So you say it's your Earth Day ....... and the silent moon rises.

[govegan]

"and if we are to be prepared for these battles that are threatening us we must be
well provisioned; for it is the tripes that carry the heart and not
the heart the tripes." Sancho Panza

On Election Day, remember to vote. And remember the farmers who won that right for us.

The actual amount of land that we need to feed ourselves is surprisingly small. All the vegetables grown in the USA are produced on slightly more than three million acres of land. Fruit and nut production occupies another five million acres. Potatoes and grains are grown on nearly one hundred million acres of land - but over sixty percent of the grains (a conservative estimate), including oats, wheat, barley, and other crops, are fed to livestock.

(thoughts from George Wuerthner in "Welfare Rancing: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West")


For years the herbicides, pesticides, and hazardous pharmaceuticals that were banned in this country have been sold by their producers to Third World nations where regulations are weaker or nonexistent. (In 1981, President Reagan repealed an executive order signed by President Carter that would have forced exporters of such products to notify the recipient nation that the commodity was banned in the USA.) Such products also.......a legacy of death.

The search for cheap farmland to raise cattle induces companies to cut down rain forests throughout Central America, South America, and Southeast Asia.

(thoughts from Michael Parenti's "Against Empire")


Large corporations seeking to control the food system have besieged family farm agriculture in recent decades. To corporations, food is no longer viewed first and foremost as a sustainer of life. Instead, it's a major source of cash flow, economic leverage, a form of currency, a tool of international politics, an instrument of power — a weapon. Increasing market concentration, calls for more "free trade," lower commodity prices, and the bogus need for greater "efficiency" and "competition" all have a devastating effect on rural communities and the agricultural economy that sustains us.

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Economic democracy:

So, as Earth Day and the advent of spring march us through this political year, the plight of family farmers and workers and the current policies that keep them in near servitude will assume their place in the political dialogue. Whether the right issues get addressed remains to be seen.

Even so, as we sit down to the cornucopia of beautiful food from these people in the months ahead, it might serve us spiritually and materially to exercise some traceability and concern for the labor that bestowed these gifts of the Earth upon us. Fair prices and fair markets are key to family farmers' survival. Government policies restoring fair prices and fair markets to rural America would revive the principle of economic democracy without which, as Thomas Jefferson reminds us, we cannot have political democracy.

http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/sc/0404/sc0404-farmpolicy.html

(thoughts from by A.V. Krebs, Editor/Publisher, Agribusiness Examiner)

(To honor Earth Day, an organic farmer and journalist considers farm policy in this political year.)

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Buy local, buy often.


Those in positions of power consider the collapse of rural America as a necessary and inevitable result of a global economy. From their point of view it would be counterproductive to reduce the suffering or mitigate the effects, let alone reverse the policies.

http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/sc/0311/sc0311-farmers1776-2003.html

(thoughts from by Jody Aliesan, Director, Farmland Fund - Western Washington group dedicated to saving/developing organic farmlands)


On Election Day, remember to vote. And remember the farmers who won that right for us.

The erosion of genetic biodiversity and the extinction of seed varieties is now recognized as a major threat to people's food security and survival. Even as Green Revolution technologies wipe out genetic diversity, the emerging Biotechnology Revolution threatens to create a new level of genetic uniformity and vulnerability. It is the very basis of world food production that is at stake. In addition, the new intellectual property rights regimes being imposed by the WTO are appropriating centuries of farmers' innovation, undermining farmers' rights and establishing corporate monopolies. Seed is being transformed from a freely shared resource into the private property of transnational corporations.

http://www.navdanya.org/movement.htm

Navdanya is a symbol of diversity in India. "Navdanya" translates to nine seeds, and connotes a diverse ecological balance at every level, from the ecology of the earth to the ecology of our body.

Because you know I'm a fool
too, like you
skimming over the thin ice
to the war going on
all over the world.

(thoughts from Joy Harjo's poem "Trickster")