USDA: Difference between revisions
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<blockquote>By requiring farmers to share environmental service benefits with corporate backers, SUSTAINS also enlists the USDA in private greenwashing efforts. Agribusiness companies have made a lot of promises in the face of public pressure to clean up their pollution and lower their climate footprint. One of their biggest projects is to pay farmers to adopt carbon-sequestering farming practices in exchange for carbon-offset credits. Companies like [[Bayer]], [[Cargill]], and [[Corteva]] buy these credits to claim that they’ve offset their greenhouse gas emissions without changing their business practices.<ref>https://thefern.org/ag_insider/congress-encourages-corporate-sponsorship-of-usda-conservation-programs/</ref></blockquote> | <blockquote>By requiring farmers to share environmental service benefits with corporate backers, SUSTAINS also enlists the USDA in private greenwashing efforts. Agribusiness companies have made a lot of promises in the face of public pressure to clean up their pollution and lower their climate footprint. One of their biggest projects is to pay farmers to adopt carbon-sequestering farming practices in exchange for carbon-offset credits. Companies like [[Bayer]], [[Cargill]], and [[Corteva]] buy these credits to claim that they’ve offset their greenhouse gas emissions without changing their business practices.<ref>https://thefern.org/ag_insider/congress-encourages-corporate-sponsorship-of-usda-conservation-programs/</ref></blockquote> | ||
= Climate-Smart Commodities = | |||
Described by agricultural expert Alan Guebert as "doublespeak," the USDA's $3 billion "Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities" tries to make commodity-centered, industrialized agriculture climate-smart, when "everyone in the food business readily acknowledges it’s an oil-gulping, climate-changing juggernaut." | |||
Major partners of the program include the [[National Corn Growers Association]], [[National Pork Board]] and the [[United Soybean Board]], which have supported corporate profits at the expense of community and environmental health for decades. | |||
Other large corporate polluters & [[greenwashing|greenwashers]] are "major partners" of the program, including many of the worst offenders in agribusiness: | |||
* [[Cargill]], [[Bayer]], [[Archer Daniels Midland]], [[John Deere]], [[Smithfield Foods]] | |||
and the food industry: | |||
* [[PepsiCo]], [[Coca-Cola]], [[Campbell Soup]], [[Keurig-Dr Pepper]], [[Nestlé]], [[Anheuser-Busch]], [[Target]], [[The Walton Family Foundation]] | |||
According to one land grant university agronomist, the premise of the program is fundamentally flawed: | |||
<blockquote>“We know that we can’t sequester carbon in any appreciable amount in today’s commodity production systems. Not through conventional tillage, not through minimum till, not through no-till. That’s just an agronomic fact. So what are we doing with these USDA projects?” </blockquote> | |||
Another land grant researcher added: | |||
<blockquote>“A model relying on those that caused the problem to solve the problem is a deeply flawed model. The smart is in those who get this type of money to do nothing. It’s beyond smart, it is genius. This is all greenwashing — vanity and greenwashing — to keep today’s ag policies in place."</blockquote> | |||
<ref>https://pantagraph.com/business/agriculture/guebert-usda-s-3b-climate-smart-commodities-program-pointless-greenwashing/article_3cc954f4-5549-11ed-8848-3b3ca2c1169a.html</ref> | |||
= School Breakfast Program = | = School Breakfast Program = | ||
Revision as of 19:22, 11 February 2023
US Department of Agriculture;
Sustains Act
At the end of 2022, the U.S. Congress enacted a new law giving agribusiness corporations even greater influence over federal farm conservation policy:
The SUSTAINS Act changes the terms on corporate contributions to USDA conservation programs. Under previous law, the USDA could technically accept private donations for public programs, but few companies took part. Under the SUSTAINS Act, corporations gain more authority to earmark money for specific programs, in specific regions, targeting a “natural resource concern” of their choice. Donors will also get some perks, including sponsorship publicity and a share of any “environmental service benefits” that farmers generate with their funds, like tradeable carbon-offset credits for taking on practices that sequester carbon in the soil. The USDA can also take funds out of other conservation programs to match corporate funds.
The potential conflicts of interest are obvious. Many conservation programs, such as organic production or pasture-based livestock methods, require removing corporate products and production methods from the landscape. Corporations are very unlikely to donate to efforts that threaten their business models. Furthermore, the prospect of USDA matching gives private interests explicit sway over allocating scarce public funds.
By requiring farmers to share environmental service benefits with corporate backers, SUSTAINS also enlists the USDA in private greenwashing efforts. Agribusiness companies have made a lot of promises in the face of public pressure to clean up their pollution and lower their climate footprint. One of their biggest projects is to pay farmers to adopt carbon-sequestering farming practices in exchange for carbon-offset credits. Companies like Bayer, Cargill, and Corteva buy these credits to claim that they’ve offset their greenhouse gas emissions without changing their business practices.[1]
Climate-Smart Commodities
Described by agricultural expert Alan Guebert as "doublespeak," the USDA's $3 billion "Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities" tries to make commodity-centered, industrialized agriculture climate-smart, when "everyone in the food business readily acknowledges it’s an oil-gulping, climate-changing juggernaut."
Major partners of the program include the National Corn Growers Association, National Pork Board and the United Soybean Board, which have supported corporate profits at the expense of community and environmental health for decades.
Other large corporate polluters & greenwashers are "major partners" of the program, including many of the worst offenders in agribusiness:
and the food industry:
- PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Campbell Soup, Keurig-Dr Pepper, Nestlé, Anheuser-Busch, Target, The Walton Family Foundation
According to one land grant university agronomist, the premise of the program is fundamentally flawed:
“We know that we can’t sequester carbon in any appreciable amount in today’s commodity production systems. Not through conventional tillage, not through minimum till, not through no-till. That’s just an agronomic fact. So what are we doing with these USDA projects?”
Another land grant researcher added:
“A model relying on those that caused the problem to solve the problem is a deeply flawed model. The smart is in those who get this type of money to do nothing. It’s beyond smart, it is genius. This is all greenwashing — vanity and greenwashing — to keep today’s ag policies in place."
School Breakfast Program
By 1969, the success of the Black Panther's Free Breakfast For Children program had become a matter of U.S. federal policy debate, with the National School Lunch Program administrator admitting in a 1969 U.S. senate hearing that the Panthers were feeding more poor school children than the State of California.[3]
According to History.com:
The public visibility of the Panthers’ breakfast programs put pressure on political leaders to feed children before school. The result of thousands of American children becoming accustomed to free breakfast, former party member Norma Amour Mtume told Eater, was the government expanded its own school food programs. Though the USDA had piloted free breakfast efforts since the mid 1960s, the program only took off in the early 1970s—right around the time the Black Panthers’ programs were dismantled. In 1975, the School Breakfast Program was permanently authorized.[4]
In response:
The BPP saw such actions as an unfair co-option on the part of establishment actors who looked to minimize the BPP’s importance and to move the control of community program development and management away from low-income Black communities themselves. Such co-option represented another factor that led to the slow demise of the BPP’s influence in communities across the nation.[5]
It was not until a new set of waivers were established in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that a complicated and often stigmatizing bureaucratic application process was eliminated, and free lunches were provided for all students. Before this new expansion, as many as 75% of U.S. school districts had unpaid "student meal debt."[6] After the federal breakfast programs were established, noticeable improvements in students' levels of focus, energy, and reduced stress were observed by teachers, while schools no longer had to deal with unnecessary paperwork.[7]
This expansion proved short-lived. In 2022, federal school meal programs faced a "perfect storm" according to Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association.[8]. Even though a poll in 2021 found that "74% of Americans support making universal free school meals permanent nationwide," the Democratic Party's surrender to Republican opposition led to the expiration of this highly popular policy, once again excluding tens of millions of students from receiving free meals.[9][10]
Mycology
Mycophobia
"With its preference for corroding railroad ties, the Train Wrecker (Lentinus lepideus) has been suspected for causing major derailments in the past. The USDA was so afraid of this fungus that the closely related Shiitake mushroom was banned from importation until 1972." [11]
Sources
- ↑ https://thefern.org/ag_insider/congress-encourages-corporate-sponsorship-of-usda-conservation-programs/
- ↑ https://pantagraph.com/business/agriculture/guebert-usda-s-3b-climate-smart-commodities-program-pointless-greenwashing/article_3cc954f4-5549-11ed-8848-3b3ca2c1169a.html
- ↑ https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/black-panther-partys-free-breakfast-program-1969-1980/
- ↑ https://www.history.com/news/free-school-breakfast-black-panther-party
- ↑ Garrett Broad, "More than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change"
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/04/us-school-hunger-crisis-federal-waivers-end
- ↑ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/free-school-lunches-are-ending-house-passes-deal-summer-meals-child-nu-rcna34745
- ↑ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/free-school-lunches-set-end-creating-perfect-storm-high-inflation-rcna33688
- ↑ https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/black-panthers-free-breakfast-program
- ↑ https://www.npr.org/2022/10/26/1129939058/end-of-nationwide-federal-free-lunch-program-has-some-states-scrambling
- ↑ Radical Mycology, p. 76