What is happening to farming ... and to your world.

I will keep this simple.

Farming here and around the world is in terrible trouble.

Kissinger said control food, you control populations.

Corporations are taking control of everything to do with food.

In India, in the last 10 years since Monsanto and our big Ag corporations went in there, thanks to Clinton, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left (or been pushed off of) the land.

Suicides occurred in the Midwest among our farmers as well. Where there was once a rich farming life and real communities, it is corporate there now.

Real farming, real families, real community life, are a memory.

The pain of those farmers cling to the land.

Be sure to watch As We Sow by Jan Weber.

It is your country that is at stake. When you hear talk of NAIS or real milk and farmers pleading for no more regulations, please hear with a different ear. It is your world that is being lost.

Farming is political. Your farmers, your land - a once real and rich and cohesive world - have been stolen out from under you. And those still holding on by a thread, and those trying to stage a rebirth, are being crushed by NAIS and other massive government (actually, corporate) regulatory laws under the name of food "safety."

Farming is political. Freedom and life itself are at stake.

Contribute to this documentary film maker. Join a farming group.

Stop NAIS. Legalize real milk nationally. Undo intellectual property laws over GE-seeds that trap farmers.

Make this battle yours.

Legal Defense Fund Files Suit to Stop NAIS

Suit Targets USDA and Michigan Department of Agriculture

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/legal-defense-fund-files-suit/story.aspx?guid={8EBD207D-29C8-42BB-B3D8-CEA78BEB35D1}&dist=hppr

Last update: 4:27 p.m. EDT July 14, 2008

FALLS CHURCH, Va., Jul 14, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Attorneys for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund today filed suit in the U.S. District Court - District of Columbia to stop the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Michigan Department of Agriculture (MDA) from implementing the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), a plan to electronically track every livestock animal in the country.

The MDA has implemented the first two stages of NAIS - property registration and animal identification - for all cattle and farmers across the state as part of a mandatory bovine tuberculosis disease control program required by a grant from the USDA.

The suit asks the court to issue an injunction to stop the implementation of NAIS at either the state or federal levels by any state or federal agency. If successful, the suit would halt the program nationwide.

"We think that current disease reporting procedures and animal tracking methods provide the kind of information health officials need to respond to animal disease events," explained Fund President Taaron Meikle. "At a time when the job of protecting our food safety is woefully underfunded, the USDA has spent over $118 million on just the beginning stages of a so-called voluntary program that ultimately seeks to register every horse, chicken, cow, goat, sheep, pig, llama, alpaca or other livestock animal in a national database--more than 120 million animals. It's a program that only a bureaucrat could love," she added.

Meikle noted that existing programs for diseases such as tuberculosis, brucellosis and scrapie together with state laws on branding and the existing record keeping by sales barns and livestock shows provide the mechanisms needed for tracking any disease outbreaks.

She said the suit charges that USDA has never published rules regarding NAIS, in violation of the Federal Administrative Procedures Act; has never performed an Environmental Impact Statement or an Environmental Assessment as required by the National Environmental Policy Act; is in violation of the Regulatory Flexibility Act that requires the USDA to analyze proposed rules for their impact on small entities and local governments; and violates religious freedoms guaranteed by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

"Other mandatory implementations, which weave NAIS into existing regulatory fabric and programs, have occurred in the States of Wisconsin and Indiana where premises registration has been made mandatory; in drought-stricken North Carolina and Tennessee, where farmers have been required to register their premises in order to obtain hay relief; and in Colorado where state fairs are requiring participants to register their premises under NAIS," explained Judith McGeary, a member of the Farm-to-Consumer Fund board and the executive director of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance.

"We are asking the court to immediately halt implementation of the program nationwide before more farmers and ranchers are strong-armed into participating in a program that the USDA has called voluntary."

McGeary also questioned the accuracy of the existing database noting that an attempt by the USDA to make the information in the NAIS database subject to Privacy Act safeguards thereby removing them from public scrutiny was suspended indefinitely in a ruling last month by the same federal court that will hear arguments in the current suit. That suit had been filed by a journalist seeking access to the database to determine its accuracy.

About The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund: The Fund defends the rights and broadens the freedoms of sustainable farmers, and protects consumer access to local, nutrient-dense foods. Concerned citizens can support the Fund by joining at _www.farmtoconsumer.www_ (http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/) or by contacting the Fund at 703-208-FARM. The Fund's sister organization, the Farm-to-Consumer Foundation works to support farmers engaged in sustainable farm stewardship and promote consumer access to local, nutrient-dense food.

A copy of the suit filed against the USDA and MDA is available at:
_www.farmtoconsumer.www_ (http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/)

Cows on rBGH

Freedom and Liberty Seminar

Pennsylvania Senator Mike Folmer is hosting the seminar for farmers and consumers.

August 2, 2008 7;30am-6:00pm
$20 registration fee.
Nutrient rich lunch.
Arrive early - seating is limited.

Keynote speaker - Sally Fallon Morell - President of Weston A Price Foundation.

Featured speakers:

State Senator Mike Folmer - Lancaster, Lebanon, Berks, and Chester County
Pete Kennedy, Esq. VP, Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund
Jonas Stoltzfus - President of PICFA (Pennsylvania Independent Consumers and Farmers Alliance)
Ted Beals - Md, Retired Pathologist & Professor
William Taylor Reil - Constitutional Scholar
State Representative Sam Rohrer - R-Berks County

Location:
Cedar Creek High School
115 East Evergreen Road
Lebanon, Pennsylvania 17042

For more information and to get a registration form - www.picfa.org
or call 717-432-2231 to have it mailed to you.

This may look like just another meeting, but these people are the earliest standard bearers in a civil rights movement on behalf of basic human choice in what food we eat and how we heal ourselves.



"You can solve all the problems of the world in a garden."

"They laughed at him and said it couldn't be done.
Nothing could be grown in that salt laden dustbowl.

But Geoff Lawton had other ideas.



He travels the world teaching others how to repair trashed environments that are beyond hope of becoming productive.
In this story, Geoff talks about re-greening the deserts of Jordan. By applying the principles of permaculture, the Jordanians managed to salvage a heavily salted environment and turn it into a green oasis.

Geoff lives and teaches at his farm near The Channon, a small community not far from Lismore. Geoff boasts that despite not having a police station or church, the Channon has some of the most tolerant and friendly people in Australia."