french farmers

French recession: Farms feeling the pinch

A year after French President Francois Hollande was elected, promising growth and jobs, the economy has slipped back into recession. As the BBC’s Christian Fraser reports, economic problems are affecting rural workers as much as those in the city.

The Lot-et-Garonne region is home to the largest organic farming area in France, and at this time of year the fields are blooming.

But as in other regions, the local economy is withering in the face of the punishing eurozone crisis.

Patrick Jouy, an industrial strawberry farmer, has seen few of the benefits Mr Hollande promised a year ago.

Many of his pickers are Poles; others are Spaniards and the Portuguese, exiles from Europe’s struggling economies.

Youth unemployment is 17% in the Lot, higher than the national average.

But French people are reluctant to take seasonal work, and Mr Jouy says he cannot risk giving out more expensive permanent contracts, particularly when France is in recession.

“It’s been far more difficult under Mr Hollande,” he says.

Read the rest of the article here.

almanac history!

The Old Farmer’s Almanac — Agrarian Chic In A High-Tech Age
By Jack Smith

IT WAS A CLEAR AND MOONLIT NIGHT, claimed the witness, and shortly before midnight he saw the defendant load a rock into his slingshot, take aim, and strike his victim right above the eye, killing him.

An excited buzz went up from the courtroom at this testimony; now it was up to the accused man’s lawyer, a tall, gangly man dressed all in black, as lawyers often did in the mid-1800s, to refute this testimony. A look of puzzlement settled over the gaunt attorney’s face as he approached the jury box, holding up a book with which they were all familiar.

The witness for the prosecution, he reminded the jury, had just sworn under oath that he could see everything in detail that night, since the moon was overhead, illuminating the fields below. Yet according to the book he held in his hand, explained the lawyer, that couldn’t have happened; the woods would have been pitch black all night, as the moon was in its first quarter, and had set shortly before midnight, more precisely, at 11:57 p.m.

vilsack on usda discrimination

Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund

Contacts: Heather Gray 
heathergray@federation.coop / 404 765 0991
www.federation.coop  

USDA discrimination
by Tom Vilsack, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-vp-0506voicelettersbriefs-20130506,0,2259372.story

In “Easy harvest; A well-meaning USDA program implodes on taxpayers” (Editorial, April 30), the Tribune editorial board chose to give little attention to a deeply unfortunate history of widespread discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture against minority and female farmers and ranchers. It focused on a settlement process intended to address these past claims of discrimination against African-American farmers – Pigford I – while failing to acknowledge additional safeguards put in place under the Obama administration prior to carrying out new claims processes.

farm hands

Farm Hands: With a fresh perspective, Colbians join farming’s next generation
by Molly Pindell, Colby College

As the nation’s farmers grow older, fewer young people are turning to agriculture as a career. Meet Colby farmers who are bucking the trend with everything from organic vegetables to rodeo calves.

our essay collection!

Congrats to all of our editors and essayists – GREENHORNS: The Next Generation of American Farmers – has just won a 2013 Nautilus Gold Award in the Living Green / Sustainability category!  The Nautilus awards recognize “Better Books for a Better World”.

From Nautilus: Amidst the turmoil and turbulence in our world today, people everywhere are beginning to hope for and imagine a world that works for everyone – a world, as it could be, with abundant possibilities for rethinking how we live. It is with great dedication and commitment to this vision that we continue to present a collection of Better Books for a Better World.  We are so proud to include your 2013 Award winning book in this body of knowledge.

discrimination at the USDA continues

WEDNESDAY, MAY 01, 2013

Discrimination at USDA: Response to New York Times

Susan A. Schneider
Professor of Law and Director, LL.M. in Agricultural & Food Law

University of Arkansas School of Law

The New York Times published an article last week titled, U.S. Opens Spigot After Farmers Claim Discrimination. I read the article with interest, as I have been teaching advanced law classes in Agricultural Finance & Credit for many years in the LL.M. Program in Agricultural & Food Law. I teach a unit on USDA discrimination each year in my class.

Discrimination in the delivery of USDA programs is a painful and complex subject. I was alarmed to see errors, omissions, and misleading references in the Times article. I am very disappointed that the author appeared more interested in producing a salacious story than in treating the issue with the respect and depth that it deserved. I offer corrections and additional information.

working farms survey

Help a journalist out and share what you know!
Here’s a note from Jason:

I am a freelance journalist writing an article on the economics of running a small farm, and am distributing the following survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CHJ58CF) in order to collect important information from farmers like you. Please fill out the following survey and share it with other farmers you may know. While the article has yet to be placed, it will likely be in a national magazine such as The Nation or The Atlantic.

As far as my own background, I have written articles about labor and employment issues, as well as food related issues. I am interested in small farms and the economics behind them because little has been written about it. My hope is that small farmers from across the nation will fill out the survey so that we can have reliable data on the labor economics of small farming. All information will be confidential and will not be shared or sold to any other entity. I am also providing access to the results of the survey to all participants. You will find questions pertaining to this in the survey.

Thanks for your time and energies. Please contact me at jason@workingfarms.org with any questions.

awesome new newsletter on maine grains & oil seeds

This is the first issue of the Maine Grain and Oilseed Newsletter.  In response to the growing number of questions from farmers regarding the production of grains and oilseeds, we decided that it was best to start a newsletter that will, hopefully, provide timely research-based knowledge to Maine’s producers.  This newsletter will be distributed on a monthly or “as-needed” basis throughout the year.  The newsletter will be available through e-mail, and will be posted online (http://umaine.edu/agriculture/blog/2013/04/18/maine-grain-and-oilseed-newsletter-april-2013/) to make reading on certain electronic devices easier.  If you do not want to receive the newsletter, or know of someone who would like to receive the newsletter, please contact Andrew Plant at aplant@maine.edu to be removed from or added to the email list.

This first newsletter contains information on seed selection, market standards, and assessing the viability of fall-sown winter grains.  We hope you will find this information useful to your production needs.

rural news from this land

This Land Press

food banks and systems change

The Hunger Game
Food banks may compound the very problems they should be solving
By Nick Saul

Picture a vast warehouse the size of a football field. Forklifts stand loaded with wooden pallets and cardboard boxes tightly secured with heavy-duty plastic wrap. In aisle upon aisle, boxes sit on metal shelves that reach all the way to the ceiling. It might be an IKEA store or any modern commodity warehouse. But this is a food bank or, more accurately, a food bank distribution warehouse. Every major Canadian city has one. The largest send out nearly 8 million kilograms of food a year to the hungry people lining up at community-based food banks.

The scale and sophistication of these operations are impressive. There are hundreds of employees and volunteers who handle thousands of donated food items, trucks and boxes, cans and bags. There is also a large fridge and freezer section for storing all manner of perishables.

Yet each time I visit such warehouses, I find myself alternating between hope and despair. Hope born of the understanding that all of this is motivated by the human urge to help others with that most basic of needs: food. Despair because this effort, and that of food banks all over Canada, has not solved the problem of hunger. On the contrary, I believe food banking makes it worse.

Read the rest of the article here.

an article from the conservation world

The Faith-based, Trickle-down Model of Conservation 4.0 — Michael Soulé

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall.
He will end by destroying the earth.

                                          – – Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)

Wildness.  Recently my wife and I spied on endangered female Leatherback Turtles depositing their ping-pong ball-size eggs at Grande Riviére, Trinidad, a famous “turtle beach” where a river enters the Atlantic.

During our first night at Grand Riviére the skies gushed for hours, previewing the rainy season.  By morning, the swollen river had cut a new channel through the beach where many female Leatherbacks had already nested.  Hundreds of turtle eggs were being washed into the ocean or consumed by dogs and Black Vultures.  We felt compelled to collect the doomed eggs and re-bury as many as possible in new “nests” at a safe distance from the river and the ocean’s waves.  So for an hour we gathered turtle eggs from the sand and reburied them in safety.

Full article HERE

undercover in a slaughterhouse

An example of excellent journalism.

You can only read the original Harper’s Magazine Piece, The Way of All Flesh, if you are a subscriber.  But here is  Ted Conover being interviewed about the story on NPR’s On the Media: http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/apr/19/going-undercover-industrial-slaughterhouse/.
And here is a post he wrote on the Harper’s Blog: http://harpers.org/blog/2013/04/on-meeting-our-meat/

well done, lindsey

Op-Ed: To Recruit a New Generation of Farmers, We’ve Got to Get the Story Right
The National Young Farmers Coalition wants to set straight the economic facts of local food production.
By Lindsey Lusher Shute, April 16, 2013

In the past year, the mainstream media featured more than a few stories critiquing America’s local and organic foods movement. The New York Times and others swallowed the findings of a Stanford study debating the value of organic foods hook, line and sinker; Time and Dr. Oz declared, “Organic food is great, it’s just not very democratic”; and NPR recently reported that growing local food doesn’t pay.

Vigorous debate is good, but these stories seemed more about selling clicks and papers than getting the facts straight. And that’s bad news for a nation that’s in need of a new generation of young people to provide it with healthy food.

Read the full article here

call for papers

from The Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development

Special Topic Call for Papers:       

Land for Food:

A Focus on Farmland Protection and Land Grabbing

Deadline for manuscripts: May 15, 2013, for publication in the fall 2013 issue

Sustainable and equitable food systems require adequate volumes of high quality and affordable farmland. Many farmers invest heavily in their farmland; typically it is one of their greatest assets. Meanwhile, the loss  of  farmland may affect food security. In the United States, for example, the USDA reports that  the country is short by 13 million acres for fruit and vegetable production to meet daily requirements.¹ While the international recession has slowed farmland loss in some places, sprawl that affects some of the best farmland continues unabated. The loss in some countries has been so great  that they are pursuing the control of agricultural land in other countries — particularly in the global south.

urban ag land access

via Little City Gardens.  A public hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.  CA greenhorns, take action!

Access to land is a crucial issue for small scale farming, both urban and rural, and as we’ve previously talked about here, insecure land tenure has been one of the biggest obstacles we’ve come across in our three years of operating this farm. Running a successful, financially sound business has been particularly challenging without a reliable long term lease, as it has greatly limited the kind of investment we can safely make, both physically (in the form of long term perennial crops, thorough irrigation setup, and necessary infrastructure like hoop houses and cold storage) as well as personally (how we are able to commit to and shape our lives around this project). Because the land we farm is currently owned by a developer, we never quite know when our month-to-month lease will be terminated, or when our rent will suddenly spike in order to more adequately cover the owner’s rising costs. Also, in our particular case, the property we’re using is ill-suited for development due to it’s irregular orientation (a long, narrow lot surrounded on three sides by backyards) and a very high water table. Unfortunately, these factors are negligible when it comes to the property’s market value, and the property taxes are exorbitant. It’s hard to imagine commercial farms thriving in cities, providing food at prices comparable to their rural counterparts, when urban land is exclusively and without exception valued in terms of its potential real estate.

Full story, including how to take action, here: http://www.littlecitygardens.com/2013/04/land-tenure-legislation/