Farm Labor
How You Can Help Women Get Land Rights
Published November 12, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Earlier this week I wrote about how women grow the majority of the world's food but own a tiny fraction of the world's land. This major imbalance makes women — and thus families — more insecure and effectively leaves a major segment of daily natural resource users out of our global conversations on issues such as global warming, sustainable agriculture and food crises.
Alert reader David Mastroianni asked what we can all do to help fix this situation. Here are some ideas.
Why Women's Rights Matter to Our Food
Published November 09, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
"Consider the daily life of the world’s typical small farmer," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the closing session of the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in September. "She lives in a rural village in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, or Latin America."
That's right: women grow more than half of the world's food and the lion's share (as much as 80 percent) of the food in developing countries, reports the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Despite their majority contribution, however, women only own 2 percent of the world's land, according to UN WomenWatch. Around the world, women are deprived of legal rights to the land they toil over day after day.
Farming is Back
Published November 03, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
As I mentioned, Bill Gates is investing in farmers around the world, aiming to empower them after decades of neglect from domestic policies and measly international aid. Some assert that he's going about it all wrong, but the fact remains: the spotlight is focused on farmers.
Apparently, according to an article in Time Magazine, Gates is at the head of a new trend: the international community and national governments are again focusing on supporting agriculture. The article's author, Michael Shuman, describes how farmers came to be so ignored:
Governments equated economic progress with steel mills and shoe factories. While urban centers thrived and city dwellers got rich, hundreds of millions of farmers remained mired in poverty. Agriculture in many developing nations stagnated.
"Now," he writes, "the farm is back."
The New Traditionalists: Young Small-Farmers
Published October 26, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
A friend recently told me she sits in her cubicle daydreaming about the charm of an agrarian life. She finds it ironic that she now longs to do precisely what her Lithuanian ancestors struggled so mightily to escape. They worked their fingers to the bone as peasant farmers to provide better futures to successive generations, on down to my present-day friend who has had the opportunity to get an education and become a well-paid professional with a comfortable life away from the hot sun and taxing fieldwork.
"It's funny," she mused, "that now I just want to go work on a farm."
Well it turns out she's not the only one. Mike Smith reported last night that in the U.S., young people -- often college grads who might have had lucrative desk jobs -- are discovering the appeal of getting their hands dirty.
In Response to "The Omnivore's Delusion" Part 1
Published August 17, 2009 @ 09:34AM PT
(This post is the first in a two-part response to "The Omnivore's Delusion" article written by Blake Hurst, a self-admitted "industrial" farmer from Missouri, a few weeks back for The Journal of American Enterprise Institute.)
More than simply being a piece praising modern technology and the rise of industrial agriculture, "The Omnivore's Delusion" is a show of utter frustration toward those the author calls "Agri-intellectuals" and their constant indictments against anything that is not small-scale, local and organic.
Although I don't agree with everything Hurst says (like his assertion that sustainable food advocates are decidedly anti-technology), I certainly understand and empathize with where he's coming from.
But what I think neither Hurst nor the "Agri-intellectuals" understand is that we have two distinct agricultural systems in the United States, and we need both of them equally.
Those of us involved in the sustainable food movement are drawn to the cause, largely, because we reject the idea that food should be an untraceable commodity with nothing but a multi-million dollar corporation standing behind it. We like to view food as having (to steal some language from one of my favorite organizations) a face, a place and a taste.
If you really think about that, it's somewhat of a selfish goal. We are imposing our values onto the people who grow our food, largely without the knowledge of what it takes to actually get that food onto our plates. Thankfully, there are an increasing number of farmers who share our food values and choose to grow either organically or sustainably, and almost exclusively for local markets. But we must understand that, for farmers like Hurst, this is neither a practical nor desirable opportunity.
Old McDonald's Intern
Published May 26, 2009 @ 07:01PM PT
Kim Severson wrote about college student working on organic farms as their summer internships in the New York Times this week. And I have to say, I think this is wonderful! The average age of farmers is about 57. They are an aging bunch and we need as many young farmers as we can get to become the next generation. Furthermore, there's a lot of knowledge that can't be gotten in books and it's imperative that farmers pass that on via mentoring young interns.
But one thing Severson notes really resonated with me. Not all of the interns are up to the job. It's hard work! That's what I found out when I tried my hand at organic farming. I visited a nearby farm a few summers ago, eager to learn what organic farming was really like. I'm still friends with the farmer, so I guess I wasn't that much of a pain in his tush, but I was definitely in the way more than I was helping.
As a San Diegoan, I was rather shocked that the farm (75mi from my home on the coast) was over 100F. After all, San Diego remains a cool 70 or so all year round. I began by cutting up mushy tomatoes to prepare them to be sundried. That was actually an OK job for me, since I know my way around a kitchen pretty well. And I was in the shade as I did it.
Next, I tried my hand at grading tomatoes - the best go to retail locations, the next best to the farmers' market, the mushy ones for sundrying, and the moldy ones to the compost. And it turned out I wasn't very good at it. I could figure out which ones were moldy, but that was about it. I felt bad that a lot of the "work" I did had to be re-done afterwards.
My third task was weeding an onion field. I was excited to finally do something that felt like real farming... until my hands began hurting. Really hurting. After I weeded a row or two, I had to give up. My poor hands just couldn't take it. I asked for something else to do.
One of the farm hands began taking me back towards the onion and I immediately began protesting. He assured me I'd be doing something else. He set me up in the shade, sitting on a crate in front of several crates of onions. The outer layers of skin on the onions were coated in dirt and had to be removed. So did the hairy roots at the bottom. I don't think I lasted too long doing that, either. My fingernails were on the verge of bleeding it hurt so much.
By the time they asked me to harvest the Swiss chard, I was physically and mentally exhausted and ready to be done with farm work for a very, VERY long time. I worked on the chard for a little while, but finally had to call it quits. You can call me a wimp. I know I am. Maybe it was the heat and I'd do better in better weather. But I know for sure that I owe a LOT of gratitude to the people who grow my food, and I do not have organic farming in my near future.
Saturday Brunch: No Breakfast for Old Hens
Published May 23, 2009 @ 06:36AM PT
Raiding the internet fridge for your intellectual delectation ...
- OpenLeft: The one type of claim to global warming skepticism that you will ever see me approvingly link to.
- Civil Eats: Ethical eating means care for the people who grow and harvest our food as much as it means care for how that food was produced. Also, is organic farming a form of activism without land reform?
- The Green Fork: What's the difference between a pigeon and an investment banker? A look at Food and Water Watch's guide to sustainable seafood (go, tilapia!)
- ObamaFoodorama: While California's first lady, Maria Shriver, followed Michelle Obama's lead in starting a garden in Sacramento on state grounds, it isn't organic, which must please some people no end. The USDA hires Rajiv Shah, yet another biotech booster.
- LaVidaLocavore: Vilsack may be pro-biotech, but at least he also likes small-scale, organic farming. The CropLife jagoffs are back at it, with a letter writing campaign encouraging people to tell Mrs. Obama that pesticides are yummy. McDonald's caught McGreenwashing. About not being anti-farmer.
PS - Dear The People Who Run Entertainment Companies: When you disable YouTube embedding of your artists' original videos and live performances, you are preventing me from advertising the music in your catalog for free on my website. A service which, I might point out, is even more valuable to you for music that's older and rarely played on the radio anymore. (Seriously, does anyone profit by my not showing people how cool the Eurythmics were, and hey, maybe they should grab one of their albums or some iTunes for old times' sake? Same for mini-clips from movies that aren't in theaters anymore.) This is moronic and self-defeating. Learn how to use advertising embeds and grow the f* up already. Kissy the face, n.
