I have friends in important places. Citizens.

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes:

            It’s been a long time since I’ve sent out a blog, but I’ve been a little heartbroken lately. Today, however, I’m feeling stronger.

I should be ecstatically happy. The weather’s delightful, the family’s all fine, the critters are healthy as ever. None of the neighbors are sick and one of my best friends, who thought she might have to move, is staying.

            But the grapevines planted by Holly and DeLisa… and the redbud tree by the house, where Lushen the farm kid climbed when he was tiny… and that crappy maple that’s always sending seeds into the lettuce beds… they’re dying.

            The culprit is 2,4D. Sprayed by a neighbor on his corn field to kill the weeds that he can’t kill with glyphosate. It’s killing them and I know I shouldn’t get attached to plants, they’re mortals, but aren’t we all?

            When we first noticed the damage, the strangely cupped leaves, then the withering and the onion-skin leaves that you can see through, and it came first on the grapevines, I went into denial. I had seen the spray trucks on the neighbor’s field but I’ve seen them before and nothing died.

So, I thought, maybe we’ve acquired a fungus? Maybe it’s a bug? We scoured the internet and our garden books for answers. We looked for bugs and found nothing. We sprayed with vinegar solution, which discourages fungi and molds but nothing changed.

Last week, we had a potluck supper sponsored by Slow Foods, and one of the guests snapped a few pictures of the vines and sent them to me. So now I had to follow up. Called the extension agent, but our local agronomist retired so the question was deferred to another county, one with an agent that doesn’t seem too interested. He left a message on the answering machine, a bored voice that he was calIing to answer “something about grapes…” 

Next, I sent the pictures to the state grape board and the damage was confirmed as “classic”.

Through this all, I’ve been depressed but weirdly astonished by the power of the universe. Why me? After all, I was onto the ironies of biotech from the beginning, fighting and writing about it all along. When so many weeds have become resistant to Roundup, I started blogging about it and about the dangers of Big Ag, who are my neighbors after all, moving to 2,4D. A clear and present danger.

But, yesterday, I found allies and everything changed.  At the farmers’ market, where we took a little surplus produce, I found other farmers who had the same issues. One of them gave me a sign that says, “Sensitive Crop. Don’t let your pesticide drift…” produced by the Missouri Department of Agriculture. It’s one of those yellow metal signs, like you see in a school zone, and it means the world to me.

Somebody “gets it.” And I have allies. And I’m feeling strong again. 

Media doesn't understand Missouri Rep Casey Guernsey story

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Happy Fourth of July weekend…or as we like to say on the farm, “Hope none of the ashes from those fireworks from town fall on my super-dry hayfield.” Not that we don’t have fireworks of our own, of course, but we don’t count those as dangerous. Just before the weekend began, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon vetoed a couple of bills that the Republican General Assembly passed in a fit of hubris at the end of the session. One was that ridiculous and irresponsible promise to foreign corporations to sell Missouri land to them. This promise, sponsored by Representative Casey Guernsey, would have given China the right to buy all the land owned by industrial ag in Missouri. China has its eye on Smithfield, a corporation that was allowed to buy land in the northwest part of the state despite laws against corporate ownership of land. Back in the 1970s, see, the General Assembly worried that losing our land meant the end of free enterprise and property rights. Today, Casey Guernsey doesn’t understand that. The media has run ever so many stories accusing the governor of vetoing “agriculture bills.” “Nixon vetoes two agricultural bills,” say the headlines, as if these bills would have helped farmers. But, in truth, these bills (SB 9 and SB 342) had sections that Guernsey snuck in at the end of session when there was no chance for farmers to think about or comment on them. The media also frets that Shanghui International Holdings, China’s leading pork producer, will abandon their offer to buy Smithfield in a $7.1 billion deal. Like the sale, which would put more CAFOs on our land, sucking up our water and polluting our air, would be a positive for the state! The GA has a veto override session in September, and we can be sure Smithfield is distributing dollars around the heartland, so we’ll see where the Casey Guernsey story leads us next. That’s it for today! July 5, 2013.

Food sovereignty v. GMO crops

Interestingly, the World Food Prize, which will honor Monsanto scientists that developed GMO crops, isn’t getting much buzz in the media, while the discovery of GMO wheat in Oregon, which points out the dangers to our food system, is. Both involve Monsanto, but maybe the media is catching on and not giving the seed corrupters the positive attention they crave. There’s even a little comic strip following the GMO wheat story. In one strip, a wheat plant is sobbing out its sad story to a field of other wheat plants. He says he doesn’t know where he came from, who his parents are, and the other wheat plants are sobbing along with him. Meanwhile, a few organizations are following the Food Sovereignty Alliance, a group that gives out an alternative food prize to draw attention to the problems our food system is causing. Last week, WhyHunger and Food First issued a joint statement that says, “Honoring executives of biotechnology giants Monsanto and Syngenta with this year's World Food Prize sends precisely the wrong message about sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty.” Their press release continues: The World Food Prize has disregarded well-documented evidence from the United Nations and other sources that small-scale diversified farming is the most effective way to end hunger, the Alliance. Reliance on genetically modified crops and industrial agriculture creates crippling debt for farmers, produces herbicide-resistant ‘superweeds,’ and keeps control of our food system in the hands of large corporations. Last year, the Food Sovereignty Alliance honored a group of women peasants from Korea who are keeping the traditional seeds and recipes alive in food for their children in schools. Next month, the alliance will announce their winners for 2013. This group, a bunch of faith organizations and farm organizations, network with labor groups and other social justice thinkers. They say: Unlike the World Food Prize, which promotes increased industrial food production through technologies such as genetically engineered seeds, the Food Sovereignty Prize champions proven solutions to hunger that empower those most impacted by the injustices of the global food system. While the World Food Prize recognizes individuals, the grassroots organizations honored by the Food Sovereignty Prize are led by their members, and most organizations count over 20,000 families as members and leaders. Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (ICCI) has also released a statement: "GMO crops have led to the loss of food security worldwide and for small farmers, they have led to the development of factory farms and have destroyed biodiversity in food we do produce and consume," said David Goodner, a community organizer for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, an environmental and human rights activist group that opposes corporate farming. "The World Food Prize by selecting these people to honor shows that it cares more about corporate profits than it cares about truly feeding the world with healthy food." You can learn more at: http://foodsovereigntyprize.org/ and http://usfoodsovereigntyalliance.org/

Farm bill goes down, but local foods march on!

For the last week, I've been in internet purgatory. After a great art event at the farm, enjoying the solstice and the jumbo moon, amazing, and making my best picture ever, even Barb said it looked like a chicken, I left my computer in the sun. Don't ever do that. It ended up fried, unresponsive, dead. Even the experts haven't been able to get the information off the hard drive. Ah, well. Now I have an even greater appreciation for my local community. What if the internet goes down everywhere? Well, if it's summer, we'll get by. If it's winter, well, better have some summer food in the cupboard. Or learn how to hunt. A couple of new books on local foods emphasize the importance of hunting and fishing. In my neighborhood, where hunting is a common activity, we are shocked by the number of city folks in the woods with guns that shoot rat-a-tat-tat, maybe 15 shots at a time. Nobody who really knows how to shoot needs 15 shots to bring down a deer. Or a coyote, turkey, dove or even squirrel, rabbit...well, you get the picture. We're not much for gun control around here, but then comes the news from the college campus. One of our favorite basketball players, a cutie with a big grin named Tony, shot dead in Memphis on his summer break. I went to the memorial service in search of answers but nobody could talk about it yet. That's what heartbreak does to you, leaves you speechless. that's enough for today. June 27, 2013.

First Jeffrey Smith. Then, Monsanto.

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: On Wednesday night, Farm and Fiddle (KOPN 89.5 fm, Columbia MO) had a great interview with Jeffrey Smith of the Center for Responsible Technology. He’s the guy that took the information on GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in our food and put them into consumer language. The first piece I got from him, a CD called, “You’re eating What??”, blew me away with the way he took the complicated issue and broke it down. I had been overwhelmed with information—from my points of view as a farmer seeing the neighborhood change, a mom wondering what kind of food system my kids would inherit, and a consumer myself—what’s this doing to my own body? This CD put it all in simple terms that I could use. He let us copy “You’re Eating What?” and pass it out to our friends and family. And now Jeffrey has come up with more projects—books, videos, a speaking tour and a speaker’s bureau. Yay, him! So, as I said, we had this great interview where he answered questions from “Isn’t the government making tests and looking out for us?” (Answer: No.) to “What is a GMO?” (Answer: a living organism with the gene from another living organism inserted. For example, a gene from a bacteria that eats the cells of corn rootworms) to “What’s wrong with eating GMOs?” (Answer: the gene that eats rootworms also eats us! Why would we want to put that in our bodies?) I was feeling really good about the interview and when I got home, I got a phone call from a good friend. Figuring she wanted to congratulate me on the excellent radio program, I tried to sound humble. But that’s not why she called. Her news? Monsanto has won the World Food Prize. Three scientists will split $250,000 for figuring out how to insert foreign genes into crops, creating GMOs. What a crock. When you mention the name, “Monsanto,” in my world, people have a range of about 3 reactions, none of them, “Well, they deserve a prize!” Instead, people say, “They’re the number one cause for suicides in farmers in India” or “After ruining a crop, they sue farmers for gene pollution” or, just, “I hate those guys.” I’ve never met a person that says, “Monsanto? They should get a prize!”

Rep Doug LaMalfa Sticks It to Taxpayers

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Here’s an article that should piss anyone off: “A Rice Gets a Price Premium: Farm-Bill Subsidy Sets High Floor for a Type Grown by Lawmaker Who Pushed It.” As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a 4th-generation Japonica rice grower, has put a federal subsidy for himself into the farm bill. If you’re not familiar with Japonica, it’s not a rice we eat much in this country. Most of it is exported, at a low price, disrupting markets in Asia. Our cheap rice comes into their cities, undercuts their subsistence farmers. The rural kids, with no prospects for the future, leave home for the cities and the land goes bare. Next step: Big Ag moves in with big tractors, big combines, big gas hogs and hey presto we’ve exported the same bad system we have here. And, back at home, never mind that Japonica (also known as sticky rice) yields more per acre and sells for more on the market, LaMalfa wants a guarantee that if the price goes below a certain level he’ll get a taxpayer-financed bonus. The name has changed—not a direct payment—but the game has stayed the same. Taxpayer payments will keep these guys in business. This creep’s farm has received “almost $4.7 million in farm subsidies since 1995,” says the Journal, including nearly $1.2 million in direct payments.” Guess they can’t get by without the handouts. At the same time, they’re cutting food assistance to poor people and ensuring that schools feed inferior, fatty meats and canned veggies to school kids. That’s in the House version of the bill. The Senate version simply promises guarantees for rice, cotton and peanuts.

Kudos to senators Begich, Merkley, Boxer and Sanders!

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Nice work, Senators! Four of you have introduced amendments to the Farm Bill that would rein in some of the outrageous benefits that big ag has been enjoying. The amendments are: - Senator Begich's (D-Alaska) amendment # 934 would ban the sale of genetically engineered salmon until Federal wildlife agencies give their OK. -Senator Merkley’s (D-Oregon) amendment #978 will repeal the "Monsanto Protection Act" provision in the 2013 government spending bill. That “Act” eliminated judicial oversight of genetically engineered crops. - Senator Boxer’s (D-California) Sense of the Senate amendment # 1025 supports mandatory GMO labeling.. Her amendment 1026 asks that FDA and USDA study the 64 countries around the world that already require GMO labeling. -Senator Sanders’ (I-Vermont) amendment supporting the existing rights of states to enact their own laws requiring the labeling of genetically engineered foods. Already this year 26 states have introduced labeling laws with the possibility of passage in a number of states.

the Supreme Court Speaks Against Gene Patenting

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: I may be mistaken, but it looks like the U.S. Supreme Court has finally looked at some precedents and laws other than the ones Monsanto has so carefully placed in their venue. Monsanto, you might remember, has been paving the way to complete ownership of all plant genes on the planet. They’ve been stocking their vaults with unusual beans, grains, vegetables of all kinds, and working through the gene pools, patenting as fast as they can. At the same time, they’ve been working up case law that proves they have the right to claim patents on these genes and that farmers who grow the plants on their own are breaking the laws. But last Thursday the Supreme Court unanimously decided that human genes cannot be patented! This is huge! For starters, it means you, dear reader, have some rights to your own body and its miracles. If you are stricken with some disease and your body figures out how to fight it, you have the right to claim that cure even if some university researcher captures a little of your dna, isolates it and develops a vaccine that imitates what your body did. We have to hope that this precedent leads to some more decisions that reverse the outrages of the past. Gene descriptions have become easy to create, thanks to new gene-reading machines. But gene descriptions are not the same as gene inventions and it’s time the Supreme Court and our lawmakers accepted that fact. As Judge Clarence Thomas wrote, “separating a gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of invention.” And the other justices, bless them, agreed!

Farm Bill Exposes Industry's Ties to Congress

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: I don’t think the farm bill debate could be any more mysterious. Seems like somebody doesn’t want us to know what’s going on. Here’s what I understand so far: Senate version, S. 954, doesn’t contain amendments to help food stamp users (now called Snap) or family farmers. There were more than 200 amendments pending, and a filibuster threatened, so they moved to limit debate to 30 hours. The good amendments, posted on the National Family Farm Coalition website, included “Udall's amendment on Section 2501 (#1055), Tester's amendment on Seeds and Breeds (#972), and the competition amendments: Rockefeller's amendment #993) to limit retaliation for growers speaking out; the Grassley (#969), Tester (#971), and Enzi (#982) amendments on other key components of livestock competition issues; and the Brown (#1088) amendment to encourage food and agriculture market development, entrepreneurship and education.” With these amendments rejected, there are no protections for family farmers and the corporations have free rein as far as narrowing the seed and livestock businesses and stopping young farmers from getting education and starting their own businesses. On the House side, debate is supposed to begin next Monday. They haven’t decided whether to accept amendments or not. Looks like they want to cut funds to GIPSA, the organization supposed to guarantee fairness in pricing, and SNAP. NFFC says, “The bill reported from the House Agriculture Committee guts GIPSA, cuts SNAP by more than $20 billion, and retains the Dairy Security Act (which we oppose) as well as other provisions that roll back current policy. During the House Agriculture Committee markup there were several amendments discussed but not voted on including Lujan-Grisham (D-NM) amendments to restore Section 2501 Minority Outreach and Education funds, and Fudge (D-OH) amendment on receipt for service that may become part of a floor amendment.” Here’s what NFFC says about the Senate Passage of the Farm Bill: S. 954: Washington, DC – Since early 2012, the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) has urged passage of a farm bill to extend important programs whose existence depends on a new farm bill. On October 1, 2012, more than 37 programs were stranded in the budget, farm bill, and appropriations processes; several were extended in the fiscal cliff deal but most received no funding. The floor debate on this farm bill exposed major flaws in our democratic process. Despite Senator Stabenow's (D-MI) claims to having taken up many amendments the past two years, some that were critical to family farmers and rural communities were introduced, co-sponsored, and supported widely but never heard or debated. These amendments would have protected growers speaking up about unfair contracts from retaliation; prioritized funding for traditional (non-biotech) crop research; and restored the 40 percent in cuts for critical minority outreach and education programs. S. 954 lowered these funds from $17 million to $10 million per year. The greatest concern around S. 954 is that it privatizes the supposed safety net by shifting direct payments to grain and dairy farmers to a corporate-controlled crop insurance payment program. There is no pricing system based on farmers’ cost of production or any sort of reserve policy at the farm, national, or global level. Without these mechanisms to stabilize prices and to help farmers, fishermen, and rural communities face disastrous weather and economic conditions, this bill promotes farmer uncertainty while global insurance companies reap unchecked profits. S. 954 makes a few small yet significant steps. It links conservation compliance to farmers holding crop insurance and allows organic farmers to be covered under crop insurance at their retail, not wholesale, prices. It expands support for farmers markets and EBT access to SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program) benefits and establishes the Healthy Farm Financing Initiative and some beginning farmer initiatives, including outreach to Veteran farmers. It also calls for an official hearing process with broad participation to consider changes to the flawed current and proposed dairy programs.

What's a farm? What's a farm bill?

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Looks like the farm bill won’t have anything in it to stem the tide of bad food coming into our communities. It will provide less money for food stamp users, forcing them to live on potato chips and white bread. And, yes, I know the current program isn’t called “food stamps” but I want you to understand what I’m saying. The program name changes just confuse the issue. To continue: The farm bill will force schools to use USDA surplus stocks, even if there is plenty of good food in the community. Here in the heartland where we raise lots of cattle, schools can get free ground beef to make taco pie and chili. It’s a grade lower than the beef used by dog food companies, but, hey! The budget . . . So far, there’s nothing to suggest that the Monsanto Protection Act will be repealed. That’s the verbiage which also protects other GMO companies, like DuPont, Syngeta AG and Dow, from worrying about GMO labeling or being prosecuted for planting unapproved GMO crops. The new farm bill won’t help beginning farmers. Or do anything to keep local agriculture in our nation. Nothing but payments for big ag insurance, big ag facilities, big ag wreck-the-earth-at-taxpayer-expense. The giant machines that tear up the dirt, dump chemicals, harvest up non-nutritious grain and sick animals—those will still go on. It’s up to family farmers and consumers to keep each other going. For consumers, it’s crucial to take a weekly trip to the farmers’ market and eat what’s fresh and local. For farmers, well, we need to learn how to think and talk like mainstream Americans. We need to agree on some messages. What we're asking the public to do is to think critically, but we're not giving them the tools to do it. So we need to talk like a consumer. For example, dairy farmers talk about POUNDS of milk. Consumers think about GALLONS of milk. Farmers talk about PRICE and want FAIR PRICES. Consumers talk about what they pay at Wal-Mart and want LOW PRICES. Since I talk to consumers all the time, I edit myself constantly. I never say "sow" without explaining it's a female hog with babies. I never say "heifer," "steer," "bull," "lamb," or even "pony," or "mule," without explaining. You can't imagine how many times I've had to explain that a pony won’t grow up to be a horse. And a mule, by the way, is a cross between a donkey and a horse. People think it's just another word for donkey, like burro or ass. The other day, I had to explain to a feed store worker the difference between a hybrid and GMOs. She was too young to know the difference. So, see the problems??

What the Old Progressives Eat

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: I go to around 50 farm and food meetings a year—probably one a week. And at most of these, there’s food. You could blindfold and feed me what they’re serving and I could tell you the age of the people in charge. Young progressives are getting really picky about their food—fresh and local. When we meet, we go to independent restaurants where local food is served, which is the kind of place these kids want to work. Oldsters go for whatever the industrial truck delivers to the greasy spoon café. They’ll eat hot dogs, for god’s sake, smothered in canned chili. And they’ll complain like crazy about industry and the consolidation of the food system, but they patronize the baddies without a thought. It’s a bit of a shock to attend meetings of progressive organizations, gray heads all, and see that they don’t know what the youngsters are doing. Shocking, really, to see well-intentioned and philosophically brilliant social thinkers talking the talk but failing to walk the walk and cluelessly tucking into the products of industry. This happens time and again, and I end up realizing that I can eat healthy local foods all month long, unless I go to a meeting of yesterday’s farm progressives. Sad, when we could be building bridges, serving healthy and local food and patronizing the businesses that the next generation sees as necessary to make their issues work. One of the great joys of being a locavore is that you so often find yourself surrounded by people working to make their communities more sustainable. These are high-energy young people and they’re forcing us oldsters to choose: Will we be helpful elders? Or are we just in the way? Social movements always start at the grassroots level. Always. And they take generations to complete. It’s up to us powerful oldsters to reach to the next group and help. We can’t make progress without them, and we can’t make headway by ignoring their accomplishments. These kids don’t ask permission, they’ll do it on their own. They’re creating composting sites and recycling in their communities, forcing cities to create bike lanes, learning how to grow their own food and, of course, patronizing the restaurants founded by their friends. They’re coming up with an excellent system. Social movements always start at the grassroots level. Always. I think of the changes in my own lifetime—civil rights for blacks, workplace expansion for women, independence for African nations. None of these came from the top and trickled down.

Nine billion mouths

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: On a conference phone call with a bunch of farmers (and one fisherwoman) yesterday, we lamented the misunderstandings surrounding the farm bill. The theme of the call might have been: We may not even get the smallest amendments on the senate floor that we need. How can we build our capacity? We never got a free market and with so much corporate power we never will. The subjects were diverse—the farm bill, a Washington Post article announcing the end of subsidies (which keep many family farms profitable and keep food cheap for consumers), a new movie that repeats the bad old messages. The movie, which I haven’t seen yet, tells about a farm family fighting over their future. The heroes, as I’ve heard it, leave the farm. The thing is that the corporate have been honing their message for decades and it’s a good one: nine billion mouths to feed. Nothing about birth control, declining population in some lands, education for women to give them more options. Just five words, repeated and repeated and repeated by the big corporate powers. So we need five words.

GMO wheat OMG

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: We had two pieces of good news on Friday—the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that land cannot be condemned for the sole reason of making money for a corporation AND several big box stores, including Target and Whole Foods—are refusing to handle GMO salmon because consumers don’t want it. Then, the good news was followed immediately by the mega bad news that GMO wheat, which is another thing that consumers absolutely don’t want, has been discovered in Oregon. Wheat, like corn, canola, soy and sugar, is an ingredient in much of what we eat, from meat with gravy to fried foods to bread to cookies and other baked goods. European culture is often called a wheat culture. For the people on the planet with anti-wheat conditions like celiac disease, eating is a real challenge. So, for those of us that don’t want any more problems with our food, the idea that an untested GMO wheat might spread into the food system is horrifying. Even before genetic engineering, wheat has been changed from the original. It has been hybridized for years. That is, varieties with a desired strain have been crossed by farmers with another strain to provide some kind of benefit. Modern wheat is shorter, more protein-laden, and has more chromosomes than original wheat. It can be harvested by big equipment more easily. It can tolerate more nitrogen without falling down and usually requires one or more blasts of nitrogen as it grows. On my farm we grow ten varieties of non-hybidized wheats that haven’t been popular since the 1920s. They vary from Fultz, which was the most popular wheat in America at one time, to Touzelle, a French variety that Louis IX thought could cure him of an unknown malady. One of our wheats is almost as tall as me, and we have to harvest with scythes. Oregon is very far from Missouri, thank goodness. If we got GMO genes in our wheat, I’d be devastated.

Hooray for the Supreme Court! And Consumers Win Again!

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: I love to start the weekend with good news. Here are two pieces of it: The Missouri Supreme Court stood up for individual rights last week against the corporate interests that want to condemn land to build a giant port on the Mississippi. The port would be build solely to build giant storage tanks for crude oil from the North Dakota fracking fields. Missouri law, which the court upheld, says that condemnation under Missouri’s eminent domain laws cannot take place “for solely economic development purposes.” The port authority wasn’t interested in paying landowners a fair price and thought they could just condemn the land under the law. Good for the Supremes for saying no! The lawyers for the port authority said something about “improving river traffic” but the Supremes were able to see past the language. In the past, there have been condemnations of land, mostly urban, that have taken entire neighborhoods and moved them so that some big box store can build a gi-normous parking lot so that rich people can come and shop. The river bluffs with their woods and wildlife are a precious commodity. Too precious to cover with concrete like some industrial wasteland. I’m glad this court has unanimously sided with the land owners. On another positive note, several big box stores are refusing to handle GMO salmon. This is the salmon that has been genetically modified to grow faster than normal salmon. If it gets into the wild, normal salmon won’t be able to compete. But consumers don’t want to eat GMO food, so the stores are saying no! Fabulous news, and now there’s a movement to ban gmo salmon from all stores in our region. Hope it gains some traction!

Smithfield buy changes everything in the meat industry

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Here’s an interesting piece from Reuters: “China's appetite for pork spurs $4.7 billion Smithfield buy”. I just caught a few seconds of it on the TV news last night before going to the radio station, didn’t have time to look it up until this morning. Basically, the “Smithfield buy” will give China’s meat processing industry a global footprint. The U.S. has deplorably little regulation on this industry, which raises hogs in giant warehouses and butchers hogs on conveyor lines where the carcasses whiz by inspectors too fast for any kind of thoughtful inspection. We have a lot of hog pollution in the U.S. already, but it’s been modified because the organic industry uses hog poo to fertilize fields for U.S.D.A. certified organic produce and grain. Consumers are misled when they think the organic industry helps keep fields clean and healthy, but that’s another story. Smithfield is the world's largest hog owner and butcher. This buy by China means that everything we believe about the food industry can be disproved if the buy goes through. They’ll begin working to dismantle country-of-origin labeling, for example. And pollution standards, as wimpy as they are, will be a thing of the past as international standards, nonexistent, take over. I’m not a predictor and I try to write about what has happened rather than what might happen, but if the past is a teacher, this “Smithfield buy” has implications to bring our tottering planet to its knees.

the March Against Monsanto

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: The March Against Monsanto, organized by Occupy COMO in Columbia MO, was a huge success. I was amazed, having predicted a small turnout. There were 150 people, and these were folks of all ages. I saw farmers from the farmers’ market, moms pushing strollers, guys on bicycles and lots of twenty-something consumer types. This was one of a couple hundred marches around the world, all kicking off at 1 p.m. in their time zone. Here in Missouri, there were five marches: St. Louis (headquarters of Monsanto), Kansas City, Springfield, Jefferson City and Columbia. We might have gone to any of them, since we’re in the middle of the state, but Columbia is the home of University of Missouri (MIzzou), and they get millions in donations from Monsanto so we went there. The rally after the march, for example, was held in front of Monsanto Auditorium, donated by the multinational corporation. We started at city hall where a young man did a great job of summing up the problems. He even mentioned the Monsanto Protection Act. Then we followed a route that took us through downtown, where lots of people came out of their stores and cheered. Yay for them! We passed a wedding party, all dressed up, the guys looking like Mafioso in black suits, and they said a sarcastic, “Good luck with that one” when they saw our signs. Since it was a Saturday, and a break between spring and summer sessions, there was nobody in the auditorium or in the building, it seemed, but no matter. I’m sure the Monsantans caught the rally on their security cameras and they’ll keep the recordings and put some kind of facial recognition program on. Cool what they can do these days! I’m a big fan of chants, so I pay attention. One that resonated with the anti-Vietnam crowd went like this: Hell, no/ Monsanto]/We don’t want your GMOs. My favorite: GMOs are from the past/Local foods will save your ass. I need to order a new banner for the farm. Maybe that’s what I’ll put on it, but for my neighborhood I’ll have to clean it up: “Factory food is from the past/Local foods will save your donkey.”

Everyone's horrified by Monsanto

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Warren Porter of the U of Wisconsin, a zoologist, was on Farm and Fiddle, my radio program on KOPN 89.5 fm Wednesday night talking about how poisons are delivered to plants and animals. It turns out that the inert ingredients in common poisons, like Monsanto’s Roundup, are not inert. In fact, some of them are designed particularly to deliver the poisons into the cells. They are like soaps that break down oils to break down cell barriers. These ingredients are dangerous because they help the poisons kill. Warren’s research has looked into ramifications of all these ingredients in the environment. Because after they kill, they go into the water and air. So we drink, breathe, eat them. There’s an epidemic of sterility going on—low sperm counts and hermaphrodite aberrations in reptiles and insects. Some boy children in areas of Mexico where our vegetables are raised have developed breasts that can function to make milk and girl children losing the cells they’ll need to make milk for their future babies. I asked Warren if we could stop using all the poisons tomorrow, how long would it take to get rid of the effects? He said 100 years, if it was possible at all. After talking to him, Hannah was nearly in tears. Dan looked like he had been slammed with a two by four. As for me, I tried to reassure them that, as responsible, sustainable-minded farmers, we’re trying to do all we can to change the trend and I apologized for being part of my generation, the ones who have created all the excess. It would be great to be in denial about the effects Dr. Porter was talking about. Then you could just go to Wal-Mart, buy crappy lettuce and fried chicken and pretend like you were providing a good meal for your family. With the March Against Monsanto coming tomorrow, I’ve been really surprised by the hatred against that company. All it takes is a casual mention, and people just open up with really revealing comments. One friend told me to keep her in the loop. Her son works for Monsanto and she tries to tell him, for example, that his employer is the number one reason for suicides among farmers in India, and he acts like that doesn’t matter. It makes her so ashamed. Other people, more political ones, are angry about the derailment of democracy—the money Monsanto spends on lobbying. Some of my university friends are mad that Monsanto money skews the research that comes out of the university. It seems like everyone has a different reason to be disgusted with this company. I wonder if the disgust has gotten to the stockholders and buyers of Monsanto products. I know that some farmers say they can’t find seeds without the GMO genes in them. One of my young friends, a chemist, thinks she might want to work for Monsanto some day and change things “from the inside.” Well, that’s a great idea but with so much money at stake, nearly impossible.

Marching Against Monsanto

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: More rain. More rain. The bare ground of my neighbors’ cornfields, poisoned with Roundup to kill the weeds, unplanted because of the rain, is washing away. Big ruts that will have to be bulldozed to fill in. More fossil fuels used to raise more ethanol. How does that make sense? There is a march against Monsanto on Saturday. In fact, there are dozens of marches all around the world. Here in Missouri, we have five to pick from: St. Louis, Columbia, Jeff City, Springfield, Kansas City. I am amazed that when I mention it to friends, they say, “Yeah. I want to go.” We could probably fill a bus to go to St. Louis or Columbia. And we haven’t decided which one to go with. That’s all for tonight. May 20, 2013.

Political Comedy

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: The political process is an interesting pageant, and everyone wants to assume that it’s impossible to change the direction once it gets started. Because if you think it’s impossible to change, you’re relieved from participating, right? So all you do is sit at the coffee shop and complain to your buddies. But, really, politics is more like an audience participation comedy than like a written script. If you’ve ever seen those standup routines where the director stops the action, asks for audience ideas, then starts it again, that’s what it’s like. And ideas can come from anywhere, stage right or stage left. So this year in Missouri, one subject was “agribusiness vs. healthy food and land.” The comedians started with a silly idea: Change the state constitution so that “modern” technology would forever be guaranteed in the state. “Modern” would mean, of course, biotechnology and highly toxic chemicals on the land in an escalation that has already caused irreparable ecosystem damage. The debate began right after New Year’s. The comedians boasted that they had a bullet-proof majority. The governor, in other words, wouldn’t be able to make a veto stick if the general assembly passed a bad bill. By March 4, the shtick was established. Here’s the language that would have gone into the state constitution, introduced in HJR 7 and 11: “No state law shall be enacted which abridges the right of farmers and ranchers to employ agricultural technology and modern livestock production and ranching practices, unless enacted by the General Assembly.” Even the careless bypasser can see the problems. No definitions of “technology” or “modern,” for example. And no room for local control. As one legislative aide said, “This would allow cockfighting in St. Louis.” Seeing the problems, citizens started coming to the capitol. There was a lobby day for family farm supporters. The Comedy stopped. The Audience spoke up. Somebody said, “this would eliminate local control. Our county governments couldn’t make rules to protect the health of citizens.” And the Director said, “go” and the comedians proceeded. They took the language out of one bill, pretended it had disappeared, slipped it into another. And this happened again and again, but the citizens continued to show up. When we couldn’t show up, we sent e-mails, phone calls, faxes. Our leadership hung in there, meeting with key players. Everyday folks delivered flyers after work or just called on their lunch breaks or weekends. We stood up for our farms and communities as well as we could. One grandma, babysitting for the granddaughter, wheeled a stroller all over the capitol to say her piece. It wasn’t easy, but she knew it was important. That’s the thing—nobody did anything super-human. We just learned the issues, showed up, sent e-mails, made phone calls, stood together. Anyone can do it, and should. Sensing that they would lose, the comedians pulled a stunt of desperation. They called a press conference and accused the governor of wrongdoing. The sharpest of the comedians, kind of a ring leader, made a tour of the state, pointing fingers all the way. When citizens came to call, he pretended to be out. Comedy of the dullest form, certainly beneath such a sharp guy. Quite often, I meet people that say they hate to go to the capitol. They hate the rudeness, the meanness, the clusters of ego in the hallways. “Just go and be a witness,” I tell them, but they say it makes them ashamed to see such low doings in the halls that are supposed to be respected and cherished. I get it, but it makes me sad. We need to get our democracy back.

Quit complaining! We won!

From the Heartland this morning, Margot McMillen breathes easier: A great e-mail this morning, just one of many from progressive organizations that won some key issues in the Missouri legislature. Last night, the session closed with the traditional ritual of throwing the huge stacks of bills into the air. And we held back the bad guys on some key issues. Here's what the e-mail said: We Won Important Victories— Thank YOU for Helping Preserve Local Control & Support Family Farms Thanks to the hard work of our members and supporters who took action, numerous pro-CAFO, anti-local control and anti-family farm bills were defeated or severely weakened during the 2013 legislative session, which ended today. Every Lobby Day visit, every phone call and every email made a difference, and there were thousands of them! These are big victories for family farms, rural communities, local control and the food supply. This was a very difficult and long legislative session, and our bills were in play to the very last day, but all your hard work paid off and we THANK YOU! These victories show that we can win on key issues for family farms, the environment and the future of our communities when we work together to hold policymakers accountable to the people and to our communities. Below is a brief summary of some of the bills we impacted: Senate Bill 342— SB 342 was an ag-omnibus bill that Reprentative Guernsey added bad anti-local control language to. This disastrous anti-local control language was removed in Conference Committee…but not without a fight. The anti-local control language would have: • Forced counties to hire a CAFO operator to administer any local health ordinance that affects CAFOs. • Stopped any county from passing manure application standards that are stricter than the current inadequate DNR/state standards, including setbacks from farms, homes and communities. • No current ordinances are grandfathered in, so all existing local ordinances passed by County Commissions and Health Boards will be null and void unless they comply with these mandates. • Stopped County Health Boards from passing ANY health ordinances without getting the approval of the County Commission. Senate Bill 9— Similar to SB 342, SB 9 was amended in the House by Representative Guernsey to include bad anti-local control language. Again, thanks to your hard work making phone calls and sending emails, the language was removed by Senator Pearce in Conference Committee. House Joint Resolution 7&11—The So-Called “Right to Farm” The original House version of HJR 7&11 was a proposed constitutional amendment that would have taken away Local Control from Missouri counties, stopped the legislature from protecting the health and welfare of Missourians related to corporate agriculture, and limited the constitutional right of Missourians to utilized the ballot initiative process. Everyone’s calls and emails resulted in this language being taken out and a specific sentence added to protect Local Control. This was a major accomplishment. The bad news is that this bill still adds unnecessary language to our constitution and could have negative unintended consequences—We already have the right to farm. Senate Bill 41—“The Pollution Protection Act” The “Pollution Protection Act”, SB 41 would have taken away constitutional rights of farmers and landowners to protect their property & property rights through the court system. Corporate lobbyists once again convinced some legislators of the need to protect a very small minority of corporate industrial livestock operations at the expense of the property rights of the majority of family farms and rural landowners. This bill finally died today, the last day of the legislative session. ________________________________________ Our future work depends on the commitment of these legislators to continue to support our issues. It is really important that we let them know that we appreciate the actions they took to protect Local Control & Family Farms.

Another CAFO coverup, and Casey Guernsey's amendment to SB 342

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Tomorrow is the last day of the legislative session here in Missouri and wouldn’t you know, even though the bad bills have mostly gone away, there’s one corporate flak, Representative Casey Guernsey, that hasn’t gotten the picture. Guernsey is a CAFO owner (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) in the smelly area that many of us call “baja Iowa.” With plenty of corn, immigrant labor and isolation, that area is perfect for corporate hog systems that don’t want the public to see them. Obviously, one of the problems of these CAFOs (many folks call them “pig shit factories”) is pig shit. So part of Guernsey’s bill would stop any county from passing manure application standards that are stricter than the current inadequate DNR/state standards, including setbacks from farms, homes and communities. The news tonight on all the TV stations is about another CAFO scandal in the state, this one in southwest Missouri (I guess we could call the area “upper Arkansas”) where a closed rendering plant buried 2,500 cow carcasses in a trench. Those are leaking into the groundwater and who knows what the results will be. Language in SB 342 would negatively impact the statute that gives County Commissions and County Health Boards the authority to pass local ordinances to rein in these CAFOs and protect the health of their citizens, farm families and rural communities. Representative Guernsey’s Anti-Local Control Amendment on SB 342: • Forces counties to hire a CAFO operator to administer any local health ordinance that affects CAFOs. • No current ordinances are grandfathered in, so all existing local ordinances passed by County Commissions and Health Boards will be null and void unless they comply with these mandates. • Stops County Health Boards from passing ANY health ordinances without getting the approval of the County Commission. This mandate would infringe on Local Control and the authority of local governments to respond to the needs of its citizens, and creates another level of detrimental unnecessary government bureaucracy.

Monsanto Beats Bowman and We're the Losers

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: “Don’t know if you saw this,” my sweetie said, pointing to a headline in the Wall Street Journal. It said, “Indiana Farmer Loses Fight Over Monsanto Seed Patent.” He said, “You probably knew about it…” Well, yeah, I hadn’t heard, but I suspected it. “A put-up deal.” I said. It’s the third or fourth time in the last week I’ve let my cynicism run free, and I’ll try to do better. In Bowman v. Monsanto, it was obvious from the first that the corporation had the precedents and cases to confirm that the patent holders would win their argument that Bowman owed them fees when he planted their seeds and harvested them. To paraphrase the Journal, “using the seed to reproduce itself infringed on Monsanto’s patent,” even though planting and harvesting has been the business of seed owners from the beginning of agriculture. Monsanto’s lead attorney repeated the hackneyed Monsanto line that the patented seeds represent “breakthrough 21st-century technologies that are central to meeting the growing demands of our planet and its people.” OK OK OK. I won’t comment on that line. But I will say that if citizens are to fight the takeover of seeds, agriculture, and food on “our planet and its people,” we can’t depend on help from the courts. We have to do it ourselves, and as soon as possible.

Sexual abuse in the military is a problem for rural women

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: The subject of sexual assault in the military is a little out of my usual writing realm of food and agriculture, but as a rural woman I am thrilled it has come out. My rural neighbors make up a disproportionate number of military entrants and for years we’ve heard from our girls that, although they begin with the best of intentions, the highest of hopes, they end up in what one told me was a “meat market.” Rural kids make up about 44% of military recruits even though we are only 20% of the general population. Our kids are, in fact, targeted by recruiters. Sharply dressed fellows with successful track records and snazzy videos come to our schools. The army’s rodeo team performs at public sales. In just a few days the “Blue Angels,” a Navy and Air Force demonstration team, will fly over my Missouri neighborhood in a Memorial Day salute that’s free to the public and widely promoted on all the radio and TV stations. Here’s what the National Priorities Project found out: “Rural counties dominated a list of the top 100 counties with the highest military recruitment rates in 2004 and 2008 . . . Their analysis looked at the Army's recruitment rate per 1,000 people aged 18-24 in each county in the U.S. The highest rate in the nation in 2004 was from Mineral County, Montana, with three other counties from that state in the top 20. Other states in the list included Kansas with three counties, Texas with three, and Nebraska with two. Rural counties in Mississippi, Illinois, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Missouri, South Dakota, and Kentucky round out the list. That year, more than 44 percent of military recruits came from rural areas, according to Pentagon figures. In contrast, only 14 percent came from major cities. Regionally, most enlistees come from the South (40 percent) and the West (24 percent).” My favorite high school and college kids, upon graduating, will talk about their hopes and plans and then say something like, “and if that doesn’t work out, I’ll join the military.” For the poorest, often those from single-parent homes, a military career is their highest and best hope. Indeed, their role models may be retired military guys since those folks retire to the country, often to farms the family could keep because the kids left farming. It’s amazing any of the youngsters get out with their humanity intact. Their first weeks are spent in total isolation with their units, banned from contact with family and friends. Then, bonded to their buddies, the training intensifies. Protection of the unit includes a grounding in homophobia and, since they don’t know where they’ll serve yet, the kids learn about all their enemies: “we good, they bad, we have big guns.” In this kind of environment, women are almost always the victims. Smaller, optimistic, trained from an early age to be pleasing, the result is inevitable. Kudos to the folks who are speaking out. They are the courageous ones in America’s incessant wars.

Glow-in-the-dark food?

From the heartland, Margot McMillen writes: A week ago, one of my students told me how easy it is to separate the bit of glow-in-the-dark DNA from a jellyfish. They had done it in her undergraduate biology class. When it came to the next step, inserting it into a frog (or something) the procedure was a little trickier, and the wise biology teacher hadn't gone that far. But it could probably be done, she told me, in an ordinary school lab. But now the news from Singularity University that they have, indeed, created glow-in-the-dark plants, a genre without regulation, and they're offering them to people for a small fee. As a food farmer, I hope none of my neighbors jump on the offer. On my farm, we have never planted a genetically modified seed and we never will. It's bad enough that we might have weeds blowing in from a neighbor's place that resist herbicides or kill pests. These genes have been inserted intentionally to crops, but now spread to weeds, thanks to the weeds' clever evasion of continual dousings of poisons from the industrial farms. Glow-in-the-dark biology can find a market--from wal-mart shoppers without a brain between them, looking for something fun to take the birthday boy, to cities looking for new ways to light their streets. But we obviously would need regulation. Nobody wants glow-in-the-dark tomatoes or kale. NO way, says Singularity University, this non-gift should be available to the world. Now, other groups are trying to find ways to raise money to fight the threat, but I can't see how that will work. With a technique so easy that it can begin in an undergraduate bio lab, the possibilities are endless.

thanks, Jolie Justus!

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: So it’s May 3, 2013, and it’s snowing in north Missouri. Rhonda says they have 5 inches in Chillicothe and Kirstin said 6 inches in Hale. So, last week, on my vegetable farm, we planted potatoes and then it started raining and I started to worry about rot. Turned out I needed to worry about freezing! All my fruit trees have bloomed—peaches, cherries, pears, apples, plums, all of them. Frozen fruit trees are fairly common in Missouri, but usually in mid-April. Early May? Not so much. If you wanted two years contrasting against each other, last year, 2012, when we had a drought and excessive heat by mid-May is a good contrast with this one, 2013. But it’s the same old politics. Tomorrow I talk to the League of Women Voters annual meeting in Jefferson City. What a delight to talk to activist women from all over the state. My text: Lessons from the suffrage movement. Lesson one: Persevere. Yeah, it takes decades, but at some point the stupids realize how ridiculous they are and they just give it up. Trouble is, when it comes to food and agriculture, they have the potential to change everything on the planet while they’re diddling around on the bad side. My state senator, Jolie Justus, has figured out that her constituents want the planet to last and want rural life to be here for the future and our kids, in a non-poisonous way. She has stood up for us in the face of the stupids, those who are paid off to support HJR 7 and 11. So I called her at the end of the day to say thanks. Hope she knows I mean it. That’s all for today. It’s May 3, 2013.

Can we go a month without GMOs?

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Last night on Farm and Fiddle, the radio program that celebrates and explores rural life for today and tomorrow, we began our second annual "month without Monsanto," also called, "Nonsanto May" and "month without biotech." Dan rigged up a Facebook page for people to check in and we reviewed the rules. For the month of May, we try hard to delete biotech products from our lives. That means, basically, no processed foods, because they mostly contain GMO corn and soybeans, unless they are marked "USDA organic" or "GMO-free". Also, no cotton clothing manufactured after 1998 when the first GMO cotton was introduced. Even though we had prepared, we all had to admit exceptions. I was wearing linen pants, rayon shirt and linen jacket, leather shoes, BUT I had blown it by wearing cotton socks. Dan had a cotton t-shirt and Hannah had taken an ibuprofen after she fell off her bike. Hannah and I were both worried about animal feed. She has new chicks and was starting them on leftovers and grain from the health food store. I was able to give her some leftover wheat from 2011, which is non-GMO. But I have 2 bottle baby lambs eating formula. I know I'll have to buy that, and it contains soybeans. Today, I saw Dan at Cafe Berlin. He was wearing a vintage t-shirt. I had put on some wool socks. We congratulated each other. But what to eat? Luckily, the cafe has a good variety of vegetarian foods, but they generally cook with canola oil. I ordered an egg and tempeh, fried in olive oil. It was delicious.

Missouri Senate Bill 9

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: It happens that I just returned from a meeting at the county health department, learning the new rules of food handling for our county, when an e-mail appeared in my mailbox about Missouri Senate Bill 9. The notices says that Representative Casey Guernsey, Chair of the House Agri-Business Committee, has inserted anti-local control language onto numerous bills, and one of those bills, Senate Bill 9, is moving—It is slated to be heard on the House floor anytime! Here’s another example of the corporate ag community throwing local control under the bus. If it passes, in order to pass any local health ordinance, order, rule or regulation regarding factory farms, BOTH the county commission and the county health board must agree to and pass identical measures. That means that if there is an emergency spill into public waters, the health department could not act until the commission meets and passes a regulation with identical language. As the e-mail states: This mandate infringes on Local Control and creates an additional and unnecessary level of government bureaucracy.

Dow and Monsanto: Invincibles Against the Consumer

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: As I wrote yesterday, HJR 7 and 11 have been dubbed the “Monsanto/CAFO protection act.” That’s the Missouri law that would “forever” guarantee “modern” farming methods in our state, regardless of what “modern” means. Robots caring for animals in confinement? Poisons sprayed all over the land to kill weeds? We don’t know. But, now, I see that maybe citizens should call HJR 7 and 11 the “Monsanto/Dow/CAFO protection act.” Because last week, Dow and Monsanto announced a “cross-licensing” deal that would stack the world’s largest chemical company and the world’s largest seed company in a ruthless “next generation” coalition. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch lined it out: “The world’s biggest seed company and the country’s biggest chemical company announced Thursday a cross-licensing deal intended to bring next-generation seeds and chemical mixes to farmers combating increasingly stubborn weeds and insects in the field. Creve Coeur-based Monsanto Co. and Dow Agrosciences, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co., said Thursday that Monsanto will allow Dow to use a corn technology Monsanto is developing to kill corn rootworm, a major agricultural pest. In exchange, Dow will give Monsanto access to its new Enlist brand corn technology, which enables crops to survive applications of the chemical 2,4-D. The deal is the latest move in an emerging pattern that has seen major rivals in agricultural biotechnology license technologies to one another. The existing SmartStax corn product, for example, already contains eight biotechnology traits developed by Dow, Monsanto and Bayer CropScience.” That, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is a “response” to the problems farmers are having in the battle against increasingly chemical-resistant pests and weeds. I guess “response” is one way to put it, but to be honest the problems are due to increasing amounts of chemicals on the land to grow the seeds that the biochemical seed companies are creating. What’s really crazy about all this is that nobody has tested the “traits” on consumers, so if you buy these weird products, you’re ingesting the “traits,” whether they’re good for you or not. And, to make matters more complex, scientists can’t get permission to run tests on lab rats or even on worms or bugs because the “traits” are protected by patents. So who are the lab rats? Well, if you’ve eaten anything today made with corn, canola, soy, sugar beets or cotton seed, you can raise your hand now.

Big ag money corrupts Missouri lawmakers

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: There’s some big money behind Missouri’s HJR 7 and 11, which has been dubbed the “CAFO/Monsanto Protection Bill.” That’s the bill that wants to “forever guarantee modern technology” in agriculture, without saying what exactly that means. The Senate made the bill better, taking out the language that would have destroyed local control. That wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the huge number of phone calls and visits to legislators we generated. Now HJR 7 and 11 is going to a Senate/House Conference Committee where the House will try to put the bad language back in. Any day now. Our citizen lobbyists are tired and that’s exactly what the corporate expected and want. They hope we’ll give up. And, besides that, there are several agriculture omnibus bills (SB9 and SB 342) that would take away the right for county commissions and health boards to pass local health ordinances to protect the health of their citizens. This form of local control should be maintained. With only 3 weeks left in the session, you’d think they’d be bending their minds to better things, like passing a budget or working on the health care crisis that will undo our rural hospitals. But, no. Senate Bill 342 & Senate Bill 9 would mandate that any county health ordinances would have to be passed word-for-word by both the county commission and the county health board. It’s another level of unneeded government bureaucracy. Here’s the deal: Monsanto has just promised 600+ new jobs to the city of St. Louis. And St. Louis is the tail that wags the dog of our state. The newspapers are all excited about it, trying to out-gush each other with enthusiasm for the expansion. Monsanto expansion may, or may not, be real. We’ve seen these expansions fail a lot of times, and we’ve seen them succeed at government expense. Some kind of tax abatement promised, some kind of bonds issued. But, for Missouri lawmakers, the chance to say that they’re bringing new jobs to the state is enough to get them re-elected. That’s life in the heartland. So we need to call our representatives AGAIN to protect local control and the state constitution. We can’t give up. Meanwhile, the day turned dreary and all the chores took two or three times as long as usual. Tomorrow, sunshine is predicted, and a fun day with my pal Laura, travelling the countryside in search of the perfect foxtrotter horse for one of her customers.

Consumers are in charge of the food system!

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: A gorgeous day today! I started it outside, when Jerry, still recuperating from heart surgery, came to trim the horses’ feet. Barb’s little white pony could hardly get out of the barn, but he trimmed her and said she’ll probably be fine. It’s really hard with an equine that’s foundered. When spring comes and the fescue gets green, they just overeat and whatever healing they did gets undone. We have several horses and ponies to go, but she was the most urgent case and Jerry left after trimming her and my big old fellow, Rocky. We made appointments for Tuesday and Thursday next week. Coming back inside, a phone call from a news reporter about my grain project, connecting consumers with local grain. Uprise Bakery, mid-Missouri’s finest, has started using local wheat for one of his bread recipes. What did I think of that? I think it’s fabulous. The reporter was very patient, trying to absorb all the details. It’s hard, when all your breads have come wrapped in plastic from who knows where, to understand how it all begins. Wheat. Farmers. Flour. Millers. Yeast. Bakers. Who knew? The main thing, as I told her, is the consumer. If consumers demand a certain kind of product, the stores will get it for them. Consumers are driving the system, but they hardly ever know it.

Genetically altered salmon in the pipeline

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Tomorrow, the comment period will close on whether industry can raise their genetically altered salmon and sell it to human consumers. This campaign has been going on for years. It started with a huge increase in salmon recipes in the ladies’ magazines and the newspapers. That, to develop demand. Omega 3, you know. The genetically altered salmon grow twice as fast as normal salmon, which means they would take over the native ecosystems by out-eating and out-growing the natives if they got into the wild. If approved, this will be the first animal to be genetically altered and raised for human use. This at the time when we’re trying to figure out what to do about the superweeds that industry created by releasing genetically altered corn, soybeans, canola, cotton and sugar beets. And if the salmon genes jump to other breeds, what then? One of my students has a habit of saying, when things are messed up, “It’s all good.” I think she means that things work out in the end. But, what kind of havoc are we releasing in nature? All good? Not.

Too much Boston Marathon

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: This is the first Sunday morning in a decade when I haven’t watched Meet the Press on TV. I just can’t stand to see those images again—the explosions at the Boston Marathon, people screaming, running TO the emergency rather than FROM the emergency as every TV commentator, preacher and fireman has told us. And then the “manhunt” as the headlines say. We’ve been given a lot of language, haven’t we? I’m sad that it happened, sad for the Bostonians, sad for the Chechnyans and Muslims that will be painted with the same broad brush. I’m proud of the first responders, the people who ran TO the emergency, big shout out to all of ya’all. But I don’t want to re-live it, over and over, giving it the stature that we give news events when they are relentlessly exploited. I don’t want to see it raised to the level of, as they say, “iconic.” I don’t want to see other kids take revenge, and then other kids take revenge against the other kids. You know what I mean—we’ve seen it a million times. The only winners are the media and the advertisers. Better for society to say: this was a bad thing. People were killed unexpectedly, this happens every day in other places but not here. At the bottom of it all was a fearful fellow that listened to the wrong voices. How can we prevent it from happening again? Bottom line: we can’t. Especially if we succumb to the fear that’s driving all this hype. Let it go.

the E-Recylclers

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: There was ice in all the buckets this morning when I went out to feed and heavy frost on the fields, but it turned out to be a gorgeous day after all. I was able to spend most of it doing silly little chores that just need to be done—checking fences, washing feed sacks, running errands and taking a TV and computer monitor to town for the E-Recycling truck. I told my neighbor I’d take their stuff, so I had a pretty good load in my little Honda Insight. When I pulled up, the guys joked that my car would just barely fit in their crusher. Not my car! I consider it a classic, an antique hybrid. It’s kind of appalling how much stuff we buy and throw out, and neither my neighbor nor I are trendy folks. When I buy something and it breaks, I get it fixed if at all possible, so my car is a 2001 and this computer a 2004. Only have had one cell phone and all it does is make phone calls, but that’s been enough so far. Still, this year the microwave gave up and we had a vacuum cleaner that was just a lemon from the start. All the stuff the E-Recyclers collect goes to a giant crusher in St. Louis and gets broken down, the metals separated out and sold. Hope they make enough money to keep it all out of the landfill.

Tony Messenger Scorns Kurt the Curt

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Yesterday, I wrote about the discourteous Kurt Schaefer hiding behind his desk when constituents came in to ask him about his stance on the Medicaid bill. The story is more elaborate and more damning than I thought. The askers actually waited an hour in the hallway while the staff of His Curtness lied that he was not in. His Boorishness had scotch taped a barrier of yellow legal paper on the window of his office so people couldn’t see in, who does that? Other suits walked in and out of the inner chamber but the constituents had to stand outside and listen to lies. After an hour, somebody lifted a cell phone above the paper barrier and snapped pictures that showed the fool was in there. The capitol police came and stood, police-like, at his door. What was he afraid of? His voters? Turns out, he’s afraid of everything federal. That, at bottom, is his objection to Medicaid. Missouri went to war over that 150 years ago, defending states’ rights. Some of our citizens have been confused about the issue ever since. That’s the trouble with wars; they leave more confusion and anger than they solve. Among the laws this fellow disagrees with is a federal law requiring access to Conceal and Carry (CCW) licenses. The feds want to be able to compare CCW lists with the list of folks getting disability payments due to mental illness. Sounds reasonable to the ordinary person, since we don’t want weapons in the hands of mentally ill people. But Schaefer, along with House Speaker Tim Jones, have tried to whip the tea party gang into a frenzy. Today, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger wrote a scathing column which said, in part: “Schaefer and Jones are both lawyers, which means one of two things . . . They’re really bad lawyers or they know they’re lying for cynical political gain, and that must makes them horrible people.” Messenger speculates that these two guys “think the road to the Missouri attorney general’s office is paved with lies about mind control and microchips . . .” And, for Schaefer, capitol police and scotch tape.

Kurt the Curt Schaefer Rides Again

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: If the book of 2013 Missouri is ever written, it will be a sad tale of the richies trying to keep social benefits from the poors. And that sad tale can never have a happy ending. Yesterday, more than one thousand people gathered at the capitol to lobby for Medicaid benefits for more Missouri families. The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, asks that benefits be extended to folks at 138% of the poverty level. For a family of four, benefits would be available if they made $26,000 or less, which takes in a huge number of rural families that have no health insurance now. That money would save hospitals, create jobs and result in healthier youngsters. In other words, it would benefit the entire state. But many lawmakers, Republican ones, refuse to pass a bill to accept the Medicaid expansion. So busloads of people, ordinary citizens like you and me, including my friends from Missouri Rural Crisis Center, Grass Roots Organizing, Faith Voices United and many other groups, came to the capitol to visit their lawmakers. They were joined by hospital groups and health providers. Far right observers called these “special interest groups.” Many of the lawmakers, Ds and Rs, were positive. They realize that the federal money is going to go somewhere and it should go to help Missouri folks. Columbia’s Kurt Schaefer was not among the positive ones. In fact, he hid from the lobby groups, taping yellow legal pad paper on the window of his office and pretending to be out, at a meeting. Who does that? Somebody held a cell phone above the paper and snapped a photo of curt Kurt hiding behind his desk. Everyone was laughing. What a fool!

Hoosier Resolutions 5 and 27 sound like Missouri

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: I said I’d look further for traces of laws ensuring “modern farming practices” for corporations, and it didn’t take long to find 3 states with efforts for amendments similar to Missouri’s proposals. Last November, North Dakota, a state besieged with fracking and sky-high land prices, passed a “right to farm” amendment into the constitution. Its language is eerily like the proposal in Missouri, to wit: The right of farmers and ranchers to engage in modern farming and ranching practices shall be forever guaranteed in this state. No law shall be enacted which abridges the right of farmers and ranchers to employ agricultural technology, modern livestock production and ranching practices. Again, we have the seriously vague words “modern,” “technology,” and the confusing phrase “no law shall be enacted…” So, in North Dakota, no county, township, parish, city or any governmental body will be able to pass a law or ordinance to protect themselves from chemicals, GMOs, CAFOs or any other kind of industrial farming scheme. North Dakota, one of our chief wheat-raising states, will not be able to refuse to plant untested (and untrusted) GMO wheat under this Constitutional clause. The same sort of language is being considered in Montana, another primary wheat-raising state, and in Indiana, one of the buckles on the corn belt. The Hoosier experience, summed up by Indiana’s TribStar.com, sounds just like Missouri. They say: "House Joint Resolution 5 and Senate Joint Resolution 27, identical pieces of legislation making their way through the two chambers, seek to amend the Indiana Constitution to prevent any legislative body from adopting any rules regulating farming . . . The amendment, apparently, would prevent any rules regulating large industrial agricultural businesses such as confined animal feeding operations. It would also prevent any laws that protect public health and private property rights for Hoosiers who are not farmers. Even zoning laws could be challenged." Indiana voters will decide whether to approve this amendment. Let’s see who spends the big bucks to get it passed.

ALEC: In a state near YOU!

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: A new version of Missouri SJR 22 has passed the Senate and is lumbering back to the House for another vote. With the weekend adjournment upon us, I decided to google some of the objectionable, vague language of the bill and see where it comes from. I chose “modern farming practices” which can take in anything from Confined Animal Feeding Operations to wacky new genetic alterations in seeds to robot tractors to unlimited spraying of Agent Orange on the land. I suspected that “modern farming practices” was dreamed up by Alec, the American Legislative Exchange Council, those apologists for big business opposed to individual rights. They are world-class bamboozlers. Couldn’t find “modern farming practices” in Alec’s model bills but there were a lot of interesting bits on the Alec site, where the far-right lawmakers can pick up language to introduce in their statehouses. Here’s a bit to guarantee antibiotic use in CAFOs: WHEREAS, the treatment, prevention and control of animal disease is critically important to the health and welfare of animals and the safety of the food produced; and WHEREAS, the availability of antibiotics is a critical tool for veterinarians, livestock and poultry producers to ensure animal health and the safety of the US food supply; and WHEREAS, the use of antibiotics both therapeutically and sub-therapeutically has a long history of success in improving animal health and welfare; and . . . (there are 8 more “whereas” clauses, each more misleading than the one before) . . . NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that The American Legislative Exchange Council supports the use of science based data to assess whether sub-therapeutic antibiotics cause antibiotic resistance problems. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the American Legislative Exchange Council opposes legislative or regulatory action that may result in unnecessary additional restrictions on the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture that are not based on sound science. Obviously, that resolution could guarantee full employment to a battery of lawyers for lifetime but it doesn’t help ensure public welfare at all. And that’s the point, dear reader. Tomorrow we'll look at the family tree and implications of SJR 22, which has appeared in other states besides Missouri, but that’s enough for today. April 13, 2013.

Cafo Far From The Farm

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Cafo Far From The Farm, arranged by Daria Kerridge in Columbia, was a huge success, according to friends who were able to attend. The 3-day event drew speakers from all over the United States, addressing problems like government financing of CAFOs, environmental degradation, corruption of the food supply and animal cruelty. All the events were held during my busy times—teaching and radio hosting—but I know plenty of folks who went. In fact, that’s the only complaint I’ve heard: Everyone there knew everyone else. It was the same group that shows up for all the foodie programs. My New Year’s Resolution for 2013 was to drag someone younger than myself to any presentation, lobby day, food meal, event, anything I go to. So far, the resolution has been good and I’ve had a great time with my young guests, neighbors or students. We usually go to a meal before or after and I drive so that they don’t have to buy gasoline. We talk about what we’ve seen or done, what we learned, what was good or bad about the presentation. It’s always worthwhile. If we don’t take the kids along, they can’t go. They’re so busy with school, work, dating, figuring out their futures…remember how you were at their age? They aren’t getting the same notices that we’re getting, so they don’t know about the events. And we need them to understand the food system. Every generation gets farther away from the farm, and the industrial system becomes normalized, they don’t know how to do things for themselves from raising food to foraging to cooking. They’re used to getting food wrapped in cellophane, poor dears. At the event last night, a panel discussion, John Ikerd told folks that farmers and consumers need to work together to solve the problems of industrial agriculture in the animal business. Folks who want good meat have to learn about the business and ask the farmers how they manage their animals. Farmers who want to work with the public have to listen to what they want. We can work it out, but we need to listen to each other, in an open and curious way. And that’s all for today. April 11, 2013.

Missouri lawmakers are getting a clue!

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Apparently, lawmakers are realizing how stupid it would be to change the state constitution to “forever guarantee” “modern farming practices,” and I’m getting more and more feedback about the subject. Tonight there was an anti-CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) meeting in Columbia and I’m not sure if folks there had called in to their reps, but it would have been a good opportunity to get them to complain about the fact that CAFOs are supported by policy. Young farmers can get loans to start CAFOs because the loans are guaranteed by the U.S. government. Can’t get a guarantee to start a vegetable farm or to buy equipment for a grain mill. When I got home another friend on the phone was complaining about the Missouri legislature and their new ideas about how to ensure that “modern farming practices” are “forever guaranteed” under the constitution. “Whatever they want, I’m against it,” said my friend. He was talking about HJR 7&11 and SJR 22. “Modern farming practices” are not defined in these bills. This is a major problem because these “future” practices could be anything (from corporate controlled CAFOs, to cloned animals, to robot tractors, to complete control of the seed supply…). And it's the Constitution we're talking about.

The FDA is a Sham

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Sunday always seems like a catch-up day and I had a pile of newspapers to read, going back a couple of weeks. And I had two lambs abandoned by their mom to nurse. They had kept me up all night and needed to be fed every 3-4 hours, the male taking longer than the female, like maybe an hour. So the day went like this: Warm bottle for the lambs and feed. Glance through 4 or 5 sections of newspaper, fold for recycling, take a nap, wake up and warm bottle for the lambs, and so forth. So it went along well, until I stumbled on an Op-Ed in the New York Times March 28, 2013. David A. Kessler, commissioner of the FDA from 1990 to 1997, a time of huge expansion in the Confined Animal Feeding Operation era, wrote “Antibiotics and the Meat We Eat.” Too little too late, David. You shoulda checked it out when you were in power. As he said, “It was not until 2008 . . . that Congress required companies to tell the F.D.A. the quantity of antibiotics they sold for use in agriculture . . .” Why didn’t he ask? It’s not a secret that low doses of antibiotics are fed to increase fast weight gain in meat animals. That was one of the first tricks the big corporations used. They followed it by such strategies as feeding arsenic to poultry to compromise the liver and increase blood flow, thus increasing gain. The antibiotic usage in CAFOs accounts for about 80% of all antibiotic sales nowadays and that is causing antibiotic-resistant bugs that flow into the creeks, the rivers, the ocean. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a major problem in hospitals and one doctor has told me he gets a memo every week about what drugs no longer work on what bacteria. Kessler’s last line exempts FDA, the organization that we thought was the watchdog, from responsibility, and sums the problem up: “Lawmakers must let the public know how the drugs they need to stay well are being used to produce cheaper meat.” The industrial system knows that the government system is a sham. After all, industry designed it. But, now, consumers need to demand answers.

Fabulous chickweed potato salad!

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Jerry the horse shoer called and postponed again. It’s been one thing after another. The weather. Somebody’s health. His health. He asked if it messed up my schedule to keep moving our appointment. Mess up my schedule? No way. A good horseshoer is worth his weight in gold. He can make or break a horse. Jerry saved one valuable horse we had here and the latest unhealthy one, a white pony, galloped up to the fence when I went out to feed this morning. So I guess I can say he saved one valuable one and one other. I can wait a long time for Jerry to get here, believe me. In the meantime, we had a wonderful group of college students visit the farm to tour and talk about sustainability, food sovereignty, food security, that kind of thing. The meal was perfect, and all from Missouri. Kobe beef, gnocchis, spinach salad, pasta salad with pasta from Excelsior Springs, all prepared by a chef from Broadway Brewery, potato chips from the Backers, our neighbors, and a lettuce salad harvested at the last minute by Walker from our greenhouse. Oh, yes, and I made a berry cobbler. I’ll give you the cobbler recipe during berry season. In the meantime, here’s how to make a superb chickweed salad, as prepared by fiddler Sarah. Cut into chunks, potato salad size, and boil until just softened, 1 pound potatoes. Arrange them in a layer on the bottom of a baking dish. Then, pick and break up 8 oz fresh chickweed. Finally, pour over the whole thing ½ cup of vinagrette, recipe follows. To serve, spoon up the potatoes at the bottom, the chickweed at the top, the vinagrette throughout. This is the best spring salad ever! Vinagrette: • ½ cup honey OR 1 cup sugar • 1 tablespoon ground mustard • 1 teaspoon salt • 1/2 teaspoon pepper • 1/2 cup hot water • 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar • 2 garlic cloves, halved • 1/4 cup really good olive oil In a 1-qt jar with a tight lid, combine the first five indredients. Add the next three and shake until the sugar is dissolved. Then add the oil and shake well. Store it in the refrigerator. You can use this on any green salad, but it’s amazing on chickweed and potatoes. Yield: 2 cups.

Jon Stewart v. Monsanto

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: The sustainable agriculture breakfast group was all a-twitter this morning because Jon Stewart had actually mentioned the Monsanto Protection Act rider that passed with the continuing resolution to keep the government in business, as he put it, until September. Stewart didn’t get the rider just right, confusing the issue and saying it had to do with GMO food rather than GMO crops, but for a city boy he did all right. He had a nice clip of Jon Tester trying to get Congress to pay attention and compared Congress to a farty old grandpa. You can google “The Daily Show” and play the clip. The breakfast group seemed to think it would be on-line for about a week. Truthfully, there has been a lot in the news about the riders. Not only was there the rider that gives corporations the right to plant any kind of biotech crops that they want, no matter if they’re poisonous to the environment or people, never mind the issues of cross-pollination or other dangers, but there’s one that prevents anyone from making regulations on gun purchases. One has to wonder what else is in there for the President to sign.

Missouri Senators Schafer and Munzlinger--BFFs?

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: In 2012, we had an early spring. So early that I was in the throes of the worst part of the legislative session, with my fellow citizens battling the bad policies that Missouri lawmakers can dream up. The session always begins with five or six really bad bills that need shooting down. With so much money coming from Monsanto, a Missouri corporation, it’s hardly surprising that a good many representatives and senators are in Monsanto’s genetically-altered, chemically-enhanced, robo-tractor pockets. That means, of course, that they’re working against family farmers. So this year, the spring is a little later and I was determined to enjoy the daffodils and the redbuds, but today we were back at the capitol. Family farmers from all over Missouri were in the Senate talking to Missouri senators about HJR 11 and 7 and SJR 22, Monsanto Protection Acts that will also work in favor of the giant meat packers like Tyson and Smithfield who have put farmers out of business. It was wonderful that so many of the senators are seeing the light and planning to vote against these bills that will defile our state constitution. Several of the senators, both Democrats and Republicans, can see that HJR 11 and 7 and SJR 22 take local control away from counties and townships. They see that if these bills pass, it will change our state constitution forever. A funny thing, though, and surprising how many of the senators we talked to made a link between Brian Munzlinger, a longtime supporter of Farm Bureau initiatives and Kurt Schafer, the Senator from Columbia who is a lawyer representing Smithfield, a giant pork producer that sells to Wal-Mart. Munzlinger and Shafer don’t really have much in common except their ties to big transnational corporations, one’s sharp as a tack and the other’s dumber than a hammer, but I guess they’ve been BFFs during this session because the other senators linked them together, like, “you need to go talk to Munzlinger and Schafer.” Maybe it’s because they both want to run for statewide office, I don’t know, maybe they’re cooking up some kind of teamwork initiative. With politics like this going on, who could be bored? That’s all for today. April 4, 2013.

A clear path for more GMOs

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Today, one of the leading food policy nonprofits issued a lengthy statement by Frederick Ravid, with this naive centerpiece: "First of all, you need to realize the Continuing Resolution is only a six month law. No part of this law lives beyond September 2013, no matter what it provides . . . Section 735 "Monsanto Rider" is reported by NY Daily News to have been written in concert with Mosanto by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), perhaps Monsanto’s biggest Senate contribution beneficiary. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) allowed the language to stand without consultation with the Agriculture Subcommittee, or any others, for that matter. This infamous action has been widely criticized in the strongest terms, even within the Senate." Senate Shmenate. Here’s the thing: It’s springtime. The CR gives cover to Monsanto and other planters to put any kind of wacky poisonous plant in the ground right now, grow it and harvest it in the fall. They only need six months. Then, with lots of seeds in their bins, they only need to go to USDA and whine, “but we have all this seed, and we need to plant it now. You need to approve our insanely dangerous plants or some family farmers with seed in their bins will suffer…” This is how GMO alfalfa was approved despite 200,000 objections from citizens. A USDA panel voted to approve GMO alfalfa, with a patented gene to resist Monsanto’s Roundup.That was back in February 2011. I blogged about it then and here’s what I said: “USDA chief Tom Vilsack had expressed doubts about the approval. Vilsack, an Iowa agriculturalist in his pre-Beltway life, has seen enough failure in the biotech sector to question another crop engineered to resist Roundup, the most powerful weed killer on earth. After a tank of Roundup is sprayed on a field, the alfalfa pops up green and sprightly, ready to grow without competition. But the gene has moved to weeds, so there are now ragweeds, water hemp and many other weeds that can’t be killed by this herbicide. "Vilsack, who wrote that cross-pollination poses "a significant concern for farmers who produce for non-GE markets at home and abroad," was ignored. So were the comments of 200,000 consumers that wrote against approval during the comment period. Many of these were organic consumers who realize that organic production will be under threat from the new alfalfa. A few minutes after I posted my blog about the hearing, I got an e-mail with a snippet of conversation between Kathleen Merrigan, who made the decision, and Mark McCaslin of Forage Genetics. And here’s the kicker: The approval was granted not because the doubts had been settled but because an ag industry company had a bunch of the seed in a warehouse and were afraid they were going to lose money without the approval. Land O’ Lakes, now part of Purina, had raised GMO alfalfa and harvested seed for 3 years. A federal judge had ordered them to put it in a warehouse rather than use it, since it was an illegal crop. The damning Environmental Impact Study (EIS) and the anti-GMO comments of more than 200,000 consumers--stood in the way. But Land O’ Lakes was determined. In the words of Mark McCaslin of Forage Genetics: "So based on USDA's estimate of a two-year turnaround on an EIS, rather than pay our seed growers to take out those Roundup-ready acres, we left those in. We honored those contracts. And we harvested that seed that we had paid the growers for. So that seed that was produced in 2007, 2008, 2009, according to Judge Breyer's ruling, is in storage. It has been in storage since that time. So the owners of that seed are the 350,000 farmer members of Land O' Lakes. So this -- is the Land O' Lakes cooperative made the decision to pursue Roundup ready alfalfa. We produce the seed. We own the seed, and it's stored in our warehouses." When I read that the investment of a seed company clinched the approval, I felt sad and betrayed. Washington’s in the hands of corporate agbusiness for sure. You would expect a furious outcry from every pet owner, organic consumer, and livestock raiser. The Roundup-Ready genes have never been tested on eaters, including horses, rabbits, hamsters, parakeets—anything that eats those greenish-brown pellets. But, no. Consumers are almost silent. A true measure of our national disconnect from the food system. ” That’s all for today. It’s April 1, 2013.

Green Revolution Tried to Solve Poverty

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: This morning I had the privilege of talking to a Forum, sort of a Sunday morning gathering of the Unitarians in Columbia. Some of the gatherers were emeritus professors from Mizzou that remembered the Green Revolution and Norman Borlaug with great fondness. Howard said I should have started the talk with a salute to those times because there’s no doubt that they were acting from the best parts of their hearts. They thought that by sharing American seeds and know-how with farmers all over the world they’d solve the problems of hunger and poverty. Now, of course, we know that the unexpected consequence was the unplanned change of all the crops raised around the world. Rather than solve poverty, we increased rural poverty by taking away the traditions of saving seeds that would have been free to farmers and adapted to their ecosystems. Unfortunately, I didn’t start the talk with the salute but with the U.S.D.A. statistic that Americans eat 12% more pounds of food today than in 1970. As I often say to my young friends, I hope you can solve the problems that we’ve created. When I got home another friend on the phone was complaining about the Missouri legislature and their new ideas about how to ensure that “modern farming practices” are “forever guaranteed” under the constitution. “Whatever they want, I’m against it,” said my friend. He was talking about HJR 7&11 and SJR 22. “Modern farming practices” are not defined in these bills. This is a major problem because these “future” practices could be anything (from corporate controlled CAFOs, to cloned animals, to robot tractors, to complete control of the seed supply…). Well, it’s Easter, and a bunch of neighbors were taking a trail ride but I got home too late to go along. Still, in a sidebar too long to start on, we found a home for an orphaned puppy, shepherd/lab/husky mix. So the day wasn’t a total bust.

Eat Here St. Louis

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: After so many recent failures in politics, where all they do is support the food giants, it’s great to hear a success story from the people. So here’s one about my friend Andy, who runs a business called Eat Here St. Louis. He brings high-quality fresh food from family farms to chefs in St. Louis. Andy had been working to get St. Louis University into his program for months. They had begun to get interested in local food and had even started a project in 2012 with Maplewood School system that involved the SLU culinary arts program, nutrition program and the school system. Last summer, when produce was plentiful, they were freezing fresh produce and keeping it in their freezers for the schools to use. How cool is that??? But something didn’t work out. We’re used to this in the local-foods world. The start-ups are always fragile but we keep trying. The schools couldn’t buy the produce—there might have been a grant involved or else it was a budget shortfall, I don’t know. But here’s why you need fearless people like Andy. He was able to buy a walk-in freezer from a franchise store that was going out of business. Now he’s buying the frozen food from SLU and selling it to chefs. It’s obviously better than they can get from other outlets. So, now SLU can continue their program, training their students, and they’re now even more committed to the local-foods idea. OK. So that’s the whole story and I think we’ll be hearing about more successes. Maybe we can even make it happen in Callaway and Boone Counties! Happy Spring, ya’all! March is going out like a lamb and it’s March 29, 2013.

Continuing Resolution Continues Bad Policy

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: Here in Missouri, the ice has melted and we’re waking to beautiful mornings with just a hint of crispness in the air. It feels like spring. But how can things seem so good here when they’re so bad in Washington DC? The continuing resolution passed with the Monsanto protection act in full bloom. Here’s the statement from Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food and Water Watch: Washington, D.C.—“Today, the Senate passed a continuing resolution that was laden with special interest policy riders. Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) and Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) abdicated their responsibility by offering a stale spending bill from last year that is loaded with special legislative giveaways to big agribusiness companies. The heavy-handed and undemocratic process used to force the Senate to accept a deeply flawed proposal allowed votes on only nine amendments. “The Senate was not allowed to consider two amendments offered by Senator Tester (D-Montana) that would have removed policy riders that favored the largest seed companies and the largest meatpackers. Senator Tester rightly observed that these policy riders were worth millions of dollars to these companies. “One of Senator Tester’s amendments would have removed a provision that prevents the U.S. Department of Agriculture from implementing livestock marketing and contract fairness rules that were included in the 2008 Farm Bill. Food & Water Watch and hundreds of farm groups worked to include these vital livestock provisions in the 2008 Farm Bill to protect farmers from unfair and deceptive practices by meatpacking and poultry companies. “Another of Senator Tester’s amendments would have removed a giveaway to genetically engineered seed companies that would allow the continued planting of GE crops even when a court of law has found they were approved illegally. This provision undermines USDA’s oversight of GE crops and unnecessarily interferes with the judicial review process. This favor to the biotech industry was not included in the House-passed continuing resolution and should never have been included in the Senate version. “One thing that the Senate got right was finding a solution for funding meat and poultry inspection that would avoid USDA inspector furloughs. The funding cuts triggered by sequestration would have required USDA to furlough its meat and poultry inspectors for up to two weeks this summer, causing the plants they inspect to stop operating. The House should maintain this funding for USDA meat and poultry inspection to ensure that this critical consumer protection program can continue to operate.” Here’s my statement: Business as usual for agribusiness means dinner at risk for eaters.