Sept/Nov 2002 News

The SuperMarketCoop--Spreading Global Democracy and Organic Goods Via Internet

The Small Farm Connection at www.SuperMarketCoop.com is a subscription delivery service by which members receive, for $35 a month, a variety of food and craft products from diverse member coops in the United States or Mexico; favorite recipes from cooperative members; stories of farmers and coops; and action alerts and educational materials on food and farm policy. Products include fresh, organic produce from rural farmers in Mississippi, North Carolina, and California; pesticide-free smoked pork and ham from Missouri; rice and garlic flavored chips from California; cheese made from cows that were not treated with recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone; organic hibiscus tea and coffee from Mexico; maple syrup, honey, jams and jellies, honey mustard and natural botanicals from Maine (H.O.M.E. in Orland is a member); and more.

This project of Rural Coalition (1411 K St., NW, Suite 901, Washington DC 20005; Tel. 202-628-7160; Fax 202-628-7165) is a collaborative effort of rural, community-based agricultural coops to employ technology to help preserve their communities, cultures and farms. It focuses on three opportunities for opening new markets and increasing the competitive advantage of small farmers: the subscription-based food of the month program noted above; an online retail storefront; and an online product availability database. Participating groups "have learned that cooperation is a viable strategy in today’s marketplace," says www.SuperMarketCoop.com.

The website also features a Newsletter called The Juicer, with the mission of "squeezing the truth out of the News on food and farms." It promotes, for instance, "global democracy" rather than the current model of globalization that the World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund are trying to impose on the world.

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Creole Pigs as a "Parable of Globalization"

Creole pigs once served as essential, sustainable "bank accounts" for up to 85% of Haitian households. These hearty pigs could survive for three days without food and could thrive on available waste. They helped maintain soil fertility, feed peasants, and were sold occasionally to pay for weddings, school books, and so on. In 1982, international agencies told Haitians that their pigs were sick and must be slaughtered to stop the spread of disease. They were promised replacement pigs from Iowa. The "better" pigs required clean drinking water, imported feed and roofed pens. Haitians called them "four-footed princes." The pigs failed, and Haitians lost an estimated $600 million. School attendance, soil fertility and protein consumption declined.

Grassroots International and Toward Freedom are now working with Haitians to reintroduce Creole pigs. For more information, including a video about throwing "pig parties," contact GI at 179 Boylston St., Boston MA 02130-9901; 617-524-1400; www.grassrootsonline.org/what_pigparty.html. The story of the Creole pig is available in a documentary called "A Pig’s Tale" from www.crowingrooster.org.

Source: "Globalization and Creole Pigs," by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Earth Island Journal, Summer 2001.

Working Horse and Oxen Association Forms

The Working Horse and Oxen Association (WHOA) is an informal organization of men and women interested in working with draft animals, particularly to perform traditional farm tasks. The acronym WHOA represents more than the interaction between human and draft animal; it also represents a way of life. Its purpose is to give anyone who wishes the opportunity to work and to learn together, recapture sustainable farming skills, and extend the knowledge of these skills and techniques to future generations. The group members range from novices to experienced teamsters, and the group is open to everyone interested—whether or not owning a draft animal. It meets regularly at MOFGA to exchange information and ideas, its goal being to encourage the revival of interest in farming with draft animals.

This summer the Haystack Project is exploring the use of hay stacking as an appropriate, inexpensive technology for small-scale farmers. Unlike widely accepted round bale technology, which requires large capital investment and creates bales that are impossible to move manually, hay stacking enables farmers to utilize draft or low-horsepower (low-cost) machinery. Traditional technology eliminates the need for major capital output and/or financing for equipment and the high cost of maintaining modern mechanized equipment. It alleviates the need for financially burdensome infrastructures (hay barns) or for plastic wrapping, which uses both major equipment and a non-renewable resource in the plastic wrapping. Baling equipment required for larger scale hay storage also becomes unnecessary. Freely stacked hay can be transported more easily than round bales, in desired quantities, rather than by expensive equipment.

The Haystack Project began at MOFGA’s Common Ground Education Center in early spring by raising the center pole for the derrick, followed by mowing in June. Participants created a traditional haystack with hay mowed at the Center. Draft animals were used to mow the hay, and hand scythes helped mow the steeper inclines. A derrick, or support frame for the haystack, was built, and the hay was placed within the structure. Once full, the structure will be removed and the haystack will be combed (as a thatch).

Samples of the hay will be sent to the University of Maine Cooperative Extension for analysis of nutrient value during cutting and handling. When the stack is broken open, the amount of spoilage will be estimated, and new samples will be analyzed for nutrient value. These results will be compared with recent research conducted by the University of Maine on round bale technologies.

The completed haystack, on display at MOFGA, is a learning experience for people from Maine and beyond. Signs describe the project and illustrated panels explain the derrick’s construction and importance in storing the hay.

The 2000 USDA report on small farms cited farmers as the lowest income group in the nation, with most living at or below the poverty line. By encouraging a method that cultivates community involvement and farmer cooperation, the Haystack Project will contribute to moving farmers away from their marginalized position in society. This project will offer this extremely important and under-served population an economical alternative for an essential farming activity.

 

Organic & Beyond: A Campaign for a New Vision of Farming

A campaign in support of a new vision of farming was launched on May 30, 2002, with publication of Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture. Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology, the large format photo book provides compelling evidence of the extensive and unnecessary costs, both human and ecological, of the U.S. system of industrial agriculture and envisions food production in greater harmony with human communities and with the natural world.

The organizations behind the Organic & Beyond campaign bring an impressive track record of research and advocacy on sustainable agriculture, pesticide reform and food safety. (A list of campaign partners follows.) Led by the Center for Food Safety in Washington, D.C., the national and international campaign will focus on supporting strong organic standards and promoting local and small-scale agriculture that is biologically diverse, humane and socially just.

At the heart of the campaign is a vision of a new agrarian consciousness, one that enables urbanites to reestablish a relationship to nature, farmers and the land. Fatal Harvest's editor, Andrew Kimbrell, challenges environmentalists to forge this connection in their daily life; "We cannot do this if we remain food "consumers," destroying and wasting our lands and farm communities. We must learn to be "creators" and truly see and understand that each action we take does make a difference."

Fatal Harvest, with its stunning photos and penetrating essays, is a valuable tool to educate consumers and decision-makers on the deep costs of the U.S. system of factory farming. With essays by a diverse group of poets, ecologists, activists and chefs that include Wendell Berry, Hope Shand, Vandana Shiva and Alice Waters, the book begins with a deeply poetic and provocative section on breaking the industrial paradigm, and proceeds to up-end the seven corporate myths of industrial agriculture. The total effect is a powerful vision of the bio-diversity and the cultural, social and economic benefits of re-visioning agriculture.

Monica Moore, co-director of Pesticide Action Network North America, contributes an article on the destruction caused by pesticides. Her essay celebrates the accomplishments of the worldwide movement to reduce pesticides, and lays out an agenda to ban the worst offending chemicals, improve reporting on pesticide use, challenge genetically engineered (GE) food, and hold corporations accountable for the environmental impacts of pesticide and GE use and production.

Fatal Harvest's persuasive force and the campaign it supports, Organic & Beyond, are valuable new resources for the community of activists working for sustainable and just agriculture.

"A healthy farm culture can be based only upon familiarity and can grow only among a people soundly established upon the land; it nourishes and safeguards human intelligence of the earth that no amount of technology can satisfactorily replace. The growth of such a culture was once a strong possibility in the farm communities of this country. We now have only the sad remnants of those communities. If we allow another generation to pass without doing what is necessary to enhance and embolden the possibility now perishing with them, we will lose it altogether. And then we will not only invoke calamity--we will deserve it." -Wendell Berry

Organic & Beyond Campaign Partners:
Californians for Pesticide Reform
Center for Food Safety
Community Alliance with Family Farmers
Community Food Security Coalition
Food & Water
Food First
International Forum on Food and Agriculture
Land Institute
National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture
Occidental Arts and Ecology Center
Organic Consumers Association
Rural Advancement Foundation International USA
Sustain

For information on the Organic & Beyond Campaign contact Center for Food Safety,
600 Pennsylvania Ave. SE # 302, Washington, DC 20003. Phone (800) 600-6664 or (202) 547-9359; Fax (202) 547-9429; www.fatalharvest.org

Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, 2002 Andrew Kimbrell, ed. 384 pages. US$45 paperback, US$75 hard cover, discounts on bulk orders. Contact Island Press, 58440 Main Street, P.O. Box 7, Covelo, CA 95428; phone (800) 828-1302; fax (707) 983-6414; email service@islandpress.org; Web site www.islandpress.org.

Source: Pesticide Action Network Updates Service

Floriculture: Pesticides, Worker Health and Codes of Conduct

In many cultures fresh cut flowers are deeply symbolic. As a gift they embody a universal desire for connection--to other people, to the beauty of nature, to God. What is deeply ironic is the extreme disparity between the symbol and the real circumstances of their production. In fact, the rapidly growing floriculture industry is a heavy user of pesticides and is poisoning its workers and the environment in a number of Latin American and African nations.

A May 2002 cover story in Environmental Health Perspectives, published by the U.S. Department of Health, pulled together current research on worker and environmental health in the cut flower industry, which is increasingly concentrated in countries that are near the equator with low labor costs. Holland remains the world's largest producer of cut flowers, but Colombia is now a close second--one of every two flowers sold in the United States is grown in the Colombian savanna surrounding Bogota. Colombia flower workers number 80,000, with another 50,000 in packaging and transportation. China, Costa Rica, Ecuador, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe all now export cut flowers. According to a report by the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers and Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN), 190,000 people in developing countries work in the flower business.

A 2000 report by Gwen Curtis, "One Woman's Present, Another Woman's Poison," traces the growth and globalization of the cut flower industry, which grew by a factor of nine between 1994 and 1999. International development agencies push floriculture as an exportable alternative to traditional crops, but increased competition for water and croplands near transportation centers has created conflicts with indigenous farmers. In rural economies where food shortages are routine, the large-scale production of resource-intensive, non-edible crops does not contribute to food security.

Environmental & Worker Health

Statistics on pesticide use in the industry are hard to obtain, but flower growers use a variety of fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, nematocides and plant growth regulators. In the United States, flower imports are not inspected for pesticide residues because they are not edible; however, since flowers are considered an agricultural product, they must be pest-free when imported. As a result, trade regulations in countries like the United States and Japan actually promote use of the highly toxic fumigant methyl bromide, also a potent ozone depleter, for some flower exports.

Pesticides can cause cancer, birth defects, and reproductive and nervous system damage; and floriculture workers are exposed at numerous stages of plant growth. Worker exposure is of particular concern in greenhouses, where up to 127 different chemicals are used in enclosed spaces--increasing risk of exposure through the skin and by inhalation. According to one study, some flower greenhouses in Mexico's state of Morelos use 36 different pesticides, including the persistent organochlorines DDT, aldrin and dieldrin. A study of fern and flower workers in Costa Rica found that over 50% of respondents had at least one symptom of pesticide poisoning, such as headache, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, skin eruptions or fainting. In Ecuador, nearly 60% of workers surveyed showed poisoning symptoms, including headaches, dizziness, hand-trembling and blurred vision. Reproductive problems are also a concern; studies of the largely female workforce in Colombia found moderate increases in miscarriages and birth defects among children conceived after either parent started working in floriculture. A Danish study of Colombian flower workers concluded that female floriculture workers had reduced ability to become pregnant, and that sperm concentrations were 40% lower in male workers with long term exposure (more than 10 years). Indications of genetic damage were also found in studies of workers exposed to organochlorines in greenhouses in Mexico.

Environmental Health Perspectives also reports disturbing environmental impacts. For example, after intensive water use by floriculture, the water table has dropped under the savanna surrounding Bogota. In Costa Rica, pesticide residues are directly discharged into waterways, pesticide equipment is washed into streams and rivers, and runoff is allowed to enter important aquifer recharge areas.

Consumers’ Choice for Workers’ Rights

In the early 1990s, as consumers were increasingly concerned about conditions in the cut flower industry, Food First Information and Action Network and Bread for the World began a European campaign to certify flower producers. In 1999, the Flower Label Program was launched in Germany. Growers sign on to an International Code of Conduct (ICC) for the socially and environmentally sustainable production of cut flowers. Based on the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ICC mandates living wages, the freedom to join trade unions, a ban on child labor, guaranteed health and security standards, reduced use of pesticides and protection of the environment.

The industry has responded with voluntary certification programs, such as Florverde in Colombia, Sello Verde in Ecuador, and the Kenyan Flower Council, each with different standards based on its country's regulations. The programs offer some improvements in worker safety but do not approach the protections in the International Code of Conduct, particularly for workers’ rights to free association and to form their own unions. A current FIAN campaign is focused on basic organizing rights for a Colombia flower workers’ union. (Contact FIAN Deutschland e.V. for information, below.)

As the Flower Label Program's coalition of labor and environmental advocates continue their course, the cut flower industry's promotional phrase, "Say it with flowers" will gain a new subtext; "Say yes to environmental health and social justice."

Sources: "The Bloom on the Rose, Looking Into the Floriculture Industry", Focus, pp. 240-247; Environmental Health Perspectives, Journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, May 2002, Vol. 110, #5; Public Health Service, U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services, Washington D.C.; and Gwen Curtis, "One Woman's Present, Another Woman's Poison," for the abstract: www2.niwl.se/wwh/wwhsearch/detail.asp?ID=6.

For more on the Flower Label Program: FoodFirst Information and Action Network, FIAN Deutschland e.V., Die Blumen-Kampagne, Overwegstr. 31, D-44625 Herne, Germany; phone (49-02323) 490-099; fax (49-02323) 490-018; email blumen@fian.de; Web site www.fian.org.

From: Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), 49 Powell St., Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94102; Phone: (415) 981-1771; Fax: (415) 981-1991.

 

World Food Summit In Rome--Food Is a Human Right

Governments' efforts to end world hunger are failing. That was the major point of consensus at the United Nations World Food Summit in Rome. The Summit, held from June 8 to 13, was convened by the U.N. Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) when it recognized that its 1996 Global Plan of Action to eliminate world hunger would not reach its target of halving the world population of undernourished (currently estimated at 815 million) by the year 2015. Representatives from 183 countries attended the Summit--including heads of state from many developing countries and two from wealthy industrialized countries. At the same time, representatives of 650 nongovernmental and civil society organizations (NGOs and CSOs), including numerous producers, fisherfolk, pasturalists, rural residents and many groups linked with Pesticide Action Network, met for a productive parallel Forum on Food Sovereignty also sponsored by FAO.

Government and U.N. leaders at the Summit cited a lack of political will and the need for wealthy nations to commit more resources as the primary reasons for the failure. However, the NGOs/CSOs Forum participants took issue with this analysis and issued a statement faulting their basic approach to the problem: "The 1996 Plan of Action has not failed because of a lack of political will and resources, but rather because it supports policies that lead to hunger." In contrast, the people's organizations at the NGO/CSO Forum identified unbridled free trade and privatization policies as primary causes of hunger, and pointed to true land reform, support for local markets, and agro-ecological production practices as key solutions.

Throughout the Summit, the United States successfully blocked incorporation of the human right to food in official statements and action plans, and diluted language referring to this right in the Summit's concluding resolution. Proponents of ecological and organic agriculture were also bitterly disappointed by the official Summit's incorporation of the U.S. emphasis on genetically engineered (GE) crops as a means of reducing hunger for people with little or no access to food, and the omission of any reference to the need for precaution in dealing with GE crops.

"Agriculture in most parts of the world is more than 5,000 years old. In the last 50 years the green revolution has not only destroyed the environment, but the knowledge base of farmers. The new technologies of genetic engineering will make problems worse," said Oswald Quintal of the Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA) network. "We have learned that community approaches and appropriate traditional techniques can resolve the present agricultural and hunger problems, not what is being promoted by the WTO and so-called modern agriculture." According to Indian activist and scientist Vandana Shiva, "the Indian food systems are now being planned and managed as an investment sector for global agribusiness, not the livelihood security of millions of farmers and the nutritional and food security of the people."

To dramatize the need for change, a delegation of farmers, fisherfolk, women, peasants and activists supported by Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific presented FAO's leadership with more than 50,000 postcards signed in rural areas of India, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and other countries as part of an ongoing campaign to Get WTO (World Trade Organization) Out of Agriculture. "Peasants who spend all their days toiling the land are not able to make a living and are dying of hunger. The WTO has facilitated the dumping of heavily subsidized cheap food from developed countries, and this has only benefited the multinationals," explained Prem Dangal of the All Nepal Peasants Association.

The day before the Summit, an estimated 40,000 people marched peacefully through the streets of Rome demanding food sovereignty and the right to food, and protesting GE crops and the failure of governments and the UN effort to end world hunger.

Both the governmental Summit and the NGO Forum issued final declarations at the meeting's close. The NGO Forum statement emphasized that food is a human right; that people and nations are entitled to determine their own agricultural and food policies; and that development policy should foster agro-ecological agriculture.

Source: Pesticide Action Network press release, July 5, 2002. Original sources:
NGO/CSO Forum for food sovereignty, Food Sovereignty: A Right For All, Political Statement of the NGO/CSO Forum for Food Sovereignty: www.forumfoodsovereignty.org/pressoffice/pressreleases/politicalstatement.htm..

Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Asia and the Pacific, Press Release, Pallacio dei Congressi, Rome, June 9, 2002, FAO Told: Take Agriculture Out of WTO! Uphold Peasants' Rights to Land and Other Resources!

Associated Press, June 8, 2002, Protesters Hold March in Rome Over Genetically Modified Food, Land Reform Ahead of U.N. Summit.

Website of the World Food Summit, FAO of the United Nations: www.fao.org/worldfoodsummit.

Daily reports on the World Food Summit by the FoodFirst Institute for Food and Development Policy: www.foodfirst.org.