Saturday, February 24, 2007

Harvest of Shame and Ag Education

Hey, those of you out there who are teaching 205 with a focus on food politics, consider showing Edward R. Murrow's famous documentary "Harvest of Shame,"which debuted on network television in November 1960--right before Thanksgiving, the time of year when we are enjoying plentiful food. It is a documentary about migrant farmworkers and their working and life conditions. It is entitled "Harvest of Shame" for good reason.

I think it's interesting to show the documetary to your students (or part of it), then ask them to read Eric Schlosser's essay "In the Strawberry" Fields" from the _Atlantic Monthly_, which is about migrant workers (many of them undocumented workers from Mexico) harvesting strawberries. This piece, although written forty some years later shows how little has changed in terms of working conditions for many migrant farmworkers.....Indeed, a good question is "What has changed (or not) in the working conditions of this labor force?" This, then, can lead to all kind of interesting discussions about globalization, immigration policy, racism, food politics, etc.

In my 205 class, we have started our unit on immigration policy and immigration issues with this very assignment.

There is also a documentary called "New Harvest, Old Shame," which updates "Harvest of Shame."

The other thing on my mind tonight is ag education. We don't have an agriculture program/major here at Syracuse, so it's probably not on the radar screen for most academically inclined folks here, but if you have ever taught or will teach at a land grant university or if you are considering a degree in agriculture, consider this:

"Ag Gets Postsecondary Boost


The rising interest in agriculture education isn't limited to high school students. Universities, too, have attracted a diverse group of enrollees thanks to progressive changes in curriculum and industry demand for workers.

Enrollment in ag ed programs at land-grant colleges climbed to an all-time high of nearly 118,000 last summer, reported the Los Angeles Times. That's up from 64,000 in the late 1980s. The new student population is more than 50 percent urbanite, 40 percent female and 10 percent ethnic minority, according to the Food and Agricultural Education Information System, a clearinghouse based at Texas A&M University.

"We woke up a few years ago and said, 'Hey, no one's walking in our door,' Joe Stasulat, director of an agriculture internship program at the University of California-Davis, told the Times last July. So he, along with colleagues at ag schools around the country, overhauled the program.

Today's university-level agriculture programs lean much more toward lab- based research. Their students are just as likely to be studying genetically altered mice under fluorescent lights and engineering high-tech farm equipment than they are to be rotating crops. More undergraduates now study natural resources (such as urban forestry and range management) than study animal science.

University educators cite the availability of jobs as the top reason for the increase in ag enrollments. One California dean said industry demand outnumbers graduates by about 3 to 1. "

Now what this article doesn't really say is that agricultural economics is a big major for a lot of ag folks and the destination may be large agribusiness firms, not farms. What I'm interested in is how many beginning farmer programs these ag education programs sponsor. Are we producing more bureaucrats or more farmers? Now there's a place for the bureaucrats, of course....but since the farming population is aging, we are in need of beginning farmer programs, sustainable agriculture programs, training in organic agriculture. Is that happening in higher education ag programs, which are funded and supported by agribusiness research dollars? Or does that education mostly take place outside the land grant system?

Worth looking into....Also, a lot (and maybe most) of agriculture education in terms of learning to farm happens through apprenticeships and non-school environments.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

2007 Farm Bill: Why We Should Care

The 2007 Farm Bill proposals are out and circulating. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns has begun his PR blitz.

Chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns here in New York state had this to say about the Farm Bill in the New York Times and why we should care:

"There's invariably something risky, if not risible, about allowing Congress to decide what’s for dinner. Bad decisions about agriculture have defined government policy for the last century; 70 percent of our nation’s farms have been lost to bankruptcy or consolidation, creating an agricultural economy that looks more Wall Street than Main Street.
Now, after the uprooting of a thousand years of agrarian wisdom, we chefs have discovered something really terrible — no, not that the agricultural system we help support hurts farmers and devastates farming communities, or that it harms the environment and our health. What we’ve discovered is that the food it produces just doesn’t taste very good.

Who’s responsible for the blandness? Look no further than Washington: There you will meet not farmers, but the people determining how our farmers farm. They do it through the farm bill, a mammoth piece of legislation that designates American agricultural policy every five years and that Congress is preparing to take up in its new session.

This is a sweeping bill, omnibus in every sense — nutrition, conservation, genetic engineering, food safety, school lunch programs, water quality, organic farming and much more. It’s really a food and farm bill. If you’re a chef or a home cook or someone who just likes to eat, it affects you, because it determines what you eat and how what you eat is grown. . . ."

Eloquent words.....

So how to evaluated the 2007 Farm Bill proposals?

I don't feel fully prepared to comment on the pluses and minuses of the proposals under consideration, but I'll offer some preliminary thoughts about the recent press release/summary. There are some good components and others worth sorting through/analyzing further. I plan to read each proposal and will blog more about the proposals. It's interesting to note support for socially disadvantaged farmers as part of the package of proposals. What will that mean, exactly, though? Five billion dollars, but distributed in what ways? School meals are also mentioned. Hopefully, this means strengthening Farm to Cafeteria Programs.

Ethanol research/funding--really worth it? I'd like to research this.

Sustainable or organic agriculture--not mentioned in this press release? Are there any plans to support conversion of traditional agricultural operations to sustainable agriculture operations or organic ones?

How will the conservation program efforts relate to the overwhelming environmental impact that CAFOs (large-scale industrial livestock and dairy farms) are having on rural areas?


From the USDA.gov website:

JOHANNS UNVEILS 2007 FARM BILL PROPOSALS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2007 - Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns today unveiled the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2007 farm bill proposals. The more than 65 proposals correspond to the 2002 farm bill titles with additional special focus areas, including specialty crops, beginning farmers and ranchers, and socially disadvantaged producers.

"We listened closely to producers and stakeholders all across the country and took a reform-minded and fiscally responsible approach to making farm policy more equitable, predictable and protected from challenge," said Johanns. "We started with the 2002 farm bill and propose to improve it by bolstering support for emerging priorities and focusing on a market-oriented approach."

USDA began preparations for the 2007 farm bill in 2005 by conducting 52 Farm Bill Forums across the country. More than 4,000 comments were recorded or collected during forums and via electronic and standard mail. These comments are summarized in 41 theme papers. USDA economists, led by Dr. Keith Collins, studied the comments and authored five analysis papers.

The proposals unveiled today represent the final phase of a nearly two year process. Each detailed proposal provides information about why a change is needed, the recommended solution, and relevant background information about the impacted program or policy.

Highlights of the proposals include (funding reflects ten year totals):

Increase conservation funding by $7.8 billion, simplify and consolidate conservation programs, create a new Environmental Quality Incentives Program and a Regional Water Enhancement Program
Provide $1.6 billion in new funding for renewable energy research, development and production, targeted for cellulosic ethanol, which will support $2.1 billion in guaranteed loans for cellulosic projects and includes $500 million for a bio-energy and bio-based product research initiative
Target nearly $5 billion in funding to support specialty crop producers by increasing nutrition in food assistance programs, including school meals, through the purchase of fruits and vegetables, funding specialty crop research, fighting trade barriers and expanding export markets
Provide $250 million to increase direct payments for beginning farmers and ranchers, reserve a percentage of conservation funds and provide more loan flexibility for down payment, land purchasing and farm operating loans
Support socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers by reserving a percentage of conservation assistance funds and providing more access to loans for down payments, land purchasing and farm operating
Strengthen disaster relief by establishing a revenue-based counter-cyclical program, providing gap coverage in crop insurance, linking crop insurance participation to farm program participation, and creating a new emergency landscape restoration program
Simplify and consolidate rural development programs while providing $1.6 billion in loans to rehabilitate all current Rural Critical Access Hospitals and $500 million in grants and loans for rural communities to decrease the backlog of rural infrastructure projects
Dedicate nearly $400 million to trade efforts to expand exports, fight trade barriers, and increase involvement in world trade standard-setting bodies
Simplify, modernize, and rename the Food Stamp Program to improve access for the working poor, better meet the needs of recipients and States, and strengthen program integrity
The Administration's 2007 farm bill proposals would spend approximately $10 billion less than the 2002 farm bill spent over the past five years (excluding ad-hoc disaster assistance), upholding the President's plan to eliminate the deficit in five years. These proposals would provide approximately $5 billion more than the projected spending if the 2002 farm bill were extended.

The proposals are available at www.usda.gov/farmbill. Also posted on USDA's website are the Farm Bill Forum transcripts, farm bill comments submitted by the public, theme papers summarizing the comments and USDA analysis papers.

Fact Sheet: A Commitment to Rural America