transnational corporations, factory farms and the economic colonization of rural america

photo credit: farmaid.org

John Ikerd, August 3rd, 2017, In These Times 

“The sense of impotence and dread in rural America is a consequence of decades of economic extraction and exploitation carried out in the guise of rural economic development. Rural areas are suffering the consequences of prolonged “economic colonization”—a term typically used in reference to neoliberal economic development in nations previously colonized politically. Rather than being colonized by national governments, most economic colonization today in rural America, and indeed in rural communities around the world, is carried out by multinational corporations.

accessible innovation

Haven’t we been hearing or a long time that that human innovation and technology will be the thing that gets us through the projected crisis’ ahead, from the environmental, to the social and political. Yet even as we are seeing an unprecedented increase in affordable technologies, these solutions still tend to consolidate power in the hands of a few as most are proprietary by design.

Wasn’t it Wendell Berry that said a solution is not a solution if it is not available to all? It’s a rational that resonates with a lot of the opensource and farmhack ethos of simple, user designed, accessible technologies and practices. Because beyond just being accessible, open source innovations respond to the needs of a community rather than being prescriptive solutions coming from outside.

We’re excited about this little project by some folks from France called The Gold of Bengal. The group has been sailing a boat made of recycled material, navigating the the world in search of different interesting initiatives. Their current voyage began in 2015 and for the next 3 years they are documenting low-technology innovations that they encounter along the way.

Three cheers for community led, decentralized, open innovation!

You can find out more info about the Nomade des Mers voyage here and look at some of their low-tech lab documentation here. And while you’re feeling inspired maybe you want to contribute some of your own low tech solutions to the farmhack tool list.

the small farmers journal sends their thanks

Huzzah!

We’ve received news from Lynn and the team at The Small Farmers Journal that their kickstarter campaign to get the 161’st and 162nd edition to print has been a resounding success.

The publication is rare mix in slowtech know-how and informed, irreverant editorials – all set alongside beautiful photos and artifacts from agricultural history.

If you’re not familiar with it, we suggest popping by their newfangled (almost as nice as the publication) website, where you can pick up your own copy of the journal.

 

how to be your own light in the age of trump

Sarah Kendzior has a favor to ask of all Americans, no matter who you voted for this past election. It’s a simple request that all of us, no matter how busy our lives may be, should take a moment to fulfill:

Write down what you value; what standards you hold for yourself and for others. Write about your dreams for the future and your hopes for your children. Write about the struggle of your ancestors and how the hardship they overcame shaped the person you are today.

Write your biography, write down your memories. Because if you do not do it now, you may forget.

Why should we do this simple exercise? Because in this Age of Trump we may see our institutions, our media, and our leaders, as flawed as they may be, erode into something that once would have been thought to be unimaginable. And that’s an easy thing to internalize:

But most of all, never lose sight of who you are and what you value. If you find yourself doing something that feels questionable or wrong a few months or years from now, find that essay you wrote on who you are and read it. Ask if that version of yourself would have done the same thing.

And if the answer is no? Don’t do it.

Read the entire article HERE. It’s well worth the read and get writing those biographies!

wages, immigration, and a labor shortage on california farms

According to a recent article in the LA Times, wages are up for farm workers in California and some farms are even offering perks (think 401(k), health care, vacation days, and profit-sharing bonuses) that were often unheard of in the world of agriculture. So why, then, are farmers struggling with what sounds like a crippling labor shortage? Paired with an increasingly restrictive immigration policy, the article suggests that it’s because native-born Americans simply don’t want to work in the fields:

But the raises and new perks have not tempted native-born Americans to leave their day jobs for the fields. Nine in 10 agriculture workers in California are still foreign born, and more than half are undocumented, according to a federal survey.

What do you think? Although the article has its holes and shortcomings, it’s a great start to a debate that must be had in California and throughout the country. Give the entire piece a read by clicking HERE.

insights from peaceful resistance

“…why the things are what they are, how the things would be if they were as they should be, and how a path can be made from the things as they are to the things as they should be.”

These are the words of Peter Maurin who, along with Dorothy Day, cofounded the Catholic Worker Movement. Now 85 years later, the movement that started with a small paper that called for non-violence, voluntary poverty, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken has 240 communities that remain committed to these principles.

Brian Terrel recently addressed the National Catholic Worker Farm Gathering, and recalling the revolutionary spirit of Peter Maurin he had this to say:

For many of us, too, solidarity work and travel to places exploited by economic and other kinds of colonialism brought us to see that Peter was right when he pointedly insisted that issues of war and peace always are, at the heart, issues of the land and its use. In New York City or Los Angeles as in Jerusalem or Mexico City or San Salvador, the peace and good order of society requires justice on the land. It strikes us, finally, that even the food that we serve on our soup lines that is donated or gleaned from dumpsters depends on slave labor and is grown in ways that cannot be sustained. When the peace for which we yearn and struggle finally comes and our global neighbors will no longer be forced by debt and oppression to clothe and feed us but will use their own labor, land and water to care for themselves, how then will we live?

The vision of the Catholic Worker Movement parallels much of the aspirations of today’s new agrarians, as we seek ways to work with the land, minimizing our reliance on asymmetric power dynamics of a global world.

You can see Brian Terrel’s full transcript here and find out more on the Catholic Worker Movement Here.

it’s art, it’s recycle, it’s fuel, it’s interfaith, it’s awesome

We couldn’t help but wrap up this week with a little re-post of this incredibly inspiring and fun initiative coming of Amsterdam.

When you spend  a lot of your life in the country it’s easy to forget about all the cool things that people in cities get up to. And this here is great example of communities, professionals, artists, and academics coming together to solve a unique challenge together.

Alors,

From the blog:

Supernatural is an exhibition and community project developed by Pink Pony Express which worked with a muslim community in Amsterdam to convert leftover bread into cooking gas.

Kolenkit is a majority Muslim district in western Amsterdam with a large amount of waste bread. According to the Koran, bread is not allowed to be thrown away and must be given back the the earth, which has developed a problem with pests. Specialty bins were provided by the municipality to collect and dispose of unwanted bread in a manner that is compatible with Muslim teachings.

Per week there are about 200 loaves of bread thrown away by Muslim families in the Kolenkit. This could generate approximately 60,000 liters of biogas, One stovetop burner set on high uses approximately 1000 liters of biogas per hour. Thus, the bread from the Kolenkit could keep a stove top burning for 60 hours per week. – cyclifier.org

Well, you get the general sense of things. Head on over to their sites, blogs and what not to get more info.

Now we’re all thinking of different ways we can make biogas on the farm… it’d be a great addition to the composting toilet.

Some nice news to digest 🙂

thinking like a commoner

If you’ve not heard of David Bollier, now is as good a time as ever.

Bollier is an author, activist and blogger that spends a lot of time researching and thinking about the commons. He has written a number of excellent books looking at ways in which economies and communities can transition to commons based systems.

From his latest book Think Like a Commoner:

 In our age of predatory markets and make-believe democracy, our troubled political institutions have lost sight of real people and practical realities. But if you look to the edges, ordinary people are reinventing governance and provisioning on their own terms. The commons is arising as a serious, practical alternative to the corrupt Market/State.

The beauty of commons is that we can build them ourselves, right now. But the bigger challenge is, Can we learn to see the commons and, more importantly, to think like a commoner?

Recently Bollier gave a lecture in Athens about the emerging commons economy in Greece post collapse.

Here is a link to the English lecture.

And here is link to Bollier’s blog.

save the rainforest: revisiting an old battle

Photo Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT for Center for International Forestry Research

Some bad news from a recent article in the New York Times:

A decade after the “Save the Rainforest” movement forced changes that dramatically slowed deforestation across the Amazon basin, activity is roaring back in some of the biggest expanses of forests in the world. That resurgence, driven by the world’s growing appetite for soy and other agricultural crops, is raising the specter of a backward slide in efforts to preserve biodiversity and fight climate change.

Large American-based food giants such as Cargill are fueling this destruction, as they look for increasingly remote areas, where regulation and protection laws are limited, to source their crops. There’s also some next level hypocrisy going on, as Cargill and other similar companies had signed deals in recent years promising to curb their role in deforestation.

You can read the entire article HERE (highly recommended!), but this is a reminder that no cause can be forgotten: stay vigilant! Also, give some thought to your soy consumption, in its many iterations:

A major culprit is the cultivation of soy, which has jumped more than 500 percent in Bolivia since 1991, to 3.8 million hectares in 2013, according to the most recent agricultural censuses. Little of that soy is consumed domestically. The vast majority is processed and exported as animal feed in a commodities trade that serves a global appetite for hamburgers, chicken and pork.

staple bedside reading material

“Women in Agriculture” by Filipino activist painter Federico (‘Boy’) Dominguez

Greenhorns, we want to point you in the direction of two texts on contemporary farm life!

The first is The Journal if Peasant Studies, a publication that focuses rural politics and development. If you’re a farmer, researcher, activist, or just plain curious about the breadth of the agrarian perspectives this is a great starting point!

You can download the 44th edition free here.

Next, we would like to give a shout out to our very own publication: the 3 Volume of The New Farmers Almanac. We’re pretty proud of this compendium of agrarian life, which focuses on the commons and features writings, illustrations, thoughts and musings from 120 farming and ranching contributors.

You can order your very own here.

agrarian economics: a letter from a young farmer

I met Kevin Morin in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, a town on the outskirts of Montreal, and home to some of the last vestiges of agricultural land on the island metropolis. At the time Kevin was working for the Cooperative farm Tournesol. Recently Keven and Nikaela Lange both won the Beingessner Award for Excellence in Writing for essays outlining hopes for the new farming economy. Below we have reprinted Kevin’s essay with permission from National Farmer’s Union and you can find both texts on the NFU site.  

Kevin’s letter poses a question that I think many of us ask each day as we sweat and plant, weed and harvest, email clients, pour over spreadsheets and budgets, then pass out exhausted: is the current system of economic evaluation compatible with ecological agriculture and a sustainable future?  This last week I had the good fortune of seeing Dr. Vandana Shiva give the keynote address at NOFA Vermont and once again I was reminded that, like Gandhi’s call for spinning and making clothing by hand, farming is a simple but profoundly revolutionary act. 

My Future Vision for Canada’s Farming and Food System

by Kevin Morin

While talking about backyard cereal breeding, an old Cape Breton farmer once told me that the agriculture there was so far back that now they’re ahead. And if you were to have a cereal killer oatmeal stout from the Island’s own Big Spruce Brewing, you may be inclined to believe that.

I dream of a farm of my own someday, cows in the pasture, neat rows of cabbage…. Think of the rainy days spent in the woodshop, the brisk November mornings crouching in the greenhouse, a woodlot to keep me busy over winter and spring. To farm such a mixed enterprise like that of our grandparents is no romance.

the four horsemen of the good food movement

If you love something, every now and then you should take a step back and think about how that thing could be destroyed. Or as Mike Lee puts it in a well-thought out article for Food+Tech Connect:

A great way to understand how to strengthen something is to think about how you might destroy it. It’s a thought experiment that can jolt the mind into thinking ruthlessly about where your weaknesses are, so you can shore them up. It’s an exercise the Good Food Movement should try to protect the gains we’ve made.

He then goes on to describe the “Four Horsemen of the Good Food Movement.” Just as the Bible’s Four Horsemen will bring on an apocalypse, Mike points to four attributes that could send the Good Food Movement into a death spiral: Apathy, Consolidation, False Truths, and Elitism.

So go ahead: click HERE to poke holes in what you hold dear, all in the name of making it stronger!

before you throw rocks, read this book

To many activists in the Bay Area and other cities in the US, “tech” has become a dirty word. It can feel like large tech companies are steamrolling through cities and neighborhoods, destroying traditional jobs, ushering in gentrification, raising rents, and obliviously pushing the little guy around.

As a result, there’s been justifiable anger, protests, and blow back against these companies. In his book, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Douglas Rushkoff suggests a more measured approach. Yes, these tech companies have done wrong, but Rushkoff believes the digital economy doesn’t have to be all bad:

This isn’t the fault of digital technology at all, but the way we are deploying it: instead of building the distributed digital economy these new networks could foster, we are doubling down on the industrial age mandate for growth above all. As Rushkoff shows, this is more the legacy of early corporatism and central currency than a feature of digital technology. In his words, “we are running a 21st century digital economy on a 13th Century printing-press era operating system.”

Protest however you see fit, but give this thoughtful book a read to expand the discussion and hear another point of view. You can buy it HERE or head on over to your local library to find a copy.

erotic farm fiction

This weekend we would like to steer you towards Artemisia Rae’s  White Oak Summer, an erotic romance novel, that blends sex and farming into a lovely little fireside read.  When she’s not writing blush-worthy prose Rae is farming and helping run a local seed cooperative in Boise, Idaho.

The synopsis:

White Oak Summer is a story about self-discovery. To escape from a dead end job and a life without purpose, Kelsie Thompson accepts an internship on an organic farm. In lush western Oregon farm country, White Oak Farm owners Dana and Craig become Kelsie’s mentors in life and in love. Dana instructs her on the fine art of beekeeping and the luscious intricacies of the plant kingdom. Craig has different things to teach Kelsie and not all of them have to do with farming. Their neighbor – hunky goat farmer Joshua Murphy- complicates things with his own agenda, while the other interns struggle to find their own places in farm life. As the season unfolds, Kelsie learns as much about her sexual interests as she does about growing vegetables. With the inherent sensuality of the natural world as her backdrop, she reaps what she sows.

One reviewer exclaimed, “farm stories with sex scenes.” I can’t help but recall Kristin Kimball’s words from the Dirty Life when, out of sheer seasonal exhaustion, she and Mark began referring to farmer sex as touching hands… This sounds like a superb addition to farm fiction canon 🙂

click here for the book:

http://earthlydelightsfarm.com (farm)

http://snakeriverseeds.com (seed co-op)

ballymoe litfest, ireland, may 19-21

Friends in the UK! LitFest – A Food and Drinks Literacy Festival is taking place this year on the weekend of 19-21st May 2017 in Ballymoe, Ireland.

The full program of events is now published so check it out and book the events that you’re interested in here…

Litfest is the only festival of its kind in Ireland and has created an important hub for food and drinks enthusiasts worldwide to meet and share ideas with each other.

Check out the list of fantastic participants who will be taking part at Litfest17. And buy tickets here!