Theme: advocacy

News from the Farm | May 26, 2014

May 26, 2014

Farmers all over California are weighing their summer water options.  Some, for example, on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, will fallow all of their land for lack of water.  Others (like Full Belly) have access to groundwater, and will irrigate only higher value crops, and choose to grow less in certain fields or reduce water use later in the season.   

In declaring a drought emergency, Governor Brown called out the likely connection between the drought and climate change.  I recently asked a friend if the farmers in his neighborhood talked about the drought in those terms and he replied that while they may or may not think about the impact of climate change, what they worry about more is the impact of regulations that will be imposed on agriculture in the name of addressing climate change! [Read more…]

Food Safety Rule – there is still time to comment!

November 18, 2013

November 18, 2013

At 6pm on 11/17 there were 10,600 comments on the FDA’s proposed Produce Rule, which we have discussed extensively in these pages. Many of our members wrote to us that they had submitted comments. Thank You!!! We need many more to make an impression upon the FDA. Because the government web site where comments can be submitted was down repeatedly, the comment period has been extended to 11/22.  If you want a copy of the article that we wrote about this issue, contact judith@fullbellyfarm.com. There is plentiful information about the proposed rule on the web site of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (http://sustainableagriculture.net/fsma/) as well as instructions on how to comment. These proposed rules could become the law of the land – if that happens, family farming and growing produce in the US will be changed forever, and not in a good way.

News From the Farm | Week of October 21, 2013

October 21, 2013

Please submit comments on the proposed FDA Produce Rule

During the last year, we have written about the proposed “food safety” regulations many times.  Now we ask every single one of our members to please submit your comments to the FDA. The deadline is November 15th. If these proposals go forward, they will require costly changes in production practices with little scientific justification and doubtful reduction in food poisoning outbreaks. Based on previous history with implementation of “food safety” regulations in the 1980’s, many family farmers will go out of business, and others will stop growing certain crops once full implementation takes place. Please take a few minutes to submit comments! We have been to FDA hearings and we do think that they might pay attention. The FDA is staffed by people who know little about agriculture. Those of you who are in touch with a local farm may have more expertise than many of them, especially if you read this newsletter regularly!

The web site of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (http://caff.org/programs/foodsafety/fsma/) has all the helpful information that you might need, including instructions on How to Comment. There are two proposed rules. The rule that we have been writing to you about is the “Standards for the Growing, Harvesting, Packing, and Holding of Produce for Human Consumption.” If you want to go straight to the comment site: (http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=FDA-2011-N-0921-0199).   [Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 29, 2012

December 4, 2012

Zero Hunger Challenge

Our refrigerator offers leftovers, several days after our Thanksgiving feast. We’re still enjoying roasted vegetables, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie. But this isn’t altogether unfamiliar – our Thanksgiving feast is only different in terms of scale – the farm always provides such abundant quantities of food that it’s hard to imagine going hungry for very long.

Generalizing beyond the farm, our country is blessed with some of the best farmland in the world, and immense agricultural capacity. Thus it is startling that we have one of the highest poverty rates in the industrialized world, and one of the highest child mortality rates. We live in a wealthy, bountiful country where 1 in every 3 children are reliant on SNAP (food stamps) to purchase food.

[Read more…]

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