Chickens, Chickens and More Chickens

This is my running blog about chickens. Attendance is up here at LFC. Thank you for checking us out. Food. Inc tells a gruesome story about the state of food and meat in America.  It shows the gruesomeness of factory chickens vs. the professionalism of a country farmer , who knows what he’s doing to provide fresh healthy chicken.  Yea!!!  The film is currently at the Drexel in Bexley. I did not go into enough detail in my previous blog about how important this movie is. You must see it. Now! They have hosted two panel discussions so far which have been right on target and well received by the sold out audience in attendance. Things could change drastically with the emergence of this movie. I would like anyone who want’s to chime in on the Mobile Chicken Processing Unit to sign in here. I made note on OEFFA direct about my concerns that this state researched project might stall and there’s a lot of discussion to be had and shared. Please do so here.

This week in Columbus

This week in Columbus was a busy one for food activists. Food, Inc. is showing at The Drexel in Bexley. A well documented overview of the destruction of the American Dream by corporate food interest. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and all that. I think the Amish have it right on a lot of issues, notwithstanding religious viewpoints. North Market hosted a panel discussion that brought together people such as Greener Grocer, Clintonville Community Market, Snowville Creamery Milk Company, the Restaurant Widow blogger and Wayward Seed Farm to present their concerns for food in our society. A very good start to reaching the public. Vote With Your Fork. I think this is a very important thing. Never forget why we have food deserts in this country and the effects of having slave labor providing the food we eat. I hope to go into more detail about the 90,000 immigrant workers that are housed in 900 work camps in Michigan  and northern Ohio every Summer and Fall, the effects on workers being exposed to chemicals when tomatoes are gassed to look red, And perhaps the effects these people who have or haven’t access to food stamps and health care have on our taxes and the general well being on society as we know it.

I just lifted the following article from localfoodsystems.org because I like the direction it goes in. This supports many of the goals I see as needed to take control of food away from the corporations.

This text came from Bob Sheak, a retired Sociology professor and voracious reader. He is kind enough to send … his notes from anything to do with Ag from time to time.

from the new issue of Monthly Review that I am reading. The focus of the issue is captured in its title: “The Crisis in Agriculture & Food: Conflict, Resistance, & Renewal.” The first articles document the terrible damage and disastrous trends associated with the corporate-dominated and neo-liberal government and trade policies on small farmers/peasants around the world. The second set of articles examine concepts like “food sovereignty” and “redistributive land reform” and other concepts and developments related to sustainable agriculture.

There are indeed noteworthy developments around the world of “developing nations,” though not yet sufficient to reverse corporate-based trends.

In one of the articles, by Peter Rosset, “Fixing Our Global Food System,” the author refers to a regional example of exemplary farming practices. He writes:

“The Amish and Mennonite farm communities found the eastern United States provide a strong contrast to the virtual devastation described by Goldschmidt in corporate farm communities. Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, which is dominated by small farmers who eschew much modern technology and often even bank credit, is the most productive farm county east of the Mississippi River. It has annual gross sales of agricultural products of $700 million, and receives an additional $250 million from tourists who appreciate the beauty of traditional small farm landscapes.”

Near the end of his article, Rosset notes:

“The benefits of small farm economies extend beyond the economic sphere. Whereas large, industrial-style farms impose a scorched-earth mentality on resource management – no trees, no wildlife, endless monocultures – small farmers can be very effective stewards of natural resources and the soil. To begin with, small farmers utilize a broad array of resources and have vested interest in their sustainability. At the same time, their farming systems are diverse, incorporating and preserving significant functional biodiversity within the farm. By preserving biodiversity, open space and trees, and be reducing land degradation, small farms provide valuable ecosystem services to the larger society.

“In the US, small farmers devote 17 percent of their area to woodlands, compared to only 5 percent on large farms. Small farms maintain nearly twice as much of their land in ’soil improving uses,’ including cover crops and green manures. In the third world, peasant farmers show a tremendous ability to prevent and even reverse land degradation, including soil erosion. The can and/or do provide important services to society at-large. These include sustainable management of critical watersheds – thus preserving hydrological resources – and the in situ conservation, dynamic development and management of the crop and livestock genetic resources upon which the future food security of humanity depends.”

“…The forested areas from which wild foods, and leaf litter are extracted, the wood lot, the farm itself with intercropping, agroforestry, and large and small livestock, the fish pond, and the backyard garden, all allow for the preservation of hundreds if not thousands of wild and cultivated species. Simultaneously, the commitment of family members to maintaining the soil fertility on the family farm means an active interest in long-term sustainability not found on large farms owned by absentee investors. If we are truly concerned about rural ecosystems, then the preservation and promotion of small, family farm agriculture is a crucial step that we must take.”

Another article, “From Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty: The Challenge of Social Movements” written by Eric Holt-Gimenez, discusses the growth of farmer-to-farmer organizations and farm advocacy groups. Here’s one paragraph:

“Via Campesina has also been among the most vocal critics of institutional responses to the global food crisis. At the High Level Task force meeting on the food crisis in Madrid, Spain, Via Campensina released a declaration demanding that solutions to the food crisis be completely independent of the institutions responsible for creating the crisis in the first place (i.e., the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and CGIAR). The declaration reaffirmed the call for food sovereignty, demanded an end to land grabs for industrial agrofuel and foreign food production, and called on the international community to reject the Green Revolution and instead support the findings of the UN’s International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). This seminal assessment, sponsored by five UN agencies and the World Bank, and authored by over four hundred scientists and development experts from more than eighty countries, concluded that
there is an urgent need to increase and strengthen further research and adoption of locally appropriate and democratically controlled agroecological methods of production, relying on local expertise, local germplasm, and farmer-managed, local seed systems.”

Holt-Gimenez concludes his essay as follows:

“Ultimately, to end world hunger, the monopolistic industrial agriculture-food complex will have to be replaced with agroecological and redistributive food systems. It is too early to tell whether or not the fledgling trend of a convergence signals a new stage of integration between the main currents of peasant advocacy and smallholder agroecological practice. Nonetheless, the seeds of convergence have been sown. Successfully cultivating this trend may well determine the outcome of both the global food crisis and the international showdown over the world’s food system.”

Other articles refer to interesting developments in Cuba, Venezuela, the largest poor-people’s/peasant movement in the world, the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil. There are also many points scattered in the articles on the specific benefits of organic farming. And more….

Read more http://localfoodsystems.org/node/483

4 Seasons City Farm

It’s been a busy week for 4 Seasons. We had a lot of Mennonite volunteers sprucing up the gardens. We welcomed the Directions for Youth program, who will be working with us on a regular basis as well as several young people from the Godman Guild youth programs. The Main Street Farm Market is starting up this weekend. (Main and 18th)

I am excited to share that 4 Seasons City Farm is currently featured in the Connect section of Columbus Foundation website. Please direct your friends, family,  staff, board members, volunteers, and  all possible donors to view the organization’s project at http://www.columbusfoundation.org/connect/pprojects.aspx during the month of July.

Visitors to the Connect section have the opportunity to learn about a project at a nonprofit, view the portrait, and donate–­with the click of a button. The goal of this section is to encourage donors to explore community needs and connect with local causes by quickly linking them to the valuable information in PowerPhilanthropy. Selection is based on donor interest, sector diversity, and community impact. The Foundation will feature ten projects per month on a rotating basis.

PowerPhilanthropy enables Foundation donors and the wider community to enrich their knowledge about hundreds of central Ohio nonprofits. By providing comprehensive information about your organization’s mission, finances, management, and programming, you are helping donors make effective choices about their charitable giving.

Thank you for supporting organizations with these portraits and for creating positive change in our community.

Flint to consider ordinance changes to enhance urban agriculture

The city of Flint, MI is promoting urban agriculture and urban ecology as means to transform Flint’s urban blight into an aesthetically pleasing, functional, and sustainable metropolitan landscape.  Read the article…

The side bar on the article had some interesting arguments that we should consider for our own municipalities here in central Ohio.

Flint Journal extras Regulating Urban Agriculture

Chickens and goats Why allow: Provide eggs, meat and dairy products. Inexpensive, high-quality manure compost replaces expensive synthetic fertilizers. How to regulate: Limit numbers and require permits for each animal. Require pens Require setbacks from property lines Restrict roosters Require notification and approval of neighbors Neuter male goats De-horn goats

Hoop Houses
Why allow:
Extended growing season for extra production. Allows gardeners to prepare seedlings. Can grow cold-hardy varieties in winter without additional heat source.
How to regulate:
Specified setbacks from property lines and streetfront
Specific height and size limits for each zoning district
Require fencing or shrubs as a buffer to adjacent properties

Bees
Why allow:
Necessary to pollinate crops. More beekeepers needed to bolster honeybee populations decreased by an unknown cause in recent years. Produce honey and other valuable products.
How to regulate:
Limit number of hives
Require setbacks from property lines
Specify minimum lot sizes
Require a permit

Producing Food for Sale
Why allow:
Creates income for gardeners. Offsets costs to produce fresh, safe food. Local production guarantees local availability. Reduces environmental impact of food production by reducing fuel and transportation costs.
How to regulate:
Require fences or landscaping as buffers between houses and garden.
Allow market gardens in certain zones such as multiple-family, commercial, industrial or urban garden districts.

Source: Genesee County Land Bank, Ruth Mott Foundation Applewood and Michigan State University Extension.

Coming Attractions

Hello,
There are two movies coming up that might be of interest: Polycultures: Food Where We Live and Food, Inc.
Details below:

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Polycultures: Food Where We Live will premier in Columbus premier on July 11 at Studio 35 – http://www.studio35 .com/
It will be a matinee screening and the guys who made the film possible, David Pearl, Tom Kondilas and Brad Masi will be present to share their story.

Below is a synopsis of the documentary and you can read more about it by following this link: http://web.me. com/blueheron55/ NAC_Site/ PolyCultures. html

It was also featured at the 34th Cleveland International Film Festival last March: http://www.clevelan dfilm.org/ ciff_films_ find-details. php?fid=2899

AboutPolyCultures

PolyCultures: Food Where We Live is a feature-length documentary movie that portrays the diverse communities around Northeast Ohio coming together to grow a more sustainable and local food system. PolyCultures is firmly rooted in the idea that local/sustainable food is good for the health of individuals, communities, local economies, and the environment. To balance the advocacy perspective, it features many national and international experts who place area food production in the bigger picture of sustainability. The term “polyculture” refers to the ecologically- minded technique of growing a diversity of crops/animals on one farm, but it also represents the documentary’ s participants coming from very different backgrounds to arrive at similar conclusions and take coordinated action. The aesthetic is a mix of “agrarian” camera techniques portraying post-industrial Cleveland and surrounding farmland, symbolizing the ground-level nature of this movement. PolyCultures was produced by LESS Productions in conjunction with the New Agrarian Center from 2006 to 2009.
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Food, Inc.

Starts Fri 7/17 at the Drexel – http://www.drexel. net/beta/ index.php? option=com_ content&task= blogcategory& id=14&Itemid= 29

Director: Robert Kenner
Cast: Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide- resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

*RATED PG*

Official Site