More Deliberate Every Day

Michael Pollan: Still A Believer

I know I'm supposed to be on vacation, but first thing this morning (after an extra hour of sleep!) I came across an op ed piece at the New York Times by Michael Pollan throwing down the gauntlet on the Farm Bill.  As you know, the legislation goes to the Senate floor this week for open debate, and while reform has been relatively light in this round of negotiations, there is still a chance that additional changes can be made before the omnibus bill goes to President Bush for a signature. 

In today's piece, Pollan does a great job pointing out the inherent contradictions in the legislation, and demonstrating that the constructive opportunity for change is a holistic one, not reform based on a single part of the appropriations:

We would not need all these nutrition programs if the commodity title didn’t do such a good job making junk food and fast food so ubiquitous and cheap. Food stamps are crucial, surely, but they will be spent on processed rather than real food as long as the commodity title makes calories of fat and sugar the best deal in the supermarket. We would not need all these conservation programs if the commodity title, by paying farmers by the bushel, didn’t encourage them to maximize production with agrochemicals and plant their farms with just one crop fence row to fence row.

And the government would not need to pay feedlots to clean up the water or upgrade their manure pits if subsidized grain didn’t make rearing animals on feedlots more economical than keeping them on farms. Why does the farm bill pay feedlots to install waste treatment systems rather than simply pay ranchers to keep their animals on grass, where the soil would be only too happy to treat their waste at no cost?

While I've been unimpressed by the process so far, and have in many ways given up on real change in the 2007 version of the bill, Pollan is more optimistic, looking to this "last mile" to be the saving grace of the effort. 

One sensible amendment that Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, and Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, are expected to introduce would put a $250,000 cap on the payments any one farmer can receive in a year. This would free roughly $1 billion for other purposes (like food stamps and conservation) and slow the consolidation of farms in the Midwest.

A more radical alternative proposed by Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, and Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, would scrap the current subsidy system and replace it with a form of free government revenue insurance for all American farmers and ranchers, including the ones who grow actual food. Commodity farmers would receive a payment only when their income dropped more than 15 percent as the result of bad weather or price collapse. The $20 billion saved under this plan, called the Fresh Act, would go to conservation and nutrition programs, as well as to deficit reduction.

And so, on the eve of what may well be the final days of the 2007 Farm Bill debate, I ask you again, gentle readers, to act today.  Your voice matters.

60 Minutes on Colony Collapse Disorder

Last night CBS's 60 Minutes aired a piece on Colony Collapse Disorder, or the unexplained disappearance of honey-bee colonies across the nation.  For those of you who haven't been following along on this front, beginning last fall beekeepers across the country began to lose full hives of bees to an unknown assailant.  The bees weren't dead, in fact corpses couldn't be found at all.  What was most shocking about it was that they were simply gone.

For the television piece, reporter Steve Kroft interviewed beekeeper Steve Hackenberg, who has been prominent in the discussion about CCD since it was first in the media in 2006.  Hackenberg is a Pennsylvania beekeeper who trucks his colonies all over the United States in an effort to support agricultural pollination nationwide.  Asked what he believes to be the cause of the colony collapses, he is quick to point to a change in the type of pesticides being used on crops:

"I think, basically, I think the insecticides are breakin' down the immune system," Hackenberg theorizes.

He says most beekeepers believe the culprit is a relatively new type of pesticide called "neonicotinoids," a synthetic chemical based on nicotine. They are now used almost everywhere, from cornfields to golf courses, and on anything from the front lawn to the family pet. They are thought to be much safer for humans and animals than other pesticides, yet still toxic enough to kill insects.

Research does indicate that a virus exists in the colonies that have disappeared, but scientists are not certain at this point whether the virus is a cause of an effect.  And if the virus is driving the collapse of all the hives, where are the bees?  If killed by the virus, they would most likely be near their home, as opposed to gone altogether.

In the practice of the canary in the coal mine, miners take caged canaries deep into the earth to warn of the existence of methane gas, which otherwise might not be noticeable to the workers.  If the canary dies, it is an indicator that the gas exists and the working conditions are unsafe for humans.  One theory about Colony Collapse Disorder is that the bees, stressed from being trucked all over the country, from insufficient nutrition caused by feeding on one type of plant for huge swaths of time, and front having to continually adapt to the changing pesticides they come into contact with, are simply suffering from over-taxed immune systems.  In this theory, a virus that would otherwise have no effect on them suddenly becomes deadly.  Or, considered another way, they leave the hive one morning on their daily pollination rounds and their otherwise flawless sense of direction becomes confused and they never find their way home.  If this is the case, the pace of their lives, combined with a bad diet, combined with the influence of environmental poisons, is impacting the viability of the bees.  Folks, it's impacting the viability of the humans, as well.

How many canaries in the coal mine have we witnessed dying already?  E coli poisoning?  Heart disease?  How about methacillin-resistent staphyloccocus aureus?

How bad does the error of our ways need to be before we wake up and smell the coffee?  Look for more bee colonies to collapse in the coming months -- beekeepers are crossing their fingers that it was a single-season phenomenon, but there's absolutely no scientific reason to believe that will be the case.  In the meantime, Steve Hackenberg invested substantial money to build his hives back up for the coming year, and if CCD returns, it will result in catastrophic losses to he and his family.

Not to mention rising costs and lower availability of fruits and vegetables grown here in the U.S.

Farm Bill Update: Lugar Challenged, Then Failed

The Senate Agriculture Committee made the distance today, despite the fact that Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana threw a monkey-wrench into the mix by introducing a moral, and political dilemma and threatened to shut down the imminent progress of the status quo 2007 Farm Bill. 

According to Blog for Rural America, Lugar suggested that perhaps it would be best to reduce direct payments by a relatively small percentage in order to use those funds to subsidize programs that would address the neediest beneficiaries of the legislation:  the hungry.  Whoa.  The moralizing began and suddenly, as the story is told, all bets were off.  Agreements became nullified, backroom dealings were suddenly forgotten, and the session was adjourned, at least for awhile.  While the amendment proffered by Lugar went down in a blaze of glory, it nonetheless demonstrates the tenuousness of the coalitions that make up the legislation currently marching toward victory in Washington.

Keith Good, over at Farm Policy, summarizes the proceedings yesterday as well as the editorial response to them with all due seriousness.

Over at The Ethicurean, the team points out a couple of other amendments that missed our radar but which may result in a reduction in restrictions regarding locally processed meats.  According to their commentary, it may be possible to ship state-level processed meats across state lines when the business is small (under 25 employees) and a provision was introduced that supports non-integrated processors (meaning processing facilities which do not also raise animals directly).  Both would result in locavore/carnivores having access to more sustainable possibilities.

Also, at the Rural Blog, Tim Wiseman chimes in on yesterday's festivities, including the comment "Harkin told Herszenhorn, 'Everything is a compromise. In agriculture you don’t make sharp turns, but I do try to bend the rails a bit.'"

Late breaking news, though, is that the Ag Committee is finished.  The decision to ban meatpackers who also raise livestock was left in, the gratuitous increase in corporate welfare mentioned yesterday was inserted into the language, and the committee sent it on to the full Senate.

Let the rail bending begin.

From The Inside: Small Farmers and the Rules

Happened to check the RSS reader between engagements today and noticed a reference at The Oil Drum to an article at the Washington Post concerning small farmers and their struggle with increasingly restrictive food safety rules.  Is it just me or is the safety issue completely about the mass industrialization of food?  I haven't heard of safety issues coming from small farms like I've heard an almost non-stop slew of in the last two years coming from mass producers.  The article is by Jane Black, and looks in detail at the issue:

For the past three years, no illnesses from meat or poultry in state-inspected plants have been reported. Outbreaks of food-borne illness, however, are difficult to track because most go unreported, she said.

The growing defiance from small farmers illustrates their increasing frustration with rules that they say penalize them and favor industrial producers, who were the source of headline-grabbing disease outbreaks such as the E.coli-infected spinach that killed three people last year and last month's recall of 21.7 million pounds of E.coli-infected ground beef.

"People are dying of recalled spinach," Bean said. "It's not happening here, because you know what happens when it's a small sale with interaction between farmer and customer? You're face to face. You have to be a really bad guy to screw your customer."

The article goes on to discuss the detailed legal machinations that these farmers are then forced to endure, and the defiance, in the face of unlikely immediate change to the laws, with which they face it.

Farm Bill Update: MIA

It dawned on me this morning that with all the news and reviews I've been handing off, I've seen virtually nothing this week on the Farm Bill that is supposedly moving its way through the Senate.  While I'm not looking forward to the same song-and-dance, meaningless debate I saw on C-SPAN at the end of the summer when the legislation came up for a vote in the House, I do expect it to come to the floor of the Senate, and it needs to be sooner rather than later to avoid expiring entirely.

Despite my perspective that the Farm Bill had stalled out, however, it sounds like the quiet is just a function of the process.  Grainnet reported Friday that Kate Cyrul, spokesperson for Ag Committee Chair Tom Harkin, announced that mark-up on the legislation is scheduled to begin on October 22nd, as planned.  The delay was a result of Harkin pushing back the timelines in favor of waiting until funding was clear, which required the direction of the Senate Finance Committee on a related ag tax package.  That clarification came last week.

Luckily, I'm not alone.  Brownfield reported Friday that even John Block, Secretary of Agriculture under the Reagan administration, is perplexed by the speed of the efforts.  That said, he's not concerned about getting the job done. 

"I remember the 1985 Farm Bill, when President Reagan signed it, it was about three days before Christmas, so I don’t think we need to get to apprehensive at this point,” said Block.

The question remains:  who's got an agenda in the Senate we haven't heard about yet, and what will it be?  Are we looking at a process that will take until Christmas this year?  The Senate had enough funding prior to the Finance Committee intervention to fund the Farm Bill as it was written in 2002, and the House version of the omnibus legislation is essentially a re-authorization, even if it does include a few additional provisions for food security and conservation.  The only hint of real change coming in the Senate version is a provision to provide for disaster relief.  The Billings Gazette has a nice overview this morning of the progress in the Senate and how we got where we are today.

As for the message coming to us from advocacy groups, Blog for Rural America provides some helpful hints on how you can act to support a Farm Bill that includes real reform.  The Environmental Working Group, via their blog Mulch, calls it like it is and points out that the effort to create the aforementioned dedicated disaster relief fund in the Senate version of the legislation is nothing more than a veiled attempt to funnel more cash to big ag in the states where they are already dominant.  Farm Policy, is, well, in Doha, from appearances. 

More to come as activity heats up over the next couple of weeks.

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We shared a fabulous meal last night with Slow Food Memphis friends at Interim Restaurant, where Chef Jackson Kramer, kitchen, and house staff delivered an exceptional experience.  Jackson's dedication to sourcing locally, as well as keeping his menu fresh with seasonally appropriate cuisine, makes every visit a delight.  And of course, the company was fun as well.

That same group of people, and others, will be visiting the BRIDGES Center in downtown Memphis this afternoon to volunteer time and energy in support of their efforts to "provide experiential, hands-on learning for youth and adults to be leaders in fighting racism, poverty and educational challenges."  What's the connection?  BRIDGES has a rooftop kitchen garden that needs a little TLC, so we're joining together to prepare it for the winter.  We'll plant a tree or two, weed and mulch, and enjoy a beautiful Memphis afternoon.  And, since we are Slow Food, there's sure to be a bite to eat.  Join us from 1pm to 5pm at 477 North 5th Street, bring some gardening tools and finger food, and help us support this worthy organization by getting a bit dirty and helping them grow. 

Checking In On The Farm Bill

There's been a noticeable silence lately in regards to the progress of the 2007 Farm Bill through the Senate mark-up process, so I thought it was a good time to check in.  Lo and behold, the 2002 Farm Bill expired Sunday, meaning that we are now officially in a lull between two sets of legislation.  At the end of the day, this will have little or no impact on farmers themselves, since the Senate extended the previous legislation in lieu of new language.  But it does mean that the hard work of marking up the omnibus legislation still needs to be done.

This begs the question, to me, of the level of importance being given to this key work in Washington.  While the tone of discussions, particularly public debates, has been passionate and opinionated, the actual urgency of the work appears disconnected.  The Senate, led by Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, has had a September effort in the plans since the beginning of summer.  How did they miss a whole month?  What international crisis has distracted the Senate from addressing this scheduled event?  Clinton's Global Initiative Forum?  The War in Iraq?

Surely the resignation of Mike Johanns as the Secretary of Agriculture couldn't have derailed a scheduled debate in the Senate?  And yet if you look at the calendar of events that has riddled the Farm bill since early July this is perhaps the only event that couldn't have been anticipated in Washington, at least to the outsider's eye.  According to a Washington Post article, it's unlikely to have had any impact:

Carol Tucker Foreman, a fellow in food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, said escaping tense congressional negotiations, which are unlikely to yield substantial success for the USDA or the administration, was no mistake. "If I was planning to move to Nebraska, I would think this was a good time to do it."

The version of the Farm Bill that came out of the House of Representatives is status quo through and through.  There is still some hope that a version that comes out of the Senate will address serious, needed reforms as it relates to crop subsidies and conservation.  This is critical work in our country, especially when you consider that food is one of the most primary needs we have, and the preservation of the land that produces that food is key to our long-term survival.

I urge you to contact your Senator and let them know how you feel about this Farm Bill.  It is nothing less than the driving force behind the quality and the provenance of the food that will likely be on your table over the next five years, if you live in the United States (and in many cases around the globe).  Tell your Senator you expect them to take this discussion seriously, that they need to be deeply informed about the issues, and that the American people are waiting for Washington to product a Food And Farm Bill, legislation that addresses community, rural development, organics, and conservation. 

Agribusiness has kept this legislation in their back pocket long enough -- it's time you speak out and cast a vote with your voice to end the absurdities in the Farm Bill and return it to its rightful place as the series of laws that govern the stewardship of our land and the protection of those who tend it.  Other great places to keep abreast on the blow-by-blow in the Farm Bill debate are Blog for Rural America, Farm Policy, and Mulch.

Depew on Johanns

Brian Depew finally posted a response to Mike Johanns' resignation as Secretary of Agriculture over at Blog for Rural America and, as anticipated, provided some criticism of his time of service in that office:

. . . under Secretary Johanns, the USDA did not act on recommendations from its own Payment Limitation Commission (large pdf), created by the 2002 farm bill, and the General Accounting Office call[ed] on USDA to use it[s] existing administrative authority to close a big payment limit loophole by establishing objective standards for what it means to be actively engaged in the management of a farm.

Those recommendations were delivered before Johanns became Secretary, but even as he criticized the tendency of farm programs to benefit people who don't need them, he never used his clear authority to crack down on one of the worst abuses.

Whether Johanns' (perhaps temporary, perhaps permanent) replacement, Chuck Conner, will have any positive impact on the progression of the Farm Bill through the Senate remains to be seen.  As noted by a commenter at The Ethicurean, Conner's bio points out that prior to his more recent stint in public service, he "was President of the Corn Refiners Association, Inc., a national trade association representing the corn refining industry."  Perfect fit for a Washington that's ready to wring as much fuel out of corn as possible, eh?

Whatever happens in the Senate, you can be certain that we'll keep our eyes open and our ears to the ground. 

Jennifer Chandler on Neola Farms Beef

As previously mentioned on this blog, Slow Food Memphis held an event at the Inn at Hunt Phelan in late August celebrating the beef of Neola Farms.  The Lenagar family sells their beef at the Memphis Farmers Market each week and we thought it would be a great opportunity to get to know them and their beef a little more intimately.  Also as previously mentioned, the Squirrel Squad did a great job covering the event a few days later.  This week another participant, local cookbook author and food writer Jennifer Chandler remembers the event in the Commercial Appeal:

The focus on the Slow Food dinner was using the "lesser" cuts of beef, like skirt steak, oxtail, short ribs and brisket. I can tell you that there was nothing lesser about the dishes Stephen Hassinger prepared that night at the Inn at Hunt Phelan.

Local chefs are noticing the quality and flavor of Lenagar's beef. Jackson Kramer of Interim now uses Neola Farms ground beef for his signature burger, Hassinger at the Hunt Phelan is also using the ground beef for burgers as well as Lenagar's short ribs for a braised beef ravioli, and Ben Smith of Tsunami often picks up short ribs for his farmers market platter.

"It's good to know where the beef comes from," explains Smith, "and it tastes better, is more nutritious and supports our local economy."

The event grew out of some thoughts Michael Lenagar, who represents Neola Farms each week at the market, shared with several Slow Food Memphis folks one Saturday in July.  He pointed out that while he raised an entire steer, his retail (translate:  market) customers tended to purchase primarily strips and filets.  The result was an enormous amount of beef, all prime aged product, that he was forced to ground down into hamburger.  Our goal for the "Lesser Cuts" event, then, was to highlight exactly how good these other cuts, like those Jennifer mentions in her article, can be.

Even Lenagar was astonished at what Chef Stephen Hassinger was able to do with the Neola beef.  All present were satisfied and amazed.  Michael and his wife Charline shared the story of how and why they raise beef and we sampled the steer from tail to tongue.  Chef, in his imminent talent and wisdom, exceeded our expectations with the food.

Look for more Slow Food Memphis events coming soon.  The goal is to put local producers on a pedestal, educate the community on the value of good, clean and fair food, and enjoy great meals with great people.  For more information on Slow Food visit Slow Food USA.

[Photo courtesy of Slow Food Memphis]

Matthew Drake on the Farm Bill

Matthew Blake points out in The Nation that there are a few pieces of legitimate reform in the 2007 Farm Bill passed by the House, even if the primary need for reform, crop subsidies, survived relatively status quo.  But he also notes that that there is still quite a bit of work to do before this issue is closed -- the Senate must modify the bill in such a way as to ensure it does not get a veto from the President, or all the effort to date will be for nothing.  From the article:

Subsidy reformers in Congress say they have a solution to this suddenly partisan debate. The House and Senate must agree on a farm bill to present to the President. Under the House bill only farmers making more than $1 million a year are ineligible for subsidies. Senate reformers like Dick Durbin of Illinois and Richard Lugar of Indiana want to put the cap at about $250,000, cut a few more subsidies and use the freed-up money to pay for the expanded hunger-aid programs. Wisconsin Democrat Ron Kind, who led an unsuccessful movement in the House to revamp farm subsidies, calls the House bill a "non-starter that will never be enacted into law with the tax increase." But Kind noted it was possible to achieve progressive hunger and nutrition reforms without increasing taxes by cutting payments to farmers.

Curbing subsidies, however, could be as challenging in the Senate as it was in the House. "Many members from traditional farm states, especially the South and Midwest, view reform measures as an almost existential challenge to the livelihood of their farmers," says a Senate aide. These members could include Georgia's Saxby Chambliss, the Republican leader on the Agriculture Committee, and even Harkin, who is on the fence between subsidy reform and continued payments to Iowa farmers. A House Agriculture Committee aide says that senators indebted to constituent farmers could filibuster any drastic reform. "Change will be hard because you'll need sixty votes to do anything."

Which only underscores the need for everyone to reach out to their Senator and raise concern about those sixty votes.  Since the Senate gets to potentially re-shape the Farm Bill in September before it goes to Bush, the hope for reform is not yet dead, but needs more support from the grass roots level to bloom.

This Farm Bill isn't about politics, or crop subsidies, or conservation.  Those are all smokescreens to distract the public from the root of the issue.  This Farm Bill is about food.  The quality of food available to people like you and me worldwide, the sanctity of the land upon which it is grown.  It's important that we continue to put pressure on our elected leaders to fight for good, clean and fair food.  Civilization begins at the table -- we owe it to ourselves and those who come after us to make sure the table is healthy and just.

Farm Bill Responses

Ken Cook over at Mulch has posted a long list of mainstream media responses to the 2007 Farm Bill that was passed in the House a couple of weeks back.  His question:  Has anyone seen any articles, outside of Ag trade publications, that do anything but criticize the final legislation?  Looks like the consensus is that Washington sold the possibility of reform out in the interest of Big Ag.  From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi already has made her scandalous choice with support for the subsidy-larded Farm Bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee. There's no apparent reason other than a desire to protect some of the freshman Democrats in farm states who helped the party take control of the House.

From the Oregonian:

The payments to the dead are far from the only waste and abuse in the farm bill. Last year, a Washington Post investigation of farm subsidies found more than $15 billion in wasteful or redundant spending in farm payments, including $1.3 billion to people who do not even farm.

And the New York Times:

Reducing an outrageous cap to a lower outrageous cap is not exactly our idea of reform. The $1 million limit is also five times the $200,000 cap proposed by the Bush administration, which Ms. Pelosi is constantly accusing of catering to the rich.

Let's not forget the Baltimore Sun, in an article titled "Hush Money":

The farm bill makes gestures to the reformers. Crop subsidy and conservation payments are limited to individuals with adjusted gross incomes below $1 million a year; fruit and vegetable crops would be eligible for benefits along with corn, grain and cotton; and funding for nutrition programs would grow.

But each of these gestures, much like the new bay money, seems intended primarily to quell resistance to a program that would continue to underwrite factory farms that are making record profits at the expense of family operations and the environment.

Or the Winston-Salem Journal:

It's a policy that pumps most national farm aid to a select group of farmers, leaving well more than half of all American farmers without any aid at all. And the largest 10 percent of farmers rake in more than two-thirds of all the subsidies.

And the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

The farm program has reached such absurd heights - despite repeated attempts at overhaul - that this now passes for reform: A House version of this year's farm bill imposes a means test so that farmers will not get subsidies if their gross income exceeds $1 million. That qualifies as reform because the current cap stands at $2.5 million.

I'll stop.  Cook does a much more thorough job on the site and you can read the complete extract of the articles here.  The point he, and I, are making is that nobody who is looking at the legislation in its final form actually believes there is any significant reform at play here except those individuals in whose best interest it is to act like it's reform.  And acting is all that this is:  you're in theater class, and Pelosi has been asked to method-act the reformer.  The quality of her performance has no relation to the accuracy of her role.

So onward to the Senate.  Yesterday I received the online newsletter Food Chain from Slow Food USA which points out that this story hasn't been put to print just yet:

There were a few small steps made in this version of the bill, including some money doled to farmers of specialty crops (fruits, nuts, etc.) and an expansion of the food stamp program.  To pay for these changes, the bill proposes a tax on U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, a move that might provoke a veto from President Bush.  For an in-depth explanation in the Des Moines Register, click here.

As you can see, the story isn’t over yet; it’s not too late to send a message to your Senators emphasizing the work you think still needs to be done to put your need for good, clean and fair food into the Farm Bill.  You can vote with your fork by supporting local farmers and food producers in your community and by attending local Convivium events that raise awareness about these important issues.

Which we will do.  And we will continue to keep you up-to-date on the Farm Bill, whether it be the Senate or the President's potential veto, at More Deliberate Every Day.