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For years I have been saying that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to support Farm to School because of its common sense solution to serving local high quality food in schools and connecting children to where food comes from, but lo and behold, it does!

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12), an actual rocket scientist and five-time Jeopardy winner, has introduced legislation that would create a Farm to School grant program to fight childhood obesity and support local farmers.

“Farm to school programs exemplify the best use of federal school lunch dollars,” Holt said. “This is a rare opportunity for a win-win solution– a program to ensure our children get the best quality food at school, help foster local farm job growth, and create local economic growth.”

Watch for yourself as Holt speaks about the legislation with school nutrition experts at a hearing of the House Committee on Education and Labor, who is in charge of crafting the school meals legislation on the House side.

Representative Holt asked Dora Rivas, President of the School Nutrition Association: “Despite being authorized, the existing federal Farm to School program hasn’t been funded. What would you say about making the funding mandatory?”

“ABSOLUTELY!” Ms. Rivas replied. Mandatory funding is key as that would enable advocates to focus on actual implementation of said programs instead of fighting for dollars every year in the nitty-gritty appropriations process.

A recent poll of over 1,000 American adults demonstrated that 81% support Farm to School programs in the Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR).

The people have spoken, will their representatives on the hill listen and support mandatory funding for Farm to School in the CNR?

Backing up the rocket scientist Representative, researchers recently recognized three reasons why school food service professionals engage in Farm to School programs: (1) ”The students like it,” (2) ”The price is right,” and (3) ”We’re helping our local farmer.”

As reported in the Elsevier press release,

“researchers found the farm to school programs benefited both the school and farmer. School food service professionals (SFSP) reported that the lower price for produce was attributed to a shortened supply chain. SFSP were able to buy produce that is not typically offered in school cafeterias such as asparagus, blue potatoes, Asian pears, etc. This research is being presented at a time when budgets are tight and there is a huge need for nutrition education in schools. The farm to school program may help to promote healthful eating and improve our school food programs.”

The full study is available in the March/April 2010 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, Volume 42, Issue 2. March is national nutrition month and this year’s theme is fittingly “Nutrition from the Ground Up.”

Another new survey, released Tuesday by the Minnesota School Nutrition Association (MSNA) and IATP, reported that the number of Minnesota school districts purchasing fresh food from local farms has more than doubled in the last 15 months.

Digging Deeper

As the Child Nutrition Act is being addressed by Congress right now, Rep. Holt is working to improve how food is sourced for the 31 million children that eat at school five days a week, 180 days a year.

His Farm to School Improvements Act (H.R. 4710) would establish a competitive grant and technical assistance program to increase the use of local foods from small and medium sized farms in schools. The grant funds also would improve the relationships between schools and local food providers. The legislation would provide $10 million in mandatory funding each year for the duration of the program and require that grant recipients provide a local match to ensure serious commitment to the project.

The grants authorized by this legislation would provide communities the seed money they need to develop robust, economically-sustainable programs linking agricultural producers with schools.

“This seed funding could not come at a better time as the interest and need for Farm to School programs is at an all time high,” said Marion Kalb, co-Director of the National Farm to School Network. “HR 4710 will create competitive, one-time grants that can be used to develop vendor relationships with nearby farmers, plan seasonal menus and promotional materials, start a school garden, or develop hands-on nutrition education.”

Farm to School programs can:

• Strengthen children’s and communities’ knowledge about, and attitudes toward, agriculture, food, nutrition and the environment.

• Increase children’s participation in the school meals program and consumption of fruits and vegetables, improving childhood nutrition, reducing hunger, and preventing obesity and obesity-related diseases.

• Benefit school food budgets, after start-up, if planning and menu choices are made consistent with seasonal availability of fresh and minimally processed whole foods.

• Support economic development across numerous sectors and promote job creation.

• Increase market opportunities for farmers, fishers, ranchers, food processors and food manufacturers.

• Decrease the distance between producers and consumers of fresh agricultural products, thus promoting food security while reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and reliance on oil.

“In these challenging fiscal times, every dollar we spend must not only meet immediate needs but also make lasting improvements for the future,” Holt added. “Because school food programs currently provide more than half the daily calories for many children, it is vital that these calories are healthy ones. Farm to school programs increase the availability of fresh and locally grown food that improve our children’s daily nutrition and can lead to permanent improvements in their diets and productivity and can reduce future health care costs associated with obesity by billions of dollars.”

In the meantime, what can you do? Contact your Congress person today to encourage action on and passage of HR 4710. That part, at least, is not rocket science.

Originally Published on The Huffington Post

An 18-year-old Dolly Freed describes the philosophy of “possum living” as follows: “It’s easier to learn to do without some of the things that money can buy than to earn the money to buy them.” For five years in the late 1970’s, this teenager and her father lived off the land outside of Philadelphia, managing a small budget, eating from their garden and choosing to actively disengage from the commercial world surrounding them. Her 1978 manifesto, Possum Living, reflecting the back-to-the-land movement of that time, is now reissued.  Although she does not make an ideological case for a return to the land as others had proposed, her participation with homestead living nevertheless aligns herself with proponents of a sustainable movement. For this reason, Possum Living has new relevance and deserves a new audience.

Freed’s approach to possum living emphasizes ease and leisure. But advocates of our present food movement, who care about policy change to fight big agriculture, corporate monopoly of seed and crop production, genetically modified foods, CAFOs, and monocrop agriculture, may find in Freed’s work an authentic and usable model for personal lifestyle change. Freed recommends that her readers take responsibility for their individual actions: “If you cant go the whole route, at least go part way. If you can’t become a non-consumer, aim to be a mini-consumer.” Her intent of a life of leisure may be different from the mission of an eager food advocate of our time, but the result of a mindful existence equally affects the environment, land and our identity in comparable ways.

Freed’s authorial voice is feisty and impish—she is a girl whose witty and candid narration exposes the sprite naiveté of a child. Her chapter on nutrition begins with a recollection from “some years ago, when [she] was still a child,” and when her conscience often pesters her for “goofing off,” she simply ignores it. But more often than not, she authentically articulates the feasible possibility of returning to a life aligned with nature for the sake of ease—not for a spiritual, Waldenesque existence. Through humor and candor (“if your spouse gives you the fish-eye look when you mention rabbits in the cellar, forget it”), and directness (“kill your own meat—don’t hire someone to do it”), Freed skillfully presents a proposal for sustainable living.

Possum Living is a reflection complete with recipes, grocery lists, costs of living and personal testament. Her explorations are entirely applicable to the food movement of our time: don’t waste food, eat what’s in season, experiment with less popular food items, kill humanely, be an active producer, and become less of a mass-market consumer. She is mindful of yearly expenses, $268.80 spent on food and $101.24 on electricity, and she is learned on the topic of foraging for wild plants. Under the auspices of Euell Gibbons’ teachings, Freed demonstrates her own knowledge of edible weeds by praising yellow rocket and upland cress. She knows the tastes of cattail shoots and burdock stems and transplants wild ginger to her garden plot. Her active engagement with and curiosity about her chosen lifestyle shape this work into something more than a mere call for change. The Self is at the center of Freed’s work.

Her chapters range in topic from food, to heating, clothing, law, transportation and household chores. Three beliefs lie at the core of Freed’s teachings on eating simply, smartly and consciously: know your food philosophy, observe how nature works and engage cooperatively with it, and rely on reason and common sense to guide your decisions.  There is no attempt here to forge a romantic relationship with the land because her lifestyle is an active choice, not a privilege. Therefore, her food philosophy also depends on conviction and an educated opinion.

Many of Freed’s explanations for sustainable eating draw strength from the technicalities of active participation—how-to’s for building rabbit cages, lists for shopping, recipes and distilling manuals—and argue that others who wish to follow this lifestyle must be proactive as well. Gaining an education is important to Freed—“go to your library and read books on the subject,” “there are pamphlets at your local feed store” which explain hens’ laying cycles. Her ideas on consumption foreshadow current discussions centered on small-scale farming and livestock production: Kill your own meat. Don’t waste food. Don’t eat animals or fish that are being over-consumed. Experiment with foods less in demand. Choose action and engage with nature by learning its patterns and observable truths.

So while Possum Living encourages readers to take control of their lifestyle choices, it also reminds us that there is a level of observation needed to understand nature’s inherent cycles. She also coaches curious dwellers to examine nature within the larger food system they are rejecting. “Rabbits are often sterile in September and October,” “Fish, do, however, feed in a cyclical manner,” “try to lean toward nonhybrid types [of seeds] so you can produce your own seeds for future use,” “when you go to the grocery store, don’t forget to go out back and look for discarded greens for your rabbits. Do it even if you don’t have rabbits.”

Choosing the “possum” path of ease and simplicity—a relationship with nature that conforms to leisure and harmony with it—equips us with practical, self-reliant skill sets. It is not a spiritual movement. Perhaps it is her rejection of nostalgia that makes her belief in sustainable living so convincing. It simply makes sense. She promises her reader that “if you just want to easy-up your life somewhat, why then, you’re talking my language. We’ll get that Protestant Work Ethic monkey off your back.”

A present-day reader must select what to take from this detailed account. Certain chapters are more effective for their humor than applicability, and certain recipes seem entirely out of reach for an urbanite dweller like myself. Still, envisioning Freed making her recipe for pickled snapper—“the feet are the best. You much them up and spit out the toe bones”—makes one hopeful that we, too, could embrace possum living, should we choose to take that chance.

Since the first commercial cultivation of Genetically Modified (GM) crops in 1996, Monsanto and the rest of the big six Biotech seed companies, (Pioneer/DuPont, Syngenta, Dow, BASF and Bayer) have become masters at the art of story telling. Farmers looking for the next big technology fix have loved their stories: the promise of better yields, less chemical need for weed control, higher profits and of course, a solution to the elusive goal of feeding the world.

Governments, seeing biotechnology as a huge economic engine, embraced the technology. University research was shifted almost exclusively to biotech crops. GM was the wave of the future, bankers encouraged planting GM crops to guarantee a “profitable harvest”. Crop insurance premiums were lower for farmers planting GM. Everyone bought the story.

In a recent opinion piece in the Wisconsin State Journal, former Secretary of Agriculture, John Block, touted the virtues of GM crops and credited them with producing higher yields, lower pesticide use and solving the ever growing problem of world hunger. Current Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, plugged GM at last week’s USDA Outlook Conference. Problem is, the promises are just good stories. The believers are missing the truth.

Weeds have become resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup and insects became resistant to the toxins produced by their GM corn. As GM was planted on more acres, overall pesticide use went up, not down. A University of Kansas study found that GM crops actually had lower yields than their conventional counterparts. Even as the problems of GM crops become more apparent, the cost of GM seed continues to rise. Many farmers are backing away from GM, but finding non-GM seed is difficult, considering Monsanto controls roughly 90% of the corn and soy genetics in the U.S.

With corn and soy well under their control, Monsanto now hopes to gain USDA approval for Roundup resistant alfalfa. A perennial crop, alfalfa is the fourth most widely grown crop in the U.S. and again, Monsanto sees profit. The contamination of non-GM and organic alfalfa, the potential for further reduction of bee populations, among other problems, seem of little consequence.

Feeding the world? GM will not do it, even former Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro admitted, “The commercial industrial technologies that are used in agriculture today to feed the world… are not inherently sustainable.”

Still, Monsanto bills itself as a leader in global sustainability, ignoring the fact that true sustainability cannot be achieved when your driving goal is the next quarterly profit report. The world stands a better chance of feeding itself by using and improving upon farming methods [PDF] that have been relied upon for centuries. In Africa, if indigenous crops, long adapted to their environment, were put forward as the solution to hunger, studies show that the population could have adequate food supplies and at times, cash income from sales of surplus crops.

So, why do so many continue have faith in the story, when the evidence is against them? GM crops do not yield as promised. A USDA report [PDF] shows that farmers actually loose income by planting GM crops.

Seed costs are unreasonably high, as are the fertilizers and chemicals that are absolutely required to grow GM. Researchers continue to reject GM foods citing concerns of their serious health risks.

GM will not feed the world [PDF] The GM story as told by the Biotech giants paints the future as a happy and prosperous place: Farmers are profitable, everyone is well fed and the environment is protected.

The real GM story is not so happy. It is a story of market control, environmental degradation and deceived farmers and consumers.