American Forum Op-Ed

AMERICAN FORUM

By Ralph Paige

When President Abraham Lincoln created the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1862 he referred to it as the People’s Department. The problem is that its services have never been available to all the people. Although more recently, with the Clinton and Obama administrations, efforts have been made to correct discriminatory problems at the USDA, it's an unfortunate fact that the USDA’s history has been marred by rampant discrimination. This is why black farmers filed a 1997 lawsuit against the USDA that focused on discrimination in administration of its farm programs in the 1980s and into the 1990s.

The litigation -- referred to as Pigford vs. Glickman (now Pigford vs. Vilsack) and named after Tim Pigford a black farmer in North Carolina and then-Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman -- was settled in 1999, and more than 15,000 black farmers obtained relief for discrimination at the hands of the USDA. But the settlement itself triggered such an outpouring of pent-up frustration and demands for justice that more than 12 years later the case is still ongoing.

Black farmers originally needed to file claims by Oct. 12, 1999. While thousands of farmers met that deadline, many others were unaware of the lawsuit. As a result, the judge let people who missed the deadline petition to get into the settlement, providing they did so by Sept. 15, 2000. Again, thousands of farmers filed petitions and are now referred to as “late filers.”

Of these late filers, only 3 percent (2,700) were found eligible to file a claim in Pigford. This left a staggering 97 percent of late claimants (around 58,000 and more than 75 percent of all claimants) who were denied the opportunity.

Black farm groups and their advocates expressed concern that tens of thousands of black-farmer petitioners had been unable to file a claim. Many petitioned Congress and its leadership to resolve this issue. As a result, Congress included in the 2008 Farm Bill a provision to allow late filers into the suit, while establishing a budget of $100 million -- which unfortunately was not nearly enough to serve the farmers.

Since passage of the 2008 Farm Bill, President Obama proposed adding considerably more monies to bring the total to $1.25 billion for the Pigford lawsuit, an amount much closer to what likely will be needed to cover all proven claims. Based on that proposal, attorneys for black farmers and the government have negotiated a settlement of the late-filer lawsuit.

All well and good, but the job remains unfinished. The Obama administration has already submitted legislative language to Congress but the settlement cannot go forward until Congress appropriates the funds requested by President Obama, and they have set March 31 as a deadline to do so. Time is short, and the whole effort is teetering toward failure.

We at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund recognize that work with farmers requires far more than a lawsuit can provide. This is why for 43 years we have offered Southern black farmers assistance with cooperative development, farm management, debt restructuring, alternative crop suggestions, marketing expertise and a whole range of services to ensure family farm survivability.

Black farmers with late-filer claims, however, have waited for decades for relief for USDA denial of services and credit opportunities. In the 10 years since the original claim period closed, many of these farmers died, others lost their farms or left farming altogether. It is a tragic injustice that thousands of black farmers are still being denied relief for discriminatory behavior from their own government. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, the Network of Black Farm Groups and Advocates, and the scores of organizations around the country supporting the network's efforts urge Congress to act expeditiously on providing necessary funding for the black farmer late-filer settlement.
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Paige is executive director of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the American Forum. 3/10

By K. Rashid Nuri

In his State of the Union address, President Obama enumerated ongoing problems requiring his attention: health care, the economy, job creation, environmental issues and lack of renewable fuels. In doing so, he suggested that increasing agricultural exports would help solve some of these problems.

While export agriculture might indeed help some corporations, it is unlikely to resolve issues directly affecting the public. One thing that would, however, is urban agriculture. While not a panacea, urban agriculture can allay many of the concerns mentioned by the president, and it can do so in several critical ways.

Our country is now undeniably urban. According to recent demographics, 81 percent of us now live in cities or suburbs. And with so few of us living on farms or in rural areas, our familiarity with the production and source of our food is limited. As an urban organic farmer, I find it amazing that so many chefs, produce managers, restaurateurs and Americans in general remain blithely unaware of the sources of their food. Many have no idea what food looks like coming out of the soil, let alone have an awareness of seasonal fluctuations in fruit and vegetable production.

Implications of this lack of knowledge and involvement in our own food production are immense, affecting all aspects of our life.

Since the dust bowl era of the 1930s and the end of World War II, there has been an effort by government and corporate America to industrialize American agriculture. There has been an emphasis on efficiency and quantity rather than on growing quality food and protecting natural resources. Agriculture is estimated to represent approximately 20 percent to 25 percent of the U.S. annual energy budget, and as much as 40 percent of that energy goes towards production of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Chemical-based growth stimulants produce large quantities of food at the expense of the minerals, vitamins and trace elements that create flavor and nutrition. Evidence of the poor quality of our food can be seen in rising rates of obesity, vitamin deficiencies and food-borne illnesses.

Sadly, the major victim of industrial agriculture is the American public. We are subjected to more chemicals in food, more additives in food products and massive advertising campaigns for these products, and until recently were offered few healthy alternatives.

We Americans are in the early stages of reclaiming our food sovereignty. This is evidenced by the fast-growing organic sector in agriculture, the advent of urban agriculture initiatives and the increased numbers of farmers markets found in urban areas everywhere.

All across the nation, urban farmers are growing crops on vacant lots, in abandoned fields, in greenhouses, on balconies, by schools, in prison yards, in nursing homes and in countless other creative and engaging places. These urban growing fields can be privately owned, formed as cooperatives, as neighborhood organizations, in collaboration with universities or as partners with city and county governments. Options are endless. Urban America is beginning to wake up and feed itself.

Urban agriculture can play a critical role in reversing many negative aspects of industrial agriculture. Urban farming enhances the health of metropolitan residents, creates “green” jobs, produces affordable locally grown organic fruits and vegetables; teaches people to grow their own foods; reconnects people to their food and the land; and strengthens the environment through reduced fossil fuel dependence and carbon sequestration.

The source of our food is an abstract concept for most of us (Some urban children actually think chocolate milk comes from brown cows.). But this is changing. More and more people are exploring the supply chain that connects the production of their food to its final consumption. People are returning to the earth as they learn that urban gardens provide benefits beyond good food. This includes economic savings, environmental improvement, lifestyle enhancement, increased exercise and family and community bonding.

President Obama mentioned increasing agricultural exports, but also said that First Lady Michelle Obama would continue her work on problems associated with child obesity. Ironically, the industrial agriculture the president supports is directly connected to child obesity. Industrial agriculture and the lack of personal involvement in food production are leading factors causing our people to become obese and less healthy.

The time has come for we Americans to reclaim our agricultural heritage. Participating in urban agriculture would be a major step in that direction.
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Nuri is director of the Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the American Forum. 2/10

Hard economic times have spurred an explosion in home gardens with more people realizing that food does not begin and end in the supermarket. This increase in food awareness, coupled with recent food recalls, has brought increased attention to issues of food safety and farm policy.

Unfortunately, recent proposals fail to take into account the issues underpinning the food safety problems faced by this country.

Congress is seeking to enhance federal oversight of the production of food, thereby increasing food safety. To that end, all food producers would be subject to the same stringent regulations, regardless of their size. The local farmer and his organic or all-natural tomatoes will be treated with the same suspicion as produce from massive industrial “farms” which grow and process enormous amounts of food at unnaturally high rates, bolstered by synthetic fertilizers and genetically modified seed.

Similarly, small ranches where cattle graze on open fields of grass and are slaughtered one or two at a time in local abattoirs would be subject to the same requirements as the giant meat packing companies whose relentless “protein” production requires that they pump their cattle full of growth hormones and steroids, and dose them with antibiotics to combat the dangerous effects of a grain-based diet on the stomachs of animals designed to eat grasses.

The push for food safety ignores the real and important differences between modes of production. In regulating this way, we stand the very real chance of forcing small, sustainable and responsible food producers out of business. The increased cost in both time and money of complying with unnecessarily stringent regulations would be too great to allow many mom-and-pop operations to continue. The answer to our food safety problems though is not to regulate to the lowest common denominator but to raise the standard to which all our food producers are held.

Furthermore, these new food safety efforts demonstrate the flawed mindset with which we approach our food. We have been raised to fear our food and to suspect that items available at the grocery store may be contaminated with deadly bacteria or toxins. We have been taught to overcook meats, and wash vegetables in specially formulated vegetable wash--available in convenient spray bottles. Sadly, under the current industrial mode of food production, such fear is sometimes warranted. We have come to think of food recalls as a part of modern life. Industrial food producers would like us to think food is something too dangerous to be left to small time growers to produce.

The truth is that these problems exist in large part not in spite of the best efforts of industrial food producers, but precisely because of them. Large meat companies race to fatten their cattle for slaughter by feeding them corn, which also encourages the development of a dangerous strain of E. Coli bacteria that sickens those who ingest it.

Similarly, in vegetable production, mono-cropping, the practice of growing large amounts of a single crop in one place, can attract large numbers of pests. Farmers then spray toxic, petroleum-based pesticides, killing not just the pests but all insects in the area. Without beneficial insects, crop pollination and biological pest control becomes much more difficult if not impossible. We become the victims of our own avarice, sickening our animals and our farm fields as well as ourselves in the push for bigger, faster and cheaper supplies of food.

Rather than pushing for stricter oversight of small-scale beef producers, we should eliminate the government corn subsidy, which makes corn-feeding cattle economical. Instead of more testing for pathogens, we need a system by which foodstuffs are raised in a responsible and sustainable way that keeps them free of dangerous pathogens to begin with. When was the last time you heard about a small, organic farmer recalling the produce he sold at the farmer’s market?

Instead of “modernized” regulation and the resulting increased centralization of food production, we need a decentralized, sustainable model of agriculture that emphasizes safe, clean and responsible food production. Rather than a handful of large industrial “farms” producing our nation’s food, we should promote thousands of locally producing small farms. Small, local and sustainable food producers are already supplying many thousands of customers through local farmers markets, co-ops, buying groups or Community Supported Agriculture. Buying food from the person who grew or raised it a few miles down the road assures the freshness and cleanliness that industrially-produced grocery store food will never have, no matter how much government regulation and oversight we impose.
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Mattera is a sausage-maker and an advocate of local and sustainable food systems.
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Copyright (C) 2009 by the Virginia Forum. 10/09