Wisconsin dairy farmer and FFD board member, Jim Goodman, gave a rousing speech at Occupy Wall Street on Sat. Dec. 3rd as part of the Farmers March to Occupy the Food System. This was one of many events around the globe organized by La Via Campesina and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance to demand climate justice at the U.N. COP 17 meeting now underway in Durban, South Africa.
You can watch the YouTube of Jim Goodman’s speech here:
FFD executive director, John Peck, also participated in a protest against carbon trading outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Mon. Dec. 5th.
You can watch an interview with him, here:
He was joined by about 25- 30 others, including climate justice allies from Occupy Chicago, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Rising Tide North America, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), among others.
The press release for this event is below:
For Immediate Release:
Contact:
John E. Peck, Family Farm Defenders #608-260-0900 or #608-345-3918
Selene Gonzales, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization #773-762-6991
Raquel Nunez, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization #773-341-6459
Rally and Speak Out Against the Carbon Traders!
Family Farmers, Urban Gardeners, and Their Allies Expose the Corporate Profiteers Behind False Solutions to the Climate Crisis at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange
Mon. Dec. 5th 12:00 Noon – 2:00 pm
Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), 141 W. Jackson Blvd, Chicago
As part of the 1000 Durbans for Climate Justice Days of Action around the globe called by La Via Campesina and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, family farmers, urban gardeners and other allies will be converging on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange from 12:00 Noon to 2:00 pm on Mon. Dec. 5th to speak out against carbon trading.
This false solution to the climate crisis only serves to benefit corporate speculators while marginalizing and exploiting the real hope for cooling the planet – namely small-scale sustainable agriculture.
Since 2003, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) served as North America’s largest carbon offset trading venue, until it went belly up last year. At its height, the CCX had over 450 traders including the likes of the Farm Bureau and Amtrak to Dupont, Ford, and even the Univ. of California. But the market eventually succumbed to an over supply of “hot air” credits that drove down the price of carbon from a high of $7.50 per metric ton to less than 5 cents at its demise.
With the collapse of the CCX, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has now given the “greenlight” to GreenX as a new designated contract market for carbon trading. Besides the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), principal GreenX traders include: Constellation NewEnergy, Credit Suisse Energy, Evolution Markets, Goldman Sachs, ICAP Energy, J.P. Morgan Ventures Energy, Morgan Stanley Capital Group, RNK Capital, Spectron Energy, TFS Energy, Tudor Investment, Vitol, Citigroup, Mizuho Securities USA and Prudential Bache, among others.
Once touted as among the fastest-growing specialties in financial services, the future of carbon trading remains bleak as U.N. climate change negotiations have largely stalled since Copenhagen with no prospect that the Kyoto Protocol will be extended in Durban. According to the London Telegraph (12/4/11) global carbon trading has also fallen prey to criminal racketeering. Over 100 people have now been arrested in Europe for various schemes bilking investors and taxpayers, involving the “recycling” of already claimed carbon credits and outright theft of others.
“Such flagrant corruption is all the more reason to put an end to carbon trading,” noted John E. Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders. “Such commodification of pollution has been a false solution to climate change since the beginning, It just allows those responsible for greenhouse gas emissions to evade responsibility and shift their burden onto current taxpayers and future generations. Worse yet, carbon trading does not require any actual emission reduction – instead, it just creates another fictitious shell game commodity market ripe for corporate speculation.”
Rising Tide North America, founded over a decade ago, noted in its 2011 International Political Statement that “corporate-friendly and state-sponsored ‘solutions’ to climate change are utterly failing to solve the climate crisis. The current international climate negotiations are flawed and unjust because they are based on the interests of a neo-liberal capitalist globalization that seeks to benefit richer countries and corporations.” Rising Tide North American shares the assessment of many other climate justice advocates across the globe that carbon trading is just a form of modern-day colonialism.
Joined by supporters of Occupy Chicago, climate justice advocates also plan to invoke the spirit of Charles Dickens by presenting lumps of coal to the worst 1% of corporate scrooges who now profit off the carbon trading conducted within the bowels of the CME.
It is time to say no to a corrupt system that rewards the biggest polluters with a mafia style protection racket that forces victims to pay off the perpetrators of climate injustice.
Pollution is a gross violation of human rights, not just another commodity to be privately traded. No more green capitalism! Our carbon is not for sale!
Posted inFood Sovereignty|Comments Off on Family Farm Defenders Join 1000 Durbans Actions to Support Climate Justice
On Wednesday, November 9, Dan Brown, owner of Gravelwood Farm in Blue Hill, Maine, was served notice that he is being sued by the State of Maine for selling food and milk without State licenses. Blue Hill is one of five Maine towns to have passed the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance, a local law that permits the types of sales Brown was engaged in.
By filing the lawsuit, the State of Maine and Walter Whitcomb, Maine Agricultural Commissioner, are disregarding the Local Food and Community Self-Governance passed nearly unanimously by the citizens of Blue Hill at their town meeting on April 4th, 2011.
Residents of Blue Hill will be attending the Selectmen’s meeting on Friday, November 18 to enforce the provisions of the Ordinance. The Blue Hill residents will be instructing the Town of Blue Hill to send a letter to the Maine Department of Agriculture requesting the State withdraw the lawsuit and recognize the authority of the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance.
Community food sovereignty advocates are encouraged to contact the Maine Dept. of Agriculture and urge them to drop the lawsuit against Dan Brown of Gravelwood Farm and to respect the Local Food and Community Self Governance Ordinance of Blue Hills, Maine. #207-287-3871
Family Farm Defenders is also accepting donations for legal defense of Dan Brown. Please use our Razoo online donation function: http://www.razoo.com/story/Weareallfarmerbrown
Or send a check to FFD, P.O. Box 1772, Madison, WI 53701 with “Dan Brown Legal Defense” in the memo line.
Thanks for your solidarity!
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on We Are All Farmer Brown! Defend Community Food Sovereignty in Maine!
Thanks to all those who were able join our celebration on Sat. Nov. 12th at the Goodman Community Center. The event was a phenomenal success.
And congratulations to our two winners!
Lindsey Morris Carpenter has been running Grassroots Farm, a 40 member Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) operation near Monroe, WI with her mother, Gale, since 2007. She studied fine arts in Philadelphia, PA before moving back to the Midwest to start raising vegetables, fruit, chickens and pastured pigs.
Daniel and Hannah Miller have operated Easy Yoke Farm near Millville MN as a CSA operation since 2010 and also sell at farmers markets, co-ops, and retail markets. Besides their young children, they also have draft horses to help with farm work.
Posted inFood Sovereignty|Comments Off on First Annual John Kinsman Beginning Farmer Food Sovereignty Award Dinner Was a Great Success
John Kinsman was recently interviewed by Daniel Tucker, editor of Farm Together Now, before a packed audience as part of the Rethinking Soup lunch series at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum. Cedar Grove’s Family Farmer Fair Trade Cheese was featured on the menu. You can watch the interview by Daniel Tucker on YouTube at:
For more info on the Jane Addams Hull House Rethinking Soup series, visit:
Posted inFood Sovereignty|Comments Off on Daniel Tucker of Farm Together Now interviews John Kinsman of Family Farm Defenders at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum 9/27/11
Posted 10/5/11 on the Center for Media & Democracy’s Food Right Network
This month, the Center for Media and Democracy’s Food new Rights Network launches a series of interviews with “food and farm heroes.” It’s easy for an organization dedicated to exposing corporate spin to focus on negative corporate propaganda with its ubiquity, but we would be remiss not to highlight courageous people who fight corporate agendas and spin in other ways, large and small. Some devote their lives to it.
In the world of food and farming, the contrast between corporate agribusiness “farms” and small, sustainable family farms — farms that, to adapt a phrase of Michael Pollan’s, our grandparents would recognize as food-producing places — is especially clear. Among the farmers who live and work in these places, the CMD’s Food Rights Network is featuring some of the heroes: farmers who are making an incredible difference in the farming community, on our dinner tables and in the world around them.
John Kinsman
John Kinsman in his garden, September 15, 2011
The first hero we feature is John Kinsman, a dairy farmer from Lime Ridge, Wisconsin. He is a pioneer of rotational grazing, a strong proponent of small, diversified agricultural operations, and an activist since the 1970s.
To read more and watch the actual interview with John Kinsman, visit:
John Kinsman in his garden, September 15, 2011
