Help Make a Sustainable USDA

Sent to me by J. Rigot

Also look at:
The Food Declaration

Introducing the Sustainable Dozen!

We want to thank everybody for their generous response and would like to acknowledge your growing concerns on these vital issues going forward to the new Administration.

In just ten days over 57,000 Americans have joined with Food Democracy Now! to advocate for a Sustainable USDA!

It is important now that we focus our attention on Under Secretary positions at the USDA. We have added six individuals, who have been champions on issues of sustainability and standing up for independent family farmers as indicated by their life’s work, to our original list and want to put them forward as candidates for these positions.

These are not the only choices for consideration, but their backgrounds represent the type of candidates that we expect to be appointed to these positions in the very near future.
As you may already know, while the Secretary of Agriculture is an important position, it is our understanding that Under Secretaries may actually have “more influence on the day to day workings of the agency than the Secretary.”

Time is of the essence. It is vital that you express your voice for Sustainable Change by signing on to support these candidates and those who have worked alongside this community for decades.

NOW is the time to become the Sustainable Voice for change that our nation so desperately needs.

Many of us are Iowans who acknowledge Obama’s selection of our former Governor as the next Secretary of Agriculture and hope to deliver this petition with your comments to him once he is confirmed and President-Elect Obama to encourage them to take these issues to heart as they lead the USDA and 21st century U.S. agricultural policy into the future.

Thank you for registering your vote. The conversation has just begun…

Here are the Sustainable Dozen!

Gus Schumacher: Former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture. Boston, Massachusetts

Chuck Hassebrook: Executive Director, Center for Rural Affairs, Lyons, Nebraska.

Sarah Vogel: attorney; former two-term Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of North Dakota, Bismarck, North Dakota.

Fred Kirschenmann: organic farmer; Distinguished Fellow, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Ames, IA; President, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Pocantico Hills, New York.

Mark Ritchie: current Minnesota Secretary of State; former policy analyst in Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture under Governor Rudy Perpich; co-founder of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Neil Hamilton: attorney; Dwight D. Opperman Chair of Law and Professor of Law and Director, Agricultural Law Center, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.

Doug O’Brien: current Assistant Director at Ohio Department of Agriculture; worked for the U.S. House and the Senate Ag Committee; former staff attorney and co-director for the National Agriculture Law Center in Arkansas, Reynoldsburg, Ohio.

(My First Choice) James Riddle: organic farmer; founding chair of the International Organic Inspectors Association (IOIA); has served on the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s Organic Advisory Task Force since 1991; appointed to the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board, serving on the Executive Committee for 5 years and was chair in 2005, Board of Directors. Winona, Minnesota.

Kathleen Merrigan: Director, Agriculture, Food and Environment M.S./Ph.D. Program, Assistant Professor and Director of the Center on Agriculture; Food and the Environment, Tufts University; former Federal Agency Administrator U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service; creator of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, mandating national organic standards and a program of federal accreditation. Boston Massachusetts.

Denise O’Brien: organic farmer, founder of Women, Food, and Agriculture Network (WFAN); represented the interests of women in agriculture at the World Conference on Women in Beijing, China in 1995; organized a rural women’s workshop for the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome, Italy; received nearly a half million votes in her 2006 bid to become Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture. Atlantic, Iowa.

Ralph Paige: Executive Director, Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund; served as presidential appointment to the 21st Century Production Agriculture Commission; participates on the Agriculture Policy Advisory Committee for Trade; the Cooperative Development Foundation; and the National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education & Economics Advisory Board. East Point, Georgia.

Karen Ross: President of the California Winegrape Growers Association and Executive Director of the Winegrape Growers of America; awarded the Wine Integrity Award by the Lodi Winegrape Commission for her contributions to the wine industry. Sacramento, California.

Utah Land Grab Stung!

December 24, 2008

“One Man’s Bid to Aid the Environment”

By Amy Goodman

Tim DeChristopher is an economics student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He had just finished his last final exam before winter break. One of the exam
questions was: If the oil and gas companies are the only ones who bid on public lands, are the true costs of oil and gas exploitation reflected in the prices paid?

DeChristopher was inspired. He finished the exam, threw on his red parka and went off to the controversial Bureau of Land Management land auction that the Southern
Utah Wilderness Alliance called “the Bush administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry.” Instead of joining the protest outside, he registered as a bidder, then bought 22,000 acres of public land. That is, he successfully bid on the public properties, located near the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and Dinosaur National Monument, and other pristine areas. The price tag: more than $1.7 million.

He told me: “Once I started buying up every parcel, they understood pretty clearly what was going on … they stopped the auction, and some federal agents came in and took me out. I guess there was a lot of chaos, and they didn’t really know how to proceed at that point.”

Patrick Shea, a former BLM director, is representing DeChristopher. Shea told the Deseret News: “What Tim did was in the best tradition of civil disobedience, he did this without causing any physical or material harm. His purpose was to draw attention to the illegitimacy and immorality of the process.”

There is a long tradition of disrupting land development in Utah. In his memoir, “Desert Solitaire,” Edward Abbey, the writer and activist,wrote:“Wilderness. The word itself is music. … We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.”

Abbey’s novel “The Monkey Wrench Gang” inspired a generation of environmental activists to take “direct action,” disrupting “development.” As The Salt Lake
Tribune reported on DeChristopher: “He didn’t pour sugar into a bulldozer’s gas tank. He didn’t spike a tree or set a billboard on fire. But wielding only a bidder’s paddle, a University of Utah student just as surely monkey-wrenched a federal oil- and gas-lease sale Friday, ensuring that thousands of acres near two southern Utah national parks won’t be opened to drilling anytime soon.”

Likewise, the late Utah Phillips, folk musician, activist and longtime Utah resident, often invoked the Industrial Workers of the World adage: “Direct action gets the goods.”

More than just scenic beauty will be harmed by these BLM sales. Drilling impacts air and water quality. According to High Country News, “The BLM had not analyzed
impacts on ozone levels from some 2,300 wells drilled in the area since 2004 … nor had it predicted air impacts from the estimated 6,300 new wells approved in the plan.” ProPublica reports that the Colorado River “powers homes for 3 million people, nourishes 15 percent of the nation’s crops and provides drinking water to one in 12 Americans. Now a rush to develop domestic oil, gas and uranium deposits along the river and its tributaries threatens its future.”

After being questioned by federal authorities, DeChristopher was released.

The U.S. attorney is currently weighing charges against the student. DeChristopher reflects: “This has really been emotional and hopeful for me to see the kind of
support over the last couple of days … for all the problems that people can talk about in this country and for all the apathy and the eight years of oppression and the decades of eroding civil liberties, America is still very much the kind of
place that when you stand up for what is right, you never stand alone.”

His disruption of the auction has temporarily blocked the Bush-enabled land grab by the oil and gas industries. If DeChristopher can come up with $45,000 by Dec. 29, he can make the first payment on the land, possibly avoiding any claim of fraud. If the BLM opts to re-auction the land, that can’t happen until after the Obama administration takes over.

The outcome of the sales, if they happen at all, will probably be different, thanks to the direct action of an activist, raising his voice, and his bidding paddle, in opposition.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Newest Monsanto Crop in US

That's exactly what Flint Michigan residents Kathleen Kirby and Mark Fisher are banking on: their power to influence change. They're participating in a nationwide consumer boycott of Kellogg's Co. instigated by the Organic Consumers Association. By boycotting the world's largest cereal company, they hope to pressure Kellogg's into rejecting the use of sugar from genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets and to spark widespread market rejection in products ranging from cereal to baby food to candy.

As you may know, Roundup Ready sugar beets are genetically altered to resist Monsanto's toxic weed killer, Roundup, and its active ingredient, glyphosate. But here's the scary truth about these beets:

When the USDA first approved GE sugar beets for commercial planting in 1998, the EPA also increased the maximum allowable residues of glyphosate on sugar beet roots from just 0.2 parts per million to 10ppm. That's a staggering 5,000 percent increase of allowable toxins on beet roots. And, it's little surprise that EPA made this policy change at the request of Monsanto.

Currently, only four major GE crops are sold commercially -- corn, cotton, soy, and canola. Most of these are engineered to withstand repeated, large doses of herbicides. For the most part, these crops and their byproducts are largely fed to animals with the exception of some minor food ingredients and oils. GE beet sugar breaks with this tradition in that it could become the first major GE ingredient added to almost all processed foods on our grocery store shelves.

Last week, Hershey's in Brazil announced that it would not source ingredients from Cargill, one of the world's largest food providers, because the company could not guarantee that soy, lecithin, and oils were not GE. This successful public pressure campaign, led by Greenpeace, influenced the company to reject GE beet sugar. It also demonstrates how individuals who care about food safety can mobilize collectively to make a difference.

Like Hershey's, Kellogg's is only one of thousands of companies that may soon be using GE sugar -- perhaps without even knowing that they are doing so! That could be the case unless, of course, consumer pressure forces the market to reject GE beet sugar.

Kirby and Fisher know that as a market leader, Kellogg's could lead the charge in rejecting GE beet sugar and influence other companies to follow suit.

They also know that although they are just two people living in a small, Midwestern city north of Detroit, and with the Internet at their disposal, they are on their way to changing the world, one e-mail message at a time.

One of the comments posted:

World agriculture is increasingly becoming dependent upon a single tool for weed control -- the weedkiller glyphosate, Monsanto's Roundup in particular. This situation is largely attributable to the rapid spread of GM, Roundup Ready (RR) crops, which is also driving the expansion of glyphosate-resistant weeds. Since Roundup is becoming less and less effective in killing weeds, farmers are turning to the use of more toxic and persistent herbicides, such as atrazine and 2,4-D, to eliminate those same weeds that formerly succumbed to Roundup.

Contrary to claims that Roundup adversely affects only plants, studies have shown that the weedkiller is toxic to amphibians, frogs, and earthworms. Studies suggest that Roundup is a potential hormone disruptor and it may be correlated with increased rates of birth defects and cell division dysfunction. At least one study has shown that children of glyphosate applicators experience higher rates of behavioral disorders than non-exposed populations.

So, there's ample cause for concern not only that more Roundup is being sprayed on sugar beets, but also that more residues - a 5,000% increase since 1998 - are being allowed on sugar beet roots!

Let's start with manure. A vote for high-intensity livestock production is a vote for huge manure lagoons created in animal factories housing thousands of cattle, pigs, and poultry crowded into confined animal feeding operations or CAFOs. These manure lagoons sicken rural people with their stench and often leak into surface waters or breech their containers, contaminating local streams with a flood of fecal matter, causing massive fish kills.

At CAFOs, cattle are force-fed corn that they were never meant to eat, creating unnaturally acidic conditions in their guts that foster development of deadly E. coli 0157:H7. The source of pathogenic E. coli is animal factories, not organic agriculture. Organic farmers use cover crops that fix nitrogen and spread safely COMPOSTED manure in their fields.

Once organic farming systems are established, their yields are close or equal to that of the destructive "high-intensity" agriculture systems that you recommend. Organic farmers produce high yields without using massive doses of nitrogen fertilizer that have numerous adverse side effects including huge emissions of nitrous oxides (potent global warming gases) and the creation of ever-expanding dead zones such as the one found in the Gulf of Mexico. Dead zones are caused by hypoxia, a lack of oxygen due to nitrogen fertilizer-induced overgrowth of marine plants that suck all the oxygen (life) out of the water and then die.

I am also worried about habitat destruction, but I guess you haven't heard that practices such as ripping out riparian habitats and farmland vegetation are currently being touted as the solution to combat E. coli 0157:H7. This is a big mistake and so is misleading people to think that high-intensity agriculture will solve our food safety problems when, actually, it's the root cause.

Lisa J. Bunin
Campaigns Coordinator Center for Food Safety and Switzer Environmental Leadership Fellow
by Lisa J. Bunin

Every School Needs A Garden

Second in a series from old Organic Gardening Magazines.

My father was cleaning out his night stand and found a stack of 1973 OG magazines. Knowing I was into that sort of thing, gave them to me to read. Now, it takes me quite some time to get through them, but I'll get there!

Here are links associated with similar programs - from around the world. Very few such programs exist in the US. How sad is that?

Ireland
Canada

Here In The US
Rhode Island
Also a good resource for starting a school gardening program
California
Arizona
Oregon

Since this article is so long, I’ve edited some of the examples. But no content was changed, just omitted for space.

Every School Needs A Garden
Join the 1973 effort to put a garden into every schoolyard - starting with the one in your own neighborhood
By Jerome Goldstein

Last spring, students at the Helen Keller Junior High in Royal Oak, Michigan, planned and planted a 20x25 foot garden in the school courtyard after a series of organic gardening sessions. With the help of teacher Ronald Canton, they planted radishes, lettuce, peas, gourds and pumpkins.

Environmental education specialists Bud Souders and Tom Fegely of East Penn School District in Emmaus PA, used the nearby Organic Gardening Experimental Farm as an outdoor classroom to get youngsters personally involved in compost-making and gardening.

"Contact the school district in your hometown... Explain how important it is, and how educational 0 for children to work with nature to produce something useful, and how a lifetime habit of gardening can begin now." The last count showed almost 500,000 leaflets were sent out to schools, teachers and individuals around the country. The schools mentioned above illustrate some ways the material was put to use.

And yet, the School Garden Campaign is just getting underway! In 1973 we know that there are going to be more gardens on school property and more students gardening both in school and at home than ever before!

Teaching students to garden is by no means a new idea. Back in 1914, the Children's Vegetable Garden of Brooklyn, NY, Botanic Garden was laid out. Frances M. Miner writes in Plants and Gardens that "over the years, children seem instinctively to prefer vegetables."

School Science Projects
10 years ago, my oldest daughter did a school science project showing how food scraps change to compost. Today, several Emmaus High School students have taken on the task of composting some of the school's cafeteria garbage. Right now, my youngest daughter is planning a project with earthworms and recycling.

Earthworm projects, composting as well as many soil experiments are fully described in 2 separate manuals authored by Albert and Vivian Schatz - Teaching Science with Garbage and Teaching Science with Soil.

The science projects with garbage and leaves and other organic wastes are great, but only a garden ties everything together - food becomes alive and meaningful when cared for from seed. The land ethic and environmental awareness are just so many words in a book or on a blackboard. But they have real meaning in a garden. "In our work, we encourage schools to develop on-lot gardens by the students similar to the program which is carried out in Cleveland," says Bruce N. Singer of Blue Bell, PA. "I am sure that your materials will be helpful to a number of schools."

Organic Living Courses

About 4 years ago, Charles Kuntzleman and John Haberern of Rodale's Fitness For Living magazine and Clay Myers, National YNCA Physical Fitness Director, developed the YMCA-Fitness Finders program.

Out of the original program has come an even more ambitious effort to teach and motivate people of all ages "into patterns of living which would help delay the onset of degenerative diseases." Editor Haberern calls it an Organic Living curriculum. This month, a special pilot program with these objectives goes into effect for the fifth and sixth grades of five San Diego City schools. In the "back to nature" unit, for example, students will get a thorough knowledge of organic gardening methods - from taking a soil profile to making a compost pile. They will learn how to find their way in the woods, attract birds to the backyard, tell a good bug from a pest, sprout seeds, read a food label - learning activities never offered in the traditional health and physical education program.

With the aid of a garden plan drawn up by OG editors and volunteer help from local organic gardeners, 14 Appalachia youth aged 12 to 16 began preparing and planting their gardens. Within a matter of weeks after the decision to go ahead with the project, over 100 tomato plants went into the ground, followed closely by the planting of squash, cucumbers, corn, beans, potatoes, peas, onions, flowers, herbs and even popcorn. "The kids sometimes took some of the vegetables home with them, or if the had enough to sell, they sold them at the stand in front of the Y." Davis pointed out.

Nutritious School lunches Naturally Follow School Gardens

Out in Bloomington IN, high school students have formed a Brown Baggers for Health to publicize the low nutritional value of standard school lunches. Students hope to have a fresh-food line set up that would feature fruits, some organically grown foods and home made breads.

Actually, a teacher has been introducing good nutritional concepts to her 9 and 10 year old students since her term began last September (1972), and she’s noticed a difference in the kind of lunches her students now bring.

This community effort by organic gardeners will be most constructive. From your own organic gardens, you have already gotten many municipal officials to learn about composting leaves, for example, instead of burning them. And now, from your own organic gardens, you can extend your impact to local educational quality just as you have to local environmental quality.

Wild Alert News May Update

The Arctic Refuge was named one of the "Seven Wonders of America" by Good Morning America this week. That was welcome news to those of us who have worked to protect this unparalleled place.

Despite its wonders, the Refuge remains a prize coveted by the oil industry. Both President Bush and Sen. Domenici (R-NM) have pushed recently for opening the Refuge to oil development. Gas from the Refuge would do nothing to allay our costs at the pump, but development there would destroy a world-class breeding and nesting ground and sanctuary for more than 250 species of animals.

See below for how you can help fend off this latest threat to the Refuge, and to learn about recent successes we've had, with your help.

Best wishes,
Kathy Kilmer

P.S. To view the GMA broadcast about the Arctic Refuge, click here:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/7Wonders/Story?id=4795592&page=1

Don't Pass up this Million Dollar Opportunity

Wouldn't it be nice if you could suddenly make double the difference in protecting America's wildlands?
A couple of generous donors will match your gift dollar-for-dollar, in a one million dollar challenge grant. Why? Because they share your passion about protecting America's wilderness, and they are well aware that the Bush Administration can do some serious damage in its final days. This is when our work to save places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is most urgent.
Give today to see your donation go TWICE as far. And thank you!
Take Action
Arctic Refuge Under Fire, Again
As gas prices continue to rise, the volume is being turned up on demands to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, expand offshore oil and gas activity, and pursue environmentally hazardous oil shale and tar sands technologies.
Drilling in the Arctic Refuge will do nothing to solve America's energy problems, but could do lasting harm to this place.
Please take a moment to ask your senators to oppose any proposal to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling.
Inside Story
And the Survey Says...
As a WildAlert subscriber, you are passionate about wildlife and the great outdoors. You love to visit wilderness, hike and camp or work in your garden and watch birds. Mobilizing with others to protect wilderness is a winning strategy for you.
That's just a part of what we've learned from this year's WildAlert survey, with its record 24,000 responses. Here's more: Most subscribers have spoken out via email about wilderness issues. A growing number are eager to help by making phone calls, posting information to blogs, and getting involved in other ways.
Your thoughts and opinions help to shape our strategies, and we'll be seeking more from you in the future. Thank you!
News
New Washington Wilderness for the 21st century
America's brand new wilderness, dubbed Wild Sky, can be found on the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest north of Seattle. It's Washington's first newly-designated wilderness in more than 20 years. It includes pristine lowland valleys, large stands of old growth forests and a handful of Washington's famous wild rivers. This is the culmination of a multi-year effort, and the WildAlert community has played an important role in gaining passage for this bill. Truly, this is something to celebrate!
Learn more.
Public Overwhelmingly Opposes Oil & Gas Drilling in Utah's Famed Nine Mile Canyon
Learn more.
House Passes Major Land Conservation Initiative
Bill would make the National Landscape Conservation System permanent.
Learn more.
PBS Features Alaska Wilderness
A new video about Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska will be shown on many PBS stations this summer. The park's creation was due in part to the actions of Wilderness Society giants Bob Marshall and Mardy and Olaus Murie. If you'd like to see it, go to your PBS station's web site and search on "Gates of the Arctic."