Author: D.W.

HR 2112

On June 16, the House approved H.R. 2112, the fiscal year 2012 (FY 2012) agriculture appropriations bill, by a vote of 217-203. The House voted to cut nutritional assistance, conservation, and renewable energy programs significantly. Overall, the FY 2012 agriculture appropriations bill would cut $2.7 billion (13.4 percent) in annual discretionary spending from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) below current FY 2011 funding levels. These reductions, if enacted, would follow deep cuts Congress recently enacted in the USDA’s FY 2011 budget. Funding for food and agriculture programs in FY 2012 would be cut more than 25 percent below FY 2010 spending levels on average.

EESI

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Anna Lappé: What Can You Do

As always, I post these in the hope that it will be useful for some of you to embed in your own websites or newsletters. Never doubt that different voices saying the same message will hit different audiences over time. So keep the message alive.

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“I never thought prices would get this high”

Saw this story over the weekend. I am…troubled.

farms as investments

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Farmageddon, the movie.

Here are the current locations for Farmageddon screenings..more should be coming soon.

July 8th – 21st
New York City
Cinema Village
22 East 12th Street

July 17th
Bethlehem PA
Starfish Brasserie

July 22nd – 26th
Portland OR
Hollywood Theater

August 6th
Palm Springs CA
Camelot Theater

August 11th
Tampa FL
Roosevelt 2.0

August 20th
Sedona AZ
Sedona Public Library

Aug 26th – 31st
Chicago IL
Gene Siskel Film Center

Aug TBA
Boulder CO
University of Colorado International Film Series

Sept TBA
Cleveland OH
Cleveland Institute of Art

Thank you for supporting your local farmer!
Kristin Canty
Director, Farmageddon

If you have a large group that would like to put together a screening for your area, you can contact us at Farmegeddonmovie.com. Currently, we are aiming for a short theatrical release so that we can get this issue into the mainstream press. We are also encouraging community screenings in places that don’t have a local theater.

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The Campaign for Fair Food

In 2001, CIW launched the Campaign for Fair Food with the first-ever farmworker boycott of a major fast-food company. The national boycott of Taco Bell called on the fast-food giant to take responsibility for human rights abuses in the fields where its produce is grown and picked.

The logic behind the Campaign for Fair Food is simple. Major corporate buyers — companies such as Publix, Ahold, Kroger and Wal-Mart — purchase a tremendous volume of fruits and vegetables, leveraging their buying power to demand the lowest possible prices from their suppliers. This, in turn, exerts a powerful downward pressure on wages and working conditions in these suppliers’ operations.
CIW

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Access to grocers doesn’t improve diets, study finds

Better access to supermarkets — long touted as a way to curb obesity in low-income neighborhoods — doesn’t improve people’s diets, according to new research. The study, which tracked thousands of people in several large cities for 15 years, found that people didn’t eat more fruits and vegetables when they had supermarkets available in their neighborhoods.The results, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, throw some cold water on the idea that lack of access to fresh produce and other healthful foods is a major driver in the disproportionate rates of obesity among the poor, or that simply encouraging grocery chains to open in deprived areas will fix the problem, said study lead author Barry Popkin, director of the Nutrition Transition Program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

article

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Marketeers

This last Saturday the Crescent City Farmers Market hosted another hot summer Marketeer event. The scavenger hunt was lively all day with kids rushing back and forth looking for vegetables and fruits. Just take a second and think about that sentence again for a minute- kids rushing around for good food.
At the end of the hunt, the kids got their very own BPA-free Marketeers water bottle and parents got a reprieve from amusing bored kids for a few hours.
Next week, a seafood cooking display for the kids…

Marketeers display at CCFM

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Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project Hiring

The excellent people in Asheville North Carolina are hiring. Just so you know, they get 100-200 resumes for this type of position, so leading applicants will have strong relevant experience and skills. Applications close in two weeks.
Job Opening

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Self-checkouts may be a thing of the past soon

Consider yourself a human again. More than one industry grocery giant is experimenting with ridding their stores of the self-checkout lines. I would assume that the stores losses were climbing (from theft at those checkouts and from people just walking out with stuff since there is less personnel up there to watch), and that the complaints also went up (no friendly interactions makes shoppers feel vulnerable so they are more critical.)

And, I’ll suppose that the growth of public markets is also showing the industrial system how to regrow trust and dignity when shopping.
Story

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Layers of partnerships

Today, The Humane Society of the United States and the United Egg Producers announced in a joint statement that they will work together to urge U.S. lawmakers to craft legislation overseeing the living conditions of the 280 million hens involved in U.S. egg production. This would mark the first federal law regulating the treatment of animals on farms.

THS story

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Markets as safe havens

In the Alley of Straw Sellers:

Afghan market

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Brownfields set aside for farmers markets?

Seems like a good idea for someone to study the possibilities of setting aside a small percentage of brownfields for space for markets…

“It is perhaps one of the most cost-effective uses of federal dollars to be found anywhere in the federal government,” said Vernice Miller-Travis, former director of the Environmental Justice Initiative at the Natural Resource Defense Council, who was involved with advising EPA on the brownfields program when it was created. “Whole communities and cities have been brought back from the brink of economic despair because of successful brownfields redevelopment projects.”

Brownfields

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Obesity rates climb again

Adult obesity rates increased in 16 states over the last year and did not decrease in any, according to F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2011, a report from Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The obesity epidemic continues to be most dramatic in the South, which includes nine of the 10 states with the highest adult obesity rates.

TFAH/RWJ report

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Cash=healthier?

Journal of Consumer Research © 2011 Journal of Consumer Research Inc.
Analysis of actual shopping behavior of 1,000 households over a period of 6 months revealed that shopping baskets have a larger proportion of food items rated as impulsive and unhealthy when shoppers use credit or debit cards to pay for the purchases (study 1).
JSTOR

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