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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.