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
Last week I attended a screening of the excellent new movie Food Fight. This documentary recounts the rise of our industrial food system after World War II, along with countervailing efforts to keep our food safe, local, and tasting good!
The star of the film is the Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, and its founder and owner Alice Waters. During the riotous Sixties, she was appalled by the poor diets of her fellow protestors, and started the restaurant to provide high quality food in a "dinner party" environment. Over time she developed her own sources of local and organic food, avoiding more commercial sources in an effort to provide the most delicious food possible.
A number of other chefs are interviewed, including Wolfgang Puck and Ann Cooper (recently described here). The rise of farmers markets in many cities, as a source of local fruit, vegetables, et al. for both restaurants and individuals, is also an important story line.
Several organic farmers make an appearance, and describe their struggles to do more than produce low-cost and high-calorie commodity food stuffs. Some time is also spent recounting recent attempts to reform U.S. agriculture, focusing on Congressman Ron Kind (D-WI/La Crosse).
The movie also documents the efforts of MacArthur Fellow Will Allen of Growing Power in Milwaukee, and his daughter Alice in Chicago, to provide good-quality, low-cost food to the residents of inner city neighborhoods with few options besides the local mini-mart full of junk food and fast-food restaurants. The new wave of schools growing their own gardens is also highlighted.
Other interviewees describing the big picture include Michael Pollan of Omnivore's Dilemma fame, and academic Marion Nestle.
All in all, Food Fight is a thoroughly enjoyable film that uses humor to chronicle the absurdity of our food system and emphasizes the slow but revolutionary changes taking place at its margins. My one complaint about the film is that it completely ignores the parallel rise of food cooperatives as a source of good, whole, organic, and local food, an important complement to farmers markets in both availability and necessary staples such as grains. The same rebellious spirit embodied by Alice Waters gave rise to hundreds of small co-ops across the country, so I was quite surprised that they were not even mentioned. It seems that even they are still on the periphery in some parts of our alternative food economy.
Food Fight has been making the rounds of various film festivals, but will receive its theatrical debut on March 24 in Los Angeles, and will hopefully follow soon at a theater near you.
My book just went off to the printer, and the last thing my publisher needed from me before sending it there was a correction on ONE footnote. They'd asked me for it several times. It was a sentence describing a program in Boston where food stamp recipients received vouchers to double the value of the food stamps they spent at a farmers' market. I had documented it with a link to a website, and the link was broken.
It was a link to a Boston Public Health Commission site. I looked all over their website for evidence of this program and found nothing. I emailed them and came up with nothing. In the end, we changed the sentence in the book, documented it with a recent Jane Black article describing a similar program in other cities, and left it at that. That was just a few days ago.
A new city program designed to expanded access to locally grown fruits and vegetables will give people vouchers to double the value of food stamps at 14 farmers' markets in Boston.
The vouchers, dubbed Boston Bounty Bucks, are now available at 14 of the city's roughly 22 farmers' markets. Shoppers will be able to swipe their benefit cards on portable credit card readers at the market to receive up to $20 in vouchers by spending $10 worth of food stamps.
A new program? I swear they did this before. I KNOW I didn't make this up. Even the name Boston Bounty Bucks sounded familiar! Further down the article they admitted that it wasn't entirely new, saying:
Late last summer, a pilot program that involved Boston Bounty Bucks added seven more farmers' markets, but technical hiccups prevented the initiative from fully taking hold, Greene said.
Farmers' markets in Oregon have been affected by the Bush Depression...in a good way. Record crowds have been counted at markets here in Portland this year, and purchases are up over 20 percent from last year. Also, people on food assistance have spent almost 3 times as much at some markets as compared to last year, and markets are receiving many more vendor booth applications than they have space for.
David Suzuki and SeaChoice have teamed up with a regional chain of supermarkets, who will no longer carry yellowfin tuna, Chilean sea bass, orange roughy and other non-sustainable seafood at their 117 locations throughout British Columbia and Alberta, Canada.
Should the Washington Farmers Market Association allow nuts from around the world to be sold at farmers' market booths? One local hazelnut grower thinks not.
"They've survived ice ages, asteroids colliding. They've seen the dinosaurs come and go. And now they're going extinct in unprecedented numbers." - that's Kerry Kriger, founder of Save the Frogs. They may have met their match in us. Native amphibians in Oregon are disappearing at an alarming rate.
The (Vancouver / Victoria, BC) Tyee takes a look at the ongoing battle between two rival forestry certification non profits who certify eco-friendly wood products - the industry-created "Sustainable Forestry Initiative", and the "Forest Stewardship Council", a group formed by environmental activists.
Nevin Cohen takes a look at New York City's recently unveiled "Food Retail Expansion to Support Health" (FRESH) plan to bring more supermarkets into low-income sections of the South Bronx, Upper Manhattan, Central Brooklyn, and Downtown Jamaica (Queens).
Big Ag's gonna hate this! Food, Inc. was the top-grossing independent film at the box office this weekend, finishing ahead of even Francis Ford Coppola's (director of the Godfather trilogy) new film. Reviews of the film can be found here from Jill and from me. See it!
The USDA recently published a report showing farmers markets trends. This site here says that a recent report came out but the link they have isn't working for me, nor can I find the report on the USDA site. I emailed a friend at USDA to see if she knows where I can get the full 112 pg report, but in the meantime, check out these stats about farmers markets...
88% of farmers markets are seasonal, not year-round
The average seasonal farmers' market runs for 4.5 months.
The most successful markets financially are located in urban areas (vs. rural areas) and on the coasts (vs. in the center of the country).
The longer a market is open during the year, the better they do in terms of number of vendors, monthly sales, and weekly customers.
Market Season Length
Avg # of Vendors
Monthly Sales
Weekly Customers
Seasonal, 6 mos or less
25
$20,770
565
Seasonal, 7 mos or more
51
$57,290
942
Year round
58
$69,497
3578
UPDATE: From the kind people at USDA... they are working as we speak to put it on their website. It will be up at http://www.ams.usda.gov/Market... when it is posted, which will likely be later this morning.
UPDATE #2: OK, it's posted (here). Thanks, USDA! I'll read the report and write more about it later this week.
New Palo Alto (Calif.) Mayor Peter Drekmeier announced what the San Jose Mercury News described as an "ambitious environmental agenda" and what Palo Alto Online called "a green revolution" this week. And a new weekday farmers market at City Hall - with a target market of municipal and other downtown workers - will likely be the first step. Palo Alto has long been highly regarded for its environmental stewardship and is proud of its plentiful community gardens. It's impressive that Mayor Drekmeier hasn't rested on the city's laurels and has instead embarked on a far-reaching initiative that includes support for energy efficiency, habitat protection and sustainable agriculture.
I went back and looked at a bunch of numbers from 2008. Unfortunately, the economic numbers are pretty bleak (and still getting worse).
U.S. Population:
January 2008: 302,785,808
December 2008: 305,313,980
Unemployment:
January 2008: 4.9%
November 2008: 6.7%
Inflation (Nov 2007-Nov 2008):
All items: 1.1%
Food: 6.0%
Energy: -13.3%
All items less food & energy: 2.0%
Hunger (as of Dec 2007):
Food Insecurity: 11.1% of all U.S. Households
Hunger: 4.1% of all U.S. Households
Hungry Children: 691,000
*These numbers are expected to get worse in 2008, as unemployment went up and so did food prices. The numbers here are the most recent ones released by the USDA.
Ben Ray Lujan is running for Congress in New Mexico's diverse third district.
He is young and progressive. He supports universal health care, single payer or otherwise. He hopes to transform northern New Mexico's national laboratories into alternative energy research facilities. And, as the grandson of a farmer and sheepherder, he overflows with ideas about sustainable agriculture.
He is expected to win.
More about El Norte, New Mexico's third Congressional District, and her favored son after the jump.
(Art by native Norteño artist and health care advocate, Roger Montoya. Photos by me.)
In these lean and uncertain times the need to conserve food and energy, among a plethora of other important things, is going to help us survive this incoming recession. Sarahnity's Frugal Fridays series is doing a sensational job suggesting judicious economic shortcuts for this community. It's up every Friday at 3.30 EDT on DKos and it is an invaluable trove of goodies.
I have written in the past about cooking simple and healthy dishes and today's theme is, you guessed it, reasonably priced food and how one can live cheaply observing a few rules when buying produce (preferably local) and some ideas on how to cook nutritious meals on a tight budget. In this previous diary I have described and made a list of must-have kitchen utensils (well, not all of them, just select the ones you really need).
Yesterday was World Food Day, and sadly, hardly anyone noticed (except for the thoughtful jgoodman diary). Close to 1 billion in this world of ours is malnourished, and that is food for thought.
Supply Chain Basics: The Dynamics of Change in the U.S. Food Marketing Environment (PDF) came out earlier this month. (I've been behind in getting through all of the news to get it posted on this site. Forgive me, work's been killing me.) This report is for small to mid-size farmers to help them "take advantage of the shifts in today's retail food marketplace" in the words of the USDA's press release. (As a non-farmer, I find it useful too... it tells which states have the most farmers' markets, for example. I consider things like that when I decide where to live.)
This report examines the changes in the retail marketing environment, especially as it affects the relationship between grocery stores and their vendors. It covers such areas as consolidation in the retail food marketing sector, increases in direct collaboration between retailers and vendors, and the ways retailers can differentiate themselves from their competitors by featuring greater varieties of specialty or locally produced or manufactured items. This evolving marketing environment, combined with the increasing flexibility of individual stores to make procurement decisions, offers new opportunities to smaller-scale growers and processors. The report discusses ways to highlight their unique product offerings and geographic proximity to retail buyers as a competitive advantage.
Highlights are noted below the flip - hat tip to Luis Sierra for going through the document and sending around the highlights.
Willits, California, is a small town north of San Francisco, with some fame in the local food movement for its localization efforts. Because it is so small, its mayor and city council are part time, and they do not have offices in the small, cramped city hall.
So, when a constituent suggested that she drop by Mayor Holly Madrigal's office to discuss something, the Mayor laughed and said she had no office, that she might as well set up a desk in a field and call that her office.
OK, on this fine Sunday, everyone is posting the goodies picked up at their local farmers markets over in today's open thread. Well, I picked up some peaches, plums, apricots, tomatoes, several varieties of cucumbers, some asian pear butter, and some lavender honey on my shopping trip. Wish I could share it with you, but the intertubes don't work that way.
However, I had my camera with me, so I can share some pictures, if you follow me below the fold...
Food is a wonderful thing, especially when it's local, fresh and nutritious. Despite the trials and tribulations of farming that I seem to dwell upon in my Northern Agrarian Monthly column, farming is a great way of life and it is also, (or at least it should be) about growing fresh local and nutritious food. Too often farming is not about food or ending hunger it is, more often than not, about corporate profit.
We often think that farmers markets are a product of our times as they spring up in cities and small towns across the country. Truth is, farmers markets are the traditional way of selling agricultural produce around the world.
The really nice aspect of this transaction is that the farmer receives just compensation for his product and the eater can be assured the product is fresh, local and grown in a manner that is acceptable to all. If these criteria are not met, the consumer can look for another farmer whose products better suit his or her needs.
We protect what we care for and we care for what we understand.
Openair.org should help you better understand the functions, importance, and variety of street markets and merchants as well as the larger social context in which they are found. This knowledge should be useful to merchants, shoppers, travelers, policy makers and academics of all types, law, business, social science, consumer researchers, historians and anyone else with an interest in this age-old form of trade.
We hope you can join with us to learn about and celebrate this important economic and social institution. We invite you to contribute to this website. The structure is simple:
-Discussion...of everything having to do with markets (once you've registered).
-Links to Markets, post your favorite market (once you've registered).
-Market Magazine, photos, advice for merchants and others, job postings, topics you would find in your local newspaper.
-Market Journal, some topics similar to MM but more scholarly discussions suited to urban planners, humanities, policy makers, social scientists, law and legal studies, consumer research, business, etc.
-Events, browse events and post your events (once you've registered).
Anyone can visit this website without the need to register. But if you want to add content such as a link or post in a discussion forum or if you wish to make a comment on a blog, you will need to register (found in the menu on the left). Those who want more involvement with OPENAIR such as uploading files, creating a node website for a market, writing a blog, adding images, etc. should go through 'about' to email a request to take on editorial responsibilities (appropriate to your interests and time).
We welcome your comments and suggestions regarding this, the new version of Openair. Those interested in content from the old page can access it below. Please be patient with our new page, register and work with us to make it the most useful in the world.
Thanks!
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Ben Ray Lujan is running for Congress in New Mexico's diverse third district.
