| With this in mind, here are two suggestions for building your farm and food justice resume online and from home or college. They could be undertaken by individuals, by local food groups or college organizations, etc.
For groups, someone needs to take the lead, to organize the others. For the others, or individuals, there's work involved. Whatever the case, keep track of your hours and tasks. Take notes on what you learn. Perhaps you could write it up in several versions (long and footnoted, fact sheet, PR job hunt flier, college credit). Keep in mind the need and purpose for the project, the challenges, the learning and the results.
PROJECT 1: US Mainstream media coverage of farm subsidies as collected by the Environmental Working Group (http://www.ewg.org/farmeditorialsall). As I recall, this link leads to about 500 mainstream media editorials, and they're about all false in common ways. For example, they fail to mention that subsidies are compensations for losses, and may suggest that the subsidies farmers have received are lucrative, above profits. They fail to mention that the presence of subsidies is a poor substitute for the lack of price floors and supply reduction programs. They give false information along the lines that subsidies cause low farm prices.
These editorials can be analyzed with help from a farm commodity subsidy myths checklist. I am just now developing such a check list. Some of the data or findings can be put onto a spreadsheet or into a database, for analysis. Different groups of editorials could then be found that very closely share a common paradigm. Part of the database would include the mailing addresses (and phone numbers) of each source, for later printing on envelopes and in letter heads.
In the end, a series of op-eds could be written, and sent back to the various newspapers and other sources. Imagine that: writing 500 op-eds! See if that wins the job hunt, or special grad program competition. There could be several versions. (Note: one or several "boiler plate op-eds could each have a few specific comments about the particular newspaper in question. Newspapers would know up front that you're sending this out all over the country, in syndicated style.) Blogs could also be written. Audio and video responses could be made for radio, TV and sites like YouTube. You could speak at conferences, and be interviewed. Ahhhhh! Fame! Put that on your resume.
The food movement has achieved what the family farm justice movement never did. They've succeeded in the mainstream media 1. in getting the word out about the problems of cheap corn and other commodities, and 2. in also getting the word out that the policy location of the problem is in the Commodity Title of the US Farm Bill. This should be a key theme in the op-ed series for that project. This #1 and #2 are the first two steps in Bill Moyer's description of a successful social movement. The problem comes in the fact that on #2, the movement has concluded that the presence of farm commodity subsidies is the cause of cheap prices, rather than the actual cause, the absence of farm commodity price floors and supply reduction programs. This then has lead to a failure of our farm and food movement to achieve final success in stage 3., to get the word out mainstream about the needed policy and program alternatives.
PROJECT 2: Updating Access to the Corporate Agribusiness Research Project (CARP). The late A.V. Krebs, author of "The Corporate Reapers: The Book of Agribusiness," created a large website of articles about farm and food justice issues. Krebs work on these issues dates back to before he worked with Jim Hightower's Agribusiness Accountability Project, during the early 70s. He worked on important books from that project, including "Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times," "Eat Your Heart Out," and "The Great American Grain Robbery." He also had a hand in the audio-visual program, "Hamburger USA." During the 1980s farm crisis he worked for PrairieFire Rural Action, in Iowa.
An important key to the value of Krebs online work is that decades of great work by nongovernmental organizations on farm bill Commodity Title issues has never made it online. Meanwhile, the food movement has evolved out of a very different paradigm, one that is strongly influenced by the sustainable agriculture, movement rather than the "family farm justice movement." This has contributed significantly to the problems identified in PROJECT 1, above.
We find, then, that Krebs has made a lot of information available online, and that that information is much needed online. At the same time, however, it is difficult to penetrate Krebs site for information on important topics. There are few references to it online these days.
The information is found in Krebs serial publications, The AgBiz Tiller and the Agribusiness Examiner. The latter source is the biggest. The index shows 218 links, labeled as "1," "2," etc. up to "228."
What one or more volunteers could do is to go through these serial newsletters and make a database (or use a spreadsheet) of the various editions (ie. Issue #126, September 28, 2001,) for certain purposes. My top priority is to create access to Krebs online writing on the question of farm commodity subsidies and the needed alternative policies, as described in the last paragraph above under Project 1. For example, in Issue #126, cited just above, Krebs has a great "COMMENTARY:
FAMILY FARM LEGISLATION WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE IT COMES DOWN TO ONE WORD --- PRICE !!!!!"
To achieve this priority, a check list can be used, and a database created, similar to PROJECT 1. My first priorities are for the following topics, to address the questions of movement success on this huge issue:
1. supply reduction (ie. "production and inventory adjustments");
2. price floors (ie. "supports," etc.);
3. reserve supplies,
4. price ceilings (release levels).
(These are the key policy alternatives, that go together as a package.)
5. agribusiness advocacy related to these policies;
6. price levels;
7. subsidies;
8. price and the absence of price floors as a factors of export dumping;
9. Trade issues related to the farm bill Commodity Title;
10. Specific alternative policies (ie. Harkin-Gephardt farm bill, Food from Family Farms Act, parity programs,) that address these concerns.
We see here in the price article of Issue #126, for example, that prices are emphasized, and supply management is specifically discussed, as are price supports. Myths about subsidies are corrected. The "Food from Family Farms Act," which has these policies, is specifically mentioned. Another valuable piece of information in Issue #126 is the reference to Jim Hightower's "final report on eight nationwide farm policy forums on Agriculture."
There is also a reference to Issue #124 for more information ("NFFC OFFERS CONGRESS: BROAD-BASED CONSENSUS PROPOSAL
TO RESTORE AND MAINTAIN PROFITABILITY ON AMERICAS FAMILY FARMS AND RANCHES"). This second article is one of the best on the web on this topic. It includes the specific price floors (loan rate levels for nonrecourse loans).
A second article in issue #124, ("CORPORATE AGRIBUSINESS COALITION
DOGGEDLY BACKS FREEDOM TO FARM CONTINUATION") gives a direct citation of how corporate agribusiness "Coalition for a competitive Food and Agricultural System,) specifically supports programs without price floors or supply management, but has no problems with farmers losing countercyclical subsidies (ie. subsidies don't cause the low farm prices that agribusiness buyers want).
A checklist, like the one suggested here, would need to be revised during such a project. Other important categories could be added, depending upon how ambitious the project was. More than one project could be done at Krebs site.
Project 2 could also lead to final reporting and PR work, as in the first example, but probably on a lesser scale. It might bring less fame, but think of it as a chance to be mentored by the late Krebs, through the fruits of his many years of labor. We all owe him a great debt.
Anyone interested in working with me on these projects can contact me through facebook (see http://www.zcommunications.org... or make a comment here. I am glad to serve as a reference for anyone choosing to do such work. I can also connect you with other people who would be very appreciative of work along these lines.
Of course, you can also formulate your own project and run with it. It can be any size, any duration, partly done and passed on to others, etc., as new career opportunities or other commitments unfold. In any case, let us know.
Think farm and food justice. Think service. And yes, think resume!
For Further Reading and Viewing
Brad Wilson, "Al Krebs, 'The Corporate Reapers:' What the Food Movement Doesn't Know About Food Policy," Nov 04, 2009, http://www.zcommunications.org...
A. V. Krebs, The Corporate Reapers: The Book of Agribusiness, Washington DC, Essential Books, 1992. http://www.thecalamityhowler.c...
Eat Your Heart Out: How Food Profiteers Victimize the Consumer, Jim Hightower, 1974.
The Great American Grain Robbery and other stories, Martha McNeil Hamilton, 1972, Agribusiness Accountability Project.
Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times: A Report of the Agribusiness Accountability Project on the Failure of America's Land Grant College Complex, Jim Hightower, 1973.
Contribute to the posthumous publication of Al Krebs new book on the Farm Bill through the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, iatp@iatp.org. See tributes to Krebs at: http://iatp.typepad.com/thinkf...
Heather Gray "Al Krebs, a Fighter for Family Farmers," Counter Punch, Oct. 9, 2007, http://www.agobservatory.org/h...
Bill Moyer, "Eight stages of successful social movements," http://www.turning-the-tide.or...
Bill Moyer, (Winning the Public in Three Ways," (see chart on page 3), http://asen.org.au/files/2008/...
Brad Wilson, "Farm Bill Primer" and "Food Crisis Primer:" http://www.zcommunications.org...
Multimedia
American Friends Service Committee, "Hamburger USA," 1972, 28 minutes, http://tools.afsc.org/bigcat/t...
National Family Farm Coalition, "From the Grassroots Up, Not from the Money Down," http://www.youtube.com/user/Fi...
League of Rural Voters, "America's Stake in the 1985 Farm Bill," http://www.youtube.com/user/Fi...
Catholic Rural Life, Chuck Ryan and Dixon Terry, Farm and Food Policy, Farm Policy Reform Act, http://www.youtube.com/user/Fi... |
