Food and Ag News Nuggets

Ag Roundup: From the EPA to GMO, Why Production Agriculture is on the Defensive

By Courtney Lowery Cowgill, 2-24-11

The agriculture economy in America is running strong, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told Congress this week. But a few lawmakers were quick to tell him that that’s no thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Vilsack told the House and Senate Agriculture committees that a surge in demand overseas for U.S. commodity crops means farmers can count on a good 2011.

As Phillip Brasher reported for the Des Moines Register, the USDA is predicting that net cash farm income is expected to hit $99 billion in 2011, which would put it $7 billion ahead of 2010 and $10 ahead of 2009. And, that surge is largely due to corn, soybeans and cotton.

So, why then, lawmakers asked, does the Obama administration hate commodity ag?  (OK, so they didn’t really ask that, but conversations took a turn that way when the EPA came up.)

Several Republican lawmakers took Vilsack’s visit as an opportunity to criticize the EPA, which Vilsack does not administer, for recently added regulations on things like dust and spilled milk (seriously).

Committee Chairman Frank Lucas of Oklahoma put it this way: “The EPA is gambling with our economy and wasting taxpayer dollars while it’s at it.”

Vilsack assured lawmakers that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is interested in finding common ground with farmers and ag leaders and is meeting with farmers across the nation to that end.

But, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley still said, “It is getting to the point where you think EPA stands for End Production Agriculture.”

To which Vilsack responded: “Can I share in the proceeds from the bumper sticker you’ve just created?”

When you add up all this the big recent fights over genetically modified crops (see the links below on that issue), the bad news on food safety over the years and the bad press on animal welfare as well as the threats to direct payment subsidies in recently released budgets, it’s easy to see where all the division is budding in agriculture and why big ag has gone on the defensive.

It’s evident in everything from conventional farmers poo-poo-ing organics to members of the U.S. Senate attacking the local food movement for catering to the urban elite. (See this post about the letter lawmakers sent to Vilsack challenging the “Know Your Farmer” campaign.)

Maybe it even has something to do with Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann going after Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign on nutrition, right down to the First Lady’s encouragement of breast feeding. (For real. See this good post on Civil Eats about the issue.)

In any case, campaigns are being launched across the country to put a friendlier face on production agriculture, so many in fact, that there is even a term for it: Agvocating.

See how ag leaders are being urged to tell their story here, how the big organizations are getting behind the idea here and how farmers are taking hold of social media here.

In Nebraska, a whole group of Farm Moms is getting together to act as liaisons to non-farm women.

The program is called “Common Ground” and Dawn Caldwell, a farmer from Edgar says in a story on Brownfield, of her urban sisters: “We want them to know that the decisions we make and the actions that we take in growing and nurturing that food—whether it’s grain that’s fed to livestock or the vegetable farmers in California or the fruit growers in Florida,whoever we are across America—we’re doing the best we can for our families and theirs.”

Food Fights

Boy oh boy, has the food been flying over at The Atlantic. The last week has been full of interesting and insightful exchanges on all things controversial in the food and ag world.

First, in the same vein as the trends above, B.R. Myers takes aim at foodies (but, foodies more in the Food Channel, Anthony Bourdain realm than the Joel Salatin, Farmer John one) in the most recent print edition of The Atlantic. It’s a searing rant, one that accuses foodies of pure, unrepentant gluttony.

Just a taste:

“Even if gourmets’ rejection of factory farms and fast food is largely motivated by their traditional elitism, it has left them, for the first time in the history of their community, feeling more moral, spiritual even, than the man on the street. Food writing reflects the change. Since the late 1990s, the guilty smirkiness that once marked its default style has been losing ever more ground to pomposity and sermonizing.”

Phew. Well, Nicolette Hahn Niman, rancher, environmental lawyer and the author of Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms (2009) shot back this week on the magazine’s Web site, writing, “Myers’s case for indicting the food movement with these cherry-picked quotes and stories is not only weak, it’s ludicrous.”

She takes him to task for, among other things, “Lumping nearly everyone who cares about farming, food, or the food system into one giant despicable heap, Myers piles on quotes and anecdotes showing chefs, food writers, and others engaging in decadent and even, in some cases, disgusting behavior—extreme overeating, consumption of endangered species, eating of live animals, and the like. This, he suggests, is what foodies do and what the food movement is really all about.”

Read the whole rebuttal, which is also a good encapsulation, I think, of some of the root ideas behind the non-gourmet food movement, here.

Then, there is the GMO debate, also played out fiercely on The Atlantic site this week.

James McWilliams, author of Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly tells readers that despite the claims of the organic and environmental communities, there’s no need to panic over GMO alfalfa.

But, Samuel Fromartz, the author of Organic, Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew says hold on just a minute. Fromartz writes about the impacts the release of GMO alfalfa will have across agricultural sectors, and especially, what consumers have to lose.

Speaking of GMO, a few other links to share this week:

- The Weed Science Society of America Journal reports that more and more weeds are becoming resistant to glyphosphate, thanks to climate change. (Glyphosphate is the generic form of Roundup, as in Roundup Ready alfalfa, which is genetically modified to resist the herbicide.)

Southwest Farm Press does a nice job of summing up the report in non-science speak here.

Elizabeth Weise reports for USA Today on a new study that shows in 15 years, bio-tech crops have gone from taking up zero percent of the world’s farmland to 10 percent. A few startling statistics:

Last year, bio-tech make up 81% of all soybeans, 64% of cotton, 29% of corn and 23% of canola globally.

The report from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications is here.

Meanwhile, the EU is opening up markets to traces of GMO. Reuters reports, “An EU committee voted on Tuesday to allow traces of unapproved genetically modified (GM) material in animal feed imports, the European Commission said, in a bid to secure grain supplies to the import-dependent bloc.”

So, if you really want to eat green? Don’t even try to go gmo-free or vegan for that matter, go insectarian instead. This Wall Street Journal piece explains why we should eat insects and gives a few recipes to boot. Yikes.

Seriously though, if you want a great thought provocation on what it means to eat sustainably, check out this post on the Honest Meat blog.

--------

Courtney Lowery Cowgill is a writer and editor (formerly of these pages) who also runs Prairie Heritage Farm, a small farm in Central Montana. She and her husband grow vegetables, turkeys and ancient and heritage grains. As a farmer and writer, she works on and follows food and agriculture issues closely and each week, rounds up the top stories on the web in this arena for New West. Have an ag story you think should be included in next week’s roundup? You can reach Courtney at courtney@newwest.net.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.