U.S. Farmworkers and Palestinian Farmers share 2014 Food Sovereignty Prize

Posted on September 16, 2014 by admin

Honorees Represent Communities Defending Their Human Rights to Food in the Face of Policies of Land and Water Grabbing, Migration, and Militarization

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  September 9, 2014

palestina.jpgDes Moines, IA — The US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA) is honored to name the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) of Palestine, based in Gaza and the West Bank, and Community to Community Development /Comunidad a Comunidad (C2C) of Bellingham, Washington, as co-recipients of the 2014 Food Sovereignty Prize.

Their stories of continuous struggle to defend the rights of their communities – farmers and fishers in the occupied Palestinian territories and migrant Mexican farm workers in Washington State, both seeking to produce their own food, on their own land, in their home communities – stand in stark contrast to the storylines coming from agribusiness:  that technological changes to crops can meet human needs and resolve hunger.

Palestine has been under Israeli occupation for decades and this summer faced heightened pressure, including thousands killed and many more injured from bombings, destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, farms, and fishing boats, and hundreds of arrests without due process, and the continued building of settlements on Palestinian farmland. UAWC builds farmers cooperatives and seed banks, and supports women’s leadership, while continuing to seek its members’ human rights to food, land, and water.

“This important prize inspires UAWC to carry on its work in defending Palestinian farmers’ rights against the brutal Israeli violations, both through supporting small-scale farmers and fishermen toward their food sovereignty and rights to land and water, and also through coordination with local and international movements for social justice and human rights,” said Khaled Hidan, General Director of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees in Palestine.

In Washington State, amid failed immigration policies that criminalize working families, Community to Community Development has supported and worked with immigrant farm workers to develop farm worker-owned cooperatives, organize a successful nutrition education project called Cocinas Sanas, and promote domestic fair trade in regional assemblies and meetings. Most recently, C2C has supported an emerging farm worker union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia, and organized a national boycott of Sakuma Farms, their employer, who withheld pay, provided poor housing, and has since retaliated against the workers. Familias Unidas por la Justicia recently won a settlement for wage theft and had a Superior Court Judge rule uphold their right to organize – but their fight is not over.

“In honoring Community to Community, the USFSA honors indigenous farmworkers in the U.S. Displaced by NAFTA, these peasant farmers from Mexico are practicing a tradition of struggle for justice. Together, C2C and Familias Unidas are promoting food sovereignty in rural Washington State and challenging the corporate agricultural interests that are controlling our food system,” said Rosalinda Guillen, Executive Director of Community to Community Development.

The Food Sovereignty Prize will be awarded on the evening of October 15in Des Moines, IA, at the Historical Building. The Food Sovereignty Prize challenges the view that simply producing more through industrial agriculture and aquaculture will end hunger or reduce suffering. The world currently produces more than enough food, but unbalanced access to wealth means the inadequate access to food. Real solutions protect the rights to land, seeds and water of family farmers and indigenous communities worldwide and promote sustainable agriculture through agroecology. The communities around the world who struggle to grow their food and take care of their land have long known that destructive political, economic, and social policies, as well as militarization, deprive communities of their rights.  These are the root causes of want, hunger and poverty.

The USFSA represents a network of food producers and labor, environmental, faith-based, social justice and anti-hunger advocacy organizations. Additional supporters of the 2014 Food Sovereignty Prize include Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom – Des Moines, and Occupy the World Food Prize, along with media sponsor EcoWatch.

For event updates and background on food sovereignty and the prize winners, visit www.foodsovereigntyprize.org. Also, visit the Food Sovereignty Prize on Facebook (facebook.com/FoodSovereigntyPrize) and join the conversation on Twitter (#foodsovprize)

CONTACT:

Adam Mason, State Policy Organizing Director

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement

(515) 282-0484, [email protected]

 Lisa Griffith, National Family Farm Coalition

US Food Sovereignty Alliance

(773) 319-5838, [email protected]

Posted in Food Sovereignty | Comments Off on U.S. Farmworkers and Palestinian Farmers share 2014 Food Sovereignty Prize

John Kinsman Tributes

Posted on July 26, 2014 by admin

JohnKinsmanFarmAidKansasCityThose who attended the John Kinsman Beginning Farmer Food Sovereignty Prize Award Ceremony last March were able to experience an amazing array of tributes to John from around the world that Ruth Simpson had assembled.  Since then many people have requested to see these remembrances, so we are posting them on our website for all to enjoy.  John’s vision and legacy will inspire many for years to come!

Miriam Brown remembrance

Farm Aid Remembrance

Stephen Bartlett remembrance

John Peck Remembrance

PR Watch Kinsman Interview

Ruth Simpson remembrance

John Nichols remembrance

Andrew Bartlett Remembrance

Grassroots International Remembrance

Jim Goodman remembrance

MST remembrance

Siena Chrisman remembrance

Mark Kastel remembrance

Steve Holt remembrance

US Food Sovereignty Remembrance

Remember John — several people — 1-1

Remembering John — several people — 2

Remembering John — several people — 3

Remembering John — several people — 4

Remembering John — several people — 5

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on John Kinsman Tributes

“Free Trade” Champions Betray Us All

Posted on July 6, 2014 by admin
By:  Jim Goodman, dairy farmer from Wonewoc, WI, and FFD board member
Originally published on Wednesday, July 2, 2014 by Common Dreams
Wisconsin Congressman Ron Kind has apparently never met a free trade agreement he didn’t like. Note it is always a “free trade” agreement, never a “fair trade” agreement.
Free trade defines an agreement that has as a first (and sometimes only) priority, the best interests of corporations namely, their profits. At what expense those profits are taken is apparently of little concern to the trade negotiators and in particular the corporate representatives that are active participants in the otherwise secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations.
Fair trade on the other hand would put the interests of people and the environment ahead of corporate profit. Fair trade would protect jobs rather than off-shoring them as has historically happened after passage of all free trade agreements.
Environmental protection under fair trade would also trump corporate profit— destructive strip mines, mountain top removal, groundwater pollution, air pollution, all these byproducts of the less restrictive environmental protections, that again, always happen when free trade agreements are ratified, would have to be prohibited.
Free trade has no consideration for cultural preferences because it has no consideration for people. Japanese farmers and consumers prefer to grow and eat their traditional varieties of rice, not imported rice— that should be their right, not so under the TPP.
Food safety standards under free trade would, by design, fall to the lowest common denominator. Lower safety standards on food imports, like lower labor safety standards, reduce operating costs and thus increase corporate profit.
Pharmaceutical companies would be granted extended monopoly patents, thus increasing health care costs and access to generic medications.
Banking interests insist on and will get, Financial Service Agreements that would severely limit the ability of governments to restrict the trade of risky financial products or in general their ability to regulate “too big to fail” banks.
Another secretly negotiated free trade agreement the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) which deals extensively with financial services, would actually further deregulate financial institutions and scrap much of the re-regulation that followed the world financial meltdown of a few years ago.
Perhaps most distressing to the U.S. economy, free trade agreements have always forced workers into a downward wage spiral. Jobs tend to flow to wherever wages are the lowest. The TPP would set the stage for member countries like Vietnam with its $2.75 daily wage to become an even lower cost labor alternative than China.
Free trade proponents like Rep. Kind who co-chairs the Friends of the TPP Caucus note that the U.S. is running a trade surplus with many of the small countries that it has bilateral trade agreements with. True enough, but it is hardly relevant to use bilateral trade statistics with a small country like Columbia as an argument for joining the TPP, a group that would comprise 40% of the world trade. And considering all the positive spin about trade surpluses from bilateral agreements with small nations, the U.S. still ran a trade deficit of over $470 billion in 2013.
We are told that establishing free trade zones will lower tariffs across the globe while encouraging higher labor and environmental standards. Say what? Tariffs are basically a non-issue having been nearly eliminated by previous trade deals while labor and environmental standards will be pushed to the lowest level possible, not elevated.
The Wisconsin State Journal calls Kind “a strong voice for free trade and the prosperity it brings to Wisconsin”. Think about that, how many manufacturing jobs have left Wisconsin and been offshored due to free trade; Johnson Controls, AT&T, Georgia Pacific and Harley Davidson to name a few.
Farmers are told free trade will increase sales of agricultural commodities worldwide making us more profitable. Generally, farmers do not export, grain companies, food processors and livestock packers export and they import –– it all depends on global prices, but generally they make a hefty profit on both ends.
Agricultural commodities are bought wherever they are the cheapest and sold where they are the most profitable. Free trade pits farmer against farmer to see who will produce the cheapest, just as it pits workers against each other in a race to the bottom.
The Friends of the TPP would do well to look at the history of free trade agreements and decide if they really like this status quo, these agreements that profit corporations at the expense of people and the environment. Or perhaps they might do a better job of serving their constituents by supporting fair trade that brings everyone up rather than always seeking the lowest common denominator.

Jim Goodman is a dairy farmer from Wonewoc, Wisconsin.

Posted in Food Sovereignty | Comments Off on “Free Trade” Champions Betray Us All

Real Milk Stories – Please Spread the Word and Lend Your Support!

Posted on May 28, 2014 by admin

We started Family Farm Defenders to help protect and defend small family farmers. But we are losing too many small family farms. Help share the stories of dairy farmers who are losing their farms.

Real Milk Stories
Family dairy farms are closing at an alarming rate. Support me to tell the story of why — and why it matters to everyone who drinks milk or eats ice cream.
Indiegogo
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Real Milk Stories – Please Spread the Word and Lend Your Support!

“Farmland” Fables – What the Documentary Gets Wrong

Posted on April 30, 2014 by admin

By:  Jim Goodman, FFD board member

Originally posted on Civil Eats, 4/30/14

‘Farmland’ Fables: What the Documentary Gets Wrong

The promotional website for the new film Farmland invites viewers to “step inside the world of farming for a first-hand glimpse into the lives of young farmers and ranchers.” The film, which opens in some theaters May 1, features six young farmers from across the U.S.

But let’s make this very clear: Farmland is funded by the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), a trade association uniting industry representatives from groups such as the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the United Soybean Board, state farm bureaus, and the agribusiness corporations Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, and John Deere. This fact​ alone​​ suggests that it’s not the straightforward look at today’s farmers that it portrays itself to be.

The Farmers

The film combines interviews with scenes from their day-to-day lives, and it does a very credible job of capturing the trials and aspirations of ​a corn and soy farmer, a hog farmer, a chicken farmer, a cattle rancher, and two vegetable farmers—one large organic producer and one small CSA (community-supported agriculture) farmer. They are all passionate advocates of their farming operation and methods and all six spoke of​ the problems of growing crops, particularly the really tight margins affecting farmers.

I suppose one could say they covered a fair cross section of farming operations across the U.S., but they did, however, miss bringing ​​dairy farming, urban farming, and minority farmers into the picture entirely. From my point of view as a farmer, Farmland also left out a lot of the problems we face and glorified the trend toward larger, more industrialized farms.

When I heard the stirring, almost patriotic music I knew a giant corn planter would soon be rolling across the Nebraska landscape for a moonlit planting run. From there the viewer goes to Georgia, where a group of school children are looking into a barn housing 25,000 chickens, one of 18 such barns on the farm, to which 450,000 chicks are delivered at a time, five times every year.

The Nebraska corn and soy farmer tells the audience that he has irrigated twice as much in 2012 as he does in a normal year, but we never hear him question the sustainability of irrigating what should be dry land farm country.

The hog farmer from Minnesota shows the construction for an expansion of their facilities, but he never questions why the global market he is part of is not providing a fair return for his work, one that would not necessitate constant expansion.

And the rancher from Texas asks, “Is there really any difference between organic and natural?” as a swirling collage of labels filled the screen, enforcing the idea that labels are more confusing than they are helpful.

The commercial organic grower in California seems to rely heavily on his Latino employees and I hope they were fairly paid. While he clearly feels organic is a better way to farm, his choices appear to be lead more by economic factors than ethical ones. His farming plan is to try to stay one step ahead of the market at all times.

Finally, the young CSA farmer from the appropriately named One Woman Farm, in Pennsylvania, shows real joy in growing food, not commodities. She is the only one who directly connects with people who eat what she grows. New to farming, she is the token woman and a token small-scale operator. And, as the film suggests, she may provide food for several households, but she alone (or others like her) will never “feed the world.”

No, for that important work—Farmland tells us—one needs a much larger operation, and new technology: GPS, auto-steer tractors, genetically engineered seeds (commonly referred to as GMOs), confinement-based animal production (or CAFOs). This is a common refrain from USFRA, which was founded in 2011.

“Feeding the World”

The group has hosted events called Food Dialogues and produced media to respond to other food films, such Food, Inc., King Corn, and criticism aimed at revealing what many consumers see as the downsides to heavily consolidated agriculture. (The USFRA receives federal commodity marketing program dollars, or check-offs, paid for by growers of various commodities who contribute through product sales whether they want to or not.)

Indeed, the phrase “feeding the world” has become an opiate that lulls farmers and consumers into accepting the system of commodity production, high-tech farming and the notion that “food is food,” no matter how it’s grown or harvested.

GMOs are a good example. In Farmland, they are described as offering farmers all sorts of benefits that haven’t lived up to their hype: Weed control options, insect resistance, higher yields, drought resistance, and better nutrition. On the other hand, the film’s two organic farmers were never shown criticizing the farmers who use GMO seeds, and, in my opinion, that is how it should be. Industry is the one and only winner when it comes to GMOs.

Like them, my criticism is not of these young farmers. It’s not an easy job and most of us take on huge financial risks while the multinational corporations controlling agriculture will make a profit, no matter what happens to our bottom line. Thanks to climate change, free trade agreements, and consolidation, all our futures are uncertain.

But the system, and the corporate control was never questioned—that is what I found missing from Farmland: Someone seriously asking questions about this “get big or get out” food system. I would have liked to see someone ask why hunger continues to grow as farmers adopt all the technology that industry, government, universities, and media tell them they should.

And finally: Why must small and medium-sized farmers struggle financially while the agribusiness industries see their profit margins climb?

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on “Farmland” Fables – What the Documentary Gets Wrong