Here is this week’s installment of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s Weekly News Roundup:

CONGRESSIONAL NEWS

Congressional Bioenergy Briefing: On On Tuesday, April 27, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute hosted a congressional briefing entitled Developing Sustainable Biomass Supplies.  Presentation slides and an audio recording of the briefing are posted on the Institute’s website. The briefing began with an overview and update on implementation of the Farm Bill Energy Title programs administered by the Rural Development Agency, as well as the Biomass Crop Assistance Program overseen by the Farm Service Agency.  Then Dr. Jeffrey Steiner, the National Program Leader for Biomass Production for the Agricultural Research Service, discussed the challenges to achieving sustainable biomass production.

USDA NEWS

NIFA Director Roger Beachy to Resign : On Friday, April 29, USDA announced that Roger Beachy, Director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), will leave his post on May 20 of this year. USDA Undersecretary for Research, Education and Economics, Cathie Woteki, announced Beachy’s resignation today in a memo to her staff. Beachy intends to return to St. Louis.

USDA Releases Assessment of Natural Resources in the United States : On Wednesday, April 27, USDA released a pre-publication copy of its long-awaited 2011 Resource Conservation Act Appraisal.  The appraisal, part of USDA’s implementation of the Soil and Water Resources Conservation Act (RCA), assesses the status of soil, water, and related natural resources on non-Federal land and analyzes the effectiveness of current conservation policies and programs. The RCA also directs USDA to develop a “national conservation plan” in response to its Appraisal.  The plan is due to Congress early next year and might also serve as a vehicle for Administration ideas for the conservation title of the 2012 Farm Bill.

Results on Nationwide Analysis of Food Hubs Released : On April 19, at the Making Good Food Work Conference in Detroit, Michigan, Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan released the results of a nationwide analysis of food hubs.  Merrigan focused on the  economic opportunities of food hubs, an emerging set of business models to provide additional outlets for small and medium sized farmers and bring local food to more consumers in a region. “Food hub” is a general term that encompasses a variety of models.  Common features of food hubs are aggregation,  distribution, and marketing services for small and especially mid-sized farms.

Proposed National Leafy Green Marketing Agreement Released: On Tuesday, April 26,  USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released its proposal for a National Leafy Green Marketing Agreement (NLGMA).  If adopted, the  program would be used to govern the production, handling, and manufacturing of leafy green vegetables, including spinach, lettuce, and cabbage, for handlers who sign on and for all the farmers who supply those participating handlers. Explaining the vision for the proposed Agreement, AMS says NLGMA “would minimize the potential for microbial contamination, thereby improving customer confidence in leafy green vegetables in the marketplace.”  The Agency adds that the Agreement “would be available to operations of all sizes, locations, and agricultural practices.” Read more »

The following notice was sent from Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. It announces the rescheduled date for the Agriculture Field Hearing on the Farm Bill to be held in Michigan with Ranking Minority Committee Member, Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS).

If you have previously sent in comments or questions you don’t have to re-send them, Stabenow’s Committee Staff has informed me. But you do need to RSVP again.

AGRICULTURE FIELD HEARING – RESCHEDULED

April 26, 2011

As the new Chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, I am writing to invite you to the first official field hearing on the upcoming reauthorization of our nation’s Farm Bill. Senator Pat Roberts from Kansas, who is the Ranking Member on the Committee, will be joining me for the hearing.

Senate Agriculture Committee Field Hearing

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

9:00 am – 12:00 pm

Kellogg Center, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI

http://www.kelloggcenter.com/about/location.html

Congress considers the Farm Bill only once every five years. As you know, this legislation has broad implications for agriculture as well as sweeping impact on our energy, conservation, rural development, research, forestry and nutrition policies. This is your opportunity to make your voice heard and to be a part of the official record of committee debate.

You may participate in the hearing by submitting written testimony which will be included in the official record of the hearing. Three copies of your testimony can be submitted at the hearing or can be sent to the Committee no later than June 7, 2011. You may also submit questions for possible consideration by the panel members during a limited question and answer period before May 26, 2011. Send your testimony or questions to aghearing@ag.senate.gov or to US Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, 328A Russell Senate Office Bldg, Washington, D.C. 20510.  If you previously submitted testimony and questions, there is no need to resubmit.

For up-to-date information on the hearing and Farm Bill process, you can visit the Senate Agriculture Committee website at ag.senate.gov.

To RSVP for the hearing, contact the Agriculture Committee Office at 202-224-2035 or email aghearing@ag.senate.gov.

12^th Annual International Agroecology Shortcourse in Santa Cruz, CA

Agroecology and the Transformation of Food Systems: The California Model *July 10-22, 2011 *

Please Apply Now!

You are invited to attend this year’s course, Agroecology and the Transformation of Food Systems: The California Model. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about the transformation of food systems to the agroecological model from field to table, utilizing California food systems as a working case study of challenges and successes. California is a place where most investment in agriculture has centered on increased production as the main priority, and where local food systems, urban access to healthy food, and labor, water, and poverty issues are often considered to be secondary. At the same time, the state is also home to an incredibly diverse and vibrant sustainable food movement, full of people seeking to change how food is produced and consumed. The course will bring together the various components of the California food system to mobilize its transformation to an inclusive system that addresses multiple needs and goals. We will also learn from similar models of change from around the world.

Apply soon before the course fills up – applications are being accepted on a rolling basis. Cost to participate is $2250; the course fee is comprehensive and covers all tuition, lecture materials, accommodations, three meals per day, field trips and administrative fees. View the Shortcourse Flyer at http://www.agroecology.org/Shortcourse.html. For more course information please contact Heather Putnam at shortcourse2011@canunite.org

The 4th National Sustainable Agriculture Education Association (SAEA) conference August 4-5, 2011 University of Kentucky, Lexington

The Conference is co-hosted by the College of Agriculture, UK Sustainable Agriculture Program and the Virginia Tech Civic Agriculture and Food Systems Program.  The conference will be held in the heart of Kentucky’s Bluegrass region, on the campus of the University of Kentucky in Lexington. The conference theme, Cultivating Sustainable Agriculture Education: Growing a Collaborative Legacy, is focused on addressing the means of achieving sustainability in agriculture through authentic educational experiences across the food system: schools, universities, farms, and communities. Please consider joining other faculty, staff, and students in the only national-level forum focused on the teaching and learning of sustainable agriculture!

In addition to networking with other faculty, staff and students working with sustainable agriculture programs across the country, this conference offers numerous field trips to farms around the Bluegrass, service learning activities, farm-to-table cooking opportunities, a materials exchange, a pre-conference track for land grant university programs, and loads of local food. True to the innovative, participatory nature of SAEA conferences, we’ll be spicing up your traditional conference fare with student panels, round table discussions, Anthony Flaccavento as the keynote speaker, as well as panel and poster session.

For more information about submitting a conference abstract, please visit: http://sustainableaged.org/Portals/0/SAEA/2011%20Conference/SAEA%202011%20Conference%20Announcement.pdf

And see more information at: http://www.sustainableaged.org/ Read more »

The C.S. Mott Group at Michigan State University (MSU) is searching for an experienced professional to fill its newly-created position of Academic Specialist for Healthy Living.

The person selected for this position will join MSU’s Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies (CARRS) and a group of people active in applied research and outreach on local and regional food systems.  He/she will bring at least three years of relevant professional experience and an educational background in health, urban/regional planning, nutrition or a related field.

Please share information about this opportunity with people you think may be interested and let us know about individuals that you suggest we contact. We encourage and welcome, applications and/or nominations of persons of color, veterans and persons with disabilities.

Information about the position and directions to apply are located at http://jobs.msu.edu, as MSU Posting #4627.  A complete position description is attached. Please direct questions regarding the position or search process to Mike Hamm, C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Sustainable Agriculture, mhamm@msu.edu, phone 517-432-1611 or fax 517-353-3834.

This position will provide coordination and support for a NIFA grant-funded project housed by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech. The position will generate positive, substantive impact on the development of sustainable food systems and agricultural economies in the region. Responsibilities include assisting the Program Director in coordinating communication among three (3) universities to execute the planned research and activities for community-based local food efforts; develop a framework for documentation, evaluation and analysis of information generated via meetings and research; write and proofread written correspondence, schedule meetings, make travel arrangements and assist in evaluation efforts of the initiative process overall.

Position Number:  0110398

Apply: https://listings.jobs.vt.edu/applicants/jsp/shared/search/SearchResults_css.jsp Read more »

The Missouri Beginning Farmers Program will continue its monthly webinars in May with a presentation by Joel Gruver of Western Illinois University, “Getting Started in Organic Farming – Soils Basics.”

The webinar will be Monday May 2^nd from 7:00 to 8:30 pm with a PowerPoint presentation.  There will be two additional opportunities to learn from Joel, May 9^th and 16^th, both from 7:00 to 8:30 pm.  These will be live chats in a Question/Answer format where Joel will answer questions brought forth by participants in the webinar.  Joel is a agriculture professor and researcher at Allison Organic Research and Demonstration Farm at Western Illinois University.  Joel is well known in the organic community for his research and has spoken at the MO Organic Association’s Annual Conference and the Upper Midwest Organic Conference for the past several years. 

Meeting Name:  Soils Basics
When:  Monday 2 May, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Central Time
To join the meeting: http://univmissouri.adobeconnect.com/r50315094/

Meeting Name:  Soils Basics Q’s & A’s Part 2
When:  Monday 9 May, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Central Time
To join the meeting: http://univmissouri.adobeconnect.com/r19424801/

Meeting Name:  Soils Basics Q’s & A’s Part 3
When:  Monday 16 May, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Central Time
To join the meeting: http://univmissouri.adobeconnect.com/r39075834/

Missouri Beginning Farmers Program’s Archived  and Future Monthly Webinars, Workshops and Forums: Read more »

Life On The Farm Attracts Green-Spirited Entrepreneurs (By: Rob Reuteman – CNBC)

This is really a pretty good article. Not super in depth but it hits many of the important points, and they found the right people to interview.

EXCERPT: “Family farms, through more local purchasing, are able to make a profit and a living. Young people are seeing this as a very rewarding lifestyle and career. For the first time in a long time, young people are interested, after decades of farming not being a very desirable career.“

Despite a tepid response from the Senate Agriculture Committee, and actual hostility in the House, 141 agriculture organizations (see list below) signed a letter in support of USDA’s new livestock marketing competition rule (also known as GIPSA), and delivered it to legislators on Thursday, April 21st, 2011. The content of the letter is as follows:

As a result of rapid consolidation and vertical integration, the livestock and poultry markets of this nation have reached a point where anti-competitive practices dominate, to the detriment of producers and consumers. Numerous economic studies in recent years have demonstrated the economic harm of current market structures and practices, and have called for greater enforcement of existing federal laws in order to restore competition to livestock and poultry markets.

Until recently, Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have largely ignored these trends. Fortunately, Congress included language in the 2008 Farm Bill to require the U.S. Department of Agriculture to write regulations, using its existing Packers and Stockyards Act authorities, to begin to restore fairness and competition in livestock and poultry markets.

On June 22, 2010, the Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Agency (GIPSA) issued proposed rules to implement the 2008 Farm Bill mandates, and to address related anticompetitive practices in the livestock and poultry industries. These reforms are long overdue and begin to respond to the criticisms by farm groups, consumer groups, the Government Accountability Office and USDA’s Inspector General about USDA’s past lack of enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act. The proposed GIPSA rules define and clarify terms in the Act in order to make enforcement more effective, and to provide clarity to all players in livestock and poultry markets. Read more »

NEWS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEDIA CONTACT: Brendy Barr, (248) 651-4858, brendy@barrcommuncations.com

ORAN HESTERMAN, LEADING GOOD FOOD PIONEER IN MICHIGAN, RELEASES FAIR FOOD, SHARING HIS VISION FOR CREATING A HEALTHY, SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEM

Book signing events to be held in Detroit and Ann Arbor to benefit local food banks

Ann Arbor, MI, April 25, 2011— Our food system is failing us. Once designed to bring us abundant food at low cost, it now nourishes us by destroying some of what we hold most precious – our environment, our health, and our future. A host of books and films have documented the dangers – from chemical runoff to soaring rates of diet-related illness – but very few have offered any viable solutions.  This void in public information is what compelled leading good food pioneer Oran B. Hesterman, Ph.D. to write Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All, a new book being released in May 2011 by PublicAffairs Books.

Dr. Hesterman, president and CEO of Fair Food Network, shares his inspiring vision for changing not only what we eat, but how our food is grown, packaged, delivered, marketed and sold.  Fair Food is an enlightening guide in which Dr. Hesterman shows how our food system’s dysfunctions are unintended consequences of our emphasis on efficiency, centralization, higher yields, profit and convenience, and he defines the new principles that a redesigned food system should embody, as well as the necessary steps to restructuring it.

In Fair Food, Dr. Hesterman also highlights people and organizations around the country who are already integrating these new principles in many creative ways within their enterprises, providing inspiring new models for producers, consumers, businesses and communities.

For readers who want to be a part of the fair food movement, Dr. Hesterman offers a wealth of practical information.  His menu for change suggests how we can participate in collective action to precipitate the transformation of our food system, from the kitchen to the community to the state house to the White House.

Enthusiastic praise for Fair Food and Dr. Hesterman’s vision comes from a vast spectrum of leaders across the country: Read more »

New England Grain Conference: Bread, Beer and Biodiversity
July 14 – 15, 2011,  UMass Farm and Colrain Seed Farm
Join us at a regional event on growing organic landrace grains, share skills to reinvigorate heritage grain traditions, exchange seeds, learn how to bake artisan bread in a wood-fired oven, brew artisan beer, and celebrate the harvest.

Brought to you by The Heritage Grain Conservancy. For more information and to register: growseed.org

CRAFT is a network of farmers of all ages and experience levels who are interested in continuing their agricultural education. CRAFT offers exposure to a diversity of farm designs and agricultural practices through potlucks, workshops and farm tours. We build a supportive community of farmers and farmers-in- training, one farm at a time.

The first CRAFT program was founded in upstate New York in 1995. Northwest Lower Michigan CRAFT was designed in 2010 to meet the needs of farm interns or apprentices, but the program is for anyone interested in learning (or teaching) agricultural skills.

What is required of member farms? Two things: first, each farm is required to host one workshop/farm tour/potluck in the 2011 growing season, at a date that works with your growing season. Second, each farm is required to make time for your interns, apprentices and other farm-learners to attend other workshops. Everyone is welcome. Read more »

That’s right folks, this post is number 2001. I never dreamed, 3 years ago that I’d be writing about such an event. But it is your overwhelming support and interest that has kept me going.

I run the site by myself. I had a helper for a while, but she split town, so now it’s all me again. Beginning Farmers was begun as a service, and it still is. I have a couple of ads now, as I’m sure some of you have noticed, but those simply help to pay for hosting costs and my maintenance guru Chris Decker who is a farmer advocate and web doctor.

It’s been a long haul, still is. Posting every day isn’t easy for a graduate student. And I’ve never made a dime off the site. But it’s those of you who write to me, call me, comment and participate on the Facebook Page who make it worth it.

Thanks to everyone who has helped to make Beginning Farmers such a success. Thanks for tuning in, and thanks for all the love…

If there is anything you feel is missing, if you have any ideas, want to talk about the content or stories, or want to share your own, I love to get comments and e-mails, and I love guest posts even more. So please, send me either through the comments section of the site or at beginningfarmers@gmail.com.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I’d like to share some of my art with you. This one is a close up picture of a squash. My lovely wife Emily named it: The Meeting of the Frogs for reasons you may be able to discern if you study it closely enough (and use your imagination a little bit).

Meeting of the Frogs

Thanks again for all your support!

- Taylor Reid

Whatever you think of Eliot Coleman, this really is a great article, and well worth taking the time to read

Organic agriculture: deeply rooted in science and ecology (by Eliot Coleman – Grist)

EXCERPT: Skeptics have often misrepresented a biologically-based agriculture as if it is nothing but the substitution of purchased organic inputs for purchased chemical inputs. Even if there were evidence to document the rationale for a substitution philosophy, it would lose on the grounds of economics alone. Both bone meal and dried blood, for example, two popular “organic” fertilizers, are prohibitively expensive on a farm scale. Furthermore, such substitution thinking is not pertinent to the actual objective of a biological agriculture — namely the development of sustainable, farm-generated systems for maintaining soil fertility.

Hope you’ll read it and send in your comments.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Press Contact: Valerie Jaffee, 415-875-6106, vjaffee@nrdc.org

Awards recognize leaders and innovators in the field of sustainable food and agriculture

Fair labor practices in the organic berry industry, environmentally-responsible biopesticides, a new crop of young sustainable farming stewards in the Midwest, and a lunch food  revolution in schools – these are the winning  innovations receiving recognition today by the Natural Resources Defense Council’s third annual Growing Green Awards.

“With the double whammy of rising food demand and growing environmental challenges, we need a food system that can produce more while using fewer natural resources,” said Jonathan Kaplan, Senior Policy Specialist at NRDC. “These Growing Green Award winners are providing the leadership needed to make that happen. They inspire all of us.”

An independent panel of prestigious sustainable food experts selected the four winners from a pool of 265 impressive candidates that included diverse growers, business leaders and activists across the country. The 2011 winners are: Read more »