“gene drive” proposal to make weeds more susceptible to ROundup

The Heinrich Boll Foundation and the ETC Group recently released a 20 page report about the ill defined and understood “Climate Smart Agriculture”. Unsurprisingly the agro-industrial sector has embraced these developments that rely heavily on synthetic biology. Synthetic biology sometimes dubbed “genetic engineering on steroids,” broadly refers to the use of computer-assisted, biological engineering to design and construct new synthetic life forms, living parts, devices and systems that do not exist in nature. Proponents maintain that designer crops and entirely genetically new products are the way forward in the fight against climate change. The lobbying power of this sector is significant, we cannot allow them alone to dictate the future of the food system.

the cracks begin to show at the young farmers conference 2017

The young farmers conference 2017 took place this past week, and you may have already heard about the controversy that unfolded during and after the first days keynote speech. The keynote was a discussion between Ricardo Salvador  from the Union of Concerned Scientists and writer Mark Bittman who is the author of 20 acclaimed books, including the How to Cook Everything series, the award-winning Food Matters, and The New York Times number-one bestseller, VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00. Bittman has become a prominent and and distinguished figurehead of the sustainable food movement over the course of his career, and yet during the young farmers conference, it became clear that he does not represent the foot soldiers of the movement.

During the question-and-answer session after Bittman and Salvador’s keynote, chef and educator named Nadine Nelson directed a question at Bittman that he did not seem able to answer. She asked: “How do you hold yourself accountable to communities of color, and vulnerable communities?” Nelson was communicating her concern as a woman of color about the disparity between the rhetoric, and action of liberals who say that they support minority groups but who often do not realise this.

Bittman for all intents and purposes did not respond to the substance or content of her actual question, answering simply with “ok well then, fair enough”. When prompted to answer the question more fully, the stated that he didn’t understand what “how he could hold himself accountable” within the context of the question and maintained that he has always tried to do good throughout his career. The tension is palpable in the video footage (it takes place from around minute 56 onwards) and serves as a snapshot of the discontent and miscommunication that exists between the leaders and founders and the new generations within social movements, not least the sustainable food and farming movements.

This was not however the last word on the issue. Minutes later another attendee made her dissatisfaction with Bittman’s disregard of people of color known. She explained that land reform alone was not the answer to systemic racism. White men have always had a disproportionate number of seats at the table and what is needed now is for those like Bittman not only to respect the voices of people of color but to observe their seats at the table.

“This shit is exhausting,” she said, in reference to Bittman’s dismissal. “And we’re not all friends. Y’all don’t listen to us.”

Click HERE to watch the full video or HERE to read an account by the New Food Economy.

new farmer’s almanac submission time!

Greetings writers, artists, photographers, agrarians! It’s almanac time again! If you would like to contribute to the next volume of the Almanac, now is the time to get thinking, writing and creating agrarian content. This year we have a wonderful new editor Briana – you can contact her with your ideas and submissions at almanac@thegreenhorns.org.  Please see below for more details about the submissions process as well as our guidelines for themes for the upcoming Almanac.

Submission Guidelines:

Deadlines

– ASAP/ By the End of December: Send a quick description of what you want to submit to almanac@thegreenhorns.org. If we’re amenable, we’ll invite you to submit via a google form.

– February 28 will be the deadline for completed submissions.

Written Submissions

Send us essays, interviews, recipes, ruminations, reading lists, rants, star charts, stories, instructions, jokes, thoughts, dreams, or other curious textual things. For prose, 700 words (give or take) is our preferred length. If you’re submitting poems, give us up to three to consider. If your work defies such categories, aim for one page, or two, or three (but no more than that unless we ask).

Visual Arts Submissions

Send us your photographs, original art, illustrations, picture essays, flowcharts, diagrams, maps, doodles, or natural world paraphernalia. Whatever your medium, materials should be submitted as 300 dpi grayscale images, formatted as .tiff, .png, or .jpg files. With each piece, please specify artist name, name of work, and medium.

Farmers React

We will solicit your reactions to selected art works early in 2018. Let us know if this form of writing calls to you.

Themes and Challenge Questions

As usual we have laid out some themes as a scaffold to inspire and provoke your Almanac contributions. You can ignore them, or you can rebut them–but it does seem to work well when we have some consonance within the chapters.

The overarching theme of this year’s almanac is a bigger, broader WE. The motto we’ve chosen is: Together WE can make the Almanac (and agriculture) great for everyone. As Marada Cook always says: “Food is physical”–and the physical proof of a series of inter-linked land actors–so when Aldo Leopold talks about “Land as a community to which we all belong,” it’s perhaps not too dumbed-down to recognize ourselves and one other as both inextricable beneficiaries and victims of land-use decisions. Directly or indirectly. Now or sometime soon. What fictional and exclusive “We” that sees itself apart from the coiling, uncoiling, and recoiling of nature’s news may exist in TV newscaster and consumerist narratives, but this is a shrinking and fortified minority–a miserable abstract demographic otherness.

We therefore challenge ourselves to look straight at the question: “Which WE are WE? And how can we work more together in that WE?” Aren’t WE the settler-homesteaders, aren’t we the dispossessed Irish, Scottish, Mexican, and Caribbean diasporas who arrived penniless on ships? Aren’t we the re-settled Japanese or Chinese coolie-workers? Aren’t we the trail-guard cavalry or buckboard opportunists with a pick-axe? Aren’t we those enslaved for sugar or cotton? Aren’t we the offspring of oppressors and oppressed? Aren’t we the H2A guest workers, or undocumented and fearing the traffic cop? Aren’t we the kids on the Reservation, or orphaned from it by bureaucracy? Aren’t we those chased over the border by structural adjustments, refugees of the “Green Revolution”? Are we not All of these?

Aren’t we all citizens of this same landscape, voters in our watersheds, stewards in the neighborhood, committee members to a changing climate? Isn’t that the WE we are talking about? The bigger broader inclusive and all-encompassing WE, the WE it will take to turn this situation around. The hearts and minds and shovels and sandbags, the libraries and ambulances, the pollination and aquifers, the relief efforts and scar commons that will take part in the distributed volition and immediate reactions to crisis near and far. WE collaborators who can relate with one another alongside, not one-sidedly, in this our shared project of survival.

The editors of this year’s New Farmer’s Almanac challenge you, dear authors and agrarians, to consider the WE. To name your subject, your object, your actions and your place in the ecosystem of successional, emergent, spontaneous, collaborative and altru-opportunist future-making that lies ahead.

 

January

What story are WE?

Reflections on the Trump era, local practices, resilience-based organizing. Tuning in, Tuning out–coping strategies, adrenaline and keeping it real.

– Peace Economy, relations in a small town.

– Peace Economy, relations in the big city.

– Peace culture, non-violence and relating through conflict.

– Peace culture–relating across histories with hispano/indigenous water rights.

– Radical Extension–a thought experiment on how the Extension service might operate in the future, imagine the role of community testing plots for new crops and varieties.

– Punk Extension–a thought experiment on how communities might self organize to do crop research and form adaptation strategies on next crops…

February

Age of SAIL

Looking across the bow at a new economy–a report from the International Sail Freight Alliance.

– How do we orient (post-colonially) to the logic of the landscape, the harbor, the river-system, the portages and canal-making.

– Bodies in Motion/Thoughts on animal movement, human migrations, and the finding of habitable habitats in our beleaguered world.

– Re-negotiating terms of trade.

– Re-negotiating settlement norms.

– Looking at the cargos pre-diesel:Sandalwood, Potatoes and Sardines to the California Gold Rush, Opium and tea Trades, Chilean Nitrate, Russian Hemps, Chinese Silks, Tropical Hardwoods, Masts and lumber, Molasses and Rum, Ice to India. Pick a story, go research it– and tell us what you learn of its enduring consequence.

– Wobbling docks, longshoremen, and the Wobblies.

– Some thoughts on Partnerships and LLCs.

Book Review.

March

Age of TRAIL

Criss-crossing the plains and passes. Please choose one and teach us about it.

– The role of the US cavalry, native treaty negotiations, and broken promises. Fort Laramie.

– The history of trade along the Santa Fe Trail.

– Jedediah Smith and the Beaver trade.

– Forts–Fort theory.

– Fording the rivers, taxes, veins, caches, the Cumberland Gap.

– Research Project: Comparative legal infrastructures of Pastoralism (i.e. Seven North African nations agree to allow their pastoralists to travel freely between the nations without harm).

– Forgotten words, “Land Marks” of animal passage.

– Beginners’ guide to Fruit Exploring.

– Tracking on the farm, using spoor and knowing the wild life.

– Quaker Underground, apples, and peace.

Book Review.

April

Age of RAIL

Farmers Cooperatives, especially the sheep/goat cooperatives of Texas and Colorado, a micro history.

– Hoard’s Dairy, the Wisconsin cooperative milk delivery history.

– The Oak Savanna, and its analogues (Savanna Institute).

– Cattle hubs and spokes, slaughter, hides, buffalo robes.

– Oil Trains, a report from Wisconsin on the rail freight of fracked shale gas.

– Vision for bio-myco-remediation of contaminated railroad lands.

Book Review.

May

FAIL  

Failure

Failing

Exploring trauma in relation to extreme weather.

– Fraternity, exploring the themes, rituals, economic relations and underlying lessons of Fraternal orders in the US.

– Stories from Grange revivals and dissolutions.

– Healing from Lyme.

– What went down with the California “Green Grange Movement.”

Farmers react: ART PIECE.

June

Faith Lands
Testimony from farmers working within religious communities, or on church-owned lands.

– A report from the Catholic Workers Movement.

– Report from Puerto Rico/Caribbean relief work.

– Report from the American Friends Service Committee.

– Culinary Seed Breeders Network.

– Sandhill Cranes, migration and the Federal Wildlife Reserve system (GMOs?).

– Super PACs–back to the land as a progressive political strategy, Brian Donahue…

Farmers react: ART PIECE.

July

Labor forms, Labor arrangements, Negotiating power.
Sharecropping

– Illustration: Comparative value systems for shared profit models (East India Company, Letters of Marque, Whalers, Merchant-ships, Sharecropping arrangements) (cotton, pecans, wheat ground, marijuana cartel). *Will require some research and interviews.

– Illustration: Peasant holidays secured in different feudal arrangements, concessions for subsistence alongside service to the estate/center of power.

– Overview of the H2A system.

– Description of the Student Loan Forgiveness program.

– Illustration: Photos of Sharecropper houses, photos of sugar cane workers, photos of Mockabee farmworker houses, photos of farm apprenticeship housing, photos of mini-houses, photos of prairie homesteads, photos of worker trailers.

– Sharecroppers Union formed Southern Federation of Cooperatives, the legacy and the work ahead.

Farmers react: ART PIECE.

August

Reparations

What would a Restoration Economy look like? And would it pay as much as videography?

– Confronting racism in the food system.

– Sherman’s Order.

– Solidarity practices.

– Thought experiment: What would it look like if the Food Deserts got a Land Trust, and elected to protect their agricultural foodshed?

– Intersectionality.

– Acequia stories: Hispano/Indigenous water rights issues in the Southwest.

Book Review.

September

Marijuana culture

– Marijuana philanthropy, small town politics.

– Market limits…Who will smoke it all?

– Race and enforcement, legalization for whom?

– CBD recipes and markets.

– Venture stoners.

– Discussions about warehouses, hydroponics, and the future of ‘organic’.

Book Review.

October

Genetics

– Population breeding, a report on the work in Italy.

– Adaptation, how does nature learn?

– Assisted migration theory, SW Seed Partnership botanists explain their work collecting seed from native populations for restoration practices.

– Personal audit, who are my people? Which WEs am I?

November

Native Sovereignty Movements

– The work ahead.

– Native food products, aggregation.

– The story of Chimayó chiles.

– ‘First foods’.

– About the Huckleberry Commons of Mt. Hood.

Book Review.

December

Scar Commons

Looking at the forms of human coping post-crisis, post-displacement. How we reformulate ourselves into coherence. Reactive institution-making.

– Refugee farms, Alcoholics Anonymous, Syrian Seed bank project, Community Centers in the old rural schools, and on.

– Personal reflections on healing from trauma.

With thanks,

Briana Olson – Lead Editor
Severine vT Fleming – Director of the Greenhorns
Katie Eberle – Visual Editor
Emma O’Leary – Office Manager

bad news – usda vote in favour of inclusion of hydro- and aquaponics as organic

The Packer reports that yesterday the USDA  National Organic Standards Board voted 8 to 7 not to ban hydroponic and aquaponic production from being included under the organic umbrella. Lee Frankel, executive director for the Coalition for Sustainable Organics, shared the news today in an e-mail to members. The board did vote in favour of excluding aeroponics from the definition.

Click HERE to read the full article on the Packer and we will keep you updated once further information emerges.

biodynamic wildfire relief fund

credit: The Biodynamic Association

Following the devastation caused by the spread of massive wildfires in California over the past week it has become apparent that many of those within the biodynamic community have been directly affected. Among these is Frey Vineyards, a pioneer in Biodynamic® wine and dedicated supporter of the BDA. The vineyard has experienced significant losses due to the fires, as have many other farms and vineyards. Many more have been evacuated from their homes and are waiting anxiously as the fires continue to spread. In response the Biodynamic Association is considering setting up a recovery fund to enable donations to assist biodynamic farmers experiencing losses of animals, crops, homes, and infrastructure in the region. If you or someone you know in the biodynamic community is in need of financial support, please contact Karisa Centanni at karisa@biodynamics.com to help them better understand the needs of the biodynamic community and how they can mobilize support.

rally keep the soil in organic! – oct 8th and 15th

“Organic without soil is like democracy without people.”

     -Vermont Lieutenant Governor-elect David Zuckerman at the Rally In The Valley

The first of two rallies to keep the soil in organic takes place this Sunday October 8th at the Intervale Center (180 Intervale Rd) in Burlington VT. The second rally is being planned for Sunday, October 15^th on the green at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. These are just two of dozens of rallies happening around the country this fall in solidarity with organic producers growing in, and caring for the soil.

Tractor parades at each rally will start rolling at noon, followed by brief speeches, local food, live music, and lively celebrations!

Speakers at the Intervalle rally include: Senator Bernie Sanders, Eliot Coleman, Lt. Governor David Zuckerman, Maddie Monty, Christa Alexander, Taylor Hutchison, Will Raap, Joe Tisbert and Pete Johnson.

Speakers at the Hanover rally include NOFA VT executive director Enid Wonnacott, farmers Roger Noonan, Lisa McCrory, Will Allen, Jake Guest, Dave Chapman, Karl Hammer, Michael Phillips and Davey Miskell

Please join us as we rally together to take back the National Organic Program (NOP) from corporate influence and reclaim the lost meaning of organic. Organic integrity has suffered in recent years as a flood of hydroponic vegetables and berries and products from animal confinement operations have forced their way into the Program. Join us in sending a strong message to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) that animal confinement and hydroponic production have no place in organic. Real organic is based on healthy soil and working with natural systems, not imitating and replacing them. We are preparing for a historic NOSB vote in November on reconfirming fertile soil as the foundation of organic farming.

Contacts:

Intervale: Davey Miskell (802) 318-0576 or Maddie Monty (802) 324-1580

Hanover: Dave Chapman (802) 299-7737 or Cat Buxton (802) 359-3330

To keep up to date on the “Keep the Soil in Organic” movement, click HERE.

2017 empire farm days: soil health centre

Photo Credit: USDA, Scott Bauer

The New York State Working Group for Improved Soil Health has just announced its schedule of activities for the Soil Health Center at Empire Farm Days 2017 in Seneca Falls, NY. They have a fantastic line up of speakers spanning the course of three days from August 8th – 10th.

request for proposals: the fifth annual yale food systems symposium

With the 5th annual Yale Food Symposium taking place this September, the organisers are putting out a final call to farmers and activists to submit proposals. The aim of the gathering is to create a platform to share research and knowledge between scholars and those who are tangibly involved in the food system in order to create meaningful and fruitful relationships across disciplines.

Relevant topics range from indigenous food sovereignty and food justice to nutrition, ethics and religion and everything in between! There is a comprehensive list of topics and requirements for proposals on their website however they welcome proposal on other relevant topics not listed.. Closing date for submissions is July 15th so don’t delay!

To submit a proposal click HERE and for more information about the previous symposiums click HERE

hudson valley school plants seeds of herbalism with upgraded training program

Wild Gather, a spectacularly cool herb school in the Hudson Valley, is currently offering Seeds of Herbalism, a foundations class in Western herbal traditions. Registration is open, and those who have looked at the program before will note that they’ve added an additional month to the program with 20 more hours of class time.

Seeds of Herbalism is a 5 month foundational program that takes place in and around Hudson, NY. This 60-hour course will provide students with a grounding in Herbal Medicine by developing the skills to work with plants for their own self care and their communities.

Wild Gather writes, “In this program, we’ll cultivate an understanding of Botany and the plants of our bio-region, learn medicine making, first-aid & hands-on self care skills. We’ll also delve into the spirit world of plants and healing, by exploring our unique ancestries and relationship to plant lore and magic. Additionally, Social and Health Justice are core values for us as facilitators, and our program is rooted in holding space for conversations, learning and growing around the many oppressions people face surrounding health care and its access. With all this and more, students will gain an incredible footing into the beautiful world of Herbalism.”

If you’re interested, go here to learn more; registration is now open!

goats in the city

Our friends at Kiss the Ground take the cake for this week’s most uplifting environmental video– best of all it integrates two of our favorite things: videos of goats being goats and alternatives (dare we say upgrades?) to fossil fuels in land stewardship. Also, does anyone else want this woman’s job?

write 200 words, take an eco-retreat in beautiful appalachia

Greenhorns blog reader Robin Wilson has an intriguing pitch for anyone out there who could use a free eco-village retreat. I’ve driven through West Virginia in the Spring: the rolling hills, the verdant green, me senses magic afoot there! Those of you out there who aren’t tied ball and chain to a greenhouse of needy baby plants, do it for the rest of us! (And while we’re living vicariously through you, think about riding your bike there…)

She describes the opportunity:

“Five days in rural West Virginia between May 19 and June 11, 2017
• Simple living, activist, eco-village, experience in rural West Virginia.
• Time to write, research, create. Learn or swap ideas about Appalachian history, nature, gardening, tree crops, and carbon neutral ways of life
• Room and board in exchange for three hours shared work per day – garden / orchard work, building, organizing for people and planet over profit.
• Housing: small separate bedroom and use of outhouse, Food: mostly local and mostly vegetarian
• Please send a short (max 200 words) pitch for why you’re a good fit for this idea – Robin Wilson robin@wvcag.org – I’ll email you back if it looks like it will work for one of the five day slots between the dates given.”

 

making the eggs-pansion a reality!

OK, gang, here’s the deal: our friends at Apple Creek Farm (run by Greenhorn Abby Sadauckus and her partner) just needs a few more eggs in their basket to be successfully funded in their Barnraiser! With three days to go, they are within 85% of their goal of funding a the construction of a chicken coop that would allow them to meet the demand for local pasture-raised eggs at their local farmers market. As Abby writes below and as every farmer can empathize, raising money is so just so much harder than the actually work of farming, so let’s help a sister out!

More info about the eggs-pansion (and I hope you’ve caught the double pun there) here!

Here’s the latest from Abby: “As we are all well aware starting a farm takes more that great products, consistent markets and energy—it takes the support of the community as well. The campaign will fund the construction of a hoop house which will serve as winter housing for our expanded flock of organic laying hens.

We’ve met our minimum funding goal of $8,000 and the remaining funds will help us purchase new nest boxes that will make egg collection easier, the lumber for constructing our end walls, and an exhaust fan to keep the house dry.

By improving the way we produce our eggs we’ll be able to offer the same unparalleled product, enhance our hen’s living conditions and double our flock without increasing our workload! Eggs are a key component of our market presence and when we run out in the first two hours of markets our customers notice! This project will enable us to sell more eggs to market shoppers, natural foods stores and through a CSA.

Since we brought all of our farming activities to Bowdoinham we’ve increased our capacity and now we’ve outgrown our current buildings and are ready to take the next step. So, we have this fundraising campaign. We’ve been pushing it for a month and to be honest, it’s harder than farming!”

Support the Greenhorns community! Donate here!

 

if you wanted to track your local wind patterns…

We’ve got another good one for all of our fellow map geeks out there. Sev just learned about Windy TV from the lighthouse keeper in the Azores. The website provides a real-time map visualization of wind and weather patterns around the globe. It allows the user to zero in on a specific address or to get a satellite’s-eye-view of whole continents, and it’s a great tool for educating yourself about about predominant wind patterns and their seasonal variations.

Utility aside, we’d be remiss for not mentioning that the visualization is in and of itself downright gorgeous; as far as we’re concerned this is kind of the best way to spend time on the internet since Google Earth.

Oh, and bonus? Windy TV also provides your local forecast five days out without the encroachment of ads.

It makes so much sense to be as familiar with the wind as you are with your coastline, your local watershed, your local politics…

The air is moving! Can you feel it?!

latest ourland episode is out! and it’s awesome

Our Land Episode 6: Growing a Regional Food Economy from The Greenhorns on Vimeo.

No secret that we can’t be exactly unbiased talking about the latest Our Land episode, but as a blogger who has essentially no film-making skills and had no part in the making of this video, I have to say that it’s kind of the bomb-diggity. Episode Six, “Building a Regional Food System,” which follows the Cook family of Maine. The Cooks are responsible for the first large organic potato operation in Aroostiuck County, the phenomenally innovative and inspiring Crown of Maine Co-op, and Northern Girl— a value added processing plant that provides rural farmers with access to institutional buyers across New England. The story and its footage is as poignant and hopeful as you’d like to start off your day, but the video goes so far beyond your typical feel-good foodie youtube piece and into the nitty-gritty challenges of what it actually takes to create resilient regional food systems.

regenerative enterprise

Regenerative Enterprise, or the idea that business doesn’t have to suck so much. Wait! Don’t go: before you think I’m about to preach to the choir on creating businesses that go beyond the extractive model, or throw some vague “Be sustainable!” nonsense at you, don’t worry.

Enter, the Regenerative Business Institute, a nonprofit with its roots in permaculture and agriculture. The organization provides an incredible wealth of resources on “regenerative enterprise.” A lot of this, are things that small farmers have and have been doing for years: valuing social connections, social health, and the health of land as much (if not much more than) monitory profit. But, what the institute has to offer that is new are economic ways of thinking that allow us to clearly articulate our goals and create smarter systems.

For instance, download an entire book on Regenerative Enterprise for free. Or, spend some time exploring the idea that there are actually eight forms of capital (spoiler alert, only one of them is financial). Ask, how can this change our budget, goals, and planning? Or, watch this truly excellent talk on the  Introduction to Seven First Principles from CAROL SANFORD on Vimeo.