The President’s Cancer Panel report, released today, exhorts consumers to choose food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers, antibiotics, and growth hormones to help decrease their exposure to environmental chemicals that can increase their risk of contracting cancer. Organic products avoid the use of these chemicals.

Read more…

You can help send a message to Secretary Vilsack and the Obama administration by signing this petition and calling your Senator to voice your thoughts. Help put a stop to Monsanto to ensure that healthy, safe, organic crops are preserved and continue to make their way to your doorstep.

We appreciate your support!

For more information about GMO’s, we put together an article a while back with some great information. Check it out here.

Senator Jon Tester of Montana

Background

You may remember our post in September about the Tester Amendment. The Tester Amendment refers to a bill called the Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510). In a nutshell, S.510 places stricter regulations on farms that process their crops. The issue arises with smaller farms and facilities as the bill makes it more difficult for your favorite small farm products to get into stores and your kitchen. Those small farms will also be forced to pay additional fees for required regulations and tests.

The Tester Amendment exempts those small farm/facilities with incomes under $500,000 and allows them to continue their operations while putting the necessary checks on big agriculture producers/farms.

The Problem in Washington

Since we last updated you, the Senate has voted 74 to 25 in favor of the cloture vote for The Food Modernization Act. This means it could move forward to a final vote by the end of the week.

At the moment, support for the Tester-Hagan Amendment is unclear and possibly even absent. According to a Democracy Now alert:

“We’re hearing that some Senators still have not made up their minds or even worse, some are waffling in their support for the Tester-Hagan and Manager’s Amendments, which will help protect farmers who sell their produce or goods locally to farmers markets, customers, stores and restaurants from excessive regulations that could harm their ability to compete and even survive.”

Even food experts Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser are calling for action in supporting the Tester Amendment:

“S.510 is the most important food safety bill in a generation. The Tester amendment will make it even more effective, helping to ensure food safety while protecting small farmers and producers.  We both think this is the right thing to do,” said Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser.

How You Can Help

It’s critical you show your support for the Tester-Hagan Amendment today. Washington is on the move, and very close to a decision on this. With your support we can ensure small farms like Tahoma Farms and distributors like Terra Organics are able to sustain their businesses without the fees and roadblocks included in this unbalanced act.

STEP 1: Call Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and let them know you support the Tester-Hagen Amendment.

You may be surprised, but giving your Senators a call makes a serious difference in how they act. Calling in is the easiest and best way to help make the Tester-Hagen Amendment happen.

STEP 2: Share this with your friends and family

Terra Organics and Tahoma Farms needs all the support it can get in helping to pass this critical amendment. Explain the importance of the Tester-Hagen amendment to friends and family and urge them to make the same call to their own State Senators.

Thank you, as always, for your support! We, at Terra Organics, love being able to provide you and your family with the best quality, small farm grown, organic produce and hope to be able to continue to do so in the same way that we already are.

Resources:

Food and Ag Groups Rally Against Tester Amendment

Stand Up for Small Farmers

There’s also a graphic that I’ve been holding onto for a while, and it now seems timely to share it.

The subsidy regime pits commodity growers against vegetable and fruit growers, and McDonalds and others buy fillers and subsidized meat, dairy, and grains at an artificially low cost.  The foods that should be accessible to the least healthy amongst us have little to no price supports.  So long as corn syrup and factory meat and dairy dominate the $60 billion a year farm program in this country, McDonalds will always dominate the way food is produced and consumed in this country, no matter how many new farmers markets are springing up around the country.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean we can give up the fight.

And that’s because the new law in Arizona is state-sanctioned discrimination.  If the problem was on our northern border, and white Canadians and other non-American whites were jumping the border, it would be obvious that a similar law that called for the detention of any person suspected of being in the country illegally would be absurd.  Or, more accurately, it would be useless because how could one distinguish between an illegal Canadian and a legal American?  But because there’s no confusion that in Arizona they are targeting illegal-aliens from Latin America, anybody with brown skin and that speaks Spanish is a suspect, a target, of the law.  And that is the definition of discrimination.

As a matter of principle, we reject discrimination.  And for the millions of legal, brown Americans in this country – including the thousands of farm-workers that put food on our table – we stand behind you.

This program is responsible for technically assisting Pierce County farmers, developing educational programs to support existing and new farmers, and driving the knowledge base of agriculture in the County.  Over the past 15 months this program has applied for over $6 million dollars in external grants funds through partnerships with county, state, and federal agencies, non-profit agencies, and farmer cooperatives.  This money has been used to build the future generation of farmers, identify potential new agricultural products and cropping systems, reduce production costs and increase profit margins, and increase consumer interest in Pierce County agricultural goods.

For every $1.00 Pierce County contributes to support this program the county receives $176.00 in return in the form of grant funding or state support. In such a tight economic climate turning away this much funding will have resounding effects and reduce potential future leveraging of county funds.

Pierce County agriculture is a contributor of over $84 million to the overall economy of the county.  This $84 million tends to multiply up to 2.5 times and accrue close to home. Although this $84 million is less than significant compared to the total economy of the county, it is very significant to the rural areas of the county.  The county has witnessed a loss of farmland and farmers over the past twenty years, and without technical support and educational outreach this trend will only continue.  The county is seeing strong interest by residents to purchase locally produced goods through such avenues of farmers markets and other direct sales avenues.  Without the support of such programming the supply will not meet the demand.

Your Involvement Is Crucial!

Without hearing from you, the council will not see the value of this programming and will terminate funding.  Voice your opinion to county council member listed below.  The council’s Rules and Operations Committee will consider the budget reduction proposal at its 10 a.m. meeting on Monday, April 5. The full council will then consider it at its Tuesday, April 6 council meeting at 3 p.m.

For those who cannot attend, both meetings will be broadcast live on PCTV channel 22 and streamed live and archived at www.piercecountytv.org.

We, at Terra Organics, work with the folks at WSU Extension in Pierce County all the time and we need them as a resource and voice in support of local agriculture in Pierce County.  Please consider contacting your representative to the County Council today!

Our friend, Mary Embleton, at Cascade Harvest Coalition, wrote the following letter:

Dear friends,

Proposed budget cuts by the Pierce County Council threaten to shut down WSU Extension in Pierce County.  As you remember, we lost all farm support and research programs in King County this year due to budget actions by the King County Council.  We cannot continue to lose the critical infrastructure, staff, research and program support that Extension provides to farmers and resource landowners throughout our region and state.  My greatest fear is that these cuts will continue unless we act now and are heard.

I believe that the councils and others do not see farming as economic development, which is a priority in these challenging economic times.  But, that couldn’t be further from the truth.  Every farm is a business that directly supports employees and many other purchases throughout the community.  That spending and employment lead to additional economic impacts throughout the region.  Local farms make local economies more resilient, not less.  Collectively, our efforts are strengthening local economic development opportunities by helping more farmers get on the land, creating new market connections and adding significantly to the quality of life in our region.

We have worked so hard for so many years to get where we are now.  The demand for local food easily exceeds what we can produce at this time.  There are programs and research in place to grow the next generation of farmers, improve economic and environmental sustainability and address critical issues of climate change, food access and food safety.  If we truly want a sustainable regional food system, we have to act NOW.

Please, take a few moments to call and write each Pierce County Council member asking them to maintain funding to WSU Pierce County Extension.

I have included some background information and talking points should you need them.

This is critically important.

In community,

Mary

Council Webpage

http://www.co.pierce.wa.us/pc/abtus/ourorg/council/default.htm

District 1 – Shawn Bunney
sbunney@co.pierce.wa.us
(253) 798-3635

District 2 – Joyce McDonald
joyce.mcdonald@co.pierce.wa.us
(253) 798-6694

District 3 – Roger Bush
rbush@co.pierce.wa.us
(253) 798-6626

District 4 – Timothy M. Farrell
tfarrel@co.pierce.wa.us
(253) 798-7590

District 5 – Barbara Gelman
bgelman@co.pierce.wa.us
(253) 798-6653

District 6 – Dick Muri
dick.muri@co.pierce.wa.us
(253) 798-3308

District 7 – Terry Lee
terry.lee@co.pierce.wa.us
(253) 798-6654

Here are some talking points:

WSU Extension is a joint program of Washington State University and Pierce County. WSU Extension staff are the county government’s experts in agriculture production and farm management. Extension staff have degrees and experience in production agriculture and focus their technical assistance and education on economic development and profitability of farms and related businesses. The reductions proposed in the Council budget will have the following impacts on the $84,000,000 (annual sales) agriculture industry:

Programming

• WSU Extension could no longer provide economic development services to agriculture including alternative feed crops for livestock production, grain production, and new crop identification and development.
• Technical assistance via farm visits, the phone, e-mail or the web for plant, animal and pest problems would no longer be available for Pierce County growers.
• All agriculture workshops for existing and new farmers and ranchers will be eliminated.
• The County would lose leveraged resources from WSU and its volunteers. Pierce County Agriculture Extension generates an additional $176.00 for every $1 of general funds: $82,747from WSU, $6 million in partner grants, support and in-kind matches.
• Workshop revenue would also be lost to the County.

Impacts on Agriculture Industry

• Loss of farmland and farming operations due to unprofitability
• Increased costs to farmers as a result of plant, pest and animal problems
• Loss of competitiveness to other growing regions
• Less access to locally-grown food products for consumers
• More salmon and water quality/quantity issues because there is less farmland and fewer farm land stewards
• Decrease in “food security”: farms less sustainable; consumers less self-reliant