Tag: Agriculture

Edward R. Murrow: “Harvest of Shame”

Cross poster from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Watch Edward R. Murrow’s ‘Harvest of Shame’

by John Light, Moyers & Company

The people who harvest our fruits and vegetables are, today, among the country’s most marginalized. They earn well below the poverty line and spend a substantial portion of the year unemployed. They do not have the right to overtime pay or to collective bargaining with their employers. In some cases, workers have faced abuses that fall under modern-day slavery statutes. “The extreme is slavery,” observed Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), while visiting farm workers in Florida. “The norm is disaster.” [..]

In 1960, legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and his producers Fred Friendly and David Lowe attempted to draw public attention to this state of affairs with the documentary Harvest of Shame. The film – an hour-long portrait of the “humans who harvest the food for the best-fed people in the world” – aired on CBS the day after Thanksgiving, 1960.

Yes We Have No Bananas

Fresh vegetables via AFP

Fish and vegetables grow without soil on Gaza rooftops

By Agence France-Presse

Friday, October 26, 2012 22:30 EDT

Abu Ahmed looks out over a sea of grey, empty Gaza rooftops, and smiles as he looks back at the lush greenery sprouting in tubs and pipes on top of his apartment building.

He is part of a United Nations agency project to introduce cutting-edge urban agriculture to Gaza City, teaching Palestinians to farm without soil in the space available to them in one of the world’s most densely populated places…

Anatomy of a Struggle: The Coalition of Immokalee Workers

If there is ever to be any effective pushback against the hegemony of capital, we will need bases of power, organized expressions of sustained popular resistance to exploitation and repression.  The contemporary political landscape of neoliberal media message management, social atomization and political alienation  can seem harsh and desolate for those of us looking for direction, for effective means of participation and expression of solidarity.

Today I’ll take a look at the struggle of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers for some measure of justice and dignity in the fruit and vegetable fields of Florida, their history, the impressive solidarity network they have built, some recent victories, and some ongoing and upcoming efforts and actions that offer us all an opportunity to participate in solidarity.

Meet the Meatrix





copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

As you gobble that fine food, be it steak, a frankfurter, roasted chicken, or an omelet, please, sit back relax. Put your feet up and stay a while.  I will furnish the entertainment in the form of a film. Meatrix is fun, fascinating, and far from folly.  This presentation is playful; the message profound.  

You may recall the fairy tales you loved as a child.  The plots varied, although all had elements of mystery.  Adventures were abundant.  Tots were often so engrossed in the tales, they barely noticed that the themes taught a life lesson.  Meatrix is as the fables you once anxiously awaited and even asked others to read aloud to you.

Enter The Meatrix

     For those of us who often wonder where our food comes from, but don’t exactly want to visit the abattoir, themeatrix.com has the power to open your mind a bit. Before you click the video and take the red pill, I offer you the blue pill if you want to bail out now.

    If you have gone this far, there is no turning back now.

Action Diary: Tell Those Wicked Iowans What Ya Think Of ‘Em!

I’m pretty gosh-darned frightened, America.  Frightened of what’s happenin’ to this great country of ours when a beloved fly-over state like Iowa turns its activist judges loose to pee on the holy institution of marriage.  Are patriotic Americans expected to stand idly by while gay people try to sign the same piece of paper in a church?  In a state with the first presidential caucus no less?  It’s time to draw a line in the sand!  Or dirt, in Iowa’s case.

New Jersey Loses A Good One

A little bit of shuffling in New Jersey’s state government leading up to next year’s elections.  New Jersey holds state elections in the “odd-numbered” years – in 2009 there will be a gubernatorial election with incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine (D-Hoboken) running for a second term, while all 80 seats in New Jersey’s General Assembly (the Lower House of the NJ State Legislature, currently controlled by Democrats 48-32) will be up for election.  Elections for seats in the Upper House (the NJ State Senate, currently controlled by Democrats 23-17) are held in years ending in 1, 3 and 7.  A “2-4-4 cycle” in order to reflect redistricting changes due to the Census.

In the midst of a recent certain other (heh…) important and closely-watched election, came news that Charles Kuperus, the head of New Jersey’s Department of Agriculture, has resigned the position he’s held for the past six years after originally being appointed by former Governor Jim McGreevey.

As someone who grew up in New Jersey, and was a resident as recently as two years ago…I’m sad to say that we lost a really good one here –

“Charlie has been taking the heat from many in the farm community who would rather be able to sell their land to developers, growing houses [rather] than crops,” Tittel said. “He has helped protect farming for the future.”

Crossposted from La Vida Locavore, more below the fold…

The Organic Silver BB?

A few days ago, Jill Richardson brought us news to pay attention to with the question “Can Organics Save Us from Global Warming?”  Jill excitedly brought news of a new study from the Rodale Institute entitled Regenerative Organic Farming: A Solution to Global Warming.  After now having taken the time to read this report, it seems worth seconded Jill’s excitement … even if perhaps seeking to dampen it a little bit.

The Green Desert: Field Trip to New York City

This is a continuation of The Green Desert and The Green Paradox.  The quick update is:  more flowers; still many bees; growing number of moths and butterflies.  Still no bees on flowering plants around the Roundup Ready corn and soybean fields.  

This story starts about a week ago with a phone accounting of all this to a friend in NYC, who I had called to tell we were coming to the city for a few days.

Specifically, I told him not only about the bees, but the complexities of mass production and paying the bills on a family farm, ala how my father works alone the amount of ground that would have been 3 families’ work just 50 years ago, and grew much more than they did then as well-all while using (at minimum) poisons that (at minimum) bees don’t like and seem obviously to be out of balance with nature.

So my friend said, “Well, what’s wrong is the feeling that you have to grow that much.”  Which got me to thinking.

‘Bout That Food Crisis (long-apologies)

[Crossposted from Fire on the Mountain.]

Some kind of quantity changing into quality point has been reached–suddenly the newspapers are full of "in-depth" reports on the global food crisis, a crisis that seems to have sprung up as suddenly as the credit crisis did a few months ago. I've been tracking this for a while and decided to think on the keyboard instead of out loud. I think it is important to try and understand this while it is a New Thing, before it becomes more background noise in world politics and our daily lives.  

1. Production shortages and inflation are two major factors in the crisis.  

What's causing the shortages?  

Global warming is widely regarded as a contributing factor in droughts which have stricken not only subsistence farmers in East Africa, but also major commodity grain producers in the Southern Hemisphere–Chile, Argentina, and especially Australia, with thousands of square miles in their eighth straight year with no rainfall to speak of.  

Growing Asian economies, especially in China and India, have made possible better and more diverse diets for hundreds of millions of people. This growing demand for food has additionally seen rising meat consumption by the middle class (echoing US consumption trends), and, as vegetarians are quick to point out, it takes 16 pounds of grain to produce a pound of beef.

Glaciers Retreat at Record Rate Imperiling World Water Supplies

The world’s glaciers are losing mass at record rates according to the United Nations. Preliminary calculations just completed for 2006 show that the rate of glacial melting increased from the previous record rate in 2003. Glaciers have not retreated this rapidly since prehistoric time over 5000 years ago.

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us
By FishOutofWater

Water supplies and agriculture, especially in China, India and Pakistan are threatened by the rapid loss of mountain glaciers. Water supplies in California and the western U.S. are diminishing as glaciers and winter snowpack decline.

Note: x-posted in Orange.

I have generally lurked here rather than post here because environmental writing doesn’t seem to be a primary focus here. However, many of my former readers are now here so I thought it might be a good time to make a first post here. Environmental matters aren’t discussed enough on the political blogs, in my opinion. The planet has been taken for granted by people for far too long. We can not escape the environmental consequences of our choices.

The glacial retreat story was covered extensively in the European press and virtually ignored in the U.S. One reason Americans are so ignorant is the lack of media coverage of environmental matters. Blogs also tend to have less discussion of the environment here. I hope this blog is interested in environmental discussions.

GLACIER RETREAT ACCELERATES (over)

USDA recalls 143 million pounds of beef

Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

The USDA has recalled 143 million pounds of beef produced from a Chino, CA slaughterhouse, making this the largest beef recall in the U.S.:

LOS ANGELES – The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Sunday recalled 143 million pounds of frozen beef from a Southern California slaughterhouse that is being investigated for mistreating cattle.

More below the fold…

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