Local Food Creates Jobs

On this gloriously rainy day I came across a recently released USDA report that looks at trends in locally marketed food. The report talks a lot about the demographics of farmers selling local food and where these farms tend to be, but one of the most interesting factoids it contains is this:

Fruit and vegetable farms with local food sales employed 61,000 workers in 2008, or 13 full time employees per million dollars of sales, while fruit and vegetable farms not engaged in local food sales employed only 3 full time employees per million dollars of sales.

As Mother Jones' Tom Philpott puts it, "In other words, a dollar you spend at the farmers market supports four times as many workers as a dollar spent at the supermarket."

Everytime you choose to shop at the Monument Market, you can be sure your food dollars are going to create jobs right here at home!

Garden Visitor & RIGHT 2 KNOW RALLY

I spent longer than I probably should have chasing this Monarch Butterfly around the garden. She was gathering nectar for the long journey ahead. All the monarchs east of the Rocky Mountains migrate to one area in Central Mexico for the winter. There they gather in the forest so thickly that tree branches break under the weight of butterflies. Can you imagine?

The monarchs that make the long journey south (or back north in the spring) live 3 times as long as their family members who live in other times of the year. No one knows how they can do this, let alone how they always find their way back to their winter get-away. Amazing.

Unfortunately, there are signs that the monarch population is in decline, especially in the Midwest. This decrease in population over the last 17 years has been attributed, at least in part by the widespread use of Genetically Modified Roundup Ready crops. Monarch caterpillars can only eat milkweed, and monarchs will only lay their eggs on milkweed. The widespread and liberal use of Monsanto's Roundup on GM crops is killing off a large portion of the milkweed in agricultural areas. One study found that the amount of milkweed on farms in Iowa declined 90 percent from 1999 to 2009. Monarchs are finding fewer places to lay their eggs, thus their population is shrinking. "It [glyphosate] kills everything," said Lincoln P. Brower, an entomologist who is also an author of the paper detailing the loss of monarch population. "It's like absolute Armageddon for biodiversity over a huge area." You can read the New York Times article here.

This is only one of the many reasons to avoid GMO crops, and I think that many of us would if only we could easily distinguish what was made with genetically engineered crops and what was not. Without a law requiring that products containing GMOs be labeled as such, it is very difficult for we as consumers to know what is GMO free. It is estimated that as much as 75% of processed foods in a conventional grocery store contain GMOs. Most people are completely unaware of this because the large corporations who make heaps of money with their GMO seed and herbicide know that if we knew what we were eating, we would make different choices, and their lucrative business model would be in jeopardy. Their millions are made by keeping millions of consumers ignorant about what they are feeding their children. Even China has labels their GMO food. We have a right to know.

You have a voice! It will take a lot of us, but if we shout loud enough for long enough, we can get GMOs labeled, which will be a huge blow to the GMO corporate giants. Come out to the Capitol Sunday, October 2nd and shout with the rest of Central Texas for the right to know what is in our food. fond out more at http://rallyforrealfood.com/.

This is a part of a 2 week nation wide series of anti-GMO actions highlighted by a 313 mile walk from Brooklyn to the White House to demand to know what is in our food. You can learn more about this historic march at http://www.right2knowmarch.org/

Farm and Food Leadership Conference

Monday I had the great pleasure of attending the Farm and Food Leadership Conference in San Antonio. This gathering of people looking to improve the way we as a society think about, talk about , grow, eat, and legislate food was presented by the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance (FARFA). This nonprofit has been doing incredible important work over the past few years getting the voices of small ranchers and family farmers heard by local, state & federal politicians. Among other things, FARFA was instrumental in getting an exemption in the recently passed Food Safety Law for small farmers who sell directly to the end user - aka - any farmer you find at the local farmers market and whose produce we carry here at the Monument Market. Without this exemption many, if not most small farmers would've been regulated out of business under the mountain of paperwork and fees that would've been forced upon them without actually doing anything to make food safer for you and me. I encourage you to visit their website http://farmandranchfreedom.org/, sign up for their newsletter, and if you can, become a member. The more members FARFA can claim, the more power they have to bend the ear of politicians. We might not have all the lobbying money that corporate Ag giants have, but we are the ones to have to eat. Our power is in our numbers. Our voices shouting together can be heard.

My head is still swimming with all the information I gathered at yesterday's conference. With discussions on everything from water rights to hunger to raw milk to GMO's, there were a few ideas/comments that stood out out most to me. One was a bit of an office joke that Patty Lovera of the Food and Water Watch told us about. The staff of this non-profit sustainable food & environmental lobbying group likes to play a version of the "6 degrees to Kevin Bacon" game where, instead of movie stars, they can connect any problem in the world in less than 6 steps to the consolidation of the world's food supply into a few very wealthy and very powerful hands. Where this might be a bit of an exaggeration (although I am not totally convinced it isn't possible), it is true that the more you learn about how most of us get our food, you can see how it is connected to a number of problems from childhood obesity to rising health care costs to environmental degradation to faltering rural economies and lack of good jobs for the many looking for good work.

Why is it that the government will intercede between AT&T buying T-Mobile in the name of anti-trust & consumer protection, but they have allowed the likes of Monsanto to buy up every independent seed company they can get their hands on? Did you know that 2/3 of the corn seed sold in the US come from 2 companies? 80% of the beef in this country is slaughtered by 4 companies. There are examples like this all throughout the food industry. There can be no free market competition when so much of the market is controlled by so few. In this system farmers have no power, and consumers have no choice. Why are anti trust laws thrown out the window when it comes to food?

The Keynote speaker of the conference was John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, University of Missouri, Columbia. It was wonderful to hear from an economist that the economic reality of our food system made no sense, and that we are really no longer dealing with a capitalist structure. Capitalism relies on the competition between a large number of buyers and sellers. Once the market power has been consolidated into a few hands, we have moved from a free capitalist market to a corporatocracy, which is more akin to communism. The only real ddifference is that instead of the government holding the power, a few entities in the form of corporations get to dictate the rules. He admitted that this is a bit of a rradical idea, but he had a lot of evidence to back it up.

Professor Ikerd's suggestion was to end all government subsidies and use the money to offer a tax credit to those farmers who are implementing sustainable practices on their farm. He proposed that with all the subsidy money now, we should be able to offer each small farmer about a $20,000 tax credit until they start making a livable income - somewhere in the 40,000 to 50,000 range.  He also proposed that factory feedlots, or CAFOS (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) should be treated as a factory and subject to all the environmental and public health regulations that any industrial factory is subject to. This would be a big step in abolishing CAFOS all together.

And there was so much more! If any one wants to chat about food politics with me, come on down to the market and find me in the garden! And remember to buy local! The best way you can help support a vibrant local food economy by choosing to eat local food. No solution is as delicious!