If you have noticed, our Food System is broken and even though there are a lot of organizations attempting to do something to fix it, we need more than amazing activists to make the Agricultural system work in our favor, which means making healthy food available to everyone.
Slow Food USA is an amazing organization as well as Food & Water Watch, which is heading up a campaign to urge you and everyone you know to do something tomorrow to help urge The USDA to finish their fair farm rules.
The days of Factory Farming should be numbered, not those of small, sustainable, organic farmers that support health and fair food for all and are an important part of our communities.
We must have Regional Food System, local agriculture and anything else you want to call it. It must be closer to where you live, work and thrive and it must be organic and sane. This is our only hope for so many reasons, from our very health to the health of our environment.
You can do something tomorrow. By why should you?
Fair Farm Rules: Enact the GIPSA Rules
Why USDA Needs to Finish the Fair Farm Rules
What is the problem?
Our food system is not working for most Americans. Most supermarket aisles do not offer good, nutritious foods as feasible shopping options. What you will find is an abundance of cheap, processed foods that are generally unhealthy, or meat from factory farms produced with antibiotics and artificial hormones and vegetables raised with pesticides that are often produced halfway around the world.
At the same time, small and medium sized farmers across the U.S. have been driven out of business or are barely making ends meet. We are losing our farming backbone because bigger companies set unfair prices for livestock and crops, cheating small and medium farmers out of money they need to cover their costs. The companies get away with it because farmers often don’t have anywhere else to sell their products.
A few large companies dominate the meat and poultry industries. Their control over these markets allows them to use oppressive contracts to squeeze both small producers and consumers. For example, nearly all producers of broiler chickens (those chickens raised for eating) operate under take it or leave it contracts. Chicken processing companies regularly require growers to make costly equipment upgrades, sometimes for little or no reason and often pay growers less for the chickens than what they cost to raise. Companies have retaliated against growers that complain. Growers put up with it because in many parts of the country, there is only one processing company for chickens.
The 2008 Farm Bill included some new reforms to protect small and medium-sized farmers who raise cattle, hogs, and chickens. The bill required the U.S. Department of Agriculture to enforce a law called the Packers and Stockyards Act by enacting new Fair Farm Rules, also known as the GIPSA rules (named for the branch of the USDA that would oversee the rules, the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration). The Packers and Stockyards Act has been on the books since 1921, but the Department of Agriculture has never enforced its prohibition on unfair contracts and discriminatory practices against farmers and ranchers.
What do the proposed rules do?
The new rules prevent meatpackers from giving “undue preference” to large producers, like factory farms, that put small independent producers at an economic disadvantage. Many of the changes are technical, but very meaningful to small and midsized farmers and ranchers. The new rules would:
• Stop price premiums and secret preferential contracts granted to cattle and hog factory farms.
• Prevent one buyer from representing multiple meatpackers at an auction. This practices effectively eliminates competitive bidding on livestock, which hurts small-scale producers.
• Prohibits retaliation against poultry growers who speak out about abuses.
• Protects poultry growers who make expensive upgrades and investments and prevents companies from requiring growers to make expensive upgrades to their facilities if they are in working order.
How will this impact small farmers?
New rules to make contracts more fair will make it easier for small farmers to get their product to market and make a fair price that will let them stay in business.
Who is working against the fair farm rules?
Big processing companies that profit off exploiting small farmers and ranchers like Tyson, Cargill, and Swift. And trade associations like the American Meat Institute and the National Chicken Council.
Didn’t the current system develop because it is more efficient?
The current system only benefits meatpackers and poultry processors, who pay farmers less and less for their livestock and force them into unfair contracts. The companies have efficiently eliminated independent farmers, but consumers don’t even get the benefit of this so-called efficiency, since food price inflation has risen sharply over the past few years. Also, large-scale production leads to greater public health and environmental problems, which impact everyone.
Doesn’t the current system lead to lower prices for consumers?
No – consumers see no benefit from the current system, as savings by processors from these oppressive contracts are not passed onto consumers. When so few companies control the market, they don’t have much reason to pass savings on to consumers. And consumers lose out as small and midsized farmers are pushed out of business. We’re left with fewer healthy sustainable choices and more antibiotic and artificial hormone ridden meat and poultry in the grocery store.
RSVP for the Call-in Day Event
We, the consumers do not benefit from fewer and fewer large corporations controlling the production of ANYTHING. And when it comes to food production, it affects our health, our children's health and our very planet's survival since how we raise and grow our food impacts water quality, soil conservation and climate change so directly.
You can do something.
RSVP for the Call-in Day Event
And I urge you to go further than just doing something on Wednesday.
Start a community garden. Support a local Farmer's market and BUY local.
My community just approved the lease of 24 acres to an Organic Ranch on our very city. My excitement cannot be measured by these mere words I type now. I just know that by having local organic fruits and vegetables grown just two miles from my home, community gardens and a Farmer's market will make a difference for our community. Every community deserves this opportunity.
Congratulations to Savannah's Organic Ranch for getting approval last night by our City's Community Association. No one thought it would get done, but it did!
I plan on writing more about this amazing non-profit and family that have become an important part of our community and a cause I intend on personally being involved in seeing through because every CHILD deserves access to organic fruits and vegetables and safe healthy food to eat.
After several months, the two-thirds majority vote was reached, and delegates approved the Aliso Viejo Community Association's recommendation to lease land to Savannah's Organic Ranch. SOR plans to build an organic farm, community garden and educational center on a 24-acre piece of AVCA land off Wood Canyon.
Savannah Sachen lost her battle with cancer when she was 8 years old. She had dreamed of having her own organic ranch where other children and their families could come to have fun and learn how to eat healthy.
Savannah's parents, Joe and Lisa Sachen, promised to get their little girl her ranch—even if she couldn't be here to see it. The majority was reached June 20, and the Sachens can now continue in their effort to fulfill Savannah's dream.
Every little bit helps, you can make calls, you can plant garden beds, go to a Farmer's market and do even more, but please do something.
And educate yourself.
From Environmental Working Group, another important non-profit:
Eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day from the Clean 15 list rather than from the Dirty Dozen can lower your pesticide intake by up to 92 percent!
Environmental Working Group's Food Guide
Check out the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen and SHARE IT.
We can do something!
RSVP for the Call-in Day Event