Full list: Agriculture in the News

Burlington Free Press: Tons of Burlington Intervale produce to be plowed under

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Mollie

September 10, 2011
By Sally Pollak
Full Article

Andy Jones stood in a field of butternut squash at the Burlington Intervale on Friday morning and marveled at the amount of crop — about three acres and 55,000 pounds worth — that needs to be dumped in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene.

“The really impressive and incredibly depressing thing is how much food we’re leaving in the field,” said Jones, a 42-year-old vegetable grower who has farmed in the Intervale for two decades.

Federal regulations forbid crops that have been in floodwater from being sold for human consumption. The law applies to crops grown above ground, and to root crops that are below the surface of the soil.

It even applies to butternut squash — a vegetable with a thick, smooth skin that can be washed with soap and water, sanitized (with an approved organic sanitizer), and is peeled and cooked before it is eaten.

“If this flood had happened 25 years ago, people might have said we shouldn’t eat the lettuce,” Jones said. “But, OK, that butternut squash is a pretty good bet as far as being able to be safe.”

How much risk?

Vern Grubinger, vegetable and berry specialist with the University of Vermont’s Extension Service, said he hasn’t seen studies about the effects of floodwater on butternut squash.

But Grubinger, who has a Ph.D. in vegetable crops and 21 years experience with the extension service, said there is “a more robust set of studies” than he had been aware that suggest there is some risk to eating flooded crops.

“People think you can just take samples and understand what’s going on,” Grubinger said. “One thing scientists are clear on: It takes a very large number of samples to have any confidence in what you find.”

The studies typically involve replicating flooded conditions by intentionally inoculating certain fields and testing soils and vegetables, Grubinger said.

“It’s clear there’s some level of risk,” he said. “It’s not clear what our level of risk is here. And I can understand the FDA, whose role is to protect the public health, erring on the side of caution. It’s very frustrating to have to throw food away. Especially food that’s going to be cooked and peeled.”

In the field of butternut squash, which was flooded when the Winooski River rose above its banks as Irene inundated Vermont on Aug. 28, you can see the water mark on some of the squash: the silty line that shows where the river rose.

Jones, manager of Intervale Community Farm, said he and his crew will plow under about 55 tons of food to comply with federal regulations. The 530-member community-supported agriculture farm feeds 1,500 to 2,000 people a week, Jones said. He’ll plant a winter cover crop, as farming at the Intervale has come to an abrupt end at the height of the harvest.

“As much as it pains me to look at 50 or 60 tons of food I have in the fields, I have a long-term concern,” Jones said. “Climate change is the concern. If there’s going to be hotter and wetter weather — more extreme weather — the logical conclusion is that there could be more flooding.”

There are preliminary estimates of well over half a million dollars of crop loss at the Intervale, said Travis Marcotte, executive director of the Intervale Foundation. The dollar amount will grow, as not all of the dozen farms have reported their losses, he said.

Statewide, about 10 percent of Vermont’s 500 vegetable farms saw flooding as a result of Tropical Storm Irene, Grubinger said.

“I have personally received reports of about $2 million of losses in vegetable farms,” Grubinger said. “I estimate that it’s likely to be twice that.”

At the Intervale on Friday, a handful of vegetable farmers met with Chuck Ross, the state’s Secretary of Agriculture.

Standing in the muddy fields farmed by Diggers Mirth Collective, the farmers raised concerns about the federal regulations that forbid them from selling any vegetables, including root vegetables and crops that were to be harvested in four or five weeks.

They questioned the basis on which the determinations are made. They wondered about soil testing, and specific criteria that would indicate something about the safety of the food. They are interested in flood-specific data that is particular to Vermont.

Flood research

There was talk at the Intervale of developing a research project related to contaminants and flooding; of finding collaborators at the university and in the agriculture department; of attempting to the turn the disaster into an opportunity for Vermont to be in the forefront of farm-flood management.

“Seize that opportunity as you try to respond and restore and rebuild your farm,” Ross said. “I don’t underestimate the double whammy of that.”

Grubinger had what he called a “common-sense solution.” He suggested compensating growers for avoiding the health risks to consumers.

“The problem is we don’t have a mechanism in place for adequately compensating growers if we’re going to ask them to throw away their crops,” Grubinger said. “That’s actually the simplest way forward, rather than trying to measure risk on every farm, with every waterway being different and every soil being different.”

Vermont could also develop and propose a system that allows for exemptions to the one-size-fits-all FDA rule. In this way, site assessments can be made that demonstrate a lack of significant sources of contamination, Grubinger said.

Another important factor is for growers to “ramp up” handling of produce after the harvest. This means triple washing of vegetables and applying surface sanitizers, Grubinger said.

“All the big boys do these things,” Grubinger said. “Washing is good. More washing is better.”

Grubinger suspects the level of risk to Vermont’s flooded crops lies somewhere between those who say there’s little problem with the food and those who say it would be extremely risky to eat it.

“We’re in a kind of no-man’s land where nobody has the data for Vermont, and you can say anything you want,” Grubinger said, “and it’s not a good place to be.”

The Journal: In focus: War of words over plan to ban ‘raw milk’

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Mollie

10/9/11
Full Article

A GROUP of artisan foodmakers are at odds with the government’s food safety body over plans to ban the sale of unpasteurised ‘raw’ milk – rejecting claims that the ban is a logical move to reduce health risks.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland has recommended that the government restore an outright ban on the sale of such milk, which had been originally introduced in the mid 1990s but overturned by a European directive in 2007.

Opponents of the proposed ban – including some of Ireland’s best-known restaurateurs - believe there is no reason for the ban, arguing that the government should instead try to educate people on how to avoid some of the potential health risks posed.

“The primary reason why we don’t think the ban should go ahead involves choice,” said Elisabeth Ryan, of Sheridan’s Cheesemongers in Co Meath, who is leading a campaign urging the government not to ban the sale of raw milk.

“We think people are educated enough and clever enough to be able to read – we’re not saving raw milk should be sold from every single farmer around Ireland! Our suggestion is that small dairy farmers, who have regulations on them, be allowed to sell raw milk – and people be allowed to buy it.”

Ryan explained that the largest consumers of raw milk are farming families who drink the produce of their own dairy herds – and that statistics from the time the original ban was introduced showed suggested that as many as 100,000 Irish families drank raw milk.

The Bridge: The Right to Choose What We Eat

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Mollie

Rural Vermont Drafts Food Sovereignty Resolution
SEPTEMBER 15–OCTOBER 5, 2011
By Sylvia Fagin
Full Article (See page 5)

Does an individual really have the right to eat whatever he or she wants to eat? This is the fundamental question behind Rural Vermont’s food sovereignty campaign. Rural Vermont, the statewide group dedicated to advancing economic justice for Vermont farmers through advocacy and education, is ramping up a campaign to encourage towns and villages to consider the issue of food sovereignty at their 2012 town meetings, according to Robb Kidd, an organizer with the group. Sovereignty means supreme authority. Considering the
issue of food sovereignty, Rural Vermont takes this position:

“We declare the right of communities to produce, process, sell and purchase local foods. In recognition of Vermont’s traditional agricultural systems, we assert these vital principles
as the foundation of local Food Sovereignty.”

This current effort stems from Rural Vermont’s past statewide advocacy work on issues including meat-processing regulation and the right to buy and sell raw milk. Much of
Rural Vermont’s work focuses on ways consumers can purchase food directly from farmers. “In a lot of our work, we’re running into legislative dead ends and federal rules and regulations that don’t allow any more growth in the market,” Kidd said. He noted that the recently released Farm-to-Plate plan reports that only 5 percent
of the food consumed in Vermont is produced in Vermont.

“How are we going to change that?” Kidd asked. “Big food trucks still rumble into Montpelier daily.”

In order for Vermonters to be able to buy more food from their farmer-neighbors, some regulations, both state and federal, will have to change, Kidd said. The first step is educating more people about the issues.

“Even though there’s a lot of support from Vermont politicians, we feel there needs to be a vast culture change,” Kidd said. “One way to do this is in communities themselves. This
campaign is about bringing the message to town halls, to get this issue talked about on a greater level.”

Town Meeting Day discussions serve to inform a greater number of Vermonters on the details of a particular issue, Kidd said, citing past Town Meeting Day topics such as nuclear
power. Rural Vermont is encouraging towns and villages to consider a food sovereignty resolution at their town meeting in 2012 and to adopt resolution language that speaks specifically to the individual community’s history and direction regarding
food and agriculture. “For example, a town may have had a slaughter facility and want to address that issue,” Kidd said.

As a first step, Kidd has convened a group of Montpelier residents to draft a food-sovereignty petition to present to Montpelier voters on Town Meeting Day in March 2012.

The Montpelier group continues to meet to discuss how to build support for this petition. Kidd hopes that the Montpelier petition will build momentum that will spread to other communities. A lot of people are interested, he said. “I could see 15 to 50 towns taking
it on,” he estimated. “Ideally, I’d like to have 250 towns take it on. Even if they all rejected it, they’d have had a conversation about it.”

With this campaign, Rural Vermont aims to build grassroots community support to enable legislators to take a stronger stand on tough agricultural issues, Kidd said. “We want to give legislators the political capital to make tougher decisions or address issues that aren’t being addressed now.”

Kidd introduced the food sovereignty campaign at the Growing Local Fest in Montpelier on September 10. Many attendees were supportive of the effort.

“This is an issue that unites left and right, because there is nothing more fundamental than feeding ourselves,” said Josh Schlossberg of East Montpelier. Rich Scharf of Duxbury agreed: “The decisions about what

The Cornucopia Institute: Dust Flying in Countryside Over USDA Animal ID Proposal

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Mollie

August 31st, 2011
Farmers and Ranchers Appeal to Vilsack for Adequate Time to Respond
Full Article

Austin, TX:  Forty-nine advocacy groups representing the interests of family farmers, ranchers, and consumers have formally requested that USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack extend the public comment period for a controversial new proposal that would require livestock producers in the U.S. to incur significant expense tracking animals that cross state lines.  The comment period on the proposed, “Traceability for Livestock Moving Interstate,” is scheduled to end on November 9, and the organizations have requested an additional 60 days.

“The period for public comment coincides with the fall harvest and comes during the worst drought ever recorded in some major livestock production regions,” said Judith McGeary, Executive Director of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance and vice-chair of the USDA Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Animal Health.  “Our farmers and ranchers are struggling to get their crops in and save their animals, and they need more time to assess the impacts of the proposed rule.”

The groups’ letter to Secretary Vilsack pointed out that many farmers and ranchers are not online, slowing the speed of communication.  “According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, more than 40% of farms do not have internet access,” they noted in the letter.

“We have a significant number of Amish and Mennonite members who can only be contacted by mail or through print publications,” explained Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute.  “They, in turn, will have to mail their comments to USDA.  If the agency actually wants to hear from these livestock owners, it needs to extend the comment period.”

Some groups have questioned the agency’s willingness to respond to producers’ concerns.

“A coalition of cattle groups presented USDA with a reasonable plan for cattle identification, but the agency persists in proposing unworkable rules,” contends R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard.  “The least the agency can do is extend the comment period so that the cattlemen can comment on the proposal when they’re not in the middle of the calf-weaning and shipping seasons.”

The proposal has raised concerns about the economic impacts on both livestock producers and related businesses.

Gilles Stockton, a member of the Western Organization of Resource Councils said, “It will take a significant amount of time to pencil out the true costs of this proposal.  Livestock producers, sale barns, and states deserve adequate time to figure these costs and give comment.”

Brattleboro Reformer: Plowed under

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Mollie
By HOWARD WEISS-TISMAN
09/05/2011
Full Article

GUILFORD — There was very little Paul Harlow could do last week as the muddy brown waters of the Connecticut River spilled over and flooded his fields following the torrential rains of Tropical Storm Irene.

Like just about everyone else, Harlow thought the worst was behind him when he awoke last Monday, the day after the storm.

But as he prepared for a day of harvesting, the water quickly rose and within hours rows and rows of produce that he had been cultivating all season were destroyed.

“We worked for an hour, throwing dirt up to try to stop the water but it was useless,” Harlow said Friday as he prepared to plow under a massive pile of ruined produce. “It came a lot faster than I thought it could.”

The Vermont Agency of Agriculture sent out an advisory late Friday telling farmers that any fruits or vegetables that came in contact with flood waters would have to be destroyed.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it is impossible to adequately clean produce after a field is flooded.

And even though Agriculture Secretary Chuck Ross knows the flooding occurred at one of the busiest times of the state’s short growing season, he asked all farmers to abide by the directive to protect consumers.

“We understand this is a huge financial loss for our farmers,” Ross said Friday. “But in order to keep our food supply safe and ensure Vermont’s reputation for high quality, Vermont farmers are advised to follow this FDA guidance.

Harlow said he will have to get rid of about $250,000 worth of produce, about one-sixth of his annual sales.

September, he said, is his busiest time of the season at the farm stand, with local potatoes, peppers, carrots, cabbage and winter squash all overflowing out of baskets.

He said the reality is just starting to sink in.

“Walking around and looking at the fields, it really hit me how much we lost,” he said. “It’s really depressing when you think about it.”

He made it clear that any produce that did come into contact with flood waters was left, and over the following days he turned over thousands of dollars worth of organic vegetables.

The Agriculture Agency says assistance will be available and any farmers who suffered losses due to Tropical Storm Irene should contact their county Farm Services Agency.

The Vermont Economic Development Authority is also allocating up to $10 million in low interest loans to farms and businesses hurt by the floods.

Vern Grubinger, vegetable and berry specialist with University of Vermont Extension, said he has been hearing stories like Harlow’s from farmers all across the state.

Vegetable farms tend to be located on rich, bottom lands, along rivers, and all across Vermont farmers are reporting damage to their crops, machinery and fields.

So far, he said, losses are approaching $2 million.

Grubinger said in some of the most extreme cases, entire fields were washed away, and he said unlike previous floods or storms, Irene pounded the entire state.

But as bad as the flooding was for some, Grubinger said a majority of the farms in Vermont were spared the devastation, and there should be local produce available in the coming months.

“The good news is that most vegetable farms are located above the areas that were flooded,” he said. “In addition, the majority of farms that experienced flooding also have some fields that were not flooded. The result is that there is a lot of fresh, safe produce available.”

Grubinger stressed that consumers should trust any produce that is for sale.

Farmers across the state are in contact with UVM extension and are doing the right thing, as hard as it has been to trash their produce after a long season of hard work.

“Farmers understand what is at stake. Any farmer in Vermont will stand behind what he or she sells,” Grubinger said. “People should know they can buy produce with confidence. If you can’t trust a a farmer, then who can you trust?”

New York Times: Vermont Turns Out for Its Dairies as They Take Stock and Dig Out

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Mollie
By Michael Cooper
9/4/11
Full Article

SOUTH ROYALTON, Vt. — As soon as the news of the disaster at the Perley Farm began to spread — how the fast-rising waters of the White River had washed away nearly 200 bales of hay, flooded the farmhouse and then swept some of the cows down the river to their deaths — neighbors and strangers alike began arriving at the muddy barn here to offer help.

Some of the Perley Farm cows showed signs of their ordeal almost a week after the flood.

Agriculture students from Vermont Technical College showed up with shovels and began digging. A couple from Hartland, Vt., brought a wheelbarrow and mucked out the barn, and then returned a few days later with a homemade lasagna. A couple from New Hampshire brought grain to feed the surviving cows and wood shavings to line the barn.

“My husband and I, we’re people that give, you know — we’ve never had to be on the receiving end,” said Penny Severance, who runs the farm with her husband, Larry, for its owner, Harland Perley, 81, whose family has had it for a century. “So it’s really hard. We’re so grateful.”

“We had people that came down with shovels because there was no way out here,” she said, fighting back tears. “The road was totally cut off. And people walked in with shovels and were like, ‘We’re here, what can we do?’ Then we had the calf barn, the back where the heifers are, our silo room, our grain room was just full of muck. And they just cleaned it out for us.”

The flooding unleashed a week ago Sunday by the remnants of Hurricane Irene played havoc with farms across Vermont. Rushing waters left fields of silt-caked cornstalks matted down on their sides. Farmers are still checking to see what vegetables and flowers can be saved.

But for livestock farmers — especially the dairy farmers who are a symbol of Vermont — the toll has been more gut-wrenching, and the crisis has lasted longer, as they have struggled to take care of their animals.

With power out in many places, some dairy farmers could not operate the machines they use to milk their cows. Smaller farms relied on volunteers to milk them the old-fashioned way. Others got their hands on generators to run their machines. The cows needed to be milked, but with dairy pickups halted in many parts of the state because the roads were inaccessible, some farmers were forced to dump thousands of dollars worth of milk.

Then there was the emotional toll of losing animals.

Of the farm’s 65 cows, about two dozen are still missing.

Mr. Perley had only come back to the farm the night before with his nieces after a long trip to New Jersey, where he had visited relatives and had a pacemaker installed. “We didn’t expect that we’d be coming out in a boat, but we did,” he said in a telephone interview from New Jersey, where he returned after the flood.

The outpouring of help has moved Mr. Perley and the Severance family. Some heard about them through word of mouth. Others read about their plight in The Valley News. Others offered assistance after the farm asked for help on Vermont Public Radio and on a Web site called #VTResponse, which was created after the storm as a sort of Twitter-age version of the venerable Swopper’s Column in Yankee Magazine, connecting volunteers and supplies with the flood victims who needed them.

“We are in desperate need of 16% pellets for cows whose food will run out tonight,” read one post on the Web site. The next day, people arrived with feed for the cows.

As the Severances continued the cleanup on Friday, Tamara Burke, a sheep farmer from Mansfield, Vt., pulled up in her pickup truck (license plate: EWEHAUL) with wood shavings, new wire fencing and a gate.

“I know that there’s a tremendous amount of need,” said Ms. Burke, who had visited several farms. “Because people hadn’t brought their second-cut hay in, even if your barn escaped, your hay was on the ground. So we don’t have a whole lot of hay, and unfortunately we need hay.”

The days have been long for the Severances. “We’ve been working until about midnight every night here trying to do stuff and go home, and we’re up by 5 o’clock in the morning — and that’s late for us, because my husband, sometimes he’s down here at 3 o’clock in the morning on a normal day — and we start all over again,” Ms. Severance said.

“It’s been amazing, the support from the community we’ve gotten,” she said. “It really is. People are like, ‘What are you going to do?’ And I say, ‘What are we supposed to do, just throw our hands up and say the heck with it?’ This is our life. Of course we’ve got to keep farming.”

Reuters: Polish president vetoes bill allowing GMO seeds

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Mollie

8/24/11
Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; editing by James Jukwey
Full Article

WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski on Wednesday vetoed a new legislation that would allow some genetically modified seeds in the country, saying it ran against European Union rules.

Poland currently forbids any GMO cultivation or sales on its soil and must align its legislation with the more lenient one of the EU after Warsaw lost a court case against Brussels on it.

But Komorowski said the bill was faulty after parliament changed the government’s original proposal significantly, finally approving a bill that still contradicted EU rules.

“If the parliament approves my veto, I will immediately propose a seeds bill that would not have the GMO element because we need a seeds bill,” Komorowski said, adding he knew of no proof that GMO food could be dangerous for human health.

At the same time individual farmers in Poland import modified animal feed for their animals, which formally is not illegal.

Orlando Sentinel: Honey sales deregulated in Florida — a boon for backyard beekeepers

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Mollie

 

Small-scale honey producers no longer need permits, inspections
By Joseph Freeman, Orlando Sentinel
7:13 p.m. EDT, August 22, 2011
Full Article

For J.R. Denman, making honey over the past three years hasn’t been that sweet a deal. Denman, who works in technology, spends about $1,500 a year on the protective suits, new hives, lids and bottles that make up his sideline.

“Beekeeping is a money-losing proposition,” Denman said. “I can bottle all the honey I want, but I can’t sell it.”

That’s about to change. Florida’s Department of Agriculture announced Monday that it’s adding honey to its list of “cottage foods.” Small-scale beekeepers — those who have no more than $15,000 a year in sales — can now bottle and sell honey without getting permits and preparing it in a Department of Agriculture-inspected kitchen.

Making, selling and storing “cottage foods” in unlicensed home kitchens was approved earlier this year by state legislators. The list of products includes rolls, biscuits, fruit pies and trail mix.

The action will help backyard beekeepers whose costly hobbies haven’t been sustainable. Denman, for instance, said the new rule would let him make about $3,000 annually. It also could help consumers who want to buy local foods and are “a little bit more aware of organic food production,” said Jerry Hayes, chief of the apiary section for the Department of Agriculture. A pound of honey sold out of somebody’s house goes for about $5.

He explained that honey was added to the list of cottage foods because it doesn’t support the growth of bacteria and fungus: “They’ve found honey in the tombs of Egypt.”

Any cottage food product needs a label bearing the name and address of the seller, as well as ingredients. The label has to say that the item is made in a cottage food operation that is not subject to Florida’s food safety regulations.

Because the law is aimed at hobbyists, adding honey won’t threaten larger-scale distributors. In some places, such as Winter Park, local governments have imposed their own regulations and still require permits for cottage foods to be sold.

What’s more, cottage food operators can’t hawk their products over the Internet or to local restaurants or grocery stores because “wholesale” transactions aren’t permitted. They must sell their products directly to the consumer at a roadside stand or at a market. And they intend to.

The whole endeavor can be time- and space-consuming. “My wife doesn’t like it,” he quipped — but not even the Legislature can help with that.

 

Burlington Free Press: Vermont is the latest battleground in the fight for hemp

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Mollie

By Tim Johnson
8/21/2011
Full Article

Like most other products, hemp has its own trade associations. It has lobbyists. It has publicists. Together they churn out literature touting hemp’s extraordinary versatility and its ecological and agronomic virtues — a kind of wonder crop.

Hemp does not have a political action committee, however, which could explain partly why the campaign to legalize industrial hemp in the United States hasn’t gained much traction.

Advocates complain that American farmers are being shut out of a lucrative market. More than 30 countries grow hemp as an agricultural commodity, and hemp-planted fields in Canada — which legalized cultivation in 1998 — increased to 26,815 acres in 2010.

The United States “is the only industrialized country that will not allow its farmers the economic/environmental benefit” of growing hemp, laments Ben Brown, a farmer in Orwell.

“There are entire economies that can be built and sustained on hemp,” Brown wrote in a recent email. “I see Vermont as a perfect prototype for determining just how much benefit we can harvest from one simple little plant.”

Hemp can be cultivated for fiber or oilseed, and it is used to make thousands of products including drinks, skin butters, clothing and auto parts — and the market for hemp-based products continues to grow. The Hemp Industries Association estimates retail sales totaled about $419 million last year.

Some of the clothing and body-care offerings can be seen in The Hempest, a store that has maintained a downtown presence in Burlington for about 10 years. The primary source of the hemp in those fabrics? China.

As for food, City Market sells two varieties of hemp milk (“dairy and soy free, tree nut free, gluten free, cholesterol free,” reads a container). The source of the hemp? Canada.

Legalizing industrial hemp is not the same as legalizing marijuana.

The initiatives sometimes are conflated in the public mind, but that’s inevitable, considering the mixed signals from government and the fact that hemp and marijuana are the same species of plant, Cannabis sativa.

Hemp and marijuana are different varieties of that species, a key difference being that industrial hemp has a THC content so low, you can’t get high if you smoke it. THC (delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol) is the primary psychoactive component of marijuana.

This difference is moot to the federal government, which enforces a Controlled Substances Act that classifies all cannabis plants as marijuana and places strict controls on the cultivation of hemp. To grow hemp legally, a farmer must obtain a permit from the Drug Enforcement Administration. And the DEA pretty much never grants permits, so industrial hemp — an American staple from colonial times, with an output that peaked during World War II — is not grown commercially in this country.

The difference is apparent to Vermont lawmakers, however. The Legislature might balk at legalizing marijuana, but it’s on record in favor of regulated hemp cultivation. Vermont is one of nine states that have authorized hemp — but state authorization is contingent on federal approval, which Congress habitually is reluctant to grant.

Hemp advocates are undeterred.

Members of the Vermont delegation are silent on this issue, but Rural Vermont, a nonprofit farmers’ organization of about 900 members, hopes to bring them around. As the state organization that spearheads hemp legalization, Rural Vermont took the initiative as far as it could in Montpelier: a 2008 law authorizing cultivation and establishing the regulatory machinery, a 2009 resolution calling on Congress to drop the legal barrier and leave regulation to the states.

Now, Rural Vermont hopes to nudge Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., to sign on as a co-sponsor of a hemp-legalization bill in the U.S. House — but for now, Welch is staying on the sidelines of the debate.

Hemp in Canada

Christian Boisjoly is growing 23 acres of hemp in Lanoraie, Quebec, northeast of Montreal. Some farmers in his region are switching from tobacco to hemp, he said, primarily for fiber, but they are hopeful about the market for biofuel.

“It’s growing well,” he said. “This particular cultivar is different from the one in the west.” Most Canadian hemp is grown in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba; western Canada has pioneered food applications, from pasta and salad dressings to frozen desserts.

The crop is regulated closely. The government tests THC levels, checks growers’ criminal records. A minimum of 10 acres is required for a permit. Cross-pollination of legal hemp with illegal marijuana in theory could raise THC levels in hemp above Canada’s 0.3 percent legal threshold and lower THC levels in marijuana to make it less potent. (THC in seized marijuana has registered at 10 percent or more in U.S. government assays.) In fact, Boijoly said, the legal plant so outnumbers the illegal that cross-pollination works only to marijuana’s disadvantage, so any marijuana growers want to stay well clear of hemp fields.

“We’re pushing the pushers away,” Boisjoly said with a chuckle.

Hemp’s agricultural virtues? “It doesn’t need a lot of water,” he said. “None of us irrigate. It doesn’t need any pesticides.” It does, however, require nitrogen fertilizer.

Then there’s the climate-change factor. Boisjoly, who’s also a Quebec director of the Canada Hemp Trade Alliance, calls hemp “a huge carbon pump that takes carbon from the atmosphere and sticks it into straw.”

A report titled “Industrial Hemp” by Agriculture and Agri-food Canada concludes enthusiastically: “Hemp’s agronomic and environment attributes are remarkable. … It absorbs carbon dioxide five times more efficiently than the same acreage of forest and it matures in three to four months.” Hemp history

Rural Vermont’s annual meeting this spring happened to fall during Hemp History Week (May 2-8), billed by its organizers as “a national grassroots education campaign … designed to renew strong support for hemp farming and processing in the U.S.”

A table offered home-baked hemp-seed cookies and booklets of hemp recipes, along with free product samples, such as hemp protein powder, water-soluble hemp protein concentrate, shelled hemp seed, and of course, hemp milk.

The main issue of the day was food sovereignty, but hemp remains one of Rural Vermont’s longstanding campaigns. As organizer Robb Kidd put it, hemp could be an extra crop and revenue source for farmers, given that it can be used for food, fuel and fiber.

He said Rural Vermont has a list of 127 farmers who have said they’re interested in growing hemp. Among them is Johnny Vitko, a chicken farmer in Warren.

“For me as a small farmer the advantages are that I can manage a crop without the use of large machines,” Vitko wrote in an email. “Hemp is a complete protein and has all the amino acids and is omega 3-6 rich. This makes for healthier livestock. For me, that would be chickens that lay healthier eggs. I would be able to produce much of my own feed and that would reduce a lot of carbon produced from transport and farming of my current feed.”

Handouts at the annual meeting featured informational nuggets from Hemp History Week: “George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp … Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper … Henry Ford experimented with hemp to build car bodies … During World War II, U.S. farmers grew about one million acres of hemp as part of a federally subsidized program called ‘Hemp for Victory.’”

“Hemp for Victory,” a 1942 promotional film, invokes hemp’s place in U.S. history (Old Ironsides’ sails, rigging and anchor rope came from hemp) and urges farmers to step up their production to supply the Navy in the war effort.

Hemp and marijuana are “indistinguishable by appearance,” the USDA averred in its 2000 treatise on industrial hemp. The only way to tell them apart was by chemical analysis of THC content.

Since then, another way has emerged. DNA analysis has found that industrial hemp (bred for low THC) and marijuana (bred for high THC), vary genetically. That’s not much use to on-the-spot law-enforcement inspectors, but it does buttress the hemp enthusiasts’ contention that their celebrated plant really is different from its notorious twin.

The difference is clear to state Sen. Randy Brock, R-St. Albans, a co-sponsor of the Vermont Legislature’s 2009 Joint Resolution that calls on Congress to redefine hemp in federal law as a “nonpsychoactive and genetically identifiable species of the genus Cannabis” and to let states replace the DEA as the crop’s regulators.

“This is an industrial product,” Brock said in a phone interview recently. “This is not marijuana or anything remotely related to a hallucinogenic product.”

Brock called hemp a good, useful product that “could in fact be grown in Vermont.”

“I have not been persuaded that there’s any legitimate reason for banning it,” he said.

With the state Legislature on board, Rural Vermont has turned its attention to Congress. Neither Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., nor Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has taken a position regarding hemp legalization. Such legislation hasn’t come before the Senate.

Industrial hemp’s legislative prospects, such as they are, begin in the House. In each of the last four legislative sessions, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has introduced an “Industrial Hemp Farming Act.” The current bill, H.R. 1831, effectively would legalize hemp-growing by excluding low-THC Cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act. When Paul introduced the bill in May, he had 22 co-sponsors — 20 of them Democrats, including the likes of liberals Barney Frank, Dennis Kucinich, George Miller and Tammy Baldwin.

No sign of Vermont’s Peter Welch.

“In conjunction with Vote Hemp, Rural Vermont is encouraging Rep. Peter Welch to cosponsor H.R. 1831,” Rural Vermont declares on its website under the headline, “Hemp Action August 2011,” adding brightly:

“A member of the U.S. House Agricultural committee, Rep. Welch is ideally suited to move this legislation forward.”

Asked where Welch stands on hemp legalization, his communications director, Scott Corriell, replied:

“Congressman Welch has not taken a position on H.R. 1831.”

Why not?

“Peter wants to talk to Ron Paul about the bill, but Congressman Paul has been a little busy lately,” Coriell said.

He was referring to the Republican presidential campaign in Iowa, where Paul — a libertarian and something of a maverick — finished a close second in the Ames straw poll.

“Peter will talk with him when Congress is back in session,” Coriell said.

Commerical Appeal: Raw milk rules tighten as demand increases

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Mollie

By Gosia Wozniacka
8/8/11
Full Article

PANOCHE VALLEY, Calif. — On a stretch of California grassland, workers milk 70 Jersey cows and bottle several hundred gallons of milk into quart glass bottles topped with bright yellow caps — without heating the milk to pasteurize it.

Claravale Farm, two hours west of Fresno, has been producing milk with minimal interference between the udder and the customer for about 80 years. It’s one of two licensed raw milk dairies in California, which allows the retail sale of milk that has not been heated to 161 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 seconds.

But even as consumers line up at farmers markets and specialty stores to buy raw milk, pressure on the producers has intensified in California and around the country.

“People have been drinking raw milk for thousands of years around the world,” Claravale’s co-owner, Ron Garthwaite, said. “But recently, raw milk has become a biohazard.”

Five other states — New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Vermont and South Dakota — have adopted stricter standards to regulate the amount of bacteria in unprocessed milk in the past three years, according to the Raw Milk Survey released last month by the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture.

And states have cracked down on small unlicensed farmers selling raw milk to friends and neighbors. Three people were arrested in California last week for allegedly producing and selling raw milk without a license. They ran a herd share, in which several people split ownership because an animal’s owner can legally drink its raw milk without state inspections.

Federal law prohibits the sale of raw milk from state to state but allows states to regulate its sale within their borders. Arkansas and Mississippi allow the sale of raw goat milk directly on the farm where the milk is produced; Tennessee does not permit any sales of raw milk.

Thirty states allow some sort of raw milk sales: 13 restrict sales to the farm, 12 allow for retail sales and the other five have a combination of regulations.

Raw milk enthusiasts say pasteurization — the process of heating milk to kill disease-causing bacteria — kills bacteria beneficial to human health and argue that unprocessed milk is fresher, full of nutrients and tastier.