:
(PepsiCo) figured that as public concern grows about the fate of the planet, companies will find themselves under pressure to perform such calculations. Orange juice seemed like a good case study.
Many of the UK’s organic farmers are asking the government to relax the strict organic standards that govern their meat and vegetable production regimes.
The group hopes to discourage Forever 21 from building a new factory on the property, and in turn discourage Horowitz from attempting to develop on the land. The South Central Farmers and student groups California Statewide MEChA and D-Q Unity issued an invitation to the rally that detailed the logic behind a boycott of Forever 21:
