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IATP 
Thu Feb 04, 2010 at 06:00:00 AM PST
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This excellent response to Vilsack's recent op ed in the Des Moines Register and Obama's State of the Union is cross-posted from Civil Eats with the permission of the author, Paula Crossfield.
Message to President Obama: Why Trade Will Not Save Rural America
February 3rd, 2010 By Paula Crossfield
In Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack's op-ed this week in the Des Moines Register, he recognized that hunger could not be solved by raising production, because production is in fact at record highs. Grappling with how these increases in productivity have not led to increases in profit, he explained that even though we've lost a million farmers in the last 40 years, "income from farming operations declined as a percentage of total farm family income by half." He continued, "Today, only 11 percent of family farm income comes from farming, which may explain why fewer young people go into farming and why many families rely on off-farm income opportunities to keep their farms." Vilsack gets the situation right, but his remedy is wrong. Instead of encouraging diversity and altering the pattern of overproduction which pits large farm owners against small by shrinking margins, the Obama administration's way of dealing with the discrepancy in rural America is through increasing trade.
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Thu Dec 17, 2009 at 12:00:00 PM PST
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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.
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Sat Apr 18, 2009 at 06:00:00 AM PDT
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Via Campesina, an international group representing farmers of all nations, put out a position paper on this weekends G8 summit entitled "The G8 should clean up their own mess instead of dictating to poor countries what to do." I quite agree.
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