Farm Issues
Farm Bill: Healthy Food, not Corporate Welfare!
Unless you are a diehard policy wonk, it's tough to get excited about the Farm Bill. But consumers have a bigger stake in this mammoth piece of federal legislation than we may realize. Big Ag's lobbyists fight hard to protect corporate interests, almost always at the expense of consumers. The OCA is here to help you fight for for healthy food and against corporate welfare!
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Apples· steve urow© 2014 -
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steve urow's garden not· steve urow© 2014
Back at the start of his campaign for president, in September 2016, Donald Trump argued that the government could save well over $1 trillion by doing away with many food safety and environmental regulations. The campaign’s web site stated: ““The FDA Food Police… dictate how the federal government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food...
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On a recent March morning following a rainstorm, Wisconsin farmers woke up to find their farms covered in sheets of ice. Cattle rancher Sylvia Burgos Toftness was soon out in the thick of it, tending fences; the grass-fed, certified organic cows on her 72-acre ranch, Bull Brook Keep, weren’t going to wait for the sun to melt the ice.
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Annie Woods is far from the screen-loving caricature of her Millennial generation. Forgoing the traditional 9-to-5 in favor of running Dark Wood Farm in Boone County, Kentucky, Woods said she doesn’t mind the early mornings or unpredictable seasons because she can see her work translate into “something tangible.”
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At the recent Nebraska Farmers Union Convention Dr. Martha Shulski, our State Climatologist who co-authored the 4th National Climate Assessment, eerily foretold to a large group of farmers that we are moving into a new era of weather extremes.
Read more300+ Groups to Congress: #GreenNewDeal 'Must Transform Our Food System and Revitalize Rural America'
In February, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced the historic Green New Deal resolution, backed by dozens of other Democratic lawmakers and a growing grassroots movement of Americans frustrated with Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration's attacks on climate and environmental protection efforts—as well as insufficiently bold measures by Democrats to tackle the global crisis.
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Many people choose organic food in order to protect themselves and their families from exposure to pesticides. But choosing organic also means helping to create a healthier food system for everyone, from farm to table. Far too often, discussions about pesticides in the food system exclude the men, women, and children who plant, tend, and harvest our food.
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In an age of planned obsolescence, there’s no satisfaction quite like fixing your own stuff. It’s not exactly churning butter, but repairing your eyeglasses, your bike, or your Volkswagen Beetle can convey a hardy sense of self-sufficiency. “If you can’t repair it, you don’t own it!” trumpets the manifesto of iFixit.org, a website for tinkerers.
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Sometimes you have a bad year. That’s always been the reality of being a farmer or rancher. The business of growing crops and raising animals for profit requires two crucial elements for success that are out of farmers’ control: good weather, and good government policy. No one enters the agricultural profession thinking that every season is going to be successful.
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Outlining how power over America's farmland has increasingly has been taken over by huge corporations as family farmers suffer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday unveiled her latest 2020 policy proposal aimed at "leveling the playing field" for working Americans.
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The worst agricultural downturn since the 1980s is taking its toll on the emotional well-being of American farmers.
In Kentucky, Montana and Florida, operators at Farm Aid’s hotline have seen a doubling of contacts for everything from financial counseling to crisis assistance.
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