Watch the Farm Bill now on CSPAN or at:http://www.cspan.org/watch/cs_cspan_wm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS

The Democratic Leadership seems to have made enough deals and bought off enough interests to think they have the votes to pass this bill; nobody thought this was possible as late as yesterday. As Chairman Peterson is saying as I type, “There’s something in this bill for everyone to like. There’s probably also something in this bill for everyone not to like.” Although we haven’t seen the reform needed to create a better food system, we have seen the advancement of good proposals pushed by many disparate groups: mandatory Country of Origin Labeling, needed changes to food stamps (though not for immigrants), Pigford claims redress, new money for organics and obesity research and many others; but no reform for our corn, soy, cotton, peanut and sugar addictions.

Borrowing a page from Jewschool’s “Motzash Mishegaas,” I’m starting a new weekly post “rounding-up” relevant news from the past week called “Ready for a Roundup?” because the world is NOT ready for any more Roundup Ready crops.

This week’s version focuses on the confluence of religion, sustainable agriculture projects and farm policy.

• Last Wednesday, an “interfaith” group released a letter to Speaker Pelosi demanding Farm Bill reform. Noticeably absent: all non-Christian/Catholic faiths, with the exception of Sojourners which is truly interfaith.

Last night I listened to the Book of Lamentations/Eichah. Today I read the words of Barbara Kingsolver:

Set down a platter of country ham in front of a rabbi, an imam, and a Buddhist monk, and you may have just conjured three visions of damnation. Guests with high blood pressure may add a fourth. Is it such a stretch, then, to make moral choices about food based on the global consequences of of its production and transport?

As Naf posted earlier, the ritual of fasting on Tisha B’av and other major fast days presents an interesting question for those who already use their food choices to represent their values, Jewish and otherwise. While I have traditionally fasted on Tisha B’av, I felt that the fast would weaken me too much to be at my “fighting weight” for a full day of work as the Farm Bill moves to the House Floor this Thursday.

Making connections between the mourning of the destruction of the Temple and the idea of Tikkun Olam as a substitute for the rebuilding of the Temple that many in the post-Messianic diaspora age make, I’ve recently viewed Tisha B’av as a moment to take a look at what is falling apart around us, as Anna posted earlier today.

However, as my teacher in Mexico used to say, when you dream about the world you imagine is possible, you should wake up and live it the next morning. Since the world I want to live in would have a wholly different food system, I decided that whatever food I would eat today should be representative of that world,

Chairman Peterson and the Ag Committee passed a Farm Bill at 10 PM last night, after 2.5 days of discussion.

The Farm Bill, which included significant new money for specialty crops (fruits and vegetables) and made some of the necessary changes to the food stamp program, did not contain meaningful reform in the Commodity title. While much of the press,  Speaker Pelosi & Majority Leader Hoyer seem to have drunk Chairman Peterson’s Kool-Aid about commodity reform, the total savings from the minor payment limitations only amounts to $50 million a year, a drop in the bucket compared with the $226 billion total spending in the House Committee bill.

Here’s how other healthy food priorities fared:

•    Community Food Projects: CFP was included in the mark at $30 million in annual discretionary funds (need to be fought for every year) and no amendment was offered to change the funding to mandatory (funds that are included in the Farm Bill and don’t need to be appropriated each year) because of lack of new mandatory funds in the Committee.

•    Geographic Preference/Local Procurement: An amendment, offered by Steve Kagen (D-WI) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE), to  allow schools to use Geographic Preference to request local foods for all child nutrition programs covered by the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 was adopted by the Committee on a voice vote.
•    Healthy Food Enterprise Development (HFED): An amendment, offered by Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), to include a local preference for loans and loan guarantees under the Rural Development Business and Industry Loan Program, was adopted by the Committee on a voice vote.

In the recent Hazon e-newsletter from earlier this week, Nigel Savage refers to Isaiah’s prophecy read in the Haftarah this coming Shabbat:

Every head is ailing
Every heart is sick…
Your land is a waste,
Your cities burnt down…
The yield of your soil is consumed by strangers…

For me all of this hits home as a prophecy for modern times, but the final verse in that section is particularly useful, as I spend my days working on increasing access to local food for the most vulnerable communities through Farm Bill legislation.

Fortunately, a very important amendment to allow school food service directors to use Geographic Preference in their bidding in order to request local foods, was unanimously accepted by the Agriculture committee at 12:15 AM last night!

However, we are still working to secure mandatory (meaning it doesn’t need to be fought for each year in an appropriations bill) funding for the Community Food Projects competitive grant program, an important incubator for projects linking small, sustainable farms with communities that need improved access to healthy, affordable local foods.

• The House Agriculture Committee has been debating and adding amendments to its draft Farm Bill since Tuesday and will be continuing throughout the day and maybe tomorrow. You can view the Committee’s (surprisingly interesting) debate and voting on the Farm Bill at: http://agriculture.house.gov/hearings/audio.html
• Please contact your Member of Congress and let them know that their support for the Farm Bill should be contingent on it being a bill that promotes healthy food and communities.

Since I seem to be cultivating a Whole Foods beat–

In the wake of the Mackey online pseudonym scandal, one fellow Cantabrigian advocates a boycott of the health food giant:

A big Whole Foods investor said it was sticking by Mackey and, as of midafternoon, the Whole Foods board hadn’t met to discuss the matter. Well, as the Whole Foods board sits in la-la land thinking that their shiitakes don’t stink, I offer myself as the first consequence. I am staging a one-man boycott. I will spend the rest of the summer procuring my vegetables from places other than Whole Foods, most preferably my local farmers market or co-op…

NYPost reports on a dispute over the authenticity of the new Bowery Whole Foods’ Guss’ Pickles supplier:

July 5, 2007 — It’s a case of the big pickle versus the little gherkin. A pickle peddler says she’s soured on trendy Whole Foods, claiming the chain of supermarkets has been buying legendary Guss’ Pickles from a Bronx rival she accuses of ripping off the famous name. “Whole Foods is selling the pickles [as if ] they are coming from the Lower East Side’s Guss’ Pickles,” said owner Patricia Fairhurst. “They never came from me. I am Guss’ Pickles.”

As the mark-up of the 2007 Farm Bill begins–the first two of six House sub-committees completed their mark-up of the Bill last week– I will be posting a series of updates about the Farm Bill, as I spend the summer in the thick of things interning for a national coalition working to create a Farm Bill that promotes healthy and local foods.

But first, a shameless plug: as part of the Community Food Security Coalition’s work, I am helping to organize a sign-on letter in support of these Healthy Priorities, which will be submitted to the leadership of the Senate Agriculture Committee this week as part of a Dear Colleague letter from Senators Feingold and Brown.

If you are involved with an organization that is related to food, agriculture, youth, communities, farms, public health, or really any area that understands the importance of what we put into our bodies and how our tax money is used, please support of the inclusion of initiatives to ensure access to fresh, healthy and local foods for all communities in the 2007 Farm Bill by signing your organization on to the letter to the leadership of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

PLEASE email me to sign on to the letter. For more information about the issues and efforts, visit CFSC’s Farm Bill policy page.

There are only a few days remaining to vote in the JFSJ poll to shape the upcoming Domestic Jewish Agenda. I’m very excited about this campaign for which Hazon, Isabella Freedman Retreat Center, Jdub Records, Jewcy.com, Jewish Student Press Service, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, Jews United for Justice, Jewschool.com, Moishe/Kavod House Boston, Progressive Jewish Alliance, The Shalom Center, The Tribe, VelveteenRabbi.com , and Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring are sponsors.

This isn’t exactly a brand-new concept, but the NYTIMES 05.25.07 feature on “Veggie Mobiles” traveling through food deserts seems like an exciting, albeit temporary and non-systemic, solution.

I’ve recently had a number of conversations about the role of the ice cream man in childhood. Despite the fact that I was privileged to grow up on a street that the ice cream truck did frequent daily, my “health nut” mother relegated actual purchases from the truck to highly rare novelties. Therefore, while I know that the concept of a vehicle driving around neighborhoods selling food isn’t exactly a comprehensive or sustainable solution to anything, I definitely see potential for “veggie mobiles” around the country, in lieu of Mr. Softee’s monopoly.

In a recent article in the UK’s Jewish Chronicle, Michael Green of our ally across the pond, Swords and Ploughshares, writes about the questionable kashrut status of genetically modified foods:

A long tradition of Jewish thinkers has emphasised the importance of protecting the natural environment, but Jewish voices have failed to reach a consensus since GM food hit the shops in 1996. . .

As Jonathan Sacks puts it, God and man are “partners in the work of creation”. The ancient covenant is mirrored in the modern concept of sustainability which seeks to “meet the needs of the present [generation] without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Or, in biblical terms, the environment must be preserved l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation.

There are many food-related things one can count while counting the omer– food miles, money spent on food each day/week….what else can folks think of?

Next week, Eat Local Challenge and the Locavores are sponsoring a Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge, from April 23 to 29. Many people are under the impression that eating local (like organic), requires a large food budget. The point of the Penny-Wise challenge is to eat local, as defined by a 100-mile radius, on what some consider a small budget.

The Penny-Wise challenge uses numbers from the Department of Labor’s Consumer Expenditures, which allots $68/week for a one-person household or $144/week for a household of 2+ with 2 wage earners.

Recipe for 1980s New York Style Sesame Noodle (courtesy NYTimes Magazine)

If you haven’t found a screening of King Corn, another amazing recent film, Black Gold, about the efforts of Tadesse Meskela and Ethiopian coffee farmers to increase the market for Fair Trade Ethiopian coffee varieties, will be airing on PBS Wednesday evening (times vary by station). If you want to continue remembering and learning about struggles for freedom after Passover ends– there are a number of actions we can take as consumers and responsible citizens with info atBlack Gold and Oxfam’s websites.

The goal of these films should not be to stress you out further about which products to consume….or should it?