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S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, is not so much about food safety standards (we already have good regulations and guidelines on how food should be handled and grown); rather, this bill is actually about traceability and accountability.

Industrial agricultural companies mix together produce from innumerable sources for national distribution. This is where all of the recent large contamination incidents have originated and why a food safety bill is needed. The industrial food chain needs traceability and accountability.

Meanwhile, small farmers who sell directly to consumers - at farmers market or farm stands - are accountable to their customers (not to mention the Oregon Dept of Ag and local sanitarians). The system is imminently traceable, since there is a direct path from farm to market to customer. To add a federal regulation system - on top of the local and state regulations all small producers are already subject to - would be redundant and onerous, and it could well drive many farmers out of business.

That's why we need to support the passage of an amended S. 510 to ensure that consumers can continue to choose to buy the safest and healthiest food possible. http://www.change.org/oregonrural/petitions/view/keep_small_farms_safe_in_the_food_safety_bill

posted 2 years, 11 months ago
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It's coming on to summer and another season of farmers markets, but local farmers are in jeopardy.

As we look forward to a bounty of local produce, there is a well-intentioned bill soon coming up for a vote in the Senate that, if left unchanged, could put the small farmers we've purchased from and chatted with each season out of business.

S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, is a necessary bill for creating the transparency, traceability and accountability needed in the industrial agriculture corporations that currently supply most of our country's food.

Problem is, as the bill now stands, small local farmers will be lumped in with these corporations, even though their scale and approach to growing and selling is vastly different. Amendments have been introduced to S. 510 and there is increasing producer and consumer demand that the Senate support and pass an amended bill.

Although TOL had a good show on food safety last December, it didn't examine the issue in terms of how scale of operation and accountability relate, and specifically the effect that the current bill would have on Oregon's small direct market farmers and burgeoning local foods economy.

The question is not whether we should have food safety standards - we should - but how the regulations enforcing these standards are to be applied to ensure accountability and traceability. My take is that since small farms are already regulated by state and local laws, their approach to growing and selling straight to consumers ensures accountability and traceability, and how all of the recent food safety outbreaks have been in the industrial ag sphere - small farms should be exempted from the final federal bill.

It would be great if you revisited the topic and involved small farmers, restaurants that purchase locally, Farm to School program coordinators, and local food buyers; perhaps representatives from Farm Aid, Local Harvest, or Organic Consumers Association; as well as voices from the industrial agriculture sphere (which includes big organic and also even small farms that sell to big food processors) to balance the conversation.

Thanks for giving it some thought,
Shaun

posted 3 years ago
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Food safety is a very important issue - as the number of recent outbreaks of foodborne illness attest. We all need and deserve a safe food system, and S510 is a well-intentioned attempt at offering a solution to the food system's current shortcomings. But it is overreaching in its attempts to apply a one size fits all process.

There are adequate regulations currently to ensure that food is handled safely. The problem is not knowledge and standards; it's accountability and traceability. All of the foodborne illness outbreaks have stemmed from food originating within the industrial agribusinesses, which source their products from hundreds upon hundreds of producers throughout the country, and even the world, to mix it into a final product put to market. There is a lot that can go wrong in the process, in any link of the long chain, so it is important that there is adequate oversight to ensure that things are running smoothly and safely and that the final product is safe. This is why a food safety bill is good.

This particular food safety bill, as it currently exists, is not good - because it lumps in small producers and processors with the big agricultural corporations and applies the same regulations and fees (which would potentially be crushing to small producers with thin profit margins).

Oregon has a burgeoning small farmer economic sector, as seen most readily at the many farmers' markets and CSAs, where the grower and maker of the product sells directly to the customer. Within this relationship there is pure accountability and traceability, because there is no middleman. The very livelihood of small producers and processors relies upon their providing the highest quality and safest product to their customers - otherwise they go out of business and lose the family farm. Therefore, there is no need to apply these regulations, which are meant for the convoluted supply chains of the big agribusinesses.

Small producers and processors should therefore be exempted from the current bill, S510, in recognition of the inherent accountability and traceability present in the relationship of a farmer selling one of his carrots directly to his customer. The surest route to food safety is knowing your farmer and legislation that recognizes the things that small producers and processors are doing right in already incorporating accountability and traceability into their day-to-day business.

posted 3 years, 5 months ago
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I'd like to refute the notion that "Remote rural communities that have at best a stagnant population growth can only really grow their economies by focusing on export-based industries." In fact, I would assert that this is one of the sources of their woes because money and resources is constantly being shipped out of the area to corporate headquarters elsewhere. Imagine if the goods and services produced in La Grande and the Grande Ronde Valley were used soley to benefit the area!

The flaw in traditional economic theory, a la Adam Smith, is that growth is endless and must be pursued endlessly. This simply isn't healthy, as any good ecology or biology student can attest.

No, we need steady-state economies of scale. There is a reason that the towns of early Europe and ancient China persisted for so long, and it's not export economies. We need to pursue sustainability, which includes the ability for all local residents to make a living and for the community to prosper. The more money is recirculated in a community, the more it will prosper and indeed even grow (which should make the traditional economists happy).

There are several ways to do this: Revitalizing downtowns and catering to locally-owned and operated businesses, introducing a commerical property taxation structure where rented storefronts are taxed less in order to encourage downtown business, supporting farmers' markets, encouraging buy local campaigns, raising corporate minimum taxes, doing business with and investing in Oregon-chartered local banks, and instituting local currencies (which are useless to corporate franchises but not to local businesspeople).

posted 4 years ago
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I am involved with a community group that is looking at expanding local recycling options.

Does anyone have any suggestions on the best manner to do so given the current economic climate and the depressed market for recyclables? Specifically, what would you recommend an organized group concentrate on: education, access to bins and other recycling options, new options for re-use and avoidance of packaging in the first place?

Any thoughts you have would be greatly appreciated.

posted 4 years, 5 months ago
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I think local control is important, vital even, for the success of utilizing biofuels and other renewable energy sources. True local control by communities is empowering to the citizens of those locales, as it can offer sustainable jobs. As Wendell Berry asserts, local control means better environmental stewardship because people will not wish to destroy their own homes. So much of the major renewable energy development that is happening is being done by large corporations, many of which are foreign-based. This would seem to be a continuation of the same exploitative energy-extraction industries that we have suffered through for the past century.

This should be a major part of the discussion on renewable energy, as should whether biofuels are sustainable in the long run. The organization I work for, Oregon Rural Action (based out of La Grande) is sponsoring a Homegrown Prosperity Renewable Energy Tour this summer, in partnership with the other groups under its mother organization, the Western Organization of Resource Councils. From August 18-27 we will be taking a biodiesel bus throughout Eastern Oregon to offer solutions to reduce greenhouse gases; increase energy efficiency in homes and businesses; clean, renewable energy; small-scale cooperative biodiesel production; local foods production, distribution and consumption; and good-paying jobs and income for rural communities. The bus and crew will make stops in Ontario, Baker City, La Grande and the Grande Ronde Valley, Pendleton and Hermiston, and will work with community leaders to address local needs, interests, and concerns. For more information feel free to visit www.homegrownprosperity.org. And if you are in Eastern Oregon in late August, please stop in at one of our events and keep this conversation going!

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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