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Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

The USDA has mailed out the most recent Census of Agriculture, held every five years to count the number of farmers and ranchers working in the United States. Among other things, the census gathers information about land use and ownership, the age of farmers, their production practices and income. Policy makers then use census data to make decisions affecting agricultural programs and community planners use the information to identify needs and services.

In the West, the USDA will use the 2007 Census to gather more information about Native American farmers, organic farmers and those involved in growing crops used to make bio-based fuels.

While information from the Census of Agriculture provides vital information about farms and ranches in our country and how they have declined over the last century, it also uses a broad definition of a farm to do so. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

This Christmas season those who play naughty received an early gift from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). On December 21st the EPA announced a proposed rule change that would exempt large livestock operators from the need to report releases of hazardous substances to the air when they come from animal waste. Under the proposed rules, they would no longer need to disclose hazards like ammonia and hydrogen sulfide to local, state and federal agencies.

The EPA argues that this approach is “better” for reporting hazardous contamination because farms are burdened with current reporting requirements.

But in a recent response, Ed Hopkins, Director of the Sierra Club's Environmental Quality Program wrote, "Once again Bush's EPA is poised to put polluters before public health." [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

After a six-week standoff, the Senate approved a $286 billion Farm Bill on Friday by a vote of 79-14. The vote was the largest margin to pass the Farm Bill in over 30 years, but reaction to the final Bill has been anything but unanimous.

While, the Senate’s version of the Bill will provide new funds for some farm programs, food stamps and conservation, it will keep the much debated subsidies for farmers and ranchers in place. Rather than lower the cap on how much individual farmers receive, as outlined in the Dorgan-Grassley amendment, the Senate’s Bill will allow for subsidy payments as high as $750,000 that won't take effect until 2010. The Houston Chronicle reports Southern lawmakers used a procedural maneuver to prevent the approval of these stronger limits on subsidy payments to large, commercial rice and cotton growers. As it is, the Senate Bill allows subsidies to be made to farmers whose adjusted gross income is $2.5 million or less.

Acting Secretary of Agriculture Charles Conner said Friday he was "disappointed" with the Senate Bill, particularly the rejection of the Dorgan-Grassley amendment that would have limited subsidy payments to $250,000 and free up $1.15 billion for anti-hunger programs, fragile grassland protection and the settlement of lawsuits filed by farmers of color suffering discrimination in government farm programs. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

The Montana Women Infants and Children (WIC) program has decided to allow participants to continue buying organic food after all. Due to a flat-lined budget in recent years, Montana WIC was planning to remove organics from its approved list of foods on December 1st in order to continue serving 20,000 Montana families each month. But after a wealth of public outcry, Montana's WIC administrators are rethinking the ban. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

After seven years of keeping sugar from genetically modified sugar beets out of their food, Kellogg, Hershey’s and the Wyoming based American Crystal Sugarwill use sugar made from genetically modified (GM) beets.

The decision marks a turnaround for Crystal Sugar, the nation's largest sugar producer, which declared in May of this year that it had no plans to use GM sugar beets, and indicated that herbicide-resistant varieties developed using biotechnology would not "be sold, given away, distributed, or planted in year 2007."

But according to a recent article in the New York Times, the food giants have softened to the idea because public resistance to GM foods seems to have faded. They now support the introduction because it will increase yields and, unlike other GM foods, beet sugar will have no genetically modified strands of altered DNA or proteins left in it by the time it is processed into sugar. Essentially, the genetically modified beet creates the same sucrose as an everyday sugar beet. This has been an important distinction for the industry as a way to assuage consumer concerns and expand the sugar beet market, which is the source for about one-half of American sugar.
[more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

In the Boise Metropolitan Area of Ada, Boise, Canyon, Gem and Owyhee counties, the landscape has become a labyrynth of homes. Development has meant more people, traffic and air pollution. It has also reduced the Valley's once vital agricultural lands.

Long defined by industrialized agriculture magnates J.R. Simplot, Ore-Ida Foods and Albertsons, which began at the corner of 16th and State street, Boise has been redefined by the sprawling development. And while the large processing corporations still operate and provide a mainstay of Boise’s economy (although Albertsons was sold to Supervalu in 2006), this expansive development has displaced many of the working, agricultural lands that surrounded Boise.

But, in Boise, one farmer is finding out how to turn expanding urban areas into a source for new markets.
[more]

"munchy crunchy gooey tasty"

These Collaborative Thanksgiving Poems are from the Chief Charlo School where I am the writer in residence through the Missoula Writing Collaborative. Special thanks to Ms. Johnston’s class for letting me be a part of their poem.

Ms. Johnston’s 4th grade collaborative poem:

Cornucopia

Oh man, Oh man, what do I pick:
cows taste perfect from the hay they eat
sometimes squishy
a piece of fat juicy bacon
starts off as a pig and
I am thankful for pizza because it smells good
with barbecue sauce it zaps my taste buds... [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

As we head toward Turkey Thursday and get ready to give thanks, give up the remote for unending hours of football and doze off with the tryptophan, locavores will celebrate their addition to the Oxford English Dictionary this year, with locally grown food. For those who want to join them this Thanksgiving, and give up the long-distance vittels, here are the top five ways to go local.

First ... Avoid Cranberries.
While Washington state is the closest producer of cranberries, most producers sell to the Massachusett’s based Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. So while you might think they are pretty local, they can actually end up in a rather long supply chain. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

Two thousand years ago, the poet Virgil wrote in the didactic Georgics about, “What makes the cornfield smile.” Like the farm-owner poets that would follow, he wrote of the bucolic view of farms. More recently, poets reveal connections between the beauty of the farm and the destructive ways we grow food.

In Wisconsin, this long standing connection is made tangible at the Wave Books' Poetry Farm. With "primitive" lodgings and no Internet access, the Wave Farm gives poets who want to do more than just sit among the bean fields a chance to work on the organic fruit and vegetable farm for four hours a day in exchange for room, board and the time to write. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

An email I received this week began, "ATTRA, the national sustainable agriculture service, is in a serious funding crunch.”

In the past, ATTRA, a project of the National Center for Appropriate Tchnology, has been funded by a federal grant from the USDA. The ATTRA project hosts a website and answers a toll free phone line (in English and Spanish) that has provided thousands of farmers and agricultural organizations with information on sustainable agriculture. ATTRA’s 250 publications were downloaded 670,000 times last year and an additional 40,000 were mailed out.

While the House passed the Agriculture Appropriations Bill back in August, the bill went dormant in the Senate. [more]

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