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
I've got a few things to add or correct from my posts about Mexican cooking from this past week.
First, I checked a label from a bag of organic blue corn chips at the store. They aren't dyed. I realized when I fried some of the blue corn tortillas I made that they turn a darker blue when fried.
Second, I took a bag of Maseca brand (a.k.a. Archer Daniels Midland) masa harina to the farmers' market today to give it to Juanita, the woman who makes tamales there. She doesn't claim her tamales are organic, so I figured she'd use it. I bought that bag at first, before I found the organic blue corn masa. When I offered it to Juanita, she told me she grinds her own masa. Then she told me why: The Maseca brand masa is made from half corn kernels and half corn cobs. I don't have confirmation that that is true, but it's certainly something to investigate.
Third, I visited OB People's Co-op today and found that they sell yellow organic masa there for $.99/lb. That's definitely going to be convenient if I can't get it together to buy a 50 lb bag of the white or blue organic masa to split with several friends.
This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. Then we headed to the rural town of Cuquio, about an hour and a half away, for the remainder of the trip. This diary is about our talk with a local microlending cooperative.
If reading about the people I've visited inspires you to help, you can donate to the Center for Farmworker Families. Every penny given goes directly to these families for clothes, shoes, food, school supplies, and more.
The Corona mill isn't a grain mill, it's a corn mill. Got that? Catalog page circa 1929.
I'll admit it took me a long time to figure this out. I've been aware of these mills way back in the early 1970s when I used to subscribe to Mother Earth News magazine and dreamt of a life of subsistence farming to replace the suffocating suburban lifestyle of a twenty year old. Buy whole wheat in bulk and grind your own flour for pennies!
To this day, people buy these things and then complain at how totally useless it is for bread flour.
“I bought this for the sole purpose of making bread flour. I got it, set it up, put some wheat into it, tightened basically as far as it would go, and the berries came out almost exactly as they went in. Plus, there were little iron filings from the burrs mixed in. Great.”
This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. Then we headed to the rural town of Cuquio, about an hour and a half away, for the remainder of the trip. On the 10th day, we visited our last village to deliver aid.
If reading about the people I've visited inspires you to help, you can donate to the Center for Farmworker Families. Every penny given goes directly to these families for clothes, shoes, food, school supplies, and more.
This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. Then we headed to the rural town of Cuquio, about an hour and a half away, for the remainder of the trip. On the 9th day, we had a painful reality check when we found out the family we were visiting was desperately poor and hungry.
If reading about the people I've visited inspires you to help, you can donate to the Center for Farmworker Families. Every penny given goes directly to these families for clothes, shoes, food, school supplies, and more.
This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. Then we headed to the rural town of Cuquio, about an hour and a half away, for the remainder of the trip. This is my third post about our 8th day, when we visited an incredibly remote village tucked into the side of a mountain, overlooking a gorgeous valley.
The view from the rancho
If reading about the people I've visited inspires you to help, you can donate to the Center for Farmworker Families. Every penny given goes directly to these families for clothes, shoes, food, school supplies, and more.
This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. Then we headed to the rural town of Cuquio, about an hour and a half away, for the remainder of the trip. The seventh day was Sunday in a very religious Catholic country so we didn't go out to visit a village. Instead we had an agronomist who specializes in Mexico's maiz criollo (landrace corn), Juan Alba Quesadas, come visit us. Here's what we learned.
Ann Lopez talks to Juan Alba
If reading about the people I've visited inspires you to help, you can donate to the Center for Farmworker Families. Every penny given goes directly to these families for clothes, shoes, food, school supplies, and more.
This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. Then we headed to the rural town of Cuquio, about an hour and a half away, for the remainder of the trip. On the fifth day, we visited a rural "rancho" (village) outside of Cuquio to meet with subsistence corn farming families.
If reading about the people I've visited inspires you to help, you can donate to the Center for Farmworker Families. Every penny given goes directly to these families for clothes, shoes, food, school supplies, and more.
If you're from the U.S. there's one bit of good news about NAFTA's impact on Mexican corn farmers: it's not all our fault. Oh, sure, we screwed them over plenty. But it's not our fault that the Mexican government implemented NAFTA in an even more detrimental way to its own corn farmers than the treaty required.
In preparation for my upcoming trip to Jalisco, one of Mexico's top corn-producing states, I have been reading up on the impacts of NAFTA on Mexican agriculture. The first part I wrote up focused on how the treaty was written and how that impacted Mexican farmers. This next part is about how the treaty was actually implemented, which is a whole 'nother story.
My dad thinks it's hilarious that the British way to lay off workers is to say "You've been made redundant." Nothing personal or anything, but you're a redundancy and our bottom line says you need to go. Buh-bye. That was essentially what NAFTA did to many Mexican subsistence corn farmers. The negotiators of NAFTA looked at their numbers and decided that those farmers would be more efficient if they grew something else or left farming altogether. This was a naive decision, at best. Here's a postmortem of many of the mistakes they made in their assumptions during NAFTA negotiations.
Note: My source here is "The Environmental & Social Impacts of Economic Liberalization on Corn Production in Mexico" by Alejandro Nadal.
Let me summarize the article for you: Bla bla bla... drought-tolerant corn... global warming... Africa really fucked... feed 9 billion people... bla bla bla... Gates Foundation.
There. Now you don't have to read it. It says nothing new and contains zero critical thinking or alternate viewpoints. There was one section of the piece that was right on:
Charles Godfray, a professor at the Department of Zoology at Oxford University who recently co-authored a paper in the journal Science about the challenges of feeding 9 billion people, said that the impact of climate change on agriculture will be negative. Although warming will open up lands in cooler regions for cultivation, it will not compensate for the loss of water and land in areas near the tropics, he said.
"The current system of agriculture is not sustainable," he said. "Water is arterial. We will run out of water in parts of the world."
Yep. The Africa-is-fucked-if-things-don't-change meme is correct. And the African-corn-production-is-in-trouble idea is also correct:
But the continent is drought-prone, with millions of farmers relying on rainfall for their crops grown in small land holdings. Corn is most widely grown, with almost 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa using it as the main source of food. And it is grown in rain-fed regions prone to crop failures.
Riiight. So how about we grow something other than corn? I'm very disappointed at the New York Times failure to only present one side - a side that is opposed by scientists world wide - on this matter.
Last month I posted about the controversy surrounding the search for a new director of Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. University officials offered the job to Frank Louws, a plant pathologist in North Carolina, although the search committee preferred Ricardo Salvador, the program director for the Kellogg Foundation's Food, Health and Wellbeing program. Salvador is a corn expert and displayed a more "holistic perspective" about sustainable agriculture, which is probably why the Iowa Farm Bureau had expressed a preference for Louws. ISU's Dean of Agriculture Wendy Wintersteen informed Salvador that he would not get the position before Louws had accepted the job. Typically, employers wait until they have a deal with their top candidate before telling other finalists that they didn't get the job.
For about two months, Louws neither accepted nor declined the offer to head the Leopold Center. Meanwhile, ISU President Greg Geoffroy denied that he had been influenced by the Farm Bureau, saying he had followed "very strong advice" from Wintersteen and ISU's Executive Vice President and Provost Elizabeth Hoffman. In the sustainable agriculture community, many people believe industrial agriculture interests influenced Wintersteen's and Hoffman's recommendation.
In any event, Louws has declined ISU's job offer, the Ames Tribune reported yesterday. Wintersteen said North Carolina State University made him "a generous counter offer," and Louws decided not to uproot his family.
According to the Ames Tribune, Geoffroy "advised [Wintersteen] to call Salvador back for a second interview" after Louws turned down the Leopold Center job. That interview has not yet been scheduled.
I gave a brief panel presentation on the dramatic topic: "Corn Farming and the World Food Crisis" at a conference of the Community Food Security Coalition in Des Moines Iowa last October. I started with a bit of drama of my own. I offered corn "safety nets" to audience members. I offered two choices, one with a larger farm program "Crop Acreage Base," but a smaller "Program Payment Yield," and one that reverses the two. These were soon rejected by my audience, as they got sort of, well, "hammered."
I further introduced myself by explaining that I was working on a dramatized version of my presentation which I'm calling "Corn Farming and the Human Spirit." For 15 years I have categorized my writings on farm and food issues into a series of unfinished, poorly edited, unpublished books, under the series title: Hog Farming and the Human Spirit: My Sequel to Moby Dick. In these writings I seek, often unsuccessfully, as readers at La Vida Locavore can see, to incarnate a "yes" of renewal beyond what I interpret to be Melville's great "no" of renewal. The "Corn Farming" drama is the latest volume in this larger work. It is built around a wonkish PowerPoint presentation, starkly contrasted with a dramatic interpretation of my family's history as told through farm bill history (cf. my farm folk song and poetry pamphleteering and other materials in HFHS), and also a series of skits on topics from farm and food history (ie. NFO's dramatic throwing of a huge pile thousands?] of Sears Catalogs in response to the 1962 CED report, which I've mentioned here, or mud biscuits from Haiti [does anyone know the recipe?). That's how I'm starting to build it. I believe this work could become a presentation with a series of simple skits, or, with adequate assistance, a powerful play and/or film.
Later last fall I was able to see the artsy farm film, The Real Dirt on Farmer John, at CSPS, a small art and drama venue on the 3rd Street cultural corridor in Cedar Rapids Iowa. After the show I went out with John and a local playwright who puts on a one man show about Grant Wood. (Wood was a leading 20th century Iowa regionalist, and the painter of American Gothic). The film and these conversations inspired me to realistically visualize a production Corn Farming and the Human Spirit at venues like CSPS. Such a vision is probably not possible, however, without significant and holistic help.
The biggest question for me is: Are the American people a population of lab rats? Apparently so. These varieties are legal in the U.S. MON810 goes by the trade name YieldGard Corn Borer and MON863 goes by the trade name YieldGard Rootworm Corn in the U.S. and Canada. NK603 sells under the name Roundup Ready corn. If I understand things right, many farmers I met in Iowa used "triple stacked" corn, which means that all 3 of these traits were engineered into the same seeds.
As of 2009, according to the USDA, 17 percent of the corn grown in the U.S. is "Bt" corn, 22 percent is "RoundUp Ready," and 46 percent has more than one trait stacked into it. Altogether, GM corn makes up 85 percent of the corn we grow. Translation: Unless you eat organic (and probably even then because of genetic pollution), congratulations! You are a lab rat! Enjoy the organ damage.
(Of course, Monsanto's already claimed that this study isn't true and that their products do not cause organ damage. I'd like to see further study happen - ASAP! And, in the meantime, how about pulling Monsanto's GM corn off the market until the science is conclusive one way or the other? I, for one, do NOT want to be a lab rat, thankyouverymuch.)
Iowa Farm Bureau made it known to ISU aggies that the leading candidate for the post, Ricardo Salvador, the program director for the Kellogg Foundation's Food, Health and Wellbeing program, was not its prime choice. It preferred Frank Louws, a plant pathologist at North Carolina State.
According to interview and program evaluations, Louws was a clear second to Salvador in almost every category commented on by evaluators. He had limited experience with Iowa commodities, no livestock experience, no "national or international reputation in sustainable agriculture," and a "lower scope of vision" for the Center than Salvador.
Despite these shortcomings, Iowa State President Gregory Geoffroy authorized ag Dean Wendy Wintersteen to offer Louws the job. Simultaneously, Wintersteen sent Salvador an email Dec. 2 that informed him he would not be Leopold director.
Why, asks Laura Jackson, a center advisory board member and a professor of biology at the University of Northern Iowa, was Salvador, "clearly the most qualified applicant interviewed," sent packing before Louws either accepted or declined the position?
Those who have seen the documentary King Corn might remember Salvador from a few scenes. He is highly regarded by sustainable agriculture experts inside and outside the U.S. and is an expert on one of Iowa's leading crops.
Guebert reports that Louws has neither accepted nor declined the position at the Leopold Center, so perhaps there is still a chance for Salvador to be offered the job. Either way, the episode doesn't reflect well on ISU, which already had a reputation for being less than welcoming to sustainable agriculture advocates.
When Fred Kirschenmann was hired as director of the Leopold Center in 2000, none of the agricultural science departments wanted him on their faculty for fear of angering corporate interests. So, Kirschenmann was appointed to the ISU Department of Religion and Philosophy. But at least the Farm Bureau was not allowed to veto his hiring. It's a sad day for a university when a corporate group can overrule the strong preference of a hiring committee.
