With dairy farmers’ prices plummeting $9.50 per cwt. (hundred weight) from the high point of $26.16 in September 2014 down to the present level of $16.66, it makes one wonder if the net result will come close to the 2009 massacre.
NFFC’s Spring 2015 Newsletter is Here!
NFFC members and friends provide thoughtful insights and event updates that you don’t want to miss in the 2015 Spring Newsletter.
NFFC Among Orgs Asking President Obama to Protect Pollinators
Groups raise concerns about neonicotinoids and their effects on bees, butterflies and other pollinators.
NFFC Leader Arden Tewksbury: Federal Policies Hurt Dairy Operations
Whole-fat dairy products have kept farmer healthy, while federal policies have hurt dairy farmers, their related businesses and communities.
Op-ed by George Naylor – Agriculture or agribusiness? As Iowa goes…
With so much at stake, we should be very clear about our vision for agriculture. The agribusiness vision is not the only or best one, especially for family farmers.
My Imaginary CAFO
If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em, the old saying goes. So I’ve decided to stop fighting and just build a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) of my own. I’ve figured out the costs and … it’s as good as owning an NFL team, but without most of the head injuries… like the proverbial Cash Cow… only you don’t need a pasture! Here’s how you, too, can be a CAFO owner… in an easy 10 steps:
NFFC December 2014 Newsletter
NFFC December 2014 Newsletter.
Group Coalition Letter Opposing Changes to COOL
The undersigned 207 farm, ranch, rural, faith, labor, environmental, farmworker, manufacturing and consumer organizations urge the leadership of the Senate Appropriations Committee to reject any effort to weaken, suspend or rescind mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) in the upcoming legislation to provide funding for the federal government for the remainder or part of Fiscal Year 2015.
La Via Campesina: Day of Action Against Violence Towards Women
On this International Day of Action Against Violence Towards Women, La Via Campesina is again denouncing the structural violence that women have to confront each day and that has been systematically silenced, made to appear natural, and rendered invisible by patriarchal capitalist society.
NFFC Part of Lawsuit Against U.S. EPA
A coalition of U.S. farmer and environmental groups, including the NFFC, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to overturn regulatory approval granted last week for a herbicide developed by Dow AgroSciences.
Palestinian Farmer Highlights Food Sovereignty Efforts with USFSA, Iowa CCI
The Union of Agricultural Work Committees, an organization dedicated to assisting Palestinian farmers in the fight for sovereignty over their trade and their land, was born in 1986. ElRahman, the organization’s board chairman, visited the United States for the first time this year to receive the Food Sovereignty Prize from the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance on October 15 in Des Moines, Iowa.
Rural Repression: The Cruel Insanity of Obama’s Agriculture Export Plan
When President Barrack Obama stated in his recent State of the Union address that one avenue to advance the economy was to increase U.S. agricultural exports, I cringed. Right out of Milton Friedman, export agriculture is the neo-liberal free market capitalist approach to agriculture that, if anything, has been successful in destroying family farmers. Obama’s announcement was yet another death-knell to the world’s family farmers. It was a gift to corporate agribusiness. It meant yet another wave of family farmers throughout the world being forced off the land resulting in another period of rural repression and dislocation. Don’t think when you read this that the scenario is somewhere other than the United States. This is a U.S. story as well.