The nation's oldest, continuously-producing mint farm is auctioned off as part of foreclosure proceedings, in a country where the government will pay millions to support CAFOS, and farms that produce high fructose corn syrup....

You might have heard about the effort to create a Netroots Platform recently. I (along with several others) participated in creating a plank for food & agriculture. The resulting plank (which you can read below the flip) is not comprehensive, but it is a start, and it's also fairly non-controversial (at least, non-controversial among the left). It's something we can all rally behind.

What I'd like to see added to this over time are more protections for children - an expanded fresh fruit & vegetable program, better funding for school lunch programs (particularly farm to school programs and school gardens), less junk in schools, and limits on marketing to children by junk food companies. At any rate - take a look, comment, and if you'd like to get involved in these issues in the future, check out La Vida Locavore (a progressive food blog) and Recipe For America (a site devoted to a liberal food & ag policy platform).

In the first chapter of his National-Book-Award winning The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, Timothy Egan describes Bam White and his family's journey in 1926 through Cimarron County, Oklahoma on their way to Texas.

Through, No Man's Land, the family wheeled past fields that just been turned, the grass upside down.  People in sputtering cars roared by honking, hooting at the cowboy family in the horse-drawn wagon, churning up dust in their faces.  The children kept asking if they were getting any closer to Texas and if it would look different from this long strip of Oklahoma. They seldom saw a tree in Cimarron County. There wasn't even grass for the horse team; the sod that hadn't been turned was frozen and brown. Windmills broke the plain, next to dugouts and sod houses and still-forming villages.  Resting for a long spell at midday, the children played around a buffalo wallow, the ground mashed. Cimarron is a Mexican hybrid word, descended from the Apache who spent many nights in these same buffalo wallows.  It means "wanderer".[pp. 14-15]

What do radiation, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and genetically modified organisms have to do with your food?  A great deal actually, as I'm learning at the IAEA's current International Symposium on Induced Mutations in Plants.  If you are interested in malnutrition in developing countries, Golden Rice, how plant breeders have produced a sizable fraction of the food you eat, and what this all has to do with the IAEA and radiation, please join me below the fold as I report on some of the astounding things I've learned from this meeting.

I have been writing about this story since May.  (after the fold are links for diaries for background).  Yet another farmworker has died from the heat. This is the sixth this summer.

Maria de Jesus Alvarez, 63, mother of nine, died from heat exposure in the fields on August 2.  Her death makes six farm workers who died of heat exposure since May and the 15th farm worker heat death since California Governor Schwarzenegger took office.  Even one is too many.  Six this year is a tragedy.  These deaths show that the state of California is unable to protect farm workers.  

We must act.  We must force action by the state to allow farm workers to protect themselves.  For there are no others to do so.

If you care, join me after the fold.

Hello,
For a number of years I have been preparing to launch what to me is a last-gasp effort to save the planet by finding ways for humans to feed themselves without destroying the ecosystem. "Sustainable agriculture" is the buzzphrase that gets used a lot, my quest was to see if this really can be truly realized, within the free-market paradigm, which for all its flaws is not going anywhere (for good or ill, and that's another discussion for another diary).

The following diary is basically a marketing survey, but not just a marketing survey. It's an attempt to see how many people really believe that we must change our way of consuming the limited resources of this planet, and to see if the seeds of a revolutionary solution can find fertile ground.

--2 & 1/2 weeks

--11 plank categories

--137 participants

--More than 150 154 collaboratively developed draft planks

--550 ratings

The result?

One Unified Netroots Platform

Or it will be, with your help!

We are down to the closing hours to refine the planks of this netroots defined platform; plus two additional days to rate up or down the planks WE have collaboratively authored.  

You can still participate and make sure your voice is heard. But to make sure the best and most representative planks appear in our platform we need your help in the next 3 days, because we want to get this into the hands of the DNC and the Obama campaign in time for them to integrate your ideas into their planning.

To learn more about how, when and where you can still participate see the email after the flip from the Netroots Platform Committee:

After enduring almost eight long years of Bush’s failed policies in everything from economics to the environment to civil liberties to education, we’ve all had plenty of time to think about what we would do differently if we were in charge.

Well we finally have a chance to put our heads together and write our own progressive platform. There’s a lot of issues and ideas out there – so we’re tapping the community’s wisdom to express our collective ideals.  Check it out and speak your mind!

http://netrootsplatform.org

If you’re thinking that you just don’t have time to write a political platform during your lunch break, don’t worry – you can still get involved! If you have a couple of minutes, you can look at what’s out there and rate the planks that best represent your point of view.  If you have ideas but don’t want to start from scratch, you can edit and remix what others have written to make them even better.  If you’ve already thought about your ideal policies, you can submit a new plank.  This is a democratic system that’s completely people-powered, so if the community agrees with you, your language will be used in the final platform.

Remember those bad tomatoes? Remember those vile little red demons, just waiting to make you sick with salmonella?

Well, wait no longer, they weren’t the culprit.  Nope, it was peppers from Mexico.

A strain of the salmonella bacteria that sickened more than 1,300 people has been found in a serrano pepper and a sample of irrigation water at a farm in Mexico, U.S. health officials said Wednesday.They called the discovery a "breakthrough" but cautioned that tomatoes may still be a culprit in the nearly four-month outbreak that has alarmed consumers and cost the domestic produce industry hundreds of millions of dollars

Only 2 days left to submit new planks to the Netroots platform!!!! Come on by and add your $.02 to the process:

www.NetrootsPlatform.org

You can find the current top planks below.  These were developed by the Netroots community - democratically, collaboratively, transparently, and entirely online.

Most of the planks are really strong, but everything (even the good stuff) can still be improved. There's still time for YOU to add your voice before we submit this to the Obama Campaign and the DNC!

(For more info, see here, here, here, here and here.)

Click on to see the current platform:

Photo courtesy of State Symbols USA

So, it wasn't a tomato after all.  It was either a jalapeno or seranno pepper which caused the outbreak that completely shut down the tomato market for three weeks.  Florida growers alone estimate an economic hit of 47 million dollars.  

Today in Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture held a Public Hearing on this outbreak. California Democrat Dennis Cardoza presided. .

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/...

In a report that should shock absolutely no one, the Commodities Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) has released an initial CYA study where they claim that (gasp!) speculators are not the reason for high gas and food prices, as has been reported. But it's really (people keep buying it so they keep saying it) "supply and demand" that's the issue.

According to the article,

The task force is led by the CFTC and consists of representatives from the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Energy and the Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

[Delayed liveblog. All is paraphrased.]

There's a new food and politics blog: lavidalocavore.org blog.

Questions asked by: Orange Clouds 115 and Natasha.

Homework for all participants [and all you readers out there]: There are some myths about food in media, your job is to reframe the message when you see a food myth.

-------------------
Mark Winne - author of "Closing the Food Gap"
Jane Goodall's comment on the book: "It's heartening to find a book that blends passion for sustainable living with compassion for the poor."

Q: With rising food prices, fed program food dollars not going as far any more. What needs to be done, and how can we move that discussion forward?

A: Lower income people paying much more for food. Food cost is already 20% of income for lower income familes vs much less for rest of us.

They're already lining up at food banks and food stamp offices in record numbers. They'll take an additional hit from these rising costs. We HAVE to act immediately in terms of responding to human need.

We haven't always informed our compassion with analysis and long term thinking.

[there's more]

As the G8 conference comes to a close today, they have released their Statement on Global Food Security (link to full text, from the White House).

This is their response to the tragic food crisis.

So, let's take a closer look at the statement. It is in ten sections.

First, they remind us that this thing is bad, but they have already

taken additional steps to assist those suffering from food insecurity or hunger, and today renew our commitment to address this multifaceted and structural crisis.

Second, they remind us that they have already given $10 billion (U.S.) to fix the thing. And they ask that other people help to. They give a head nod toward localism:

We will also look for opportunities to help build up local agriculture by promoting local purchase of food aid.

I examine the other eight sections after the jump.

Congress and producer groups are pressuring the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to release millions of acres from Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contracts and open them up to crop production.  Supporters say this move would increase production and bring down food prices.
 

On the contrary, ripping up conservation lands would not make a big dent in commodity supplies or prices, but it would waste billions of taxpayer dollars of that have been invested in conservation on these lands. It also would be a tragedy for wildlife, water quality, and climate.  

Aminopyralid

According to the Guardian, this herbicide marketed by Dow AgroSciences as Forefront, among other names, has entered the food chain.

It appears that the contamination came from grass treated 12 months ago. Experts say the grass was probably made into silage, then fed to cattle during the winter months. The herbicide remained present in the silage, passed through the animal and into manure that was later sold. Horses fed on hay that had been treated could also be a channel.

The manure was sold to gardeners all over the UK resulting in withered or "grossly deformed"   potatoes, beans, peas, carrots and salad vegetables.  Never come between the English and their gardens.

This story reads like the opening of Sheep Look Up by John Brunner.

It was only a few decades ago when our government actually encouraged us to grow gardens to feed ourselves.  Now, they encourage us to buy ever more cheap plastic foreign-made crap at Wal Mart, instead.

From 'sea to shining sea', the Big Boxes and their fellow travelers have wreaked havoc on our landscape and our communities.  Over the past few decades, our never-ending desire to save 14 cents on a hairdryer has in the long run cost us Main Street.  But as it becomes apparent that the cheap oil era is at its end, even Dick Cheney must be starting to realize that "the American way of life" is absolutely 'negotiable'.

Let's talk about rebuilding our food system and the places that we live below the jump...

I’d like to invite everyone to take a journey with me over the next year and a half.  It’s a farewell to our beloved farm, and the beginning of a new one.  In the course of it, I hope to give y’all a glimpse into the real life of a farm and the practices of sustainable ranching.  And I'll share a few pictures of our farm, including some adorable baby lambs, along the way.

My husband and I have a small, organic (not-certified) farm just outside of Austin, Texas. I bought this place after I graduated law school ten years ago.   I’ll post about my transition from environmental attorney to farmer another day.  For now, suffice to say that I am a student of holistic management and eco-agriculture.  

This diary is cross posted at
La Vida Locavore