La Vida Locavore is the blog for anyone whose crazy life includes planting, growing, weeding, fertilizing, raising, picking, harvesting, processing, cooking, baking, making, serving, buying, selling, distributing, transporting, composting, organizing around, lobbying about, writing about, thinking about, talking about, playing with, and eating food!
Agriculture
Chair: Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
- Max Baucus (D-MT)
- Michael Bennet (D-CO)
- Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
- Bob Casey (D-PA)
- Kent Conrad (D-ND)
- Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
- Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
- Pat Leahy (D-VT)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
- Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- John Cornyn (R-TX)
- Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
- Mike Johanns (R-NE)
- Dick Lugar (R-IN)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Pat Roberts (R-KS)
- John R. Thune (R-SD)
Appropriations
Chair: Daniel Inouye (D-HI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: Herb Kohl (D-WI)
- Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
- Dick Durbin (D-IL)
- Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
- Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Tim Johnson (D-SD)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Jack Reed (D-RI)
- Robert Bennett (R-UT)
- Christopher Bond (R-MO)
- Sam Brownback (R-KS)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions
- Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Agriculture
Chair: B Collin Peterson (D-MN)
V. Chair: B Tim Holden (D-PA)
B Joe Baca (D-CA)
- John Boccieri (D-OH)
B* Leonard Boswell (D-IA)
- Bobby Bright (D-AL)
B* Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)
- Travis Childers (D-MS)
B Jim Costa (D-CA)
- Henry Cuellar (D-TX)
- Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA)
B Brad Ellsworth (D-IN)
- Debbie Halvorson (D-IL)
B Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD)
- Steve Kagen (D-WI)
- Larry Kissell (D-NC)
B Frank Kratovil (D-MD)
- Betsy Markey (D-CO)
B Jim Marshall (D-GA)
P Eric Massa (D-NY)
B Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
- Walt Minnick (D-ID)
B Earl Pomeroy (D-ND)
- Mark Schauer (D-MI)
- Kurt Schrader (D-OR)
B David Scott (D-GA)
B Zachary Space (D-OH)
- Timothy Walz (D-MN)
- Frank Lucas (R-OK)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- K. Michael Conaway (R-TX)
- Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)
- Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
- Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
- Sam Graves (R-MO)
- Timothy Johnson (R-IL)
- Steve King (R-IA)
- Robert Latta (R-OH)
- Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)
- Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
- Jerry Moran (R-KS)
- Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)
- Phil Roe (R-TN)
- Mike Rogers (R-AL)
- Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
- Adrian Smith (R-NE)
- Glenn Thompson (R-PA) *=House Organic Caucus member B=Blue Dog Democrat
Appropriations
Chair: Dave Obey (D-WI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: P Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
- Sanford Bishop (D-GA)
* Allen Boyd (D-FL)
- Lincoln Davis (D-TN)
*P Sam Farr (D-CA)
*P Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY)
P Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
P Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
- Jack Kingston (R-GA)
- Rodney Alexander (R-LA)
- Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO)
* Tom Latham (R-IA) *=House Organic Caucus member
P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
Education and Labor
P Chair: George Miller (D-CA)
- Jason Altmire (D-PA)
- Robert Andrews (D-NJ)
- Timothy Bishop (D-NY)
P Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
- Joe Courtney (D-CT)
- Susan Davis (D-CA)
P Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
P Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
P Phil Hare (D-IL)
- Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX)
P Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
- Rush Holt (D-NJ)
- Dale Kildee (D-MI)
P Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
P Dave Loebsack (D-IA)
- Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY)
P Donald Payne (D-NJ)
- Jared Polis (D-CO)
- Robert Scott (D-VA)
- Joe Sestak (D-PA)
- Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)
P John Tierney (D-MA)
- Dina Titus (D-NV)
- Paul Tonko (D-NY)
P Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)
- David Wu (D-OR)
- Buck McKeon (R-CA)
- Judy Biggert (R-IL)
- Rob Bishop (R-UT)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- Michael Castle (R-DE)
- Vernon Ehlers (R-MI)
- Luis F Fortuno (R-PR)
- Brett Guthrie (R-KY)
- Peter Hoekstra (R-MI)
- Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA)
- John Kline (R-MN)
- Kenny Marchant (R-TX)
- Tom McClintock (R-CA)
- Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)
- Thomas Petri (R-WI)
- Phil Roe (R-TN)
- Todd Russell Platts (R-PA)
- Tom Price (R-GA)
- Mark Souder (R-IN)
- GT Thompson (R-PA)
- Joe Wilson (R-SC) P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
According to OOPS - turns out this is according to a study funded by Meat and Livestock Australiagrain-fed beef produces less carbon emissions than grass-fed beef. However, just because grain-fed beef emits less carbon, that doesn't make it necessarily "better" - let alone "environmentally friendly" (it isn't). Here's how the article sums it up:
* Grass-fed cows produce more greenhouse gas than grain-fed.
* Critics point out that the pasture used to raise grass-fed beef offers a carbon sink.
* Experts point out that eating vegetarian is far better from a carbon point of view.
(Important and well researched piece. I have seen firsthand the effects of poor cooking stoves in India. - promoted by Asinus Asinum Fricat)
If you were to list the top causes of death and sickness in the developing world, cooking would probably be in the top tier (I'd guess that lack of clean water is at the top). In villages and cities across the world, millions cook their food while engulfed in plumes of toxic gases and particulate matter (smoke and soot). Women and children bear the brunt of these toxins: women most often do the cooking and children are often nearby. The source of these toxins is the fire that is burning wood, kerosene, dung, or another material underneath their cooking pots. In addition, gathering the fuel can be risky business, exposing the gatherer to bandits and other nefarious people. One study (PDF) estimates that there are 1.6 million premature deaths and 3.6% of the global burden of disease due to indoor air pollution caused by the use of solid fuels.
This toxic burden has been receiving a lot of attention recently, including a long article in the December 21 & 28 issue of The New Yorker. When the issue arrived a few days ago, I made my usual scan of the table of contents to see what was inside. "A stove to transform the developing world"— the subtitle of an article called “Hearth Surgery” by Burkhard Bilger — caught my eye because I've long had an interest in domestic combustion devices.* So excited was I to see such an august publication covering something as humble as the cookstove that I immediately turned to the article and started reading.
In the first paragraph, I saw the name "Dale Andreatta" and just about fell over. Dale, it turns out, was one of my research colleagues during graduate school in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Even back then Dale had an interest in using engineering to solve difficult problems of the developing world. One project that I remember was solar water pasteurization with low-cost materials — some black trash bags, some sand, a hose, and a temperature switch.** I helped out on a few occasions, but at that time in my life I hadn't yet picked up experimental skills (I was into numerical modeling, the serious experimental work would come a few years later).
Fifth in a series of interviews with farmers affiliated with La Via Campesina, an alliance of international peasant farmer organizations. This interview was conducted with the assistance of an LVC translator. Also, even if farming isn't your usual interest, I encourage you to read this, on account of how we in the US might soon need to learn a thing or two from the world's peasant farmer and landless peasant movements.
Renaldo Chingore João works a 5-7 acre farm with his family. There, they grow maize, beans and vegetables, keeping 15 cows for meat and milk, as well as draft labor. Though it's a small farm, João and his family don't face the world alone.
They're part of a community that's organized itself for advocacy and mutual support, both within Mozambique and the larger global community of peasant farmers.
I never thought I would be able to say this but something IS rotten in the state of Denmark. Copenhagen is all over, and we might have just written ourselves a suicide pact. Here's the scoop...
The USDA's assessment of the House climate change bill (H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a.k.a. ACES) was just released. Here's a short summary of the 80-page report (below). Also check out Tom Vilsack's statement on the report.
Below, you'll find the draft language of the ag agreement for Copenhagen. Anything in brackets is tentative. It's pretty similar to the previous draft from a few days ago. My take on this (which you can see in full here) is that this paves the way for the U.S. to basically continue business as usual AND for the expansion of industrial ag to the developing world. I say this because the emphasis here is on productivity (yield) and efficiency. That's typically a justification of industrial ag. Furthermore, while they call for sustainability, there are any number of nasty agribiz companies who call their products sustainable when they really aren't.
This comes at the same time that radical proposals to subsidize soil carbon storage (likely through 'biochar', RoundUp Ready GM crops and industrial tree plantations) with carbon offsetting schemes made it back into the draft after having been presumed dead. The proposals would allow wealthy countries to buy carbon credits through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) instead of reducing emissions at home.
The inclusion of agriculture in the CDM is extremely problematic - transaction costs to participate in the program are high, giving structural advantage to large-scale industrial technologies like GM monocultures. Moreover, a recent civil society study of CDM projects found that 75% did not provide any emissions reductions whatsoever.
All in all - with this along with the bombshell dropped yesterday that the U.S. is shooting for a 3 degree Celsius global temperature increase and 550 ppm CO2 - this is very bad. (Developed countries were previously talking about a 2 degree increase, which Africa was calling a death sentence and developing nations were advocating "1.5 to stay alive." And, of course, the science says we need 350 ppm, NOT 550!)
I've heard via Amy Goodman's show Democracy Now that the U.S. is more or less trying to bribe their way into getting what they want by calling for very lax carbon limits and then offering up $100 billion in aid to developing nations. Developing nations all want a stronger agreement BUT with $100 million per year at stake, they also fear that those who give into the U.S. will get the money - and those who don't, won't.
The Worldwatch Institute just released a report called "Roadmap to Low-Carbon Energy by 2030." While it doesn't really deal with food or agriculture, it is very interesting and very relevant to what is going on in Copenhagen right now. Here are a few quotes from the report that I found particularly interesting.
Between 1990 and 2007, world gross domestic product increased 156 percent while global energy demand rose 39 percent, pushing up
global CO2 emissions by 38 percent. Were it not for advances in energy efficiency - gains achieved without aggressive policies - the increase in energy use and associated emissions would have been much greater. Even so, more than half of the energy that we consume does not provide us with useful services, and there is enormous potential for improvement in all sectors of the economy.
In 2007, renewable energy provided more than 18 percent of total final energy supply. Solar energy, wind power, and other renewable technologies have experienced double-digit annual growth rates for more than a decade. The renewable share of additional global power generation (excluding large hydropower) jumped from 5 percent in 2003 to 23 percent in 2008, and this ratio is significantly greater in many individual countries.
A recent study revealed that there is an enormous gap between the nation's most and least efficient states and that by simply closing that gap, up to 30 percent of U.S. electricity consumption could be curtailed, displacing more than 60 percent of the nation's coal-fired generation and dramatically reducing national CO2 emissions.
Below you'll find the press release announcing the publication of this report along with a link to download it.
Yesterday, a new group - the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases - was announced in Copenhagen. It will be led by the U.S. and New Zealand (it was New Zealand's idea) but about 20 other countries are participating as well. The goal of this group is "to better understand -- and prevent -- greenhouse-gas emissions from farms." So far so good, right? But the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (whose press release on this is below) is not so sure. They see this as a U.S. effort to throw more money into making the same mistakes we already make. Below the IATP press release, I've also included the USDA press release announcing the alliance.
Subsidies for Forest Destruction and Land Grabs? Yep... that's the latest I'm hearing from Copenhagen. The idea is that polluters can buy "offsets" - an idea that makes some sense in theory. Get a little bit of carbon OUT of the atmosphere, then put that much carbon INTO the atmosphere, and you break even. Right? Except when offsets are used completely fraudulently, as it seems that they are (and plan to be under this new agreement in Copenhagen). For a basic understanding of this, I HIGHLY recommend watching the short animated online film The Story of Cap and Trade.
The news from a press release I've included below is that Copenhagen is paving the way for carbon offsets (called CDMs or Clean Development Mechanisms in the language of the agreement) that are totally bogus. This is very bad.
Here's the actual draft language on ag from the Copenhagen agreement that I received. Anything in brackets is tentative. Word on the street is that this is already out of date, and in the newest version, the ag offsets are back in. I will keep following this to post whatever I learn.
I've just received a draft version of the agriculture section of the agreement in Copenhagen. The document has a number of items in still up for debate, which are noted in brackets. Here's what they've got:
First off, they call for increasing efficiency and productivity in a sustainable manner. This worries me, because "sustainable" has become a very fungible word. In other words, it gets thrown around a lot and applied to things that are NOT sustainable at all. Also, this language reaffirms the idea that yield and efficiency are all that matter. More food! More food! What we need is healthy food and equitable distribution. Yes, we need to have enough for all of us, but we DO have enough for all of us and we still have record numbers of hungry people. And among those who have enough (or too much) to eat, we have epidemic health problems. So clearly, we're missing something there.
Next up, they say they recognize the interests of small and marginal farmers, the rights of indigenous people and traditional knowledge and practices. THAT is awesome. They also plan to take into account the link between agriculture and food security, and they plan to make sure that the agreement to reduce emissions and combat global warming will not adversely affect food security. Cool! There's also an up-for-negotiation point in there recognizing the problem of land degradation. So that one might not make it into the final agreement.
The next point kind of sucks. They have a bit in there about international trade, basically noting that the climate agreement shouldn't mess with international trade. Given that international trade is the cause of so many agricultural problems in the first place, this isn't something I find reassuring. I worry that free trade orthodoxy will mean that nations will be prohibited from enacting meaningful carbon laws and then importing their food from countries with lax, pollution-promoting laws instead.
After that, they make a point that's kind of the meat of the whole agreement. All parties who sign on should work on reducing man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, especially when they can do so while also improving agricultural productivity in a sustainable manner. They may or may not include bits specifying that the efforts to reduce greenhouse gases should also safeguard food security and livelihoods security. That remains to be seen.
My hunch is that the language here is loose enough that the U.S. could sign on and still stick to business as usual while claiming they are trying to improve productivity and sustainability. This also paves the way for the expansion of industrial agriculture into the developing world. Yuck.
I've got three action alerts to share on two different topics.
First, from CREDO, school lunch should be better than fast food. Kind of a no-brainer, except for the fact that a recent USA Today article revealed that fast food joints often have higher standards than the USDA's school lunch program. Ouch!
The latest from Copenhagen comes from the the G77, a group of 77 developing nations that includes India and China. According to Annie Shattuck of Food First:
The U.S has indicated it would support limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, a level that the top UN scientific body, the IPCC, says would effectively warm Africa 3.5 degrees on average - a level of warming the G77 is now calling a "death sentence."
I have to say I agree with Africa on that. The G77 is calling for limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius. As Annie notes, this has a lot to do with food:
The demand - "1.5 to Stay Alive" - is especially salient in the context of the food crisis. Without significant, genuine, immediate action, the world's food systems, and especially those of Africa, will suffer significant water shortages and crop failure. With over 1 billion hungry people in the world, "1.5 to Stay Alive" is an imperative we cannot afford to underestimate.
In an email to me, Annie also said "Ag is getting fast-tracked and the text on it will be sealed by tonight." In other words, stay tuned for news about agriculture in Copenhagen.
The entire world's eyes are on Copenhagen this week, and I've been following along via Amy Goodman's show, Grist, and updates from friends who are there.
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If you were to list the top causes of death and sickness in the developing world, cooking would probably be in the top tier (I'd guess that lack of clean water is at the top). In villages and cities across the world, millions cook their food while engulfed in plumes of toxic gases and particulate matter (smoke and soot). Women and children bear the brunt of these toxins: women most often do the cooking and children are often nearby. The source of these toxins is the fire that is burning wood, kerosene, dung, or another material underneath their cooking pots. In addition, gathering the fuel can be risky business, exposing the gatherer to bandits and other nefarious people. One study (
