The Pig-headed Presidency Meets the Farm Bill

From Peter Shinn at Brownfield Network, writing last Sunday, Feb. 24:

An extension of the 2002 farm law through at least the end of 2009 is looking increasingly inevitable as negotiations on the next farm law drag on toward the March 15th expiry of the current extension of the 2002 measure. That’s the word from Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin of Iowa, who put the blame squarely upon the Bush administration for the current farm bill stalemate.

Harkin notes that the Senate version of the Farm Bill passed by 79 votes, and would have passed by 83, except "'four people were out running for President.'"

The stalemate, at least officially, is mostly over the total cost and funding sources of the bill.

Harkin added that the Bush administration’s intransigence has come despite his view that the Senate has offered repeated concessions on cost. Harkin also noted that the Senate version of the farm bill would raise revenue using methods suggested by the Bush administration itself in its current and prior budget requests. That’s why Harkin is now of the opinion that a new farm bill won’t get done during the current congressional session.

The 2002 farm bill extension is set to expire on March 15. Nancy Pelosi has said House conferees will not be appointed until the bill's financing and budget have been agreed upon.

Five days after this story was published, little appeared to have changed.

If a deal is not reached by March 15, either the 2002 farm bill will be extended again or the law will automatically revert to the Agricultural Act of 1949. The USDA and Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer don't think much of either idea, but the former is almost certainly more acceptable to them than the latter. From the USDA paper published Friday (download Word doc) regarding reversion to 1949 law:

Often described as a reversion to “permanent law,” such a result would dramatically narrow the universe of producers who receive support, and would do so in a way that most producers will view as irrational. For instance, those wheat producers who happen to have historical acreage allocations would receive dramatically increased benefits, while all other wheat producers would become ineligible.

The second part of this memorandum focuses on the effects on other programs that are administered by USDA, explaining that many conservation, energy, trade, nutrition, and other programs would be eliminated or substantially curtailed.

The threat of neither passing nor extending a farm bill by March 15 is therefore a serious bargaining chip for Congress with the administration; most suggest, however, that such an outcome is unlikely.

Symbiont

A side note on commensal relationships:

my fish, which is still miraculously fine despite requiring water of a more tropical temperature than that of my Montana apartment in winter, is being kept comfortably warm by my DSL modem.


(This is not my fish, but looks a little like her.)

Brief News & Links, 3/1/08

Seed-saving?

The Global Seed Vault was opened on February 26 in Svalbard, Norway.

Bored into the middle of a snow-topped Arctic mountain, the seed vault has as its goal the storing of every kind of seed from every collection on the planet. While the original seeds will remain in ordinary seed banks, the seed vault's stacked gray boxes will form a backup in case natural disaster or human error erase the seeds from the outside world.

Spain-based nonprofit GRAIN warns against overreliance on seed banks for conserving diversity while the world's farmers plant an increasingly uniform set of crops.

...relying solely on burying seeds in freezers is no answer. The world currently has 1,500 ex situ genebanks that are failing to save and preserve crop diversity. Thousands of accessions have died in storage, as many have been rendered useless for lack of basic information about the seeds, and countless others have lost their unique characteristics or have been genetically contaminated during periodic grow-outs. [...]

The deeper problem with the single focus on ex situ seed storage, that the Svalbard Vault reinforces, is that it is fundamentally unjust. It takes seeds of unique plant varieties away from the farmers and communities who originally created, selected, protected and shared those seeds and makes them inaccessible to them. [...] the system operates under the assumption that once the farmers' seeds enter a storage facility, they belong to someone else and negotiating intellectual property and other rights over them is the business of governments and the seed industry itself.

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Action item:

The EPA has proposed a rule change eliminating required reporting of airborne ammonia and hydrogen sulfide emissions by factory farms. While manure pit emissions can cause respiratory and nervous system effects, the EPA has apparently come to the conclusion that reporting is "not useful."

See EPA page here.

The public comment period for this rule change ends March 28 (leave a comment here). Mine:

It is appropriate for airborne toxic emissions of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, which have been shown to potentially cause respiratory and nervous system health effects, to be reported regardless of which industry is the source. Reporting of emissions is not an undue "burden on farmers," where farms are of the size likely to endanger air quality. The reporting requirements in this matter should not be eased, and doing so would be both a threat to public health and an unnecessary giveaway to factory farms, which must be held responsible for their environmental and community impacts.

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Resource:

The Cornell Small Farms Program is offering a $200 online course for beginning farmers.

If we are ever to reclaim our country's tradition of small-scale farming, we will have to find innovative ways to educate a new generation of farmers in their work. Currently, the average age of U.S. farmers is 55, and only 6% are under 35.

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Debt relief for (very) small farmers:

India's latest national budget will completely cancel the farm loan debt of all farmers with less than 2 hectares of land, at a cost of $15 billion. While some farm groups feel the land-size cut-off is too small, 80 percent of Indian farmers work less than 1 hectare of land, and the farm sector employs more than 60 percent of the labor force.

On the other hand, farmers have to have had access to credit in the first place for debt forgiveness to be helpful.

More on the Beef Recall

Conflicts of interest:

Christopher Cook writes on "Meat Roulette" in the L.A. Times, highlighting the fact that Hallmark/Westland was engaging in its abuses while supposedly operating under full USDA oversight:

Ultimately, what needs fixing goes far beyond recalling 143 million pounds of meat. We need to greatly expand the number and the role of food-safety inspectors; erect a stronger firewall between inspection and promotion, so the agency that sets line speeds and promotes productivity is not also charged with evaluating food safety; give the government full authority to require meat recalls and to identify where tainted meat has been shipped and sold; and slow the production line to enable more accurate inspection and greater care in handling the meat, which would also reduce the high worker injury rates. Finally, the extreme consolidation into a few corporate hands must be checked, to break the meat industry's stranglehold on regulatory policy.

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Lame cows:

One likely reason for the "downer" status of the cows: laminitis. "Hallmark principally slaughters "spent" dairy cows for the Westland Meat Co.," says the Humane Society of the U.S.. High-producing dairy cows (commonly treated with rBGH to increase output, then-- spent early-- slaughtered for beef) often develop this painful inflammation of the hoof lining, limiting their ability to stand or walk. (The reasons appear complex, and to be linked to inappropriate diet, other inflammations like mastitis, and environmental conditions such as concrete flooring and restricted movement, among other factors.) Some of the downed cows in the Humane Society video do appear actually injured or deformed, as opposed to merely weak or sick.

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The wrong answer:

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA, Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and, usually, proponent of progressive farm policy), says that the Westland recall justifies support for the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Harkin's premise is that, under NAIS-- which would track individual animals or lots throughout the food system-- the beef recall could have been much smaller and more targeted.

...we would have known what lot and what animals were involved in the meat and where the meat went," Harkin said. "As it was, they had to recall all of this meat because they didn't know."

Senator Harkin, with all due respect, you are sweeping aside the implications of the documented abuses. You are suggesting that we pour our resources into building the capacity to track down and eliminate the specific meat from the specific animals whose "downer" status happened to be filmed by an undercover spy for the Humane Society.

That plant was USDA-inspected, and yet the flouting of regulations appears to have been routine. How many animals entered the food chain over the weeks or years whose treatment and condition went undocumented? At how many other companies are such practices common? I suggest we use our resources to improve federal inspection and regulatory compliance on the part of the meatpackers, rather than pushing an invasive, unnecessary program that carries substantial and disproportionate burdens for small livestock farmers.

What Is Local?

Saying you're going to "eat local" is all well and good, but what counts as local? In a large, semi-arid state with few population centers, I have to figure out how widely to cast my net. No matter where you live, this matter of arriving at an appropriate definition is crucial and must vary from place to place, depending on the productivity of local land and the activity of the local economy.

My community food coop, for instance, defines their "local" product label to mean that the food is produced within 300 miles. That seems a bit far to me-- perhaps more "regional" than "local"-- but not absolutely absurd given the landscape I live in, and the fact that it's around 100-200 miles between cities here. There is at least one direction (east) in which I can drive 300 miles and still be in the same state.

View Larger Map

On the other hand, in the Northeast, where I come from originally, 300 miles would be a ridiculously long distance to consider local. Is Boston-to-Philadelphia "local"? Yet it is only a few miles farther than Bozeman-to-Miles City.

Definitions:

Here's a great post from the Wedge Natural Foods Coop in Minneapolis, struggling with the same issue. Writer Barth Anderson considers and rejects a number of problematic definitions of "local" eating, including the "100-mile diet," simply in-state, and within a day's round-trip drive, before settling on a very broad criterion: "any local food company or local grower located in Minnesota or a state bordering ours" (so that would be Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin-- and what about Manitoba and Ontario?). Note also that "local food company or local grower" includes foods that are processed locally out of ingredients that may not be local-- another problem requiring a decision.

Then Anderson goes on to remark that, for him, "Cargill is local," a troubling complication. What if you live near a Coca-Cola bottling plant? Does that count? The fact is, "local," however it is defined, only goes so far as a food ethic.

The Farm-to-Dartmouth project also notes how difficult it is to define local, but here's what they came up with for their purposes:

For many people, local food is more easily defined by what it is not than what it is. Local food, by this classification, is not mass-produced food shipped from distant regions at the expense of taste and nutrition. Often equated with greater nutritional, social, and ecological benefits, local food is simply that which is produced by farmers living in a region geographically intimate enough to be called a community. For the sake of this project, the definition of local is that approximately 80% of the food is produced in the 69 towns of the Greater Upper Valley using ingredients produced in that same area, and the remaining 20% is produced in the bi-state region of Vermont and New Hampshire.

Caveats:

The Wikipedia page on the local food movement raises more problems:

Where local food is determined by the distance it has traveled, the wholesale distribution system can confuse the calculations. Fresh food that is grown very near to where it will be purchased, may still travel hundreds of miles out of the area through the industrial system before arriving back at a local store. [...]

Often, products are grown in one area and processed in another, which may cause complications in the purchasing of local foods. In the international wine industry, much "bulk wine" is shipped to other regions or continents, to be blended with wine from other locales. It may even be marketed quite misleadingly as a product of the bottling country.

Finally, this final section of a report from the Hartman Group, a market research group that looks at underlying motives and trends in consumer behavior, should serve as a warning that big corporations are already seeking to play on our desire to “buy local.”

In the industry, there is a belief that you can only be local if you are a small and authentic brand. This isn't necessarily true; big brands can use the notion of local to their advantage as well. There are a lot of ways for a big brand to be local by having limited edition and/or seasonal products. A nutrition bar, for example, could have a nut in it that is grown in a certain area that gives it better taste perceptions.

It is important for manufacturers, marketers and retailers to understand that quality markers, such as use of local ingredients and narratives of local production and origin, are factors that resonate most strongly with consumers when it comes to determining what is authentically local.

As local continues to evolve in sophistication as a marketing concept, the ultimate success of the "buy local" message (e.g., selling more products, increased revenues, higher profit margins, improved quality image, repeat purchases, etc.) and its sustainability over time depends on any number of cultural, societal and lifestyle factors, all covered by this overarching principle: you can’t fake authenticity.

“Taste perceptions”???

More and better definitions:

Gary Paul Nabhan, whose tremendous 2001 book Coming Home to Eat detailed his own local-eating experiment (within 200 miles of his home in Flagstaff, AZ), writes in his blog post "Deepening Our Sense of What Is Local and Regional Food" that-- now that "eat local" is becoming a popular concept and catchphrase-- "It is time that we deepen our sense of what we mean by local and regional, offer others better reasons as to why these concerns matter, and steadfastly resist any pressure to endorse simplistic formulas such as a 100-mile diet or an in-state diet."

His own list of what it means to promote local eating includes:

1. Local means from a farm, ranch or fishing boat that is locally-owned and operated, using the management skills and the labor of local community members. [...]

2. A regional food is one that has been tied to the traditions of a particular landscape or seascape and its cultures for decades if not for centuries. [...] Yes it may be produced five miles from your home and thereby reduce food miles, but its seeds are not saved and adapted to local or regional conditions, they are bought from afar every year.

3. The miles a food travels (“food miles”) must be placed in the size and volume of the mode of transport, its source of fuel, and its frequency of travel. Using biodiesel in a larger truck may be more efficient, and leave less of a carbon footprint than using leaded gas in an old clunker.[...]

4. On-farm energy and water use matter. [...]

5. Other on-farm inputs matter just as much. Where are the sources of hay for livestock, compost for garden crops or nitrogen for field crops? They should be locally if not regionally-sourced. [...]

6. Fair-trade with other cultures, localities and regions is fair game. Circumvent the globalized economy for the items you truly need from other regions by establishing fair-trade exchanges. [...]

7. Invest in the foods unique to your region that cannot or should not be grown anywhere else.

Sure, some of the above are a tall order to fill. But remembering that we're choosing local foods for reasons beyond simply saving fuel is important. Nabhan's list provides a number of reasons why Cargill, no matter where you live, is not local.

So, the question remains, of course: how should I define "local"? And should I define it at all, or simply follow my instincts towards the best available choices?

I am open to suggestions.

Let the Locavory Begin

I've mentioned this to several people now. But I'd yet to make a public commitment. Here goes:

My daughter and I are “eating local” (with a couple exceptions), for a year, starting June 3 with the opening of the first of two local farmer’s markets.

In this, as many will recognize, we are inspired by Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful and immensely popular Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I also raved about here.

It’s also the case that, as my shopping habits have changed over the past few years, I have naturally increased my use of local products. The majority of my vegetables this year have come from a farm called Gallatin Valley Botanical, where I have a CSA share; I ate them fresh during the summer, and froze some for winter (I’m still eating them now, at the end of February). My bread and flour, and my milk and cream and eggs and butter, have long come from local or regional producers. I don’t buy much meat, but we have excellent local beef, buffalo, and other meats in Montana, and I try to choose grassfed products from nearby ranches. In various seasons, I can and do get local apples, dried beans, vegetable oil, honey, and other products.

But I’ve always approached food shopping with list in hand, the question of what do I need/want? having been considered ahead of time, and the choice amounting to which version to purchase (local? organic? cheapest? etc.). Because, in our American market environment (with the exception of certain “food desert” areas), everything on the list is virtually certain to be available. Years ago, when I did a lot of exotic cooking, yet thought little of seasonality or food transportation distance, I’d be flummoxed on the rare occasion when some fresh produce item demanded in a recipe was not to be found in any of my several nearby supermarkets. It was scandalous, because anomalous, when nobody happened to have lemongrass, or Belgian endive.

The real problem, as Kingsolver and others have made clear, is not that it is difficult to adequately feed oneself on mostly local products. The challenge is to change one’s mental habits so that one embraces the food available, then figures out how to best and most deliciously use it. This requires abandoning the idea, I think, pushed by many American personal-budget gurus, that meal planning must come before shopping. When endeavoring to eat locally, we need to take an approach that should come more naturally to us as a formerly foraging species: go out and gather what there is, whether from our own garden, a nearby farm, or a market. If we live in an area with a cold season, then we have to gather more than we immediately need; avoiding waste means preserving the excess, not shopping according to a rigorous plan.

After all, which gives me more joy? Buying a jar of spaghetti sauce, a bag of pasta, and a pie slice of parmesan cheese in preparation for a dinner when we will surely have spaghetti (again)? Or receiving those unsolicited boxes of tomatoes, or root vegetables, or apples, that our elderly neighbors used to leave on our doorstep, overflow from their productive back yard, and musing over “how to use them up”? Even leaving aside all questions of sustainability, the first task is simple, carefully-delineated, impersonal, and more or less the same from week to week; the second is creative, complex, invokes a neighborly relationship, and never failed to give me a feeling of abundance and satisfaction. Potatoes, carrots or apples, yes, I did always have a use for them.

I am positively looking forward to what feels almost like a luxury: instead of budgeting some precise weekly amount for food, if I find something wonderful at the farmer’s market, I will buy it. (Maybe a lot of it, because we only get fresh foods, here in Montana, from about June to October.) I will give myself leave to explore the really good stuff that’s out there, instead of always maintaining a carefully balanced larder of peanut butter and breakfast cereal and salsa and rice and frozen juice concentrate and spaghetti sauce. I will enthusiastically take my friend up on her offer of sharing her yard’s yield of apples and rhubarb and raspberries, in exchange for picking labor and some vacation garden-watering. (Fruit is a northern-climate luxury: YES, I’m interested.)

I bet I’ll eat better than I do now, though I may have to give up peanut butter (honestly, I don’t really care). I’ll be motivated for the first time to fully explore what foods are produced in my area. And you know what’ll be fun? Travelling. When I go to Austin in July, it’ll be exciting, because there will be different local foods there.

There are a few things I can’t give up. Coffee—it’ll be locally-roasted, but I have to have it. Spices and salt—but these are dry goods used in small quantities, and I don’t feel too badly about their transport. The same would probably go for things like leavening. The idea is not to suffer deprivation, but to investigate and enjoy what is available, and to relearn some more traditional ways of food use and preservation.

And, if I’m at your house, of course I’ll eat anything you serve me.

As we are living this project, I expect there will be many follow-up posts about various details.

Wolves to be delisted; How do your Congressional members stack up on environment?

Gray wolves will be removed from the Endangered Species List unless litigation from a number of environmental groups delays delisting. After reintroduction to the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem 13 years ago, wolves have had impressive success at reproducing and dispersing, winning some enemies in the process. Management of the wolves would fall to the states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, and would likely allow hunting; each state, however, has committed to maintaining its own population of 150 wolves, including at least 15 mating pairs.

While some groups (including NRDC, the Sierra Club, and Earthjustice) are disputing the decision, other environmentalists and biologists believe the gray wolf is truly an example of successful species recovery and that delisting is appropriate. The original goal was a stable Northern Rockies population of 300 wolves; current population exceeds 1500.

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If you are curious about a U.S. House or Senate member's environmental record, the League of Conservation Voters gives a quick, easy-to-use environmental scorecard.

Downer Cattle Update: Now It's Recalled

So, as you all may remember, we were supposed to feel reassured when state and local officials reminded us that Westland beef had not been recalled, despite serious concerns about sick "downer cows" having entered the food supply.

Because, if it's not recalled, it must be OK. It's when they recall it that you should be really concerned.

Tonight from the AP:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Sunday ordered the recall of 143 million pounds of frozen beef from a California slaughterhouse, the subject of an animal-abuse investigation, that provided meat to school lunch programs.

Officials said it was the largest beef recall in the United States, surpassing a 1999 ban of 35 million pounds of ready-to-eat meats. [...]

Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said his department has evidence that Westland did not routinely contact its veterinarian when cattle became non-ambulatory after passing inspection, violating health regulations.

[...]

Officials estimate that about 37 million pounds of the recalled beef went to school programs, but they believe most of the meat probably has already been eaten.