The disappointing results for farmers, rural communities, and working families throughout North America remind us that massive trade agreements should not be negotiated behind closed doors but negotiated openly with public input to ensure a fair deal for all.
The proposed criteria are inadequate and vague, failing to address significant and harmful practices in the livestock industry that are both anti-competitive and detrimental to farmer livelihoods.
The Green New Deal must eradicate the historical discrimination in government policies and agency practices against socially disadvantaged farmers and encourage farmland acquisition by resident operators.
Similar to the healthcare system, our food system has been radically underfunded and under prioritized, with corporations and profitization driving decision-making, but a new stimulus package focused on racial and economic equity could help to address that.
Today, NFFC joined Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA), Farm Aid, WhyHunger, HEAL Food Alliance, and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in releasing a set of policy asks for Congress that would allocate funds to directly invest in communities to build out critical infrastructure between local and regional food producers and families in need of healthy food.
A ‘Surf and Turf’ panel hosted by FERN highlighted the effects of climate change – particularly rising ocean temperatures – and the need for fishers in some regions to catch new species or get out of the business. Eaters should also practice flexibility.
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Missouri Cattlemen’s Association collect the same checkoff dollar from foreign cattle and beef as from U.S. beef producers. The more imports, the better for them, at a loss for U.S. producers.
The jury found that Bayer (Monsanto) and BASF created a joint venture to manufacture and sell dicamba-resistant seed and low-volatility herbicides, and that they conspired to create an ‘ecological disaster’ to increase profits.
The number of farms with 30 to 200 cows declined by 30 percent from 2000 to 2006, but farms with a large number of cows have increased, now producing the bulk of the nation’s dairy production.
Our history of exploitation, violence, and marginalization is not relegated to history books but manifests itself to this day in determining property rights, access to public services, and how systemic racism is or is not addressed.
Since the Civil Rights Movement, heirs property and partition sales have led to the loss of over 2 million acres of Black owned land in the South, but changes in the 2018 Farm Bill offer a path and alternative forms of documentation to access USDA programs and resources for families with land in heir property status.