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
How low can you go? (At this point, Funkadelic's One Nation Under a Groove starts playing in my head, but maybe I'm just odd?) That's what Colin Beavan and his family (wife Michelle, and their absolutely adorable then-2-year old daughter Isabella) sought to discover via the No Impact Man project, which currently consists of a blog, a book and a documentary screening around the country right now.
Eager Beavan and reluctant Michelle take to the task in stages (with Isabella joyfully ogling worms in the composting bin and washing clothes in the bathtub via foot stomping), from eliminating television, cosmetics and cleaning chemicals, to forswearing forms of transit other than foot, bike or scooter and shopping farmers' markets and bulk food bins, eventually moving all the way up to turning off the electricity in their apartment.
After a couple of false starts (whistle blows - "5 yards, Jay, still first down.") last weekend, I finally made it out to the beautiful Bagdad Theater just up 39th from me here in Southeast Portland on Sunday to catch the screening of the new food documentary Ingredients, which was also a benefit for Portland Public Schools' Eat, Think, Grow farm-to-school program. I once again partook in that great Portland tradition of sitting down for a movie with a craft brew... and okay, also a contraband (!) bag of roasted Oregon hazelnuts which I snuck into the theater as a snack. Shoot me, or beat me with a leek or something.
I attended the Portland screening of Food, Inc. this past Thursday, a documentary by Robert Kenner which takes us inside the corporate food system and attempts to give us suggestions as to how we can head towards a more sustainable system.
This review, in short, can be summed up with two simple words - see it. The best part of the film, for me, was being able to actually see the things I had already read about and heard of. Immobile cows being pushed and rolled towards slaughter by forklift, hundreds of baby chicks rolled and knocked around down conveyor belts while tumbling every which way including off the belts altogether, hamburger filler being run through industrial-strength ammonia washes to kill off any potential e. coli bacteria.
Cameras take us inside an industrial producer's chicken house and show close up footage of chickens too large to take more than two or three steps before crumbling under their own massive weight. We follow the producer as she picks up dead animals off the floor and tosses them into trash piles. Hidden cameras give us a look at a 1 AM poultry pickup at a Perdue chicken house - live animals being picked up by the legs 3, 4 or more at a time and haphazardly tossed and slammed into trucks...
Interviews with Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan and others guide us along; as Pollan again makes the point that our supermarkets only present us with "an illusion of choice", as virtually all offerings of the industrial food system are simply "clever rearrangements of corn" and one or two other main ingredients.
As someone who loves good food, especially good food grown and produced in a sustainable manner by local growers and producers here in Oregon and SW Washington, I must say that I was quite intrigued when I first heard of this film. A recently released 73-minute documentary from Moving Images directed by Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin, "Good Food" is a fascinating and extremely enjoyable film that touches on all aspects of a local sustainable food system. From farm and ranch, to market or distributor, to grocery store and restaurant and on to our forks and dinner tables - "Good Food" focuses on our successful and ever-growing sustainable local food system here in the Pacific Northwest, and in doing so also demonstrates that we can (and must, if we are to carry on as a working society much longer...) do the same everywhere across the nation.
A few variables will change region by region, but in the end there's a basic "Unified Theory of Sustainable Food Systems" that is clearly sketched out here - human scale family farms and ranches working with, rather than against, nature, producing healthy food without destructive poisonous chemicals; either selling directly to the public through farmers markets or through local distributors willing to work with small family farms; on to restaurants who source their food locally and change their menus accordingly with the seasons, and neighborhood grocery stores who take their role in the community seriously by making an effort to support local growers and producers while providing convenient access on a retail level to neighborhood residents.
Loaded with informative in-depth interviews with some of the leaders in this movement in Oregon and Washington, and not to mention beautiful farm and ranch scenes and many, many(!) hunger-inducing moments - "Good Food" is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen on this issue, and is definitely worth a view (or ten...). More below the fold...
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