Friends of Rural New York

George Naylor, President, National Family farm Coalition
Corn and soybean farmer, Churdan, Iowa

“We need policy-not just new markets-to make sure sustainable family farms are the rule and not the exception.”
How can we be struggling for family farm agriculture when “the experts” think we would be closing the barn door after the horses are out? Fifty three years of “market oriented” farm policy written to feed the military-industrial complex with cheap labor and higher profits have clearly decimated farm communities and conveyed the impression the nation doesn’t really need farmers.  Well, if “we the people” believe we do need farmers, if we do need people-oriented agriculture with economic opportunity in rural areas, and if we do need to conserve our resources for future generations, then we have no choice but to round up the horses and bring them back to a warm and friendly barn.

We need policy-not just new markets-to make sure sustainable family farms are the rule and not the exception. We need policy to rationalize our whole economy by internalizing all costs into the prices of things we buy with conservation of energy and natural resources guiding our way. Otherwise, multinational corporation’s vision of using the WTO to go to other continents for our labor, energy, and food will lead us to a planet and society burned up by waste and war.

A new vision has developed of sustainable family farm agriculture where “food sovereignty” (where each country retains the right to determine its food and farm policies to meet its citizens’ needs rather than those imposed by international trade agreements) gives us the power of policy to create an agriculture that serves “we the people” with an emphasis on environmentally sound locally produced food. The next farm bill can internalize costs with real price supports,
From Farm Aid.org

George Naylor, President, National Family farm Coalition
Corn and soybean farmer, Churdan, Iowa

“We need policy-not just new markets-to make sure sustainable family farms are the rule and not the exception.”
How can we be struggling for family farm agriculture when “the experts” think we would be closing the barn door after the horses are out? Fifty three years of “market oriented” farm policy written to feed the military-industrial complex with cheap labor and higher profits have clearly decimated farm communities and conveyed the impression the nation doesn’t really need farmers.  Well, if “we the people” believe we do need farmers, if we do need people-oriented agriculture with economic opportunity in rural areas, and if we do need to conserve our resources for future generations, then we have no choice but to round up the horses and bring them back to a warm and friendly barn.

We need policy-not just new markets-to make sure sustainable family farms are the rule and not the exception. We need policy to rationalize our whole economy by internalizing all costs into the prices of things we buy with conservation of energy and natural resources guiding our way. Otherwise, multinational corporation’s vision of using the WTO to go to other continents for our labor, energy, and food will lead us to a planet and society burned up by waste and war.

A new vision has developed of sustainable family farm agriculture where “food sovereignty” (where each country retains the right to determine its food and farm policies to meet its citizens’ needs rather than those imposed by international trade agreements) gives us the power of policy to create an agriculture that serves “we the people” with an emphasis on environmentally sound locally produced food. The next farm bill can internalize costs with real price supports,
From Farm Aid.org

: Chest. 2006 Jun;129(6):1486-91.  Links
School proximity to concentrated animal feeding operations and prevalence of asthma in students.

Sigurdarson ST,
Kline JN.
Division of Critical Care, and Occupational Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA, USA.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Asthma prevalence and severity are rising in industrialized nations. Studies supporting the hygiene hypothesis suggest that being raised on a farm protects against atopy and, often, asthma. In rural United States, however, an increased rate of asthma has been found among schoolchildren. We hypothesized that the rural US environment may not be protective against airway inflammation, perhaps due to environmental effluents from a relatively high number of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). We compared the prevalence of asthma in two Iowa elementary schools, one adjacent to a CAFO, and the other distant from any large-scale farming operations. DESIGN: Cross-sectional questionnaire-based study. SETTING: Two rural Iowa elementary schools: the study school is located one-half mile from a CAFO, and the control school is distant from any large-scale agricultural operation. PARTICIPANTS: Children, kindergarten through grade 5, who attended either the study school or the control school. RESULTS: Children in the study school had a significantly increased prevalence of physician-diagnosed asthma (adjusted odds ratio, 5.71; p = 0.004). Although this group was more likely to live on a farm and have parents who smoke, these potentially confounding variables did not account for increased prevalence in a multivariate model. No difference in measures of asthma severity was found between the two populations. Because different sets of physicians are responsible for the medical care of the groups of children, it is possible that physician bias is responsible for the different prevalence of asthma diagnoses. This was not explored in the study. CONCLUSIONS: This study supports a role for exposure to rural environmental toxicants in the etiology of asthma, and suggests a need for further study of this relationship.

The Farm Bureau is a corporation disguised as a friend of the farmer. As a representative of the corporate Farm Bureau, we expect the same old, same old from Hooker.

Farm Bureau Applauds Commissioner Selection
Gov. Spitzer selects Farm Bureau’s Patrick Hooker
as State Ag Commissioner
ALBANY - New York Farm Bureau president John Lincoln praised Gov.
Eliot Spitzer’s selection today of Patrick Hooker as the new state
agriculture commissioner. Hooker is currently Director of Public
Policy at New York Farm Bureau.

We are sad to note the passing of Professor Thomas Lyson of the Rural Soociology Department at Cornell University. Dr. Lyson was courageous enough to publish a policy brief on the utter stupidity of the government, Farm Bureau and Cornell University support of Confined Animal Feeding Operations.
His Policy Brief is still up on Cornell’s website. It is titled: Requiem for Small Dairy Farms.
http://rnyi.cornell.edu/the_changing_structure_of_agriculture_and_food_system/000167.php

Please take the time to read this one and a half page brief. The situation he describes in his last paragraph is the situation which is now characteristic of many counties in rural New York.

Please do not dismiss the farm tragedy as one that does not affect you as an urban dweller. The damage done by mega dairies has already led to the documented impairment of both Cayuga and Owasco Lakes, the destruction of countless wetlands and the contamination of much of our drinking water.
What is occurring in rural New York will have profound consequences on your (and your children’s) food and water supply.

We will miss Dr. Lyson.