food policy
maine house overwhelmingly backs ‘right to food’ measure that may go before voters
FROM Bangor Daily News FULL ARTICLE HERE by Caitlin Andrews AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted on Tuesday for a proposed amendment to the state Constitution providing “a natural, inherent and unalienable right to food” in a move that could lead to a referendum on the question. The bipartisan bill from Rep. […]
disparity to parity: balancing the scales
WEBINAR: strategizing to achieve racial justice, curb corporate capture, diversify farming, and steward land & water by updating supply management & fair prices. The divisions between rich and poor, rural and urban, Black and White, landed and landless, Main Street and Wall Street look as wide today in the U.S. as they have ever been. To understand […]
canada bans soylent as it is not real food
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency have banned food replacer Soylent as it does not meet the criteria of real food as it does "not meet a select few of the CFIA requirements for a ‘meal replacement". The CFIA strongly recommends that it not be consumed and the meal replacement product manufactures do not understand the […]
2017 ag census
Register your farm for the 2017 agcensus to help inform the government of our growing presence in agriculture.
call for film submissions for change making tool-kits
Inspire food activists around the country: submit your film now!
"ditching NAFTA" may hurt american farmers, but which ones?
This NPR report suggests that leaving NAFT could hurt American farmers, but we wonder if it could actually help small-scale agriculture.
know your abattoir: there's a shortage of local slaughterhouses, and it's kind of a big problem
There's a bottleneck problem in sustainable meat: increasingly more producers and consumers and fewer slaughterhouses equipped to get meat from one to the other.
DARK Act Comeback
This just in from the Organic Consumers Association newsletter: DARK Act Comeback? Everybody loves a Comeback Kid—unless that "kid" is the DARK Act. In March, the Senate voted down the DARK Act, the bill that would Deny Americans our Right to Know about GMOs. Since then, Monsanto and its front groups, the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) have been […]
do you know where the presidential candidates stand on agriculture?
This week, for In These Times, John Collins researches what the current presidential candidates have to say about agriculture-- and what he discovers might surprise you. For instance, Hilary Clinton has the most detailed proposition for supporting small farms, including mention of student debt reform. She even proposes doubling funding for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development […]
this is food saftey
John Collins Food, safety, modernization—all good words. But the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) President Obama signed into law in 2011—giving the Food and Drug Administration new authority to regulate how food is grown, harvested and processed (i.e. produced)—places costly burdens on the small farmers who can least afford them. What is the FSMA? Prior […]
just food? conference, march 25-26, cambridge
JUST FOOD? FORUM ON LAND USE, RIGHTS AND ECOLOGY A CONFERENCE EXPLORING LAND AND THE FOOD SYSTEM: HOW LAND AFFECTS WHAT WE EAT, WHO WE ARE, AND THE ENVIRONMENT WE LIVE IN March 25–26, 2016 Wasserstein Hall, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts This year's Just Food? conference will examine the relationship between people and land, primarily […]
is farming an act of public service? time to prove it.
Enter the Young Farmer Success Act, which would extend the student loan debt forgiveness granted to persons in public service by the Higher Education Act of 1965 to full time farmer and farm workers. It's in the senate now! What you think? Is farming an act of national service? Then join up with the folks […]
just food forum on land access, rights, and ecology: march 25-26, cambridge, ma
why agrarians should care about fishing
"For many terrestrials, and certainly for me, the ocean and fisheries are a foreign place. We cannot see into the sea and don’t know much at all about what goes on there, except perhaps familiarity with the blanket-term “over-fishing.” Young agrarians of the rangeland know well that a blanket critique—that the Bureau of Land Management and Forest […]
immigration impacts all of agriculture: learn more while watching movies!
[vimeo 129248739 w=500 h=281] Watch the trailer for The Line from Kent Bassett on Vimeo. You can rent the film for the very affordable cost of $1.00.
the united states needs a food policy!
Mark Bittman of the New York Times, Michael Pollan of the University of California, Berkeley, Ricardo Salvador of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Olivier De Schutter of the Catholic University of Louvain have collaborated on a new article in the Washington Post that puts forward a plan for a national food policy. For the […]
miranda july and barak and voting
by Miranda July I'd like to think all the people who follow my work are radical, political firecrackers. But those of you who are don't need any encouragement from me. Instead I will focus my efforts on the demographic who, like me in 1996, feels completely disconnected from life, nevermind their country. I'm hoping that […]