SAVING SEEDS SUMMER/FALL 2010 RELEASED

Food for Maine’s Future is pleased to announce our Summer/Fall 2010 issue of Saving Seeds. FMF has been publishing this newspaper/journal covering the politics of food since 2005. Click on the newspaper image to the right for online version.

 

Hard copies can be obtained for distribution by contacting Bob St.Peter at 207-244-0908 or by email at bob@foodformainesfuture.org. Thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

Saving Seeds/FMF

PO Box 51

Sedgwick, ME 04676

UPCOMING EVENTS

Small Change Theatre Presents

FOOD RULES

The final performance of a community action theater project about local access to local food

Sunday, August 1 at 12:00pm

Blue Hill Town Park, Blue Hill
 

Directed and Co-created by
Amy Grant, Margot Newkirk, and the Small Change Theatre Troupe

Sponsored by 

Food for Maine’s Future, El El Frijoles, Liz Cutler, Lizarts 

Community Pot Luck
to follow performance at Blue Hill Town Park

Please bring your favorite dish made with 
local ingredients
 
 
11:00 am Community Gathering 
 
Soapbox 

at the Blue Hill Consolidated School 
with milk and cookies

We'll walk together to the town park, 
less than a mile.

Click here for event poster

 
 

Statement from the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Sovereignty, US Social Forum 2010

Statement from the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Sovereignty, US Social Forum 2010

Over a half-century ago, Mahatma Gandhi led a multitude of Indians to the sea to make salt—in defiance of the British Empire’s monopoly on this resource critical to people’s diet. The action catalyzed the fragmented movement for Indian independence and was the beginning of the end for Britain’s rule over India. The act of “making salt” has since been repeated many times in many forms by people’s movements seeking liberation, justice and sovereignty: Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, and the Zapatistas are just a few of the most prominent examples. Our food movement— one that spans the globe—seeks food sovereignty from the monopolies that dominate our food systems with the complicity of our governments. We are powerful, creative, committed and diverse. It is our time to make salt.

A movement for food sovereignty – the people’s democratic control of the food system, the right of all people to healthy, culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems - is building from every corner of the globe.

We find that our work to build a better food system in the Unites States is inextricably linked to the struggle for workers’ rights, immigrant’s rights, women’s rights, the fight to dismantle racism in our communities, and the struggle for sovereignty in indigenous communities. We find that in order to create a better food system, we must break up the corporate control of our seeds, land, water and natural resources.

Because at a time of record harvests and record profits we have over one billion hungry people on the planet; because poverty is the root cause of hunger; because the world’s oceans are being polluted and plundered, because industrial agriculture contributes one third of all greenhouse gas emissions, because increasing inequality, poverty, hunger, a global land grab, and environmental destruction are threatening the livelihoods of family farmers, farmworkers, fisherfolk, and marginalized communities worldwide; and because community based food systems and agroecological farming can cool the planet, build resilience to climate change, and eliminate poverty;

We therefore commit to re-building local food economies in our own communities, to dismantling structural racism, to democratizing land access, to building opportunities for the leadership of our youth, and to working towards food sovereignty in partnership with social movements around the world;

We call on others in the US to demand an end to the global land grab, to end both corporate and military land occupations, to demand fairer trade, aid and investment policies, land reform, and support for sustainable peasant and community agriculture and sustainable community fisheries;

We endorse actions that include: the liberation of land and water resources for the production of food and sustainable livelihoods; the creation of new structures for cooperative ownership of land and food production, processing and distribution; the integration of labor rights, immigrant’s rights and food justice; the valuing of women as primary food providers, and the denouncement of false solutions and false partnerships addressing climate change, hunger and economic development;

We demand a world in which everyone has control over their food and no one has to put food in their mouth that hurts people or the environment.

Organizations and individuals among us have therefore committed to the following actions:

• Launching a campaign for food sovereignty as a right of the people
• Growing and harvesting as much food as we possibly can everywhere
• Liberating land through reclaiming urban and rural spaces for the production of food for communities; demanding the use of public lands for food production
• Participating in a global campaign against land grabs, in which corporations and governments grab up the lands of communities
• Carrying forward the people’s agenda coming out of the Cochabamba climate summit — including popular education around food and climate justice and promoting sustainable agriculture as a solution to climate change
• Standing with the people of Haiti, Palestine, Honduras, and other countries whose food sovereignty is threatened by political, military, and/or corporate occupation
• Hosting collective meals in our communities as a way of connecting people across generations and cultural backgrounds and as a tool for dismantling racism in the food system
• Forging new models of collective control of land and waterways; assuring legal protection of the commons
• Building the leadership of the next generation; providing opportunities for urban and rural youth to have a future in food and farming
• Rejecting GMOs and other forms of the corporate takeover of our food systems
• Creatively and strategically working to dismantle the corporations who have hijacked the world’s food systems
• Affirming the sovereignty of indigenous peoples in North America and throughout the globe
• Committing our food movements in the US to be active participants in the global movement for food sovereignty and to work to stop our government and corporations from practices that undermine food sovereignty globally.
• Challenging US food and agricultural aid and development policy (e.g., Monsanto and USAID’s recent “donation” of seeds to Haiti)
• Working towards a people’s food and farm bill based on principles of food sovereignty
• Hosting community seed exchanges
• Engaging communities in popular education on GMOs and the role of corporations in our food system
• Engaging communities in popular education on community nutrition and public health
• Creating more community farmers markets that are accessible and affordable to all; affirming everyone’s right to food that is good, safe, healthy, and fair
• Helping everyone understand where their food comes from and who helped bring it to their table
• Highlighting the common struggles between farmers and farmworkers in the US and their counterparts throughout the world

Download Food Sovereignty Statement here.

Farming is Romantic

Heather, Caroline, and Phil Retberg. Photo credit Bridget Besaw.

Keynote address by Heather Retberg, Quill’s End Farm, Penobscot, Maine. The essay was read as part of the 5th Annual Local & Sustainable Food Conference in Lewiston, Maine, Saturday, April 10, 2010.

Sustainable agriculture. A viable food production system. Family scale farm. Local food economy.

“Milk distributors” . “Chicken processors”. “Food Safety Inspection System”. “Supreme court rulings”. “Private sales”.

These terms have become the terrain of our daily conversations. The first set are words we use to describe ourselves and others on our peninsula, who are beginning to understand the necessity and the urgency of coming together to survive. The second set of words represent the steep learning curve my husband, Phil and I are now climbing as we try to decide how much regulation and licensure to accept, or indeed if we have a choice. Our state and federal laws, we have come to learn with a heavy clarity, right up to the highest court in the land have been written against us. We’ve been happily working outside the system for our first 12 years of farming. This past fall, the system knocked on our door. We are not farmers, family or otherwise in their world—instead we are ‘distributors’ and ‘processors’—the same language and definitions used to describe industrial food manufacturers. The language here is of primary importance. The definitions are written by the USDA.

Photo credit Bridget Maeve

We farm a 100 acre piece of land in Penobscot. This farm had been abandoned for some 30 or more years, the two gorgeous old barns long since fallen into the ground, the farmhouse relinquished to porcupines, birds and other creatures. The 18 acres of fields had been hayed and were largely devoid of nutrients, growing acidic over time, reverting to blueberries, poplars and woods. We greeted this farm in 2005, our third child an infant, with relief and enthusiasm. Several passionate people and two conservation organizations are part of this farm’s story and how we came to be part of it. We felt blessed beyond measure and, after farming in different places for different people for 7 years, we were ready for what would clearly be our lifetime of work. In this place, we are raising our three children. We moved the farmhouse and restored it to be livable for human inhabitants. We are a diversified, grass-based livestock farm. We raise beef, lambs, and pork in season. We maintain a flock of laying hens, three dairy cows, two dairy goats and until last year we also raised broilers, turkeys and ducks. Phil has always wanted to milk cows and we’d been working towards that goal for 10 years. He spent two summers working 70 hours a week on an island building job to save the money to bring him home to farm full-time when that job was done. Meanwhile, we grew our herds, cleared 30 acres of woods and are continually working at increasing the fertility of these long neglected soils. It’s an evolving vision of family life, connectedness to our community, and increasing their connectedness to this plot of land and their food supply.

What I most want to share with those of you who care about growing food, contributing to your own local food economies, and raising strong and connected families and communities, is how romantic farming is.

Read full Farming is Romantic essay here.

STOP THE GLOBAL FARMLAND GRAB!

FMF JOINS CHALLENGE TO WORLD BANK’S SUPPORT FOR LAND-GRABBING

Bob St.Peter, director of Food for Maine’s Future, joined an international coalition in Washington, DC last month to oppose the current wave of land-grabbing by governments, investment firms, and transnational agribusiness corporations. Bob represented Food for Maine’s Future and the National Family Farm Coalition at the World Bank’s annual land policy conference on Monday, April 26 at the World Bank’s DC headquarters. The day prior to the conference, Bob joined a group outside headquarters of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, where a high-level Roundtable was being held, organised by the US government, the Japanese government, and the African Union. The coalItion held a banner reading “STOP THE GLOBAL FARMLAND GRAB” and handed out a press statement to delegates drafted by La Via Campesina, FIAN, Land Research Action Network, and GRAIN.

For more information about the global farmland grab visit www.farmlandgrab.org. Read Bob St.Peter’s press statement at http://farmlandgrab.org/12419.

Register Today!

5th Annual Local & Sustainable Food Conference: Building Urban/Rural Alliances
April 10 & 11, St Mary’s Nutrition Center, Lewiston, Maine

Click here to register for the conference, reserve your seat for the Mud Season Dinner, and buy a ticket to over a cardboard sea.

Through discussion and facilitated planning sessions conference participants will help create a set of Action Plans to guide our growing movement towards an equitable food system with justice and dignity for all.

View full weekend schedule here.

Conference Tracks

RURAL FOOD FOR RURAL PEOPLE
What are the principal barriers to rural Mainers’ feeding their own communities a diverse diet? How do we help rural producers sell locally first?

CULTIVATING MAINE’S FUTURE FOOD LEADERS
Creating a sustainable food system involves investing in our youth. How can youth and adults work together to better the food system? What role does farm-to-school and school gardens play in this? How do youth get a seat at the table for decisions that affect them?

WE CAN GET THERE FROM HERE: GRASSROOTS FOOD DISTRIBUTION
Maine has a number of successful grassroots models for getting food from farm or sea to our plates. How do we support and expand what is working? How do we create what is needed?

GROWING FOOD EVERYWHERE: THE HOME ECONOMY & FOOD SECURITY
What support and resources exist for homesteaders, subsistence farmers and fisherman, community gardeners? How can we help each other build a food economy based on bread labor, interdependence, and self-reliance?

Skill Shares

Seed Saving – Will Bonsall, Scatterseed Project
Sheet Mulching & Permaculture Principles – Jesse Watson, Mid-Coast Permaculture
Making Kombucha – Gail Wartell, Winter Cache Project
Starting a Community Garden – Shelby Childs, Stone Soup Garden
Raising Backyard Poultry
Starting a School Garden
Starting a Buying Club
Season Extension

or take a self-guided tour of Lots to Gardens’ community gardens!

End the day with our Mud Season Dinner, a (nearly) all-Maine meal & enjoy a vaudeville revival with over a cardboard sea!

Whose Rules? Balancing Food Safety, Food Traditions & Food Policy
Round table discussion with break-out focus groups, including farm-to-school, genetic engineering/seed patents, food policy councils, more.

Opening remarks by Mark Silber, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, USM
10:00am – 2:00pm St. Mary’s Nutrition Center, Lewiston
**Please note: Registration for this round table is limited. Please contact Bob St. Peter to register. There is no charge for the event and lunch will be available for a small donation.

Registration for the Saturday, April 10 conference is $15-50 sliding scale, suggested donation is $25. Members of Food for Maine’s Future receive free admission to Saturday’s conference. Sign up today!

Mud Season Dinner is $15-150 sliding scale, suggested donation is $20. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Registration for Saturday, April 10 conference and Mud Season Dinner is required and space is limited. Register early.

Presented by Food for Maine’s Future, Lots to Gardens, Healthy Oxford Hills, Lewiston Public Library, St. Mary’s Nutrition Center, and WERU

Click here to register for the conference, reserve your seat for the Mud Season Dinner, and buy a ticket to over a cardboard sea.

Help spread the word. Download a poster here!

Call for Nominations

Jim Cook Award for Outstanding Contributions to Local Food Access

Submit your nomination for an individual, group, organization, or institution who have made substantial contributions to Maine’s local food movement. The award was inaugurated in March, 2009 at Food for Maine’s Future’s Local & Sustainable Food Conference in honor of the life and work of our friend and mentor, Jim Cook. Last year’s winner was Crown of Maine Organic Cooperative.

Nominations will be accepted until March 31.

SUPPORT SMALL FARMERS, LOCAL ECONOMIES & TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE!

Take a minute TODAY to tell the Agriculture, Conservation & Forestry Committee to Reject On-Farm Poultry Processing Rules

LD 1765 Resolve, Regarding Legislative Review of Chapter 348: Poultry Slaughter and Processing with Grower/Producer Exemption

PUBLIC HEARING WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3 1:00PM 206 CROSS BUILDING, STATE HOUSE STATION, AUGUSTA

WORK SESSION FRIDAY, MARCH 5 1:00PM  206 CROSS BUILDING, STATE HOUSE STATION, AUGUSTA

Last June, Maine enacted a 1,000 bird poultry exemption. The exemption allows farmers who raise and slaughter poultry on their farm to sell the poultry at farmers’ markets, directly from their farms or through Community Support Agriculture (CSA) shares without a state-inspected facility. The exemption does not include sales to supermarkets, restaurants, or any other institutions. It is a law that promotes and supports the growth of small scale farming across the state. The new law required the Quality Assurance and Regulation (QAR) division of the Maine Department of Agriculture to write regulations that would “establish requirements for the physical facilities and sanitary processes used by poultry producers whose products are exempt from inspection.”

At a public hearing in December, the QAR heard much opposition to their draft rules, mostly on the grounds that the rules are unnecessary and burdensome to small-scale producers who would be required to build a new facility to process less than 1,000 birds per year. Learn more here.

TAKE ACTION TODAY!

FMF DIRECTOR ELECTED TO NATIONAL FARM COMMITTEE

St.Peter Joins NFFC Executive Committee

Sedgwick – Bob St.Peter, co-founder and director of Food for Maine’s Future, was recently elected to the Executive Committee of the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC). The election took place at the NFFC’s winter meeting in Washington, DC at the end of January. The term is for one year.

“It’s an honor and privilege to work alongside these true heroes,” says St.Peter. “Working with the NFFC I am constantly reminded of how important and valuable the contributions of family farmers and fisherman are to rural communities.”

The National Family Farm Coalition is based in Washington DC and is comprised of 25 farm and fishing groups from 32 states, including Food for Maine’s Future. NFFC serves as a national link for grassroots organizations working on family farm issues, including credit, trade, and farm and food policy. Through the NFFC, these organizations collaborate regionally on nation-wide campaigns making the most of every group’s experience, resources, and impact. For more information visit www.nffc.net.

Farmer Suicides Increase in Poor Economy

“Farmers have twice the national suicide rate compared with non-farmers”

Food Safety News
Jan. 31, 2010

by Norah Burton

During the Reagan era family farms experienced a rapid demise with many farmers turning to suicide as a result of lost profits.  There may once again be a muted epidemic of suicide occurring with the downfall of the economy.

The recent suicide of a New York State dairy farmer has drawn attention to the potential recurrence of this issue.  The farmer, who raised 100 head of cattle, killed his 51 dairy cows he milked twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, before killing himself.

Though Dean Pierson reportedly had ‘personal issues’ in recent months, his suicide raises multiple questions, including whether the farmer felt an elevated pressure to produce.  In early 2009, a Maine farmer hanged himself in his barn.  More recently, two Maine farmers–one an organic dairy farmer–committed suicide; both shot and killed themselves.

read full article

from the “we’re all in this together” file…

Why Are Indian Farmers Committing Suicide and How Can We Stop This Tragedy?
by Vandana Shiva