Food and Agriculture

Kauai’s Local Food Movement Designed For Independence

January 28, 2014 James Trimarco, www.yesmagazine.org Create! Food and Agriculture

With a climate that permits year-round abundance and a long history of vibrant and diverse local agriculture and fisheries, how did Kaua'i find itself so dependent on imported food? And more importantly, for leaders of a fast-growing food movement, how can local foods once again provide the security and nourishment that was once part of Kauai's way of life? Local food advocates have spent decades trying to answer those questions and laying down the foundations for a new system of agriculture capable of feeding the island's people. Part of what motivates them is Kaua'i's remoteness. Like the other Hawaiian islands, it is more than 2,400 miles away from the nearest continent. Even the rest of Hawai'i is far away; a stormy channel 70 miles wide separates Kaua'i from the closest major island. This means that local food is an urgent issue here and advocates hope their work will help prepare local people in the event that the global shipping networks that supply the island with food are ever interrupted.

8 Ways To Start Farm To School Programs

January 27, 2014 Jennie Lyon, www.inhabitots.com Create! Education, Food and Agriculture

Farm to school is a program that connects local school and farms with the main objective of serving healthy meals in schools while improving children's nutrition, supporting local farmers and introducing children to agricultural and environmental opportunities. There are many schools throughout the country that already participate in a Farm to School program. You can see if there is a school in your area here. You can also start a Farm to School Program at your child's school on your own -- with the help of the school, community and student families. It's an amazing program that when implemented correctly can have a huge impact on the school, environment, and community. All the while teaching children the importance of properly caring for the environment, eating healthy whole foods, and learning to be an eco-conscious adult. - See more at: http://www.inhabitots.com/8-ways-to-start-a-farm-to-school-program-at-your-childs-school/farm-1/?extend=1#sthash.T3Bra4K2.dpuf

Legal Experts Reject Claim Food Labelling Unconstituional

January 27, 2014 Katherine Paul and Ronnie Cummins, www.organicconsumers.org Educate! Food and Agriculture, GMOs

The food industry is playing every conceivable angle in its quest to keep labels off foods that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs)—including, according to a leaked document, threatening to sue the first state that passes a GMO labeling law. (Maine and Connecticut passed GMO labeling laws in 2013. But both have “trigger” clauses that prevent the laws from taking effect until at least four neighboring states, with a combined population of 20 million inhabitants, pass similar labeling bills). The Organic Consumers Association has obtained the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s (GMA) “One-Pager” of talking points about GMOs and labeling laws. The document is intended for use by food industry lobbyists whose job it is to convince state lawmakers to reject GMO labeling bills in their states. The talking points include the usual misinformation about GMO safety testing and the so-called benefits of GMOs. But they also include claims that GMO labeling laws are unconstitutional—claims that legal experts say are baseless.

Farmer Creating An Army To Feed The World

January 27, 2014 Paul Post, www.saratogian.com Create! Food and Agriculture

“We believe the education we provide reinforces the concept of caring through sharing,” said Bennett, the NOFA-NY 2014 Farmer of the Year. “The more people we have living and working in rural settings, the more people there are to care for agriculture. We look to the agricultural traditions of the past to build a diverse, sustainable future.” A Rhode Island native, Bennett and his wife, Ann, previously had a Maine farm, but relocated when ABC Television built one the world’s tallest transmission towers next door. “We were assured it would be safe, so we moved,” he said, during a speech laced with humor. One day, after arriving in northern New York, he was invited to give a classroom presentation about the “ins and outs” of organic farming.

Growing Movement Puts Sustainability, Community In Forefront

January 25, 2014 Andrea Germanos, www.commondreams.org Create! Food and Agriculture, Sustainability

Reporting by Agence France-Presse puts a spotlight on this global movement—the Slow City movement, or "Cittaslow"—which hopes to provide an "antidote against negative globalization." "Cittaslow is about appreciating what we are and what we have, without being self-destructive and depleting values, money and resources," Pier Giorgio Oliveti, director of Cittaslow, told AFP. Cittaslow, headquartered in Orvieto, Italy, got its start 15 years ago in a small Tuscan town "to enlarge the philosophy of Slow Food to local communities," and now boasts roughly 160 towns spanning 28 countries. Cittaslow's website explains that Slow Cities "are strong communities that have made the choice to improve the quality of life for their inhabitants."

Former Miner Admits Dumping Chemicals In Water For Decades

January 24, 2014 Robert Johnson and Guis Lubin www.businessinsider.com Educate! Coal, Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture

An Environmental Protection Agency assessment last year identified 132 cases where coal-fired power plant waste has damaged rivers, streams and lakes, and 123 where it has tainted underground water sources, according to an AP investigation by Dina Cappiello and Seth Borenstein. Nearly three quarters of the 1,727 coal mines in the U.S. have not been inspected in five years to see if they are following water pollution laws, according to the same investigation, which cites these and other alarming findings about coal pollution.

Quit Coal. Shut Off the Gas. Remember West Virginia.

January 23, 2014 Rivera Sun, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Coal, Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Oil and Gas

Every time your gas water heater roars to life in your basement, remember the West Virginians. Hundreds of thousands of residents no longer have drinkable water. The same chemical (MCHM) that contaminated the Elk River is also used for fracking for oil and natural gas in communities around the country. The tragedy waits to repeat itself in a watershed near you. Every time you click on your gas stove, remember the forty-seven citizens killed by a fire caused by a train derailment in Lac Megantic, Quebec, Canada. When you hear the subtle hiss of that blue flame, remember, people have been poisoned for your natural gas. Stare into the flame for a moment longer and imagine the miles of underground seams filled with fracking fluids that need only a tectonic shift to crack open a fissure into the aquifers above them. The substratum of our continent is now laced with accidents just waiting to happen.

Oil Trains Threaten Water And Communities

January 21, 2014 Coryn S. Wolk, www.protectingourwaterswordpress.com Educate! Food and Agriculture, Tar Sands

Philadelphia’s wake-up call is here. A few months ago, Protecting Our Waters started warning people about the dangers of the fracked oil trains coming to Philadelphia from the Bakken Shale formation out west. We’ve reported on multiple oil train explosions and derailments across North America, one of which, in Lac Megantic, Canada killed 47 people. As of this morning, the threat of an accident here in Philadelphia is no longer hypothetical. Just after 1 a.m. this morning, seven cars of a 101-car CSX train from Chicago derailed on the Schuylkill Arsenal Railroad bridge over the Schuylkill River. Six were carrying crude oil, and one was carrying sand.

Sharing Garden For A Moneyless Food System

January 21, 2014 Kelly McCartney, www.shareable.net Create! Food and Agriculture

In Monroe, Oregon, the Sharing Garden started and managed by Chris Burns and Llyn Peabody is the gift that keeps on giving. Over the past few years, the garden's bounty has tripled thanks to the support and hard work of "Sharegivers" (aka volunteers) who donate various materials and actual labor three mornings a week. And, in true Sharing Garden fashion, the harvest is distributed not only to the volunteers, but also to the food bank next door, as well as churches and other community members in need... all for free, as part of what Burns calls "nature's economy." He points out that, "None of the other lifeforms on the planet use money or currency of any kind. There's a symbiotic relationship, an interdepency. So we're trying to model that in the garden so that people understand they can give freely without having to account for their giving, and knowing they will receive what they need."

‘Frackalicious’ Comes Out Of The Shadows At Film Fest

January 20, 2014 Tatiana, www,artforthesetimes.org Educate! Climate Change, Food and Agriculture, Fracking

RAFTT anti-fracking spoof product Frackalicious was on display in multiple venues at the Wild and Scenic Film Fest in Nevada City last weekend (Thank you Ruthie for the original inspiration,) and our shadow play “What the Frack?!” debuted in the open-air gathering on Commercial Street. And kids were painting away on the children’s “Stop Climate Change” banner. What a weekend! The annual SYRCL (South Yuba River Citizens’ League) Wild and Scenic Film Festival is a weekend of film viewings, visual art, street performance (with pedal-powered stage), workshops and activist networking. SYRCL went out on a limb and invited RAFTT to showcase Frackalicious in the allotted SYRCL space in the Chamber of Commerce window beginning a few days before the Fest opened. Going in, I suspected this might prove to be controversial, and so it was.

Over 200 West Virginians At State Capitol Demand Answers

January 19, 2014 Deborah Dupre, www.beforeitsnews.com Resist! Coal, Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, West Virginia, West Virginia Chemical Spill

Some 200 angry but peaceful West Virgnians gathered on the steps of the state capitol building in Charleston Saturday in the cold to send one main message to their elected leaders: “We want answers.” Carrying signs, such as “Prosecute the Poisoners” the group called the protest out of desperation in light of the chemical spill state of emergency. A leaked chemical, “Crude MCHM” from Freedom Industries tank has poisoned 100,000 homes and impacted 300,000 people. People are sick. People are injured. They want answers that officials say they do not have. ‘People are sick, animals are sick. The water is now a blue goo at one friends house,” explains Missi-Tracy Pauley on Facebook. “Where are the rights our men and women fight for? Where are the promises the elected officials gave? Where are their morals?"

Over 250 Attend Citizens Summit To Stop Fracking In Minnesota

January 18, 2014 Organize! Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Fracking

The Land Stewardship Project (LSP) of Minnesota held a "LSP Frac Sand Citizens' Summit," on January 18th and over 250 Minnesotans attended. They had a full schedule of activities looking at what is at stake with fracking, the impact on air, health and the environment, looking at grassroots victories against fracking and developing plans to work together to stop fracking in Minnesota. According to a petition on their site they want the governor to do three things: 1. Executive action by you as Governor of the State of Minnesota to enact a two-year moratorium on frac sand mining in southeast Minnesota. Such powers are granted under the Critical Areas Act, passed in 1973. 2. The creation of tough state level regulations on frac sand mining to protect air and water quality, and the strong enforcement of such. 3. Development of community-based renewable energy production and implementation of effective energy conservation through state legislative policy and administrative action.

We Need A Democracy Movement To Fix This Sh*t (video)

January 17, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Activism, Amend the Constitution, Citizens United, Climate Change, Corporate Personhood, Corporatism, Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Foreclosures, Fracking, Government, Move To Amend, Overturn Citizens United

As the late populist and journalist Molly Ivins once said: “It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.” Extending those liberties and constitutional protections to corporations is antithetical to the principles of Democracy. While the Supreme Court has been slowly granting rights of persons to corporation for over 100 years, the phrase “Corporate Personhood” entered the popular lexicon soon after the January 21, 2010 Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court Case.

The Toxic Chemical Spill Crisis in West Virginia Will Happen Again. Here’s Why (video)

January 16, 2014 Dennis Trainor, Jr., www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Chemical Spill, Corporatism, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Freedom Industries, Resistance Report, Toxic Chemicals, West Virginia

When a massive chemical spill happens that contaminates the water supply and leaves over 300,00 people in West Virginia without water to drink, bathe or even brush their teeth - when a dangerous event that throws a whole area of the country into an existential crisis happens, one wants to believe that state and local officials in every part of the country are paying close attention to learn from this crisis to see to it that it be averted in their communities. I mean, there is no way that a corporation, Freedom Industries in this case, would be allowed to handle a toxic foaming agent used as part of the coal preparation processing unless their facility was in tiptop shape, unless the plant processing these toxic chemicals could have the adjective “good” ascribed to it.

Corporate Deregulation To Blame for Toxic Spill In West Virginia

January 16, 2014 Jessica Desvarieux, www.therealnews.com Educate! Coal, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Health Care

So the question is: how did this happen? How did a facility a mile and a half upstream from the drinking water plant that gets drinking water to 300,000 people have this leak happen? And the answer is: in my mind it's the coal and chemical industry in this state has fostered a culture of deregulation. They've captured the major institutions in the state, including the major media, except for The Charleston Gazette, which is doing an incredible job reporting on this. The major university systems, both political parties, are beholden to big coal and to the chemical industry. And the result was predictable. And we've seen this over and over again with these kinds of disasters--in April 2010, the Massey Upper Big Branch explosion, Massey Energy mine, that killed 29 workers. And the Labor Department report found, you know, hundreds of violations. Obviously, the companies aren't taking the violations seriously, 'cause if they were, they would clean up their act. So we need in this state to upend the control, the corporate control of the institutions and bring back a sense of law and order for corporate West Virginia.

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