canada bans soylent as it is not real food

credit: Getty Images/AFP

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency have banned food replacer Soylent as it does not meet the criteria of real food as it does “not meet a select few of the CFIA requirements for a ‘meal replacement”. The CFIA strongly recommends that it not be consumed and the meal replacement product manufactures do not understand the requirements of human nutrition.

This is not the first time the Soylent products have come under fire from the CFIA, they recalled one of their nutrition bars last year as they were making people ill. Naturally Soylent themselves naturally maintain that the problems with their products are regulatory rather than based in any fact.

Click HERE to read the full article on Eater

2017 ag census

This years ag census is underway friends!

Now is good chance to show the state of ecologic agriculture across the country and to signal that our growth is something the federal government needs to get behind.

Why participate? The data from the annual census can be used to shape the way the government makes decisions on ag policies across the board, from working to encourage new farmers, to expanding resources to help women, veterans, and underrepresented folks in ag. We make up a growing portion of food producers in the country so lets make our numbers count and let the government know we are here!

You can link here to the site to be sure you get included in this years census.

call for film submissions for change making tool-kits

Real Food Films is calling for filmmakers to submit projects by April 1st that correspond to the themes of:

• Crafting Public Policies for Public Health: Taking on Big Soda
• Building Power with Food Workers
• Tackling Climate Change Through Food

Selected films will be included in their 2017 Organizing Toolkits, which will be jam-packed with educational materials for groups and individuals interested in working in food system reform.

“ditching NAFTA” may hurt american farmers, but which ones?

https://www.npr.org/player/embed/515380213/515638250

NPR’s The Salt spoke to American farmers growing products (strawberries) in and outsourcing their products (milk, powdered) to Mexico. And no doubt, these industrial farmers will either pay more to import and export their crops and could lose potential markets. Given, however, that NAFTA’s effect on small and medium farms in this country– which we rarely mentioned in the discussion– has been largely detrimental, and NAFTA’s effect on small farmers in Mexico has been unequivocally disastrous, we wonder how this conversation could be extended to address small-scale sustainable agriculture.  Greenhorns, policy buffs, what do you think? Surely, it is not always true that what is bad for industrialized ag is good for sustainable ag, but….

What do you think, Greenhorns, specifically our economics buffs out there, what will it mean for young agrarians and small farms if the US “ditches NAFTA?”

know your abattoir: there’s a shortage of local slaughterhouses, and it’s kind of a big problem

The following cross-post comes from Field Notes from Maggie’s Farm, the blog from the Learn to Farm Program at the Farm School, and serves as an announcement of an exciting ongoing future partnership between this program and the Greenhorns Blog. Today, Farm School student Sophie Mendelson gives us a compelling run-down of the current quiet bottleneck crisis in sustainable meat– and what to do about it. 

Now in its 28th year, the Farm School in Athol, MA provides comprehensive educational programming in agriculture for youth, visiting schools, and adults. (Read more on their programming here!) Watch for more original posts on this blog from Sophie Mendelson, a student in their Learn to Farm Program, talented writer, and past and future farmer.

Know Your Abattoir: How to Keep Sustainable Meat Sustainable

by Sophie Mendelson

If consumers want local meat, they need to go to bat for local slaughterhouses.

At Adams Farm Slaughterhouse in Athol, MA, they play classical music on the kill floor. Cattle carcasses—seemingly as big as dinosaurs—hang by the hock from metal hooks fitted to a track in the ceiling that winds around the perimeter of the cathedral-like room. As the carcasses move along the track, they are divested of their blood, their skins, their internal organs, their heads, their hooves, and ultimately their integrity as a saw divides the animals neatly down their line of symmetry. This is how a “side” of beef is made.

The door to the holding pen opens and there is a great rattling as a cow enters the first segment of the indoor chute. A worker steps forward to urge the animal into the final compartment of the stunning pen, but this is a smaller cow, and instead of proceeding smoothly through the Temple Grandin-designed system, it begins to turn in the chute—an option not available to a larger animal. The worker attempts to redirect by prodding the cow from behind; metal clangs as the animal presses against the bars in resistance. The worker prods again, with little luck.

Noticing the commotion, another worker makes his way over to the chute. Instead of pushing from the rear, this man approaches the cow’s head. He reaches through the bars and strokes the cow’s chin. The animal stills. The man leans forward and appears to whisper something to the cow. Then, gently, he takes the cow by the ear and guides it into the stunning pen.

DARK Act Comeback

This just in from the Organic Consumers Association newsletter:

DARK Act Comeback? Everybody loves a Comeback Kid—unless that “kid” is the DARK Act. In March, the Senate voted down the DARK Act, the bill that would Deny Americans our Right to Know about GMOs. Since then, Monsanto and its front groups, the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) have been using their power, influence and, most of all, money to ram some version of the DARK Act through Congress before Vermont’s first-in-the-nation GMO labeling law takes effect on July 1. Reliable sources say that the DARK Act will soon be up for another vote. Last time, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) didn’t have the votes to pass his bill to take away states’ rights to label GMOs. Many of those who voted against the bill were pro-GMO Senators who take campaign contributions (and their talking points) from companies like Monsanto. But realizing they would take a lot of heat from their constituents, they voted no in the hope that a more palatable “compromise” bill might come along. The Senators who voted against the DARK Act last time could easily flip their votes to support a “compromise” (capitulation) to block Vermont’s law and replace it with a weak federal standard, because of—what else?—pressure from the big corporations who profit from toxic pesticides and GMO foods. TAKE ACTION: Stop the DARK Act Comeback! Tell your Senators: Protect Vermont’s GMO labeling law.  Dial 888-897-0174 to tell your Senators to vote against any compromise that would block or delay Vermont’s bill from taking effect. Help us protect Vermont’s GMO labeling law

do you know where the presidential candidates stand on agriculture?

This week, for In These Times, John Collins researches what the current presidential candidates have to say about agriculture— and what he discovers might surprise you. For instance, Hilary Clinton has the most detailed proposition for supporting small farms, including mention of student debt reform. She even proposes doubling funding for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program. But, then again, she has received significant campaign funding from GMO industries. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has a sort of nebulous proposition that ignores the details and gets to the heart of the matter, notably including: reversing NAFTA and a fun little historical rid-bit about how Abraham Lincoln called the USDA the “People’s Department.”

this is food saftey

John Collins

Food, safety, modernization—all good words. But the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) President Obama signed into law in 2011—giving the Food and Drug Administration new authority to regulate how food is grown, harvested and processed (i.e. produced)—places costly burdens on the small farmers who can least afford them.

What is the FSMA?

Prior to the law, the FDA’s approach to food contamination was reactionary. When instances of foodborne illnesses were reported, they responded, often with voluntary recalls. The new regulations, finalized last year and currently being implemented in phases, mark a distinct shift in an agency strategy that seeks to prevent contaminants from entering the food supply in the first place.

Food poisoning is a problem nationally. According to the CDC, of the 48 million Americans who get sick from eating tainted food every year, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die. Furthermore, massive recalls and settling the inevitable legal fallout costs the food industry billions. In addition to authorizing the FDA to issue mandatory recalls, the FSMA has incrementally unveiled 1,286 pages of new safety regulations.

While the food industry’s largest producers can afford to accommodate the various certifications, infrastructure changes and inspections that the law now mandates, small farmers already struggling to compete in their local markets risk getting priced—and regulated—out of business. Counter-intuitively, this is happening as consumer interest in food that hasn’t been doused in pesticides, wrapped in plastic and shipped halfway around the world should be offering regional farmers expanding economic opportunity in the form of community supported agriculture (CSAs) and weekend markets. To read more, click HERE.

just food? conference, march 25-26, cambridge

JUST FOOD?
FORUM ON LAND USE, RIGHTS AND ECOLOGY

A CONFERENCE EXPLORING LAND AND THE FOOD SYSTEM: HOW LAND AFFECTS WHAT WE EAT, WHO WE ARE, AND THE ENVIRONMENT WE LIVE IN

March 25–26, 2016

Wasserstein Hall, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts

This year’s Just Food? conference will examine the relationship between people and land, primarily through agriculture and food. Conference events will explore the legal, moral, policy, health, historic and environmental aspects of our modern domestic and international food system, with a focus on the intersection of land and justice. The conference will bring together scholars, farmers, activists, practitioners, and other authorities to discuss the growing concerns about who has access to land, how agriculture changes land, and who is marginalized or dispossessed by our current system. Our goal is to educate attendees, empower them to make changes, and engage them in a larger dialogue about food.

A full conference schedule, when it becomes available, will be posted. But please feel free to register here now!

is farming an act of public service? time to prove it.

National Young Farms Coalition survey graphic

Enter the Young Farmer Success Act, which would extend the student loan debt forgiveness granted to persons in public service by the Higher Education Act of 1965 to full time farmer and farm workers. It’s in the senate now!  What you think? Is farming an act of national service? Then join up with the folks over at FarmingIsPublicService.org.

As Eric Hansen, policy advocate for the NYFC says, “It’s incredibly valuable to invite your member of Congress out to the farm. Show them what you’re doing, what contributions you’re making to your community. You’re providing jobs, you’re producing food, and you’re helping to secure the rural economy. Show them the service you’re providing and explain your own struggle with student loan debt.”

why agrarians should care about fishing

“For many terrestrials, and certainly for me, the ocean and fisheries are a foreign place. We cannot see into the sea and don’t know much at all about what goes on there, except perhaps familiarity with the blanket-term “over-fishing.” Young agrarians of the rangeland know well that a blanket critique—that the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service’s policies lead to “over-grazing,” for example—is not enough. Indeed after decades of handing over mining, drilling, grazing and mineral rights on public lands, there’s a flank of the environmental movement calling for privatization of over 400 million acres of public lands. Another flank, the Rainforest Action Network, is calling for a moratorium on the sale of mineral rights on public lands.

We need to look more closely. We need to survey what we already know. And we need to build from there.

Some of us have followed the campaigns against factory fish—the Costco victory against GMO salmon, GMO soy oilbeing sold as pelletized fish food and the pollution caused by fish farms. And we have heard hype about aquaculture projects and been confounded by this glamorization of international fish farm development projects. We use kelp supplements for our dairy animals and soil mix, but don’t know much about the controversy behind them. For the most part, we aren’t much connected as producers with fisher people whose fish-meal we farmers buy. (I hope this article may woo a few young farmers to study across the boundary of the seashore and help us discover our common causes.)

So, what’s the difference between a well managed and a poorly managed commons?”

-Severine on the ocean commons, in “A Farm Organizer Visits Fish Country: Part I” for In These Times. Read the whole article here!

immigration impacts all of agriculture: learn more while watching movies!

Watch the trailer for The Line from Kent Bassett on Vimeo. You can rent the film for the very affordable cost of $1.00.

the united states needs a food policy!

image via abcnews.go.com

Mark Bittman of the New York Times, Michael Pollan of the University of California, Berkeley, Ricardo Salvador of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Olivier De Schutter of the Catholic University of Louvain have collaborated on a new article in the Washington Post that puts forward a plan for a national food policy. For the authors, “The food system and the diet it’s created have caused incalculable damage to the health of our people and our land, water and air” and that this damage continues because “we have no food policy — no plan or agreed-upon principles — for managing American agriculture or the food system as a whole.”

They put forward a set of basic tenets that could inform a national food policy adequate to our age. The priorities of this policy include healthy food for all, reducing the carbon footprint of the food industry, investing in food that is free of dangerous chemicals, and treating animals with compassion and attention to their well-being.

miranda july and barak and voting

by Miranda July

I’d like to think all the people who follow my work are radical, political firecrackers. But those of you who are don’t need any encouragement from me. Instead I will focus my efforts on the demographic who, like me in 1996, feels completely disconnected from life, nevermind their country. I’m hoping that there aren’t very many of you, in this day and age. You people are hard to encourage, because all the political arguments will mean nothing to you. I just spent the last hour typing up my case for Obama, but you won’t even read it, you’ll skip ahead to something that seems subtler or less cliche, I know you. (And those of you who will read it, who are perhaps torn between Obama and Clinton, are well tended to by better writers.) So nevermind all that.

Here’s why you should vote: you are going to really love it, the whole strange procedure. You get to walk right into a building that you would never normally be allowed in, often an elementary school. You can pause in the hallway to look at all the weird school-art and feel the eerie vibe of hundreds of kids living their endless kid lives right nearby. Then you follow the arrows to the voting room and look at the faces of the volunteers – who are these people? There is a hush of secrecy, the voting booth is clunky, the whole thing seems fake somehow. You consider filling in all the bubbles, like you did on the SATs. But you don’t. You vote. You walk back outside feeling like you just gave blood or something, lightheaded from citizenry. You are wearing a sticker that says “I Voted” and you wish you could continue to get stickers like this throughout the day: I Ate Dinner, I Went To Sleep, I Got Out Of Bed, I Went To Work.

But alas, it is just this one thing that we all do together, savor it.

I tried to find an easy link for you to locate your polling place, but the best thing to do is just type the name of your city + “where do I vote” into google. If you’re not registered, then you might not be able to vote in the primaries, but register right now so you can vote in November.

pps: non-american readers: sorry. for everything. we are working on it.

from and while we’re on the topic, i am voting for barak obama

related: candidates food policy positions