Someday, after we’ve taken back our government and our soil, it’ll be as hard to run a 1,000,000-chicken meat factory as it is now to keep a few hens in your backyard (for pete’s sake). Until then, we have to fight for our right to raise food for ourselves and our neighbors, independently.
So IF YOU EAT FOOD, you ought to know about the grassroots organizations below.
(1) The Farm and Ranch Freedom Association (FARFA) www.farmandranchfreedom.org is a courageous grassroots group fighting for small farmers’ rights. They have been particularly concerned with the raw milk wars and with the National Animal Identification System, a USDA project which would require everyone who owns an animal — even one horse, even four hens — to implant microchips in each animal and report to the government every time the animal leaves the farm (goes on a trail ride, to the county fair, to the vet…). Obviously this would put small farmers out of business in a hurry. You won’t be surprised to learn that NAIS was written by microchip manufacturers and by industrial meat companies (who would be allowed to register thousands of animals under a single microchip).
Due to strong grassroots hostility, the USDA finally dropped its national NAIS program in early 2010.
Various states (not California) press on with their own irrational programs. The latest national fight now concerns the FDA, which wants to directly regulate small farms, in the name of preventing foodborne illness outbreaks. Small farms are already appropriately regulated by county ag and health departments and, because of the scale of their enterprises, have a completely different set of challenges compared to large farms (which have caused all the foodborne illness outbreaks to date). They should not be regulated in the same way.
2) Another important grassroots group is CAFF, Community Alliance with Family Farmers. This Davis-based group works to make sure that any ag policies and legislation in California are small-farm-friendly. They also have planted miles of hedgerows on willing farmers’ land, initiated a huge “Buy Fresh, Buy Local,” campaign complete with marketing help for farmers, supermarkets and restaurants, and created a wholesale distribution company, Growers Cooperative, whose sole function is to help Bay Area/Sacramento Area institutional food buyers source their food from local farmers! By creating a whole new category of cotton (“Cleaner Cotton”, somewhere between certified organic and the toxic routine — complete with marketing help, expert ag extension advice, and farm bus tours for clothing deisgners), they’ve helped thousand of acres recover from toxic cotton farming.
And closest to my heart, when industrial salad greens growers used an E. coli outbreak (for which they themselves were completely responsible!) as an opportunity to write absurd new regulations that further reduce competition… CAFF was there. (I’m talking about the Leafy Greens Management Act, which was written so restrictively as to illegalize hedgerows, riparian buffers, insectary flowerbeds, farm animals, and virtually any kind of animal habitat on a farm selling greens. Check in with CAFF to see the latest on that.)
(3) It’s not just wild creatures who are losing ground to industrial agriculture. Every day, we also lose traditional breeds of livestock and crops. Many are, or were, supremely well-adapted to stresses like drought, low fertility, and blight — enabling farmers to raise food with less water, fertilizer and pesticide. Once rare foods are gone, they’re gone forever — and we have lost tastes, cultural traditions, valuable rare genes, disease resistance, and a lot of beauty that should be part of everyday life. The organizations below are working to conserve and celebrate endangered foods.
