Nation’s Food System Nearly Broke, John Kinsman
As more farmers face bankruptcy, we all face a food emergency.
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February 26, 2009
John Kinsman
The Capital Times, Madison, WI
As our government enacts a stimulus package and President Barack Obama announces bold initiatives to stem home mortgage foreclosures, disaster threatens family farmers and their communities.
The government’s response to plummeting commodity prices and tightening credit markets leads to the basic question: Who will produce our food? This is a worldwide crisis. U.S. policy and the demand for deregulation at all levels — from food production to financial markets — contribute greatly to the global collapse. The solution must be grounded in food sovereignty so that all farmers and their communities can regain control over their food supply. This response makes sense here in Wisconsin and was the global message from the 500+ farmer leaders at the Via Campesina conference in Mozambique in October.
Many U.S. farmers are going out of business because they receive prices equal to about one half their cost to produce our food. How long could any enterprise receiving half the amount of its input costs stay in business? As an example, dairy farmers in the Northeast and Midwest must be paid between 30 and 35 cents per pound for their milk to pay production costs and provide basic living expenses. Until 1980, farmers received a price equal to 80 percent of parity, meaning that farmers’ purchasing power kept up with the rest of the economy. Unfortunately, a 1981 political decision discontinued parity, and today the dairy farmers’ share is below 40 percent.
“Free trade” and other regressive agricultural policies have decimated farms. We are now a food deficit nation dependent on food imports, often of questionable quality.
Our food system is nearly broke, which is almost as serious as our country’s financial meltdown. With fair farm policies, farmers would get fair prices that would not require higher consumers prices. The Canadian dairy pricing system is the best example that proves fair farmer prices can and often do bring lower consumer prices and a healthier rural economy. In addition, excessive middleman profits are taking advantage of both consumers and producers.
As more farmers face bankruptcy, we all face a food emergency. European farmers speak from thousands of years of experience on the importance of family farms when they warn us, “Any time a country neglects its family farm base and allows it to become financially bankrupt, the entire economy of that country will soon collapse. It may take generations to rebuild the farm economy and that of the country.”
Despite the magnitude of this food emergency, the “farm crisis” does not appear in headlines, so politicians are not compelled to provide political or financial assistance to something that would likely fail to bring votes. As farmers, we are now only about 1 percent of the U.S. population, and have little power to expose and prevent our demise. However, our urban and rural friends could be vital voices and advocates.
Bailing out the financial giants will not solve the financial crisis in the country, but the right policies and stimulus dollars could prevent a severe food crisis by saving farmers and workers. Furthermore, farm income dollars remain in and multiply at least two to four times in the local economy.
Family farmers have proposed fair food and farm policies that can be implemented at a fraction of the present multibillion-dollar policies destroying us. As the Treasury Department develops plans to distribute the bailout funds, the National Family Farm Coalition and others urge it to require banks receiving funds to treat their borrowers fairly by providing debt restructuring as an alternate to home or farm foreclosure or bankruptcy.
Concerned citizens can call the White House, 202-456-1111, or your members of Congress, 202-224-3121, to urge them to support policies that enable farmers to earn a fair market price; request an emergency milk price at $17.50 per hundred weight; provide price stability through government grain reserves and effective supply management; support the TRADE Act to be reintroduced in Congress; increase direct and guaranteed loans to family farmers; and ensure that the food we raise can be marketed to local schools and institutions, providing a better food supply at a fair price. We need these immediate changes in our food and farm policy.
John Kinsman, a dairy farmer from La Valle, is president of Family Farm Defenders, based in Madison.
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/440669
Global Food Crisis Called ‘Ticking Time Bomb’
food crisis overshadowed by financial crisis
March 1, 2009
By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) — The global food crisis was called a “ticking time bomb” at a Feb. 24 forum during the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington.
Although prices for cereal grains have dropped since their spike last spring, the crisis has not gone away, according to Rajul Pandya-Lorch, chief of staff at the International Food Policy Research Institute and the head of the institute’s initiative, Vision 2020 for Food.
Instead, she said, the food crisis has been overshadowed by the global financial crisis.
The spike in prices was brought about by unregulated speculation in food commodities, Pandya-Lorch said.
While regulations ordinarily limit purchases of cereal grains to 11 million bushels, the U.S. financial houses Morgan Stanley and American International Group, better known as AIG, used loopholes to buy more than 2 billion bushels of grain, keeping it off the market and sending prices soaring. Rice more than tripled in price, and wheat and corn doubled, she said.
Another driver in food price hikes was the use of food for biofuels. Cereal grain use last year was up 5% for food, Pandya-Lorch said, but up 38% for energy.
The price spikes whipsawed producers and consumers alike. Because the price of oil also had spiked, producers found it harder to maintain leases on equipment in order to do more planting and take advantage of the higher prices, Pandya-Lorch said, and poor consumers, especially in developing countries, found themselves spending 50% to 70% of their income on food.
Yet cheap food is not an automatic solution to the food crisis, she said. “People think low food prices are good for the poor in the developing world. They’re not,” Pandya-Lorch declared.
Low prices lead to a flood of cheap imported food from high-yield agricultural nations, creating a disincentive for local farmers to grow their own crops since they cannot compete on price.
A new dynamic in last year’s food price upheavals was a shortage caused by growing demand, according to Pandya-Lorch. Past shortages have been primarily caused by insufficient production.
Even so, the rate of increased yields is declining to about 1% to 2% a year, she noted. In the early 1990s, the rate of increase had been 1.5% to 3%, and in the early 1980s the rate of increase had been 3% to 5%, depending on the type of grain.
The use of grain as animal feed also removes food from the marketplace. It takes 2 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of chicken, she said, but 6 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef.
Steve Hilbert, an African affairs policy adviser for the U.S. bishops’ Office of International Justice and Peace, called for calmer markets and the closing of regulatory loopholes.
“We have to say you can’t treat food commodities as you would copper,” Hilbert said.
The Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, which drew 550 participants, was co-sponsored by 18 agencies, including five agencies of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church, the Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, Migration and Refugee Services, and the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities.
Other co-sponsors were the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, Catholic Charities USA, the Catholic Daughters of the Americas, the Catholic Health Association, Catholic Relief Services, the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, JustFaith, the Ladies of Charity, the National Catholic Partnership on Disability, the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, the National Council of Catholic Women, the National Pastoral Life Center, the Roundtable Association of Diocesan Social Action Directors, and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0900904.htm
A Tiny California Town Prepares for ‘Armageddon’
March 1, 2009
By Ken McLaughlin
Mercury News
FIREBAUGH — Shawn Coburn is barreling down a country road in his white Ford F-150 pickup, talking about how California’s water crisis darkly reminds him of a scene from a movie aptly named “Armageddon.”
“Billy Bob Thornton tells Bruce Willis that a huge asteroid is approaching Earth,’’ says Coburn, 40. “Willis asks Thornton who will get hurt, and Thornton tells him that he just doesn’t get it — that everyone will be dead, that the game is over.’’
The disaster coming this spring and summer is no movie, and nothing menacing is falling from the sky. It’s about what’s not falling from the sky — rain. After three years of below-average rain and snowfall, coupled with new pumping restrictions to protect endangered fish, California’s farmers are running out of water. The devastating impact has trickled down to dozens of small Central Valley farming communities.
This is the story about one of those towns:
Firebaugh.
It’s also about Armando Ramirez, a 63-year-old barbershop owner on Firebaugh’s main street who says business is down 90% from last year. It’s about Manuel Rivera, 20, who is hoping against hope that he can keep the lights on at his clothing and jewelry store across the street.
And it’s about Randy, Frank, Steve and Larry Gonzales, four friendly brothers who say their family’s half-century-old auto-parts and repair business around the corner is withering because farmworkers are driving less and getting laid off in droves.
The farmers who will be slammed the hardest are those who depend on the Central Valley Project, the massive federal system of dams, reservoirs, pumps and canals that helped spawn California’s $36 billion farming industry — the state’s largest.
MANY TOWNS WORRIED
Within a couple of years, Coburn says, numerous small towns like Firebaugh could die and hundreds of thousands of once-profitable acres could turn into fields of dust. Beginning today, the federal water spigot in California has been turned off for the first time. And just as in “Armageddon,’’ the game might be over.
Across the Central Valley, warns a new University of California-Davis study, 80,000 jobs could be lost this year.
In Firebaugh, a historic town of 7,000, one of the first casualties could be the Silver Creek Almond Co., which Coburn co-founded five years ago to pack and market the almonds he grows on 1,500 acres.
All of the water used to nourish Coburn’s orchards comes from the Central Valley Project. And on Feb. 20, federal water officials announced a “zero allocation’’ to farmers — most likely for the rest of the year. Farmers who depend on water from the State Water Project are only slightly luckier — they have been told their allocation will be 15% of normal.
“In a few years this will all be gone,’’ Coburn predicted as he walked through a cavernous warehouse stacked with bins containing 10 million pounds of almonds, about 70% of which will be sent overseas.
“Think of the business that will be lost at the Port of Oakland,’’ Coburn said. “This is all going toward reducing our trade deficit.’’
BUSINESS WAY DOWN
Back on O Street, the main drag of downtown Firebaugh, is shrouded in sadness.
Ramirez, the barber, says he understands why many of his longtime customers can no longer afford even a $10 haircut. Rivera, who owns the clothing and jewelry store Xavier & Sariah Styles with his mom, says his business is down the same as Ramirez’s — 90% from a year ago.
“We’re now ringing up only $50 in sales a day,’’ Rivera said.
The rough times for Firebaugh started in August 2007 when U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger reduced the amount of water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to protect the delta smelt, a tiny fish, from extinction.
The new restrictions decreased farming on the west side of the Central Valley, which is much more dependent on federal water than the east side.
The water nightmare caused by the pumping restrictions and dry weather has hit Main Street at a time when the recession and housing foreclosure crisis already are pummeling valley towns.
In the past year, a third of Firebaugh’s downtown businesses have closed. They include an ice cream shop, a Western clothing store and a once-popular Mexican restaurant. Even the lone bar catering to farm laborers was shuttered.
Firebaugh, settled during the Gold Rush as a major ferry crossing for prospectors heading up the San Joaquin River, is now about 90% Latino.
The city’s official jobless rate is 23%. But Jose Ramirez, Firebaugh’s city manager, estimates it’s probably closer to 35% because so many undocumented workers don’t make it into the official statistics. In the past year, sales tax revenue has plunged more than 40%.
And the nightmare is just beginning.
WELLS NO SOLUTION
The huge Westlands Water District, wholly dependent on federal water, predicts up to 400,000 acres of its 611,000 acres of farmland will lie fallow this year. Farmers such as Coburn are spending millions of dollars desperately digging wells. But the water underground contains so much salt and boron it will kill orchards and vineyards in two or three years.
“Putting our well water on almond trees is like giving them chemotherapy,’’ Coburn said. “It will fry them.’’
Back in town, Steve Malanca, general manager of the John Deere dealership, gazes at a former alfalfa field across the street.
Malanca doesn’t just see bare dirt. He conjures up the image of the tractor and the 30-foot-wide disk needed to prepare the field to grow alfalfa. He sees all the irrigation and seeding equipment — and crews — needed to get the alfalfa seeds in the ground; the companies needed to make the fertilizers and insecticides to ensure that the seeds germinate; the experts with advanced degrees needed to inspect the fields and help farmers design their battle plans against pests and disease.
He sees four other pieces of equipment — a swather, hay rake, baler and harrow bed — that are needed before a semitrailer with a forklift loads the hay for delivery to a dairy.
“Without water,’’ Malanca said, “none of that will happen.’’
The stress and depression that often accompany layoffs are taking their toll.
Firebaugh Police Chief Elsa Lopez has noticed a recent uptick in domestic violence calls. And the number of people arrested on drunken-driving charges in January was double what it was a year ago.
With sales tax revenue tanking, the city is asking its employees to take one furlough day a month to try to head off layoffs. But Lopez resisted calls for furloughs for her 12 sworn officers, fearing that layoffs on the farms will increase drug use, which in turn will lead to more burglaries and robberies. In lieu of the furloughs, Ramirez is asking that the cops not be paid for any holidays.
MANY SUFFER DEPRESSION
If things in Firebaugh weren’t difficult enough, Premier Paso, the town’s lone substance-abuse center, closed in September because state legislators were late passing a budget.
“Losing them was a sad day for us,’’ Lopez said.
Dr. Marcia Sablan and her husband, Dr. Oscar Sablan, who for the past 27 years have run a Firebaugh medical clinic, say they are treating many more farm employees for depression.
On Wednesday, Maria Linares, 38, brought her 17-year-old son to the clinic because he was sick. While she was there, she spoke to “Dr. Marcia,’’ who also happens to be the town’s mayor, about the anxiety at home.
Linares’ husband, an irrigation supervisor at an almond ranch in Firebaugh, is losing self-esteem, she said. He is now working only one or two days a week and fears he’ll lose his job. And her job is also at risk: She works on the almond processing line at Coburn’s Silver Creek Almond Co.
If her husband does lose his job, Linares said, they will probably be forced to leave the trailer they paid $35,000 for three years ago so they could live on the almond ranch.
Once upon a time they looked forward to moving from the trailer into a house in the heart of town.
“But that dream,’’ she said, “has all been erased because we have no water.’’
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_11809845
Recession Raises Food Prices
March 2, 2009
Colin D’Mello
680 News - Toronto
The recession may be good for the gas pumps but it’s bad for the dinner table. A new study out says grocery bills are more expensive this year than last.
Statistics Canada has compared food prices from January 2008 to January 2009 and says there has been a dramatic rise around the world.
The average grocery cart now costs 9% more than it did only a year ago.
A dozen eggs is now $0.13 more expensive, a kilo of apples costs $0.88 extra, and 4-kilos of potatoes are $1.57 more than last year.
Mushrooms, chicken, beef and flour are also on the list of higher priced products with an almost one dollar rise each.
Experts say that this rise in food costs will likely effect lower income houses the most, who may have to choose lower cost foods with lower nutritional value over higher priced, healthier foods.
The spike in prices is due to raw materials costs rising, and the drop of the Canadian dollar in the market.
http://www.680news.com/news/more.jsp?content=20090301_093231_5180
Recession Raises Food Prices
March 2, 2009
Colin D’Mello
680 News - Toronto
The recession may be good for the gas pumps but it’s bad for the dinner table. A new study out says grocery bills are more expensive this year than last.
Statistics Canada has compared food prices from January 2008 to January 2009 and says there has been a dramatic rise around the world.
The average grocery cart now costs 9% more than it did only a year ago.
A dozen eggs is now $0.13 more expensive, a kilo of apples costs $0.88 extra, and 4-kilos of potatoes are $1.57 more than last year.
Mushrooms, chicken, beef and flour are also on the list of higher priced products with an almost one dollar rise each.
Experts say that this rise in food costs will likely effect lower income houses the most, who may have to choose lower cost foods with lower nutritional value over higher priced, healthier foods.
The spike in prices is due to raw materials costs rising, and the drop of the Canadian dollar in the market.
http://www.680news.com/news/more.jsp?content=20090301_093231_5180
Drought Bad for Wheat
We’re very dry. The wheat crop is terrible. If we don’t get rain soon, there won’t be much grain production. —Dana Bay, Oklahoma State. Univ.
March 1, 2009
By Michelle Seeber MCT Regional News
Tulsa World
“Terrible.”
That was the word OSU Extension Agent Dana Bay used to describe current wheat conditions in the area, all caused by lack of rain.
‘’We’re very dry,” Bay said. “The wheat crop is terrible. If we don’t get rain soon, there won’t be much grain production.”
Bay said wheat is now at a critical stage known as hollow stem. Hollow stem occurs when the developing head is still below the soil surface. Rain is critical to further growth.
‘’The wheat is very drought stressed at this time,” Bay said. “We need a good soaking rain to come pretty quickly.”
Oklahoma Secretary of Agriculture Terry Peach described the situation as “fighting to survive” in an address on his website. He also described the outcome of lack of rain as an economic disaster.
In a phone interview Friday, he said, “In a good year, the state averages 140 million bushels of production. Without rain in the next 10 days, it could drop to the 70 million to 80 million range.”
According to the National Weather Service in Norman, there is no rain predicted into next Tuesday.
Even with irrigation techniques in place, the situation is serious because farmers can’t afford to pay for the fuel it takes to irrigate their land, Peach said.
Farmers are not only fighting the drought, he said, they are fighting increased costs.
‘’Today our farmers ... fighting to survive this tenacious drought also are struggling with a problem our forbears didn’t face: greatly increased input costs,” Peach said. “Fuel, fertilizer and seed grain prices have increased up to four times during the past year.”
According to Woodward Emergency Manager Matt Lehenbauer, Woodward County has received only an average of .3 inches of rain so far this year.
‘’Harper County has received .13 inches of rain and Ellis County .25,” Lehenbauer said.
All of which is “well below” the amount of precipitation that is typically seen around the area this time of year, he said.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=298&articleid=20090301_298_0_Terrib881676
Haven’t heard from Wneighbor for a while...
Saw this and am hoping this isn’t the reason...
Wildfires Destroy 25 Homes in Central Texas
BASTROP, Texas — A wildfire fueled by grass, brush and trees has destroyed at least 25 homes and three businesses in central Texas.
Officials say two National Guard helicopters joined other aircraft Sunday in dropping water on the blaze near the towns of Bastrop and Smithville.
Gov. Rick Perry has activated state resources, including four Blackhawk helicopters equipped to drop water and fire retardant, firefighters and equipment.
The wildfire has charred just over a square mile since it was started Saturday by a fallen power line.
Texas Forest Service spokesman Lewis Kearney says the fire is about 70 percent contained and that no additional structures are threatened.
Residents who were evacuated during the night were being escorted back into the area Sunday to identify their property.
Bastrop is about 30 miles southeast of Austin.