For too long, funding provided by the United States’ most far-reaching food and farm legislation has primarily benefited agri-business and large scale industrial-scale commodity farms that aren’t growing food. Instead, they’re growing ingredients for animal feed, fuel and highly processed food — at a high cost to our nation’s health, environment and rural communities.

Meanwhile, only meager public resources have been invested smartly to build the kind of dynamic local food economies that support agricultural diversification and help link small- and mid-sized family farms to local and regional markets.

With the 2012 Farm Bill fast upon us, Congress has an opportunity to make smart, timely changes to help fix our broken food and farm system by embracing a package of policy reforms outlined in the Local Farms, Food and Jobs bill. This legislation was recently introduced by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and is co-sponsored by 63 representatives in the House and 9 in the Senate.

The Pingree-Brown bill includes a comprehensive package of cost-effective policy reforms that would boost farmers’ and ranchers’ incomes by helping them meet the growing demand for local and regional food. The legislation also aims to make fresh, healthy and affordable food-especially fruits and vegetables- more accessible to consumers. Given our nation’s costly epidemic of diet-related disease, small investments now that increase access and affordability of healthier food will save us billions of health-related dollars down the road.

Trends show people want fresh, healthy, local food

Demand for locally grown, sustainable food is growing in every corner of the country, with more than 100,000 growers now serving more than 160,000 outlets (pdf):

In 2011, 7,175 farmers markets were open for business, more than double the number in 2002.

• An estimated 6000 Community Supported Agriculture programs are delivering food directly from the farm to consumers.
• More than 2,000 farm-to-school programs are up and running, a five-fold increase since 2004.
• More than 300 universities are involved with the Real Food Challenge and sourcing sustainable food locally.
• More than 360 hospitals have committed to sourcing more nutritious, locally grown food through the Healthy Food in Health Care pledge.
• The number of restaurants purchasing locally-grown food has skyrocketed; For the fourth year in a row, locally sourced food is the top restaurant food trend in 2012.
• More grocery stores are carrying food produced locally or from farms within the state – and labeling it for customers!

In 2008, the USDA valued this expanding market for local and regional foods at nearly $5 billion. The total will likely surpass $7 billion by the end of 2012, when the current farm bill expires.

This growth is particularly remarkable considering the tiny amounts of federal funding that have been invested in local and regional food system projects. Since 2008, funding has almost doubled but EWG estimates that still just a measly $100 million dollars of taxpayer money a year is being channeled to projects supporting increased local food production, distribution and consumption.

Compare that to roughly $12 billion in subsidies annually that go to industrial-scale growers of commodity crops who are enjoying record income year after year.

Farm Bill must help scale up local and regional food systems

While the recent expansion is impressive, local and regional food markets represented a mere two percent of gross farm sales in 2008. We desperately need the new investments and policy reforms outlined in the Pingree-Brown bill to help this burgeoning market grow and remove the many barriers farmers face in meeting existing demand from grocery stores, restaurants, schools, universities, hospitals and consumers. The Local Food bill has a $100 million a year price tag, a small sum compared to its potential benefits.

The Local Farms, Food and Jobs bill will improve our broken food system by:

• Increasing support for local aggregation, processing and distribution so that farmers can more easily sell healthy food, including locally raised and processed meat, directly to schools, hospitals, stores and restaurants.
• Enabling schools to use more of their federal food funding to buy fresh, local foods. Public schools could opt to use up to 15 percent of their school lunch commodity dollars for buying foods from local farmers and ranchers, instead of through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s nationalized commodity food program.
• Improving the diets of food stamp recipients and low-income seniors by making it easier for them to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers markets, community supported agriculture programs, and other direct food marketing services, putting more money in the pockets of local farmers and generating additional economic activity in nearby business districts.
• Diversifying and increasing the production of healthy and sustainable food by increasing funding for the Specialty Crop Block Grant program and increasing access to credit, crop insurance, and other support for organic producers, diversified operations, smaller-scale and beginning farmers.

Together, these modest but effective investments will yield important, much-needed economic benefits. Farms that sell locally through shorter supply chains often keep a higher portion of the retail dollar, increasing profitability and potential for expansion and job creation.

According to a recent USDA analysis, farmers producing for local markets generally provide 1.3 full time jobs compared to 0.9 for farmers who sell through traditional wholesale markets. And local food farmers grow higher value crops that generate greater sales per acre—$590 per acre versus $304 for the average farm. Local food markets also provide a critical pathway for new businesses, with beginning farmers accounting for 48% of local West Coast food producers.

Tough road ahead

Despite proven economic and public health benefits, getting this bill through the House agriculture committee may be challenging, given the panel’s hostility to the “Know Your Farmer” Program, the USDA’s comprehensive local and regional food initiative.

Pingree’s bill presents both a major opportunity and challenge for the highly decentralized local food and farming movement to work together in a unified, focused way to transform its considerable success at the local level into the political power needed to win support in the House and Senate agriculture committees.

With the stakes as high as they are, we believe that local farmers and the more than 180 hundred organizations that have endorsed the bill are up to the challenge.

“First do no harm,” a concept central to medical ethics, is important in an age when indicators of agricultural pesticide (including herbicide) pollution represent a serious threat to environmental sustainability.

It’s an unnecessary threat given the productivity, profitability, and environmental and health benefits of organic agriculture.

The return on pesticide-intensive agricultural practices has proved unrealized, considering billions of dollars in secondary or externalized costs — from $2.2 billion in annual pesticide poisonings, water treatment and pollination, according to two Iowa State University economists, to $10 billion, according to the research of Cornell University professor David Pimentel.

A new study extols the benefits of conventional no-till farming and the herbicide atrazine, but ignores secondary pollution, health, and production costs.

Atrazine has been shown to affect reproduction of fish at concentrations below EPA water-quality guidelines, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study.

Used with genetically engineered crops bred to be tolerant of specific herbicides, another widely used no-till herbicide — glyphosate (Roundup) — is linked to acute human health effects and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Atrazine and glyphosate-tolerant crops contribute to a cycle of increasing dependency on toxic chemicals in agriculture.

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service 2010 Agricultural Chemical Use Report finds 57 million pounds of glyphosate applied in 2009 on corn fields in surveyed states, an increase from 4.4 million pounds in 2000. Because of this, atrazine use declined.

What the chemical no-till study researchers should, but do not, ask is the question of pesticide essentiality. Organic agriculture is now a $26.7 billion industry in the U.S. and $54.9 billion worldwide. We do not need these toxic chemicals to meet our food productivity, profitability, environmental and public health goals.

A Rodale Institute study comparing organic and conventional cropping systems over a 22-year period shows equal yields for corn and soybeans, with the organic yields increasing after several years. Additionally, the study finds that 30 percent less energy is required.

Internationally, the United Nations Environment Program reports that 114 farming projects in 24 African countries using organic or near-organic practices increased yield by more than 100 percent.

Conventional no-till farming is advanced as part of a chemical approach that incorporates synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, creating a cycle of dependency as soil is depleted of its microbial life and natural mechanism for producing soil nutrients and building the soil food web, which contribute to plant health.

Organic no-till farming, though, has the benefits of conventional no-till farming and more. It minimally disturbs the soil and provides erosion control with the planting of live cover crops between rows. That eliminates toxic chemical inputs, reduces fossil fuels and synthetic petroleum-based fertilizers, builds the organic matter in the soil, increases water retention and eliminates contamination of waterways. It also protects human health and the environment, sequesters higher rates of atmospheric carbon and reduces the pressure on global climate change.

Beyond Pesticides’ pesticide-induced diseases database links pesticide exposure to asthma, autism, learning disabilities, birth defects, reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and other illnesses.

The studies signal an urgency to transition chemical-intensive agriculture to organic practices.

Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, a Washington, D.C.,-based coalition, serves on the National Organics Standards Board.

The USDA keeps a list of inorganic products that can legally go into foods labeled organic, but new board members could change things

When is “USDA Organic” not organic? More often than you probably realize. The USDA keeps a “National List” of inorganic products that can legally go into foods labeled as organic. The casings for those tasty USDA Organic sausages can come from conventionally raised animals that have been fed antibiotics. The hops in your favorite organic beer can be sprayed with all manner of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Strawberries can be labeled as organic even if they had their start in a conventional nursery.

According to USDA rules, if 95 percent of a product is made up of organic ingredients, it can be called organic. If it’s 70 percent organic, the label can read “made with organic ingredients.”

For the past several years, public interest groups such as the Cornucopia Institute have complained that the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), which has the power to determine what materials can — and cannot — be used in organic production, too often weakens regulations in the face of intense lobbying by corporations who are more interested in the higher profits conferred by the word “organic” than in strong and meaningful standards.

Clad in well-worn jeans, a denim vest over a salmon-colored turtleneck sweater, and a pair of scuffed work boots, Richardson snooped from one end of the bakery to the other.

Recently, five new members were nominated for five-year terms to the 15-member board. The Obama administration has had a schizophrenic relationship with agriculture, on one hand cozying up to the likes of Monsanto Co. by advocating for GM crops, and on the other hand winning plaudits from small farm and organic advocates for programs like Know Your Farmer Know your Food and the White House organic garden.

So I was interested to see what type of NOSB appointees were selected. Fortunately, for a firsthand look all I had to do was get in my car and drive 20 miles up the road to Shelburne Farms, where Jean Richardson, an organic inspector, was conducting the annual inspection of O Bread bakery one recent afternoon.

For the past 10 years, Richardson, whom I know personally, has worked primarily for the Vermont Organic Farmers (VOF) certifying organization, which is part of Northeastern Organic Farming Association-Vermont (NOFA-VT). That will change in January: As one of the new NOSB members, her decisions and suggestions will affect any American who grows, produces, processes, or buys organic products.

Clad in well-worn jeans, a denim vest over a salmon-colored turtleneck sweater, and a pair of scuffed work boots, Richardson, whose inspections do occasionally lead to a company or a farm losing its certification, snooped from one end of the bakery to the other, and from floor to ceiling, at times jolly, at times serious, getting down on her hands and knees to peer under counters, running her hands over cooling racks (“What do you clean these with?”), flipping over 50-pound sacks of flour, and peering into mixing machines. Regulations required her to document that every ingredient in the bread met organic standards, following a paper trail that led all the way back to the mill where it was processed and the field where it was grown. It also required her to ascertain that the bakery maintained adequate standards of cleanliness and that there was no chance that food would be contaminated by mice, moths, flies, or other pests.

O Bread’s co-owner, Carla Kevorkian, provided Richardson with a fat sheaf of certificates, invoices, and lot numbers proving that the ingredients she used met organic standards — all except for the raisins in her raisin bread. Kevorkian couldn’t find the invoice for the raisons. She had the box — clearly labeled organic — from which they had been scooped, but that wasn’t enough. Organic guidelines demanded a document with a lot number verifying that the specific raisins used in that batch of bread were organic.

“It must be at home,” Kevorkian said. “My husband’s coming in. I’ll have him bring the invoice.” Richardson smiled, showing her jolly side. “I like to find errors, Carla,” she said, then paused for a flawlessly timed beat, “It’s my raison d’être.”

In addition to being a hands-on organic inspector for the last decade, Richardson is a professor emerita of natural resources and environmental studies at the University of Vermont and an organic maple syrup producer.

“My experience in Vermont has been with small farms, and as an inspector, I work with grassroots producers,” she said, while Kevorkian telephoned her husband. “I want to be sure that the voice of the small growers and processors get heard at a national level. There are times when a regulatory template that works for a large farmer or processor simply cannot work on a small scale. We need regulations for both. And we need clear labels for the consumer to understand.”

Other newly appointed NOSB members include Harold Austin of Zirkle Fruit Co., a Washington state fruit tree grower; Carmela Beck of Driscoll’s, a California berry producer; Tracy Favre of Holistic Management International in New Mexico, a non-profit group that educates about how to manage land sustainably; and Andrea Sonnabend of the California Certified Organic Farmers.

After two and a half hours, Richardson’s inspection of O Bread was complete. Her report would go to VOF, which would make the decision on whether or not O Bread had any “non-compliances.” Richardson had little doubt that the bakery would pass muster. “This company does a good job. They leave themselves a lot of leeway,” she said.

Still, I’ll wager that next year when Richardson comes around, Kevorkian will have an invoice ready for her raisins.

Much of the pollution in U.S. rivers and streams today comes from improperly handled manure generated by CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), which confine thousands of animals on a single site.

But unlike many other industries, CAFOs do not regularly disclose facility-specific information to the EPA—and the powerful interests behind CAFOs want to keep it that way. Under a recent settlement agreement, the EPA promised a regulation that would require CAFOs nationwide to report some basic facts, such as the location of the operation and number of animals housed.

The EPA is now asking for public comments on a proposed rule to collect some of this data from the nation’s largest CAFOs. Having this information will vastly improve the agency’s ability to ensure that CAFOs comply with the Clean Water Act and do not contaminate our lakes and waterways.

Gathering this information is about simple transparency and protecting the environment, but industrial animal agriculture is fighting to keep CAFOs shrouded in secrecy. The industry is pressing the EPA to withdraw the proposal or limit its application. So please act now, and urge everyone you know to do the same.

Ask the EPA to finalize a rule that collects information from CAFOs across the country.

Comments are due by Dec. 20.

Julie Janovsky
Manager, Pew Campaign for Reforming Industrial Animal Agriculture

Food Safety News
by Michele Simon, Opinion

For years now, I have been hearing about the food industry’s influence on the annual conference of the American Dietetic Association — the nation’s largest gathering of nutrition professionals–with some 7,000 registered dietitians in attendance. Last month, I witnessed it for myself and discovered the corporate takeover by Big Food was worse than I even imagined.

The top-paying sponsors, whom ADA called “partners,” were Coca-Cola, Aramark, the National Dairy Council, and Hershey (their “Center for Health and Nutrition” – really). “Premier sponsors” included PepsiCo, Mars, and General Mills.

The exhibit hall seemed more like a processed food trade show than a nutrition conference. I saw very few booths with actual information, apart from that being peddled by the likes of Nestle, Kraft, and McDonald’s, along with (of course), ubiquitous product samples, tastings, and myriad swag. (Oddly, Monsanto’s booth featured its branded, soy-based lip balm.)

But the worst cooptation came during the “educational sessions,” which should have been off limits to marketing. Numerous panels were hosted by industry players, including, “Dairy Innovations,” brought to you by (surprise!) the National Dairy Council, which also hosted a media-only session, as did others.

“Culinary” demos were offered by cooking experts such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Hershey, and McNeil (maker of the fake sugar, Splenda). For attending several “Expo Impact Sessions,” described by ADA as “scientific and evidenced-based,” RDs could even earn continuing educational units. Who better to teach, “Are Sugars Toxic: What’s Wrong with Current Research?” than the Corn Refiners Association? I attended a silly session called “Snacking and the 2010 Dietary Guidelines” brought to me by the largest snacking experts in the nation, Frito-Lay, who also had a huge booth touting their deceptively-labeled “natural” products, nearby the monstrous booth hosted by parent company PepsiCo.

But while all this was obvious industry spin, several sessions had backers harder to identify because of the stealth names, lack of transparency, and impressive backgrounds of the presenters. Enter the International Food and Information Council. Certainly sounds legit. But if anything sets off my BS detector it’s the word “council.” It’s often used by corporate front groups to magically transform public relations into credible science.

A closer look reveals IFIC’s true agenda. On its board of trustees sits representatives from PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, and General Mills, while funders include the likes of Coca-Cola, Hershey, McDonald’s, Nestle, and Monsanto. (Funny how this list sounds remarkably similar to ADA’s sponsors.)

IFIC’s mission is “to effectively communicate science-based information about health, nutrition and food safety for the public good.” Heartwarming. Under “Food Safety Resources” IFIC communicates about such sticky issues as arsenic in food and “The Science of Bisphenol A.” For the public good of course.

What sort of science-based information was IFIC communicating to 7,000 nutrition professionals at the ADA meeting? The session, “A Fresh Look at Processed Foods” promised to “share new research on how processed foods contribute to key nutrition needs.” Sounds a tad defensive.

Another panel asked, “How Risky is Our Food? Clarifying the Controversies of Chemical Risks.” Who exactly is attempting to clarify the controversy? While the session was not listed in the program as being organized by IFIC, the moderator, Marianne Smith Edge, is the group’s senior vice president of nutrition and food safety. At no time during her remarks did she disclose IFIC’s corporate funding, although ADA rules require speakers to disclose any conflicts of interest. The two panelists were Julie Miller Jones and Carl Winter, both academic researchers, apparently hand-picked by IFIC for their industry-friendly positions. And indeed, each speaker downplayed any risks of chemicals in food such as pesticides, food dyes, and other additives, while practically making fun of organic production.

Jones lamented about organics being too expensive and offered tired arguments about how risks are everywhere, so really, why worry? She also claimed people automatically fear something because it is artificial. But Andy Bellatti, an RD in attendance told me he found this “rather insulting; she’s trying to argue we have no capacity for rational thought. The concern with artificial ingredients is over studies showing harmful effects.”

But the lowlight of the session came when Carl Winter launched into a lengthy attack on the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen, an annual list of the 12 fruits and vegetables most contaminated with pesticides. Winter claimed the list wasn’t backed by science, resorting to outright mockery at times. This was the same theme Winter struck in his “Expert Perspective” for IFIC this summer. His core argument is that EWG only considers pesticide residue and not actual exposure, which he argues, causes “negligible risks to consumers.”

Now reasonable people can disagree on this point and I am no expert in pesticides, but most troubling was how the audience only got to hear one side of the story. Why wasn’t anyone from EWG invited to participate to defend their scientific analysis?

During the Q&A, several frustrated attendees challenged the presenters–the only time the audience heard any opposing viewpoint. Several who spoke up are members of the Hunger and Environmental Nutrition Dietary Practice Group, which represents a growing number of RDs who are challenging ADA’s corporate ties and making inroads, slowly but surely. (I recently became a “friend of HEN” to support this brave group of professionals challenging the status quo.)

I asked the moderator why IFIC had organized such a one-sided panel and complained that as a writer for Food Safety News, I was unable to cover the session in an intelligent way given the biased information. IFIC denied any such bias and defended its selection of presenters. Afterwards, an IFIC rep approached me to offer to put together a more balanced panel at next year’s event. I am still waiting for the follow-up phone call.

But the corporate-funded, pro-pesticide spin didn’t end there. A few of us took to Twitter during the session, which in turn inspired a hit piece on Forbes.com called, “Cleaning up the EWG’s Dirty Dozen,” co-authored by Henry Miller and Jeff Stier. Both have ties to the American Council on Science and Health, (there’s that “council” moniker again) a notorious industry front group that has attacked the likes of Marion Nestle. Miller is currently a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, right-wing / libertarian think tanks that favor deregulation, both heavily funded by corporate interests.

Here’s how the Forbes article describes what happened at ADA, although neither author was actually in attendance:

Winter presented his report at the American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo this week. The food police on hand were outraged with his findings, but the best they could muster were ad hominem attacks on Dr. Winter and IFIC, such as, “Google Carl Winter and industry front group IFIC and you will understand.” In fact, EWG’s Senior Communications and Policy Advisor, Don Carr took to Twitter to call IFIC “industry goons.” So much for scientific debate.

OK, so the Google suggestion was mine and I’ve been called the food police before. But scientific debate? That was sorely lacking at the event itself, as Don Carr noted in his comment in response to the article:

EWG was not invited to the American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo nor were we even alerted that our Shopper’s Guide would be the topic of discussion at the event sponsored by an industry front group. We welcome any opportunity for an honest, open and transparent discussion about pesticides and our consumer guide – but that was not afforded to us.

Indeed how about a lively debate on whether chemicals in food are dangerous? That would have far more interesting and useful for the audience. But industry front groups are not interested in debating. IFIC only wants to present the spin that supports its funders’ economic interests, which is entirely understandable. But how can the American Dietetic Association allow such powerful economic interests to completely control the message its members hear?

Between the junk-food dominated expo and the industry-friendly educational sessions, the American Dietetic Association conference is yet another disturbing example of Big Food’s co-optation of the nation’s health professionals.

Michele Simon is a public health lawyer specializing in industry marketing and lobbying tactics. She is the author of “Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back” and president of Eat Drink Politics, a consulting firm.

We are in a food emergency. Speculation and diversion of food to biofuel has contributed to an uncontrolled price rise, adding more to the billion already denied their right to food. Industrial agriculture is pushing species to extinction through the use of toxic chemicals that kill our bees and butterflies, our earthworms and soil organisms that create soil fertility. Plant and animal varieties are disappearing as monocultures displace biodiversity. Industrial, globalized agriculture is responsible for 40 percent of greenhouse gases, which then destabilize agriculture by causing climate chaos, creating new threats to food security.

But the biggest threat we face is the control of seed and food moving out of the hands of farmers and communities and into a few corporate hands. Monopoly control of cottonseed and the introduction of genetically engineered Bt cotton has already given rise to an epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India. A quarter-million farmers have taken their lives because of debt induced by the high costs of nonrenewable seed, which spins billions of dollars of royalty for firms like Monsanto.

I started Navdanya in 1987 to address the challenge of GM seeds, seed patents and seed monopolies.

We have been successful in reclaiming seed sovereignty and creating sixty community seed banks to reclaim seed as a commons. We have proven that biodiverse ecological agriculture produces more food and nutrition per acre than monocultures, while reducing costs to the planet and to farmers.

But our efforts are like a little lamp in a very dark room. We keep the lamp of possibilities and alternatives burning. The food emergency, however, calls for a much wider response.

The food movement must become more integrated, from seed to table, from village to city, from South to North. We need to be stronger in challenging the corporate control of our food system and the role of governments in increasing, rather than stopping, the corporate abuse of our seeds and soils, our bodies and our health. Michelle Obama has an organic garden at the White House, but the Obama administration is embracing GMOs in the United States and around the world. The US-India agriculture agreement—signed by President Bush and Prime Minister Singh in 2005, at the same time as the signing of the US-India nuclear deal—has on its board representatives from Monsanto, ADM and Walmart. The hijacking of our food systems is the hijacking of our democracy.

That is why we have to make food democracy the core of the defense of our freedom and survival. We will either have food dictatorship for a while and then a collapse of our food systems and our societies, or we will succeed in building robust food democracies, resting on resilient ecosystems and resilient communities. There is still a chance for the second alternative.

This piece is one in a series of replies in the Nation to Frances Moore Lappé’s essay [1] on the food movement today.

Read the other responses in the forum:
Raj Patel, “Why Hunger Is Still With Us [2]”
Eric Schlosser, “It’s Not Just About Food [3]”
Michael Pollan, “How Change Is Going to Come in the Food System [3]”

Links:
[1] http://www.thenation.com/../../../../../../../article/163403/food-movement-its-power-and-possibilities
[2] http://www.thenation.com/article/163402/why-hunger-is-still-with-us
[3] http://www.thenation.com/article/163400/its-not-just-about-food

As you’re probably aware of by now, there’s a war being waged against raw milk. It’s nothing less than an unconstitutional assault on one of your most basic rights, i.e. your right to choose what you want to eat and drink, and one of the excuses used to defend the violent persecution of those who dare sell this healthful food is that unpasteurized (raw) milk endangers human health.

But is raw milk really a major source of foodborne illness?

NOT according to the US government’s own data!

Food safety chief and former Monsanto lawyer Michael Taylor has defended the FDA’s gun-toting tactics against raw milk producers, calling the campaign “a public health duty.” Furthermore, the new Food Safety Modernization Act, which was enacted earlier this year, grants the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) extraordinary new powers to detain any food the agency suspects to be unsafe, whether there are good grounds for suspicion or not. Taylor himself has stated that the new agency focus will be on preventing food poisoning outbreaks rather than responding to them after the fact.

Government Data Proves Safety of Raw Milk

Research by Dr. Ted Beals, MD, featured in the summer 2011 issue of Wise Traditions, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, shows that you are about 35,000 times more likely to get sick from other foods than you are from raw milk! Statistically, you’re also more likely to get injured driving to the farm to pick up your raw milk than becoming ill from drinking it.

Dr. Beals’ research shows that between 1999 and 2010, there was an average of 42 cases of illness per year attributed to raw milk, and that includes both “confirmed” and “presumed” cases.

The Weston A. Price Foundation writes:

“At last we have access to the numbers we need to determine the risk of consuming raw milk on a per-person basis”… The key figure that permits a calculation of raw milk illnesses on a per-person basis comes from a 2007 Centers for Disease Control (CDC) FoodNet survey, which found that 3.04 percent of the population consumes raw milk, or about 9.4 million people, based on the 2010 census. This number may in fact be larger in 2011 as raw milk is growing in popularity.  For example, sales of raw milk increased 25 percent in California in 2010, while sales of pasteurized milk declined 3 percent.”

In his report, Dr. Beals writes:

“From the perspective of a national public health professional looking at an estimated total of 48 million foodborne illnesses each year [from all foods]… there is no rational justification to focus national attention on raw milk, which may be associated with an average of 42 illnesses maximum among the more than nine million people (about 0.0005 percent) who have chosen to drink milk in its fresh unprocessed form.

… Consumption of any food has some risk of illness or adverse reaction. And the consequence of basing public policy on horrific personal experiences is that all foods will ultimately be banned, and we will not be able to participate in any activity.”

If this isn’t food for thought, I don’t know what is. These statistics are the smoking gun proving that the war on raw milk cannot be based on food safety or protecting your health from an even remotely real threat…

The Differences Between Raw Milk and Pasteurized Milk

The FDA would have you believe pasteurization of milk protects you from deadly pathogens contained in raw milk. The fact is however, that if cows are raised as nature intended (free-range and grass-fed), there is no need to process the milk these healthy animals produce.

However, cows raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are NOT raised in a manner that makes their milk suitable for drinking raw.

CAFO cows are typically raised on high-protein, soy-based feeds instead of fresh green grass, and instead of free range grazing, they stand in cramped, manure-covered feed lots all day. These conditions are perfect for the proliferation of disease, and yes, this milk MUST be pasteurized in order for it to be safe to drink. These cows also need antibiotics to keep them well, and some are also given genetically modified growth hormones (rBGH) to increase milk production. Needless to say, these hormones and antibiotics also wind up in the milk.

Aside from the manner in which the cows are raised, which significantly alters the milk they produce to begin with, pasteurization has its own problems as it:

• Transforms the physical structure of the milk proteins and alters the shape of the amino acid configuration into a collection of proteins that is now non-functional and in a shape that can be highly allergenic.
• Destroys the friendly bacteria found naturally in milk and drastically reduces the micronutrient and vitamin content.
• Encourages the growth of harmful bacteria, and turns milk’s naturally occurring sugar (lactose) into beta-lactose. Beta-lactose is rapidly absorbed in the human body, with the result that hunger can return quickly after a glass of milk – especially in children.
• Makes insoluble most of the calcium found in raw milk, which can lead to a host of health problems in children, among them rickets and bad teeth.
• Destroys about 20 percent of the iodine available in raw milk, which can cause constipation.
• When pasteurized milk is also homogenized, a substance known as xanthine oxidase is created. This compound can play a role in oxidative stress by acting as a free radical in your body.

Raw milk from clean, healthy, grass-fed cows bears NO comparison to pasteurized CAFO milk. It’s full of nutrients that your body thrives on, including:

• Healthy beneficial bacteria
• Valuable enzymes, such as phosphatase, which aids the absorption of calcium in your bones, and lipase enzyme, which helps to hydrolyze and absorb fats
• Natural butterfat, without which your body cannot effectively utilize the vitamins and minerals in the milk. It’s also your best source of preformed vitamin A, and contains re-arranged acids with strong anti-carcinogenic properties.
• Cancer-fighting conjugated linoleic acid (CLA)
• Healthy unoxidized cholesterol
• High omega-3 and low omega-6 ratios, which is the beneficial ratio between these two essential fats

Buying Raw Milk Straight from the Farm

It’s not uncommon for people who drink raw milk to report improvement or disappearance of troubling health issues – everything from allergies to digestive troubles to skin problems like eczema. However, it’s important to understand that the milk you drink will only be as healthy as the cow that produced it. So make sure to source your raw milk from a clean, well-run farm that gives its cows access to pasture.

To locate a local farm or raw milk source near you, visit RealMilk.com. If you’re thinking about purchasing milk from a small farmer, it would be wise to visit the farm in person. Look around and ask questions, such as:

1. Does the farmer and his family drink the milk themselves?
2. How long has he been producing raw milk?
3. Are the cows clean?
4. What conditions are the cows raised in?
5. Are there any obvious sanitation questions?

If a cow is covered in filth and manure and stinks, and is wet and cold and doesn’t look particularly comfortable, that could be a warning sign that her milk is less than ideal for raw consumption. Also keep in mind that fresh grasses for foraging will not be available year-round in many areas of the US, so it’s also important to take a look at what the cows are being fed during winter months. According to Mark McAfee (founder of Organic Pastures, one of the largest producers of raw milk in the United States and one of the leaders in this industry), acceptable winter feed includes:

• Dried (organic) alfalfa
• Timothy grass, and
• Other cut pasture or forage that has been dried

Raw Milk Safety Standards Often EXCEED Those of Pasteurized Milk

The dairy cows used to produce most of the pasteurized dairy sold in the United States are raised in deplorable conditions, which is why the milk has to be pasteurized in order to make it safe for human consumption. But high-quality raw dairy farmers march to an entirely different drummer. California, specifically, (where raw milk is legal) has its own special set of standards for raw milk for human consumption, in which farmers must meet or exceed pasteurized milk standards, without pasteurizing.

The conventional dairy industry, realizing that increasing numbers of consumers are recognizing the safety and health benefits of raw milk, are now redoubling their efforts to make sure that raw milk sales cannot expand. If raw dairy really caught on, you might think that the dairy industry would simply follow suit and begin producing raw products to meet the demand. But this would be virtually impossible with the way their overcrowded farms are run. Their business depends on pasteurization, and that is why their powerful lobbyists will stop at nothing to persuade government agencies to keep raw milk bans in full force.

And this is why you keep seeing armed raids taking place on farms and organic co-ops.

One such case is that of Amish Farmer Dan Allgyer, who was caught in an FDA sting operation earlier this summer, after the FDA planted a spy in local buying club he supplies with raw milk. His farm was raided at gun point, and the Department of Justice, at the behest of the FDA, filed suit in Federal District Court to obtain an injunction prohibiting him from transporting and selling raw milk across state lines.

Are You Ready to Stand Up and Protect Food Freedom?

Allgyer’s case caught the attention of Congressman Ron Paul (TX), who in response introduced House Bill HR 1830: To authorize the interstate traffic of unpasteurized milk and milk products that are packaged for direct human consumption.

While the fight currently revolves around farmer’s rights to sell and transport raw milk across state lines, the FDA claims to have the power to restrict your access to any kind of food it deems harmful, because you have no fundamental right to obtain and eat any particular food whatsoever! It’s also been insinuated that consumers crossing state lines to obtain raw milk may be charged with committing a crime…

So please understand that this issue has the potential to go far beyond raw milk. Now is the time to put on the breaks, before it goes any further, because there’s no telling what food the FDA might target next.

The Farm-to-Consumer Defense Fund has created a petition page for HR 1830 that also automatically faxes your message to your US Senators and House Representative. You can even choose to send your message to your nearest daily newspaper. I urge you to take a moment to sign the petition to support HR 1830 right now!

You might also consider getting involved with organizations like the Weston A. Price Foundation and the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund who are working toward true freedom of choice for American consumers.

Oxfam America
Jim French is a farmer from Partridge, KS who also works on agriculture policy for Oxfam America

The telephone rang at 6:30am. It was my wife, “We had twenty four hundredths of rain last night.” I savored every word as if they were drops slowly soaking into parched earth.

The extreme drought has taken its toll on the region’s agriculture.The winter wheat harvest was lessened by thirty to sixty percent. Rain fed corn has mostly been abandoned or cut for feed. Rangeland grass has long stopped growing.

And yet in the midst of this severe drought, one doesn’t see mass migrations of rural folks.

Why? Since the depression there has been long-term government investment in programs that ensure agricultural resiliency through resource conservation and insurance. Like most farmers who suffered crop losses in June, my crop insurance helped compensate for the loss of income. Moreover, land grant research and extension services have helped spread better farming practices, which have prevented some of the worst consequences of drought.

In short, the US agriculture system is prepared to manage extreme situations, allowing us to avoid the type of mass migrations that destabilize governments and lead to famines elsewhere in the world.

This is not the case in East Africa where another historic drought is taking place. Thousands of Somalis have crossed into refugee camps in Kenya – a country that is also suffering from lack of rainfall. Officially declared a famine by the UN, at least 12 million people are at risk and many are dying each day from hunger. Because of the drought and failed infrastructure, over 135,000 people have fled Somalia into neighboring countries, creating new stresses for governments and exacerbating conflicts.

We know there must be an immediate response. The UN estimates that $2.1 billion is needed to stave off a major humanitarian catastrophe. However, in places where chronic drought or the other extremes of climate can have a major impact on food security, there must be longer range investments to build local capacity and economic opportunity to prevent future crises.

Most of those displaced by drought rely on agriculture and food production to earn a living. But official development assistance for agriculture dropped 75 percent during the last three decades. Faltering public investments in developing country agriculture is undoubtedly an underlying cause of the current crisis and has undermined long term food security in many poor countries.

In the last two years, the US has made commitments on the global stage for investments that would help developing nations build resilience to these extremes and improve food security and self-reliance through small holder agriculture. These commitments would be less than what we now pay in wasteful farm subsidies and tax breaks for oil refiners to blend ethanol – spending that contributes little or nothing to US agricultural resiliency. And they will create powerful savings in the level of food aid that is needed and will help prevent the mounting national security costs that humanitarian crises create.

Whether in the US, Africa, or in any agricultural region, farmers will face uncertainty. The future will certainly hold greater risks as climate change increases, markets become more volatile, and resources more constrained. Planning for that future and investing in resiliency means a more secure world and a place where hope for rain is not a matter of life or death.

Note: Oxfam aims to reach 3 million people with a variety of support, including food aid, clean water, and veterinary care for animals. We are drilling and repairing wells and distributing fuel vouchers to ensure that pumps on the wells can keep operating—even if people have no money. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.

By 2050, the world will have to feed 9 billion people, adapt to climate change, reduce agricultural pollution and protect fresh water supplies – all at the same time. Given that formidable challenge, what are the quickest, most cost-effective ways to develop more productive, drought-, flood- and pest-resistant crops?

Some will claim that genetically engineered, or GE, crops are the solution. But when compared side-by-side, classical plant breeding bests genetic engineering. Coupled with ecologically based management methods that reduce the environmental harm of crop production, classical breeding could go a long way toward producing the food we will need by mid-century.

Producing better crops faster certainly would help the world feed itself, but genetic engineering has no advantage on that score. Not only can classical breeding programs introduce new varieties about as fast as genetic engineering, technical improvements are making classical practices even faster.

Early steps in the genetic engineering process avoid the multiple rounds of cross-breeding inherent in classical plant breeding by directly inserting engineered genes into the crop. But seed companies then use classical breeding to transfer engineered genes to the crop’s numerous varieties for different markets and climates – and that takes time. And just as in classical breeding, new engineered varieties must be tested in the field for several years to ensure they perform as expected.

Second, GE crops are significantly more expensive to develop. Industry estimates of the cost of developing a single GE trait are in excess of $100 million. By contrast, a classical breeding program for similar traits typically costs about $1 million. Most of the cost differential is attributable to GE crops’ research and development requirements, which include DNA synthesizers and sequencers and other expensive equipment, in addition to classical breeding facilities.

Genetic engineering might be worth the extra cost if classical breeding were unable to impart such desirable traits as drought-, flood- and pest-resistance, and fertilizer efficiency. But in case after case, classical breeding is delivering the goods.

Plant breeders have already produced drought-tolerant varieties of sorghum, corn, rice, cassava and pearl millet – all critical for poor farmers in developing countries. Genetic engineering, meanwhile, has yet to commercialize its first drought-tolerant crop varieties.

Scientists using classical breeding enhanced with genomic information – a process called marker-assisted breeding – also have produced rice varieties that can tolerate flooding. These varieties, now cultivated in the Philippines, Bangladesh and India, are expected to increase food security for 70 million of the world’s poorest people.

Classical breeders likewise have developed papaya resistant to ringspot virus and corn that can fend off destructive rootworms – traits previously touted as requiring genetic engineering. And in Uganda, scientists have successfully bred sweet potatoes to resist virus diseases, while a multimillion-dollar, multi-year project in Kenya to genetically engineer similar virus resistance failed.

Finally, classical breeding and better farm management are responsible for all the yield increases for soybeans and most of the yield increases for corn in the United States. Recent yield increases are often erroneously attributed to genetic engineering, but data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and academic scientists show that even during the past 15 years that GE crops have been commercialized, classical breeding and crop management improvements contributed the large majority of the increases, not the newly inserted genes.

So if the conventional wisdom is wrong, and classical breeding is superior, what does that mean for public policy?

Federal and state governments should dramatically increase their support for tried-and-true, cost-effective classical breeding technology – including better funding for breeding programs at public universities and nonprofit institutes where breeders can work with farmers to develop a wider range of farmer-ready crop varieties. Big biotech companies do not focus on small-acreage crops, which include most fruits and vegetables. Nor do they market many classically improved varieties without including their patented engineered traits, which doesn’t help farmers who don’t want to pay the high prices biotech companies charge for them.

We are not suggesting that genetic engineering has no role to play in developing improved crops. But its modest contributions come with an extremely high price tag. If we are going to meet the challenges of feeding a growing population and protecting the environment, the scientific evidence says we place our bets on technology that works – classical breeding.

Margaret Mellon is the director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Food and Environment Program. Doug Gurian-Sherman is a senior scientist in the program.

Yes! Magazine
by Frederick Kirschenmann

I learned the important lessons about water very early in my life. My father and mother began their life on our family farm in North Dakota in 1930. Their years as beginning farmers were thus spent in the midst of the Dust Bowl. My father understood intuitively that the devastation was not solely about the lack of water; it also was about the way land was farmed. The weather, including the scarcity of rainfall, was the immediate cause of the Dust Bowl, but the farming methods of that era had left the land vulnerable to incredible soil loss. As a result my father became a radical conservationist, and from the time I was five years old I can remember him admonishing me to “take care of the land.” As far as he was concerned, that was the most important moral duty imposed on any farmer—not only for the sake of the land, but also for the economic survival of the farmer.

Consequently, water has never been an isolated “thing” for me. I understood from my father’s tutelage that water was only one part of a complex web of living relationships that included, among other things, soil, climate, biodiversity, and husbandry. He understood ecology before most people had heard the word.

No Separate Parts

Although the science of ecology has been evolving for decades, it has barely begun to influence agriculture in the 21st century. We still manage farms as if all of their parts, including water, are separate entities. However, that method of farming is becoming increasingly dysfunctional, and the philosophy that informs it is being questioned more rigorously.

Cultural historian Morris Berman points out that since the dawn of the scientific revolution we have gradually adopted a “mechanical philosophy” that “insists on a rigid distinction between observer and observed” and assumes that our personal well-being is contingent upon acquiring personal wealth through the exploitation of natural resources.

Our attempt to isolate the welfare of the human species from the health of the rest of the biotic community is a direct outgrowth of this worldview. And perceiving water as if it were a separate entity, a thing, a commodity, is part and parcel of this same compartmentalized scientific culture.

But we now know that nature is not a collection of objects. It is not a machine. We are not the end point of evolution. And we are not, as environmentalist Aldo Leopold reminded us, “conquerors” of the land community, we are simply “plain members and citizens of it.”

The water issues we are facing are tightly coupled to a complex, interconnected set of relationships. We are unlikely to solve our water problems without addressing comprehensive ecological health.

One of the reasons that we are using such large quantities of water for irrigation is that we have not paid attention to the biological health of our soils. Soil is not a thing, but a dynamic web of relationships with billions of microorganisms at the base of soil life. Industrial agriculture treats soil as if it were nothing more than a material to hold plants in place while we insert the synthetic nutrients plants require.

Rebuilding My Home Soil

In 1976, after my father had a mild heart attack, I decided to leave academic life and return to manage our family farm operation. This provided me with the opportunity to explore alternatives to industrial agriculture.

Being on the farm with full management responsibilities for the first time gave me the opportunity to explore theoretical questions I had: Were there ways to manage soil so it would absorb and retain more moisture to sustain crops during drought periods? Could I design a farming system with sufficient diversity to increase its resilience? Or one that was less energy intensive? Was it possible to create a farming system that was more self-renewing and self-regulating?

There was some immediate repair work to do. In addition to his passion for taking care of the land, my father was a progressive farmer, and he had always been interested in exploring technical innovations. When synthetic fertilizers first became available in our community in the early 1940s, my father was intrigued. He was deeply interested in increasing his wheat yields, and this seemed like an efficient way to do so.

But he also was concerned about the effect such inputs might have on his land and checked with our county extension agent and with other farmers whose judgment he respected. Everyone assured him that synthetic fertilizers would not have a negative impact on the health of his land. Based on those assurances, my father became the first farmer in our township to use synthetic fertilizers. The results were spectacular.

With this new technology he could plant wheat in successive years or grow it on simple rotations. And since wheat was the best possible cash crop in our part of the world, it simply made practical sense to raise more wheat and abandon other crops.

Replacing complex rotations with monocultures increased weed pressure. The more often we planted a cool-season crop like wheat, the more often cool-season weeds would produce seeds. So my father had to begin applying herbicides for weed control. By the time I returned to manage the farm, it was a fairly specialized wheat and sunflower monoculture farm operated in accordance with typical industrial farming practices—and the quality of our soil was significantly impaired.

We rarely saw an earthworm. Organic matter had declined, and the physical character of the soil had deteriorated. Soil granules had broken down, and there was little pore space in the soil. The soils on our farm were absorbing and retaining much less moisture from our limited rainfall. We were more vulnerable to droughts.

I remembered that almost 10 years earlier I had met a student who had served as a research assistant to an extension specialist at the University of Nebraska. The extension specialist had designed a research project to determine the effects of organic management on soil quality. The student shared some of the results: The soil in organic fields became more porous, its organic matter increased, and earthworms were present in greater abundance. Inspired by those results and the information I gleaned from soil-science classics of the first half of the 20th century, I decided to convert our farm to an organic operation.

Making such a transition in the 1970s was challenging. There were no mentors to call on for advice, and there were very few farmers in our part of the world with any experience in making such a transition. I learned how to make compost from Bob Steffen, a farmer in Nebraska. David Vetter, my former student, helped me think through crop rotation strategies. I made plenty of mistakes. But eventually, I devised a crop rotation that helped us control weeds, recycle nutrients, reduce disease, and find a niche for our crops in an emerging organic market. We began to see the quality of our soils improve.

By 1988, when we experienced one of the severest droughts on record in North Dakota, our soils were able to absorb and retain enough moisture to sustain our crops. Our fields managed to produce a 17-bushel-an-acre average yield while conventional fields around us dried up, yielding no harvest at all.

Farming in a Changed World

Despite those results, our farm, in my judgment, is still far from “sustainable,” given the challenges that we are likely to see in the decades ahead.

As I see it, the key challenges we will face are to continue producing an adequate amount of healthful, nutritious food for a growing population in the face of disappearing fossil fuels, fossil water (the legacy of ice-age melting contained in our great aquifers), declining biodiversity and genetic diversity, and more unstable climates. In an effort to anticipate these challenges on our own farm in North Dakota I have tried to frame the daunting task before us into a self-evident question: Let’s assume that 10 years from now crude oil will be $300 a barrel; that our planet will have only half the amount of fresh water available for food and agriculture; and that we will have twice as many severe weather events, droughts, and floods. What kind of agriculture will remain productive under those circumstances?

It is clear to me that the methods currently employed on our farm, despite the organic management practices we’ve instituted, still will not prepare us to meet that challenge. The farm has to be redesigned to be much more resilient under such difficult impending circumstances. What do we need to do now?

In the short run, we plan to increase the presence of perennial grasses and legumes in our crop rotations. Perennial plants are much more resilient than annuals, have much denser and deeper root systems, and do a superior job of restoring and maintaining the biological health of the soil. We will slightly shift the balance of our farm’s production to raise more livestock and less grain, but we will continue our practice of not feeding any grain to our livestock. We will continue to sell our grain directly into organic markets for human consumption. Our livestock will graze on the perennial grasses during the summer and feed on the forages harvested from our legumes during the winter.

In the long run, we hope to convert annual monocultures on our farm to the perennial grains The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, has been developing.

We will continue to rely on the “no waste” policy that we have adhered to for the past 30 years. And we plan to search out more innovative production systems based on energy exchange instead of energy inputs. We are trying to learn from creative farmers like Joel Salatin who have developed complex, synergistic systems in which the waste of one species becomes the food (energy) of another.

Finding Our Foodsheds

As much as possible, I plan to continue to be part of the larger effort to transform our food and agriculture system. I hope to champion more advances in urban agriculture, which has been evolving rapidly in recent years.

Many creative farmers are ­devel­oping incredibly productive, synergistic systems. Will Allen’s Growing Power farm in Milwaukee is a prime example. By creating multiple synergies among species, Allen manages to “provide healthful food to 10,000 urbanites” on 3 acres of land. For example, Allen has created huge fish tanks in the center of his greenhouses that are 3 feet wide and 4 feet deep, extend the full length of the greenhouse, and are stocked with tens of thousands of perch and tilapia. Above the fish tanks Allen has installed beds of watercress. The water from the fish tanks is pumped into the watercress beds. The watercress cleanses the water for the fish, while the fish droppings provide the nutrients for the watercress.

Equally promising models of synergistic production are being developed by individual farmers in many parts of the world. These models are well-suited to community food systems where small-scale farmers have found ways to produce incredible amounts of food on limited acreage for local populations. The efficient recycling of water often plays an integral part on these farms.

As our energy-water-climate challenges impose themselves upon us, we will need to gradually embrace the concept of “foodsheds”—a concept borrowed from our knowledge of watersheds. Foodsheds are geographic areas wherein people engage in a civic exercise that determines the most sustainable food system for their region. The first priority of a foodshed is to produce as much of the food as possible by people in the foodshed for people in the foodshed; exports and imports become the second priority.

This community foodshed concept is fully compatible with the United Nations’ new mandate to foster “food democracy, food justice, and food sovereignty” as the means by which global food problems can best be solved. It also is in accord with the G8 countries’ recent recognition that it is a critical task to revitalize the food production capacity of local communities rather than encouraging the producing and shipping of food to such communities from other parts of the world.

How the next chapters in the story of water are written in this country and around the world will depend in large measure on how creative water use is embedded in the ecology of these new food systems.

Kirschenmann-Mug.jpgThis article appeared in Water Solutions, the Summer 2010 issue of YES! Magazine. Frederick Kirschenmann is a longtime leader in sustainable agriculture. He is a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center at Iowa State University and president of Stone Barns Center for Food And Agriculture in New York State. Frederick Kirschenmann’s essay “Tending the Land” adapted with permission of the National Geographic

A 40 Gallon Water
Chaser For Your Beer?

The food we eat and the products we use contain “virtual water”—the water used to produce them. Cut down on home use, but here’s where you can really save some water.

Water to make 1 pound of:
hamburger 2,029 gallons
chicken 468 gallons
apples 72 gallons
tomatoes 16 gallons
bread 171 gallons
cheese 600 gallons

Source: A.Y. Hoekstra & A. K. Chapagain
Water footprints of nations, 2006.