Items Tagged With Policy

What is at stake this election?  A lot frankly. Angus La Cense has been trying to get the word out about grass-fed issues . And yet, we are all still hurting. It is a scary time, and frankly grass-fed issues might not top anyone’s list, but they might, even if you do not know it. How we produce food in our country really touches upon all the issues that are troubling us: energy dependence, rising food costs, inflation, skyrocketing health care costs, and the attack on the middle class.   These issues can all be traced to how, we as a nation produce and consume our food. If we are going to change we need to reevaluate our dependence on big business and fossil fuels.  Many of us might feel helpless; we live in such a large, complex and powerful country. What can one citizen do? That is what is so exciting about this campaign, and Angus La Cense’s message. Even a small purchase of grass-fed beef or visiting your local farmer’s market, or choosing to cook a meal for your family can have implications that really generate change.  We can help to fix these daunting national problems by what we eat--- policy has to follow but the more of us who rise up, conservative and liberal alike, to ask our policy makers to make sensible policy change the more likely they will be to listen.

Yes, there is a lot at stake this election. We all know this, but there is so much that we can do.  We can choose to have a grass-fed America buy voting with our forks, supporting grass-fed producers and asking our elected officials to rethink how we grow and consume our food!  The more grass-fed party members the better! So join today!

Dear Mr. Pollan,

  As a candidate for President this year, I felt obliged to reply to your now famous letter printed in the New York Times this Sunday, as it was addressed to a Mr. President-Elect.  As a potential President-Elect, I read your letter closely, and hope that my fellow candidates have done so as well. 

 Mr. Pollan, I want you to know that I have been campaigning on a platform that seeks to reform the food system much like you have suggested in your letter.  I was more than happy to see that you addressed the President-Elect in your letter, as I believe that the changes in policy that are necessary for real Grass-fed Change to take hold in this country will be made when we have the cooperation of our President.

 I’ve listened to the voices of my constituents across the country, the voices of those who are ready for grass-fed change and the voices of those who want to make a living as grass-fed farmers and ranchers.  I ask them, “What is the greatest hurdle to achieving a true Grass-fed America?”  I have heard a resounding reply: subsidies. 

  We, the farmers, the animals, and other grass-fed believers know that the current subsidy and loan distribution is too heavily weighted in favor of the big corporations.  We know   that the status quo in Washington is keeping us from achieving what we call Grass-fed Change and what you call diversified sun farming.  The powerful lobbies in Washington ensure these subsidies are kept in place, however, it is in the authority of the President to stand up and steamroll these lobbies to redistribute the subsidies in a way that favors an agricultural self reliance that is crucial to maintaining the health of our people and land. So I applaud you, Mr. Pollan, for addressing the President-Elect in your reform proposal, and letting him know how crucial his role will be in preventing a serious crisis on our homeland, and that it must begin with reforming the policies of our farmland.  The people are waiting.

I thank you for the for the solid and radical advice laid out in your letter.  It has been very encouraging to me.

Sincerely,

Mr. Angus La Cense

Founder, The Grass-fed Party

P.S.  I enjoyed your proposal for a White House South Lawn Victory Garden.  If I am elected, I promise that my family will set an example for your polyculture sun farms.  I promise to unabashedly graze my meals on the White house lawn, keeping the soil healthy and ensuring that tax-payers dollars will be saved as we will not be needing any oil or chemicals, but only sun to produce the food that will keep my neighbors and my family healthy, safe, and self-reliant.

Agricultural policy is not an easy subject to undertake but Michael Pollan was able to eloquently tackle it in his new article Farmer in Chief making a compelling case for us all to reevaluate how we grow, consume and purchase our food.  There are three major points that he brings up that are possibly the biggest issues we face as a nation: health care, energy independence and climate change.   He argues "we need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine." I say right on! Grass-fed farming is about turning sunlight into food, and in the process it can heal the earth, our bodies and our rural economies.

What then is preventing us from grass-fed change? It really comes down to our agricultural policy, specifically our subsidies that make grains, and corn particularly artificially inexpensive.

Growing food in America accounts for 19 percent of our oil consumption and most of our CO2 pollution.  Farm subsidies have perverted how we produce food; it has made corn artificially inexpensive, even though their tolls on our bodies and soil have been astronomically expensive.  Farm subsidies, and corn by default, has infiltrated every aspect of our agricultural process, because we pay agribusiness to grow it cheaply, we can feed it to our cows, pigs and change its chemical composition and put into fruit juice and baked goods. It is time to revaluate our corn subsidies, because there are great implications to being so dependent on fossil fuels that are not only environmental, they are also strategic and patriotic. Why should we be giving foreigners our hard earned money when there is a better way to grow our food?

It really comes down to our agricultural policy, we have for years stressed a system that benefits "efficiency" over inefficiency, by paying large farms to grow grains at massive quantities. So few Americans really understand agricultural policy, or care to see its implications on our daily lives it is our subsidies that are making fossil fuel hungry farming efficient not the system itself.  A good friend of mine grew up on a wheat farm in northern North Dakota, this girl drove a combine as a kid (so cool!), their farm was a small family-run operation of about 1100 acres and they received little to no subsidies from the federal government however the larger agribusiness like ADM did.  Throughout her teens she saw family-run wheat farms buckle under economic pressures while larger agriculture corporations flourish, expand and consolidate. This is story of the past 50 years, consolidation and yet it is in our agricultural sector that this consolidation has been the most obscene, where we have massive feedlots feeding cows corn, and pig farms so industrial they pollute whole communities, that you and I, the citizens of America, can have the most impact.  It is impossible to buy our TV's from local producers but it is possible to buy our meat and vegetables from farmer's who are opting out of our agricultural industrial process.  Change is a foot and there is so much to be gained; it is time to get our politicians to listen.

Mark's grass-fed farm in the Ozarks.

We met Grass-fed Party member Mark Hudson in September at a Cowcus in New York. Mark had come all the way from Arkansas for the Cowcus! We found out that Mark was in the process of starting a small grass-fed farm in Southwest Missouri, the heart of Ozark country. The land he currently owns was settled by his great-grandparents in the 1860’s when his grandfather drove cattle over from Georgia and Tennessee to the Ozarks and met his wife, a woman of the cattle owning Caddo tribe. They established a farm together, which stayed in Mark’s family until the 1950’s. Mark, who grew up on an adjacent farm, recently bought part of the old family farm, which had changed hands in the 50s.

Tell me a little bit about the farm you grew up on. Did your family raise grass-fed cows?

 Our cattle were on grass; however, the majority of the calves were weaned and sold as feeder cattle. This is on land my father purchased in the 1960’s. Until the early 1970’s most of these light calves went to the wheat pastures in Kansas for finishing. Typically, during the 30 days prior to slaughter, grain was provided. As a kid we ate grass-fed beef from our own cows. I remember wishing we could eat the plastic wrapped supermarket beef, but I’ve since realized how much better I had it.

When my ancestors came to this area in the 1860’s they brought cows. Their calves were weaned and tuned to grass. They also grazed the mountainsides for acorns to supplement their diet. Old folks around here say, “A good acorn meant fat cattle in the spring.”

After 1 to 2 years, the fat cattle were driven to market. My Grandfather drove cattle to markets in Kansas City on horseback. They were all grass-fed. At first to Kansas City and later to the railroad in Crane, Mo. They were truly grass-fed for over 100 years.

As a kid did you see yourself owning your own farm one day?

 Yes. I always planned to continue and expand the farming operation. FFA and 4-H were a significant part of childhood on the farm.

Have you been able to do that?

While working as a grain inspector I established a farrow-to-finish hog operation. I grew grain, mixed feed, farrowed pigs and finished to 245 lbs. With high input costs and low returns, the operation was not sustainable.

Three years ago land next to our family farm came up for sale. This land was part of my great grandfather’s place. I purchased this acreage and am in the process of reclaiming pastures and installing improvements.

I spent a few years looking for a bank that would give me a loan to buy the cattle. Because grass-fed cattle need more time to grow, I wouldn’t be able to make a payment for at least 2 years. I finally found a local banker who knows me and helped me buy the cattle. It took a few years of looking.

I am establishing all pasture without chemicals and using the most environmentally sensitive practices. The USDA Conservation Service is very helpful in this area. I recently gained funding through the federal EQIP program. It basically helps pay for wells and fencing to keep cattle out of natural springs and to put native grasses back on the land. I have until November 2009 to finish my improvements.

What is ecologically distinctive about your part of the country?

 One distinction is in the Ozarks we have some of the highest carrying capacity per cattle per acre, given to the grasses, soil, and climate. We get about 2 snows per year. Grass is growing all year round. My cows will graze native warm weather grasses in the winter and cool weather grasses such as clover fescue in the summer. We also have hardy cattle for four seasons grazing.

What kind of cows are you raising?

I’m raising Charolais and I just bought a new herd of Black Angus Heifers from a local farmer, so I know their history well. I know what they’ve been eating. They’re bred so they’ll be calving in February.

What are the biggest issues in your region?

 The biggest issue is the market for the live grass-finished cattle. Where can I take a live grass-fed cow and sell it? We can’t process meat and sell it to anyone without a USDA certified facility processing it, and most of those are own by the big 3 packers. I couldn’t just bring in 30 cows. I consider myself a wholesale producer meat on the hoof. We never had control, before the packers, it was the government – they bought and processed the cows.

If the USDA would ease up, I could produce any grass-fed beef cheaper or for as much as a feedlot. If we truly had a Grass-fed America, I could take my calf to a sell barn that would have a way to process it or pack it as a grass-fed product without shipping it to a feedlot. The 2 sell barns within a 50 mile radius of my place run about 5,000 to 6,000 calves per week.

I was trying to find out what to do with my cattle that will be ready in 2010. I have friends who own restaurants, but because I don’t have a USDA processing facility to process them, legally I’d have to sell them as live cows to the restaurants owners, who would be in charge of processing them. I’m committed to it though. I’m raising them. I’m raising grass-fed cows and what I do with them I’ll have to figure that out when the time comes.

I’m very excited about our new administration. Our cheep food policy in the US has had many benefits but it has created the subsidized corn/feedlot/agri-busness we have today. It is imperative that we revisit our food policy as build new energy and economic policies.

Young NFU members with President Tom Buis at the 2008 Convention

There must be a voice to represent those who are working on the land, those who must deal with the swing of commodity and fuel prices, feeding families, and retaining ownership of working agricultural lands. The interests of farmers and ranchers, who don’t have the lobbying weight of the big 4 packers, must still be fairly represented when policies are being made (or not made). The National Farmers Union gives independent producers a voice in Washington. When we talk about Grass-fed Change on this blog, we always come back to the need for effective policy change and the work of the National Farmers Union has proved a devotion to active grassroots development of new policy through programs such as the Farm Bill Listening Sessions. They work on issues surrounding taxes, renewable energy, conservation, country of origin labeling, fair trade, and fair competition, among others. They take part in the crafting of the Farm Bill, and work to see that the laws created in the bill are enforced and regulated. This week, we were able to interview Liz Friedlander, the director of communication at the National Farmers Union, to find out more about how the NFU is helping to give small farmers a voice in our nation’s agricultural policy.

What historical conditions gave rise to the formation of the National Farmers Union?

National Farmers Union was founded in 1902 in Point, Texas, to help the family farmer address profitability issues and monopolistic practices while America was courting the Industrial Revolution.


How does the NFU assist producers in retaining ownership of their commodities further to the processing channel?

NFU passed a policy position in 2008 recognizing consumers’ increasing demand for fresh, source-verified, direct from the farm food. This is the fastest growing sector of the food industry and a win-win for both farmers and consumers. Many of the Farmers Union state organizations have embraced the idea as well. A few examples: North Dakota Farmers Union owns two restaurants in Washington, D.C. – Founding Farmers and Agraria – that specialize in local food; Kansas Farmers Union’s members sell their products to local school districts for school lunches; Missouri Farmers Union has formed Heritage Acres Pork, natural pork products direct from the farm and supplier of the Chipotle restaurant chain.


What are some major accomplishments in Washington that the NFU has made on the behalf of it’s members?

In 2008, NFU was a key player during the farm bill debate with several of our priorities, most notably the creation of a permanent disaster program and implementation of mandatory country of origin labeling, becoming law as part of the final bill. In years past, we have advocated for emergency disaster assistance which has resulted in billions of dollar to farmers who sustain losses as a result of natural disasters. We’re continuing to monitor USDA’s implementation of the new farm law to ensure the U.S. Department of Agriculture follows Congressional intent. NFU has also been a long-time advocate for increasing the use and production of renewable fuels and were the first agriculture organization to support establishing a national Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS).


How does the NFU work to support co-ops, and how do the co-ops offer farmers and ranchers greater independence and control of their products and income?

NFU promotes rural economic and cooperative development by supporting existing agricultural co-ops and helping form new farmer co-ops and other rural businesses. The primary objective is to help family farmers and ranchers add value to the food, fiber and energy they produce. NFU assists producers to retain ownership of their commodity further into the processing channel and enhance market returns on their investment. By working together with other persons and groups, Farmers Union helps family farmers and ranchers advance their farm, ranch, co-op and community enterprises. We also advocated in strong support of the Value-Added Producer Grant program, included in the farm bill, which provides grant dollars to producers who wish to pursue creative strategies to add value to their raw commodities.

How can a small farmer benefit from being a part of the National Farmers Union?

NFU provides a voice for farmers, ranchers and their rural communities. The key to NFU’s success is our grassroots structure. All NFU policy is developed by our members, beginning at the local level, before being formally adopted by delegates to the organization’s annual convention. It is these policy positions that NFU staff and members advocate during visits with policy decision-makers both in Washington and across the country.

For more information about the National Farmers Union activity and commitments click on this link. Also, their check out their blog and gallery to see profiles of members and pictures from their events.