All week long, we post updates on what’s happening at Farm Aid and in the world of farms and food on our Twitter feed. In case you missed some of those links, below are some notable stories we shared since our last update:
- The USDA’s Dairy Advisory Committee met. Over 2,600 family farm supporters sent emails to the committee through Farm Aid’s Action Center speaking up for the future of America’s family dairy farmers.
- A New York Times editorial calls for the ban of non-therapeutic antibiotics in livestock and points to the successes achieved in Denmark after a similar ban.
- PBS aired the Academy Award-nominated documentary Food, Inc. the other night. You can watch it in its entirety online through April 29, 2010.
- A great post on Grist: “USDA downplays own scientist’s research on ill effects of Monsanto herbicide“
- A new book called Animal Factory claims that CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) in the US yield 100 times more waste that all US human sewage treatment plants. Wow.
- “The food safety system in the U.S. is underfunded, overwhelmed, and in desperate need of new powers to keep us safe as Americans”— Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. Here’s a good blog post talking about the shortcomings of the Food Modernization Act, which quotes Farm Aid’s own Program Director Hilde Steffey.
- Farmers in Durham, North Carolina transitioned from growing tobacco to growing food and are thriving thanks to a new appreciation of local food in restaurants and beyond.
- Good overview from the Associated Press on new rules due this Spring from USDA addressing concentration in meat companies.
- “I’d like to be respected like a worker; right now I’m like a slave.” Great article investigating the hard lives for workers at large dairies in the western states of America.
- Very cool CNN story about different approaches to making urban farms work around the world.
- “Why We Farm” — a nice video from Ohio on family farmers and what keeps them farming generation after generation.
What news did you see out there? Please share in the comments.
