Family Farm Defenders is proud to once again offer many giftbox options you can send to your family and friends over the holiday season. We are excited to offer award-winning Cedar Grove Cheeses along with other delicious products – artisanal Potters crackers, Cherokee Farm bison sausage, organic Just Coffee, Honor the Earth wild rice, Honey Acres mustard, Tietz Family heirloom popcorn, and Driftless Organic sunflower oil – all of which are “fairly traded” and guarantee their smallscale producers a living wage. By choosing Family Farm Defenders Holiday Gift Boxes, you can help insure family farmers receive a parity price for their hardwork. So, this holiday season, why not just “say cheese” and help support Family Farm Defenders at the same time!

FFD-1 “Cream Puff” Special:

Three pounds of “creamy” Cedar Grove cheeses that will melt in your mouth: Farmers, Monterey Jack and Butterkäse. We’ve also included some Tietz Family heirloom popcorn, as well as Driftless Organic sunflower oil. Yummy! $50 total – includes shipping and handling.

FFD-2 “Spicy Cheese” Special:

Three pounds of “spicy” Cedar Grove cheeses that will tingle your tongue: tomato basil; pepper jack; and garlic dill. We’ve also included some Honey Acres hot mustard, as well as Potters artisanal crackers. Delicious! $50 total – includes shipping and handling.

FFD-3 Something Wild

Three pounds of pepper jack, swiss, and smoked cheddar from Cedar Grove Cheese, along with Honor the Earth wild rice, Cherokee Farms Bison Cranberry Summer Sausage and Potter’s artisanal crackers. A real crowd pleaser! $75 total – includes shipping and handling.

FFD-4 Breakfast Brunch

We’ve put lots of good stuff in this box to start off your day – three pounds of mild, medium, and sharp cheddar from Cedar Grove Cheese, Cherokee Farms bison cranberry summer sausage, organic French Roast Just Coffee, and some Potter’s artisanal crackers. MMM good! $75 total – includes shipping and handling.

Make Your Very Own Box!

Just give us a call (#608-260-0900) or email: [email protected] if you would to customize your own box by mixing and matching whatever combination of items you wish. We are more than happy to accommodate your holiday gift giving!

You can download an order form here:  FFD2018HolidayGiftBoxOrderForm

The US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA) held its IV National Assembly from October 12^th thru 14^th in Bellingham, Washington with the participation of 117 members, allies, and individuals from 71 organizations and 7 countries.  The theme “Defending Mother Earth for an Agroecological Life:  No Walls, No Capitalism” was enacted through art, drama, music, dance, organizing, debate, analysis, healthy locally-sourced food, and spirited “mística” ceremonies.

Anchored by the farmworker-led organization Community to Community Development (C2C), the assembly overflowed with a joyous, intelligent, and diverse rainbow of origins, identities, and organizers of all ages from various sectors of the food system, including farmworkers, food chain workers, fishers, family farmers, urban agriculturalists, food providers, and social justice advocates fighting for their livelihoods, freedom, and dignity through food sovereignty, and an end to patriarchal, capitalist, and colonial ways of thinking and acting.  Building on regional assemblies in the Northeast, the South, the Midwest and the West, the IV National Assembly vibrated with an expanding and deepening energy!

Challenged by the current political and ecological moment—characterized by the rise of right-wing, racist populism allied with neoliberal, corporate economics, coupled with massive impoverishment and oppression of peoples, and the threat of climate catastrophe—our motivation intensified.  Those assembled discussed and the Alliance’s national coordination proclaims the following solidarity positions of the USFSA:

* In solidarity with La Via Campesina, we call on the United States and other members states to support the Declaration of Peasants Rights being pushed forward at the U.N.  The struggle for Food Sovereignty depends on the protection of the rights of peasants and small- and medium-sized family farmers.

* We oppose the expansion of the H2A visa guest worker program, particularly when used as a means of displacing farmworkers organizing themselves into unions.  H2A workers tied to a single employer have not been able to unionize themselves, and are often subject to wage theft, extortion by labor contractors and foremen, and other abuses.  We denounce in the strongest terms efforts to expand and weaken existing safeguards and housing provisions in guest worker programs by establishing a proposed H2C visa, which would spread and intensify the defects of H2A to food processing industries.  We also support the boycott of Reynolds American Tobacco VUSE e-cigarettes until that corporation signs an agreement to guarantee the right to organize without retaliation to all farmworkers in the tobacco fields, whether H2A or undocumented.

* We denounce the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in implementing the racist policies of mass detention and deportation, and stand in solidarity with immigrant and refugee peoples currently residing and working in the U.S.

* We add our collective voice to the Call to Protect Food Systems from Genetic Extinction Technology and call for a global moratorium on any release of engineered gene drives, which could contaminate ecological systems, species, and food webs with genetic traits designed to create species extinction.

* We denounce proposals in the Farm Bill that would increase work requirements for SNAP eligibility, end the Double Up Bucks farmers market program, defund critical conservation programs, and reduce support for beginning and socially challenged farmer programs.

* We reject the King amendment in the House Farm Bill, which would give agribusinesses greater control and restrict state and local governments from regulating agricultural products, and could nullify the Food Sovereignty Ordinances passed in Maine, as well as laws that curb pesticide use, regulate farmworker safety, prevent cruel livestock practices, and label GMO foods.

* We call for an expansion of agroecological practices and the protection of our agroecological biodiversity in food, fiber, forest and aquatic systems across the planet, as one of the essential solutions to the climate catastrophes humanity faces.  We know that small farmers, family fishers and foresters all cool the planet.  Agroecology cools the planet!

* Lastly, the USFSA stands in solidarity with our global allies, particularly members of La Via Campesina, suffering the overthrow or threat of overthrow of popular, democratic governments.  Whether in Honduras, Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Venezuela or elsewhere, these “soft coups” are a threat to democratic processes and to food sovereignty everywhere.
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The IV Assembly debated and affirmed the formation of the following national Collectives:  Political Education, Agroecology: Land and Water, Narrative Strategy, International Relationships, and Youth.   These collectives together with the regional bodies will carry forward the work of USFSA, coordinated by representatives from grassroots organizations from the regions, with the help of grassroots support organizers.

With our collective strength, we shout “No!” to injustices in the food system everywhere and “Yes!” to the people rising up to radically transform unjust systems and practices, for the betterment and survival of humanity and defense of Mother Earth.   And to the inspiring sister movements across the planet working for food sovereignty, we sing out a resounding ¡VIVA!  WE STAND WITH YOU!  WE ARE PART OF YOU! 

Instead of posturing to look like he supports farmers, the president should be pushing for reforms in agricultural programs that would actually help the little guy

By: Jim Goodman, President, National Family Farm Coalition (Wonewoc, WI)

Published by the Daily Yonder, Aug. 2nd, 2018

Despite strong continued support for President Trump in rural America, farmers fear they will bear the brunt of the retaliatory tariffs from the president’s trade war. 

Farm country can ill afford it: In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicted 2018 crop profits would hit a 12 year low. Dairy farmers’ prices have fallen 30% in two years, while pork producers have seen a price drop of roughly $20 per head. Overall farm incomes are down nearly 50% from 2013. Long before the trade war began, I and many other farmers feared we were in a farm crisis as bad as that of the 1980s. Now we know it will be even worse. 

While the president has said he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not lose support, he also knows who butters his bread. And so, we have a new $12 billion emergency aid package for farmers to ease the sting of the tariffs, clearly designed to keep his rural base firmly behind him. But will it actually solve farmers’ problems? I doubt it. 

Twelve billion dollars is a lot of money, but spread across all the major agricultural commodities, it will be a drop in the bucket. Details on how the money will be dispersed are still hazy, but I suspect most of it will not find its way into the pockets of struggling farmers. 

 The proposed scheme divides the funds into three pots. One will be used for direct incremental payments to producers of soybeans, sorghum, corn, wheat, cotton, dairy and hogs, for losses sustained from the tariffs. A second will use USDA Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) authority to purchase commodities of fruits, nuts, rice, legumes, beef, pork and milk and distribute them to food banks. The third will use CCC funds to partner with the private sector to develop new export markets for agricultural commodities. 

So what’s wrong with that? Well, plenty. First, direct payments will supposedly replace projected income lost due to the tariffs – as if everything was going along fine in farm country before the president’s little trade war. The whole plan ignores the full-blown farm crisis – complete with farmers struggling to pay their electric bills and buy food, forced to sell their farms, and in some cases taking their own lives – that has been quietly growing in the countryside for years, with virtually no recognition or corrective action from Washington. But now they’re playing politics. 

Second, after the bailout gives an unknown share of $12 billion to make up for farmers’ low prices and feed the working poor through a donation program, it hands the rest to big agribusiness for export market development. Farmers are already forced to pay a tax on every animal or bushel of grain we sell. This checkoff goes to agribusiness trade groups for product promotion and market development. But apparently that’s not enough, so this deal gives them another pound of flesh – this time from the taxpayers. 

The real problem facing farm country is not international tariffs. It is that we produce too much. Farmers are told that to survive, we must produce every possible bushel, every gallon of milk or pound of meat, no matter what it costs to buy the inputs, no matter the toll on the environment. When prices are low, we must produce more – and of course that means even lower prices and a never-ending death spiral. 

The small farms go first in hard times; the land merged into bigger operations, and the small dairy herds, like mine, sold off. My state of Wisconsin is losing 1.5 dairy farms every day – that’s 1.5 farmers out of a job. We can only guess at the economic impact the loss of these small farms will have on the businesses in their rural communities. 

There is another way: not a bailout, but a minimum wage. For many years, federal farm policy included a grain reserve. The government bought grain in times of low prices, sold it back into the market when supplies were low, and ensured farmers a floor price to keep them farming at a profit rather than producing below their cost of production. This stabilized the food supply and food prices, and farmers were required to maintain good environmental practices – no fence-row to fence-row planting. 

We could do the same for livestock producers. Rather than forever chasing new export markets, we could, like Canada, simply keep our production in line with domestic consumption. Canada’s supply management program guarantees farmers a fair price and guarantees consumers adequate food supplies grown locally – with no taxpayer subsidies required. We could still export excess production where there was demand, but US farmers would no longer compete with every farmer in the world over who can produce the cheapest product. Farmers, like everyone else, do better with a fair price for their work rather than emergency handouts. 

Trump’s trade war will cause irreparable damage to the farm sector, but we were bleeding long before he took to Twitter. If the president really wants to help farmers – and consumers, the environment, and taxpayers – he would lobby for a U.S. supply management program, not a $12 billion PR stunt.