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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org, OWL-OldWaysLiving@yahoogroups.com
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Radical Farmer's March Aims to Bridge Urban-Rural Divide, Focus in on "Food Justice"
  • Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:29:46 -0700


Occupy Your Food Supply: Radical Farmer's March Aims to Bridge Urban-Rural
Divide, Focus in on "Food Justice"
http://www.alternet.org/story/153335/occupy_your_food_supply%3A_radical_farmer%27s_march_aims_to_bridge_urban-rural_divide%2C_focus_in_on_%22food_justice%22/?page=entire

Farmers strode through the city as the food justice and Occupy Wall Street
movements teamed up for healthy, ethical food for the people.
December 6, 2011 |

“I have a confession to make,” said Jim Gerritsen, an organic seed farmer
from northern Maine, “This is my first time in New York City. I had no good
reason to come until today.”

Jim Gerritsen was one of several farmers, farm laborers, and food activists
that came from across the country to the country to the Farmer’s March this
past Sunday—a rally and march designed to connect the struggles of rural
farmers held captive by the corporate control of big agriculture with the
Occupy movement in New York City.

The march began with music and a rally of speakers in La Plaza Cultural, one
of New York City’s many community gardens, with over 500 rural farmers, urban
farmers, food laborers, community activists and former occupiers—some wearing
overalls and straw hats, and others wearing “we are the 99%” buttons.

"I am here today to let you know that America is broken,” Gerritsen
continued, addressing the diverse multitude. “The corporate control of our
government and our economy—and the joblessness that it is creating—is
directly related to the corporate dominance of big agriculture and the
quality of food that you are getting.”

In addition to being a farmer, Jim Gerritsen is the President of the Organic
Seed Grower and Trade Association (OSGTA)—which this past spring filed a
lawsuit with Monsanto, the corporate giant that controls 93% of the soybeans
and 80% of the corn growth in the United States. Since March, over eighty-two
other seed businesses, trade organizations, and family farmers—representing
more than 300,000 people—have joined in the lawsuit, fighting the corporate
monopoly of genetically modified seeds that are crushing organic farmers out
of business and giving consumers little choice over whether or not their food
is genetically modified.

Monsanto is not the only monopolistic offender—though it is one of the most
influential through the extreme prevalence of corn and soybean chemical
ingredients in processed foods. Four firms now control 84% of beef packing
and 66% of beef production—over the past thirty years, the farming sector has
lost over 90% of their pork producers, over 80% of their dairymen, and over
40% of their ranchers. Farmers are being forced into bankruptcy by corporate
conglomerates.

Destroying jobs and economically devastating small farmers is only one
element of the food industry’s particular strain of corporate greed.
Eradicating farmers in favor of corporate mass production pushes their
unregulated, heavily processed food on consumers. In addition to having
little choice to begin with, this food is far more affordable by merit of its
mass production.

As a result, more and more people—especially in lower income communities—are
experiencing the health affects of genetically modified fats and sugars. It
is no coincidence that obesity is directly correlated to income level, and
that cases of diabetes, hypertension, and other obesity-related illnesses are
concentrated in low-income communities, and often communities of color.

The reality is, most ordinary consumers in the ninety-nine percent are more
concerned with trying to live within their means than making consciously
healthy decisions. Economically, it makes more sense to purchase a filling
fast food hamburger, especially when it is the same price as fresh fruits and
vegetables. In trying to live from day-to-day, consumers lose track of
long-term health consequences of their decisions, fueling the corporate
supply with their continual demand.

As corporations become conglomerates and crush and replace small farmers,
healthy food quickly becomes a privilege, rather than a right. And when
storms caused or worsened by climate change like Irene come along, small
farmers pay the biggest prices. Many of upstate New York and tri-state area
farms lost a huge percentage of their harvest this year--and, one speaker at
the rally said, while the media declared the storm over because the city was
spared, they found themselves vulnerable to fracking companies who wanted to
move in onto the land.

In the past, the food movement—like many movements—has been seen as a fringe
movement, especially among urban audiences. What happened on the farm stayed
on the farm, and products like organic heirloom tomatoes were more of a
symbol of green elitism, rather than a means of resisting the toxic corporate
machine.

Then along came Occupy Wall Street—a movement that combines its roaring
collective fury at Wall Street and its radical, idealistic design to merge
previously marginalized progressive movements into a vision for a new society
to build over our broken, unsustainable system. One of these demands is food.
Not just any food—food that is produced outside of the corporate machine,
simultaneously protecting the livelihood of small farmers and ensuring the
health of its eventual consumers.

In the days of the occupation at Liberty Plaza, the cooks in the kitchen
formed alliances with many local, sustainable farmers, making sure that all
of the food that they prepared was free of genetically modified organisms. A
group called Feed the Movement formed, collecting donations to pay small,
local farms for their contributions and thereby supporting both the occupy
movement and small farmers. Several additional groups, such as Occupy Big
Food and the Occupy Wall Street Sustainability Food Justice committee, also
emerged, using the language of greed, inequality, and resistance mobilized by
the occupy movement to bring awareness to the corporate stranglehold on the
food industry.

However, until Sunday—aside from the occasional deliveries and
donations—there was no organized urban-rural solidarity between farmers and
occupiers. Though many farmers, such as Jim Gerritsen, were politically
mobilizing against the corporate machine, these issues remained largely
absent from the initial discourse on corporate greed, financial fraud, and
joblessness. In rural communities—often conservative land where the most
pervasive discourse on the occupy movement was negative—it was difficult for
rural farmers to see themselves in the media’s images of the urban
ninety-nine percent.

The Farmer’s March—organized by urban farmers and food activists within
Occupy Wall Street--began to bridge this divide. While local CSAs and
greenmarkets have been forming connections between urban consumers and rural
farmers for several years (and pushing to get food stamps accepted and
improve access to these bounties for low-income members), this took those
small connections and made them large-scale.

For the first time, rural farmers and this new crop of daring urban activists
met one another in a massive way, exchanging stories of corporate greed and
marching together to demand basic economic justice. The march culminated in a
seed exchange in Liberty Plaza, symbolizing the ultimate peoples’ resistance
to the food industry’s corporate machine.





  • [Livingontheland] Radical Farmer's March Aims to Bridge Urban-Rural Divide, Focus in on "Food Justice", Tradingpost, 12/07/2011

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