National Author, Michigan Farmers and Advocates Focus on Safe Food
Contact: Gail Philbin, 312-493-2384, gail.philbin@sierraclub.org
East Lansing, Mich.—Michigan consumers seeking safe, locally-grown, healthy food at farmers markets and other outlets are currently forced to subsidize corporate agricultural giants through taxpayer subsidies. An expert panel sponsored by a new sustainable agriculture coalition, Less = More, will address the situation and opportunities to change the food system and the federal Farm Bill to better serve consumers.
Who: Daniel Imhoff, Food Fight author/farmer; Gail
Hansen, Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming; Joe Maxwell, The Humane Society of the
United States; Lynn Henning, 2010 Goldman
Environmental Prize winner and Sierra Club activist, and Maynard Berry, Michigan sustainable livestock farmer. Note: Panelists are available for
interviews. Contact Gail Philbin for details.
When: 7:00
pm, Thursday, March 21, 2013
Where: B119 Wells Hall, Michigan State University,
East Lansing (Wells Hall is at the corner of North Shaw and Red Cedar Roads)
Nationally
known author and farmer Daniel Imhoff joins other farmers and experts to
explore the disconnect in our food system and how to begin to create a fair
playing field for sustainable livestock farmers in the discussion, Less=More: Restoring the Balance to Our Food
System. The event is free and open
to the public. RSVP by Mar. 18 to gail.philbin@sierraclub.org or
312-493-2384.
Background
Most industrial livestock
‘farms’ operate like a factory and confine animals in warehouses or crowded feedlots
with no vegetation. Although they generate millions of gallons of waste, these
facilities receive substantial taxpayer subsidies even when they pollute the
water, air and land through poor disposal of that waste, violating state and
federal environmental laws. Meanwhile, farmers with good practices that produce
healthy, clean food and don’t harm our natural resources struggle to survive.
Less=More:
Restoring the Balance to Our Food System will look at the economic,
environmental and health impacts of polluting livestock factories and how
taxpayer subsidies perpetuate their existence. The panel, hosted by a new
sustainable agriculture coalition called Less=More,
will also look at ways to address the unfair advantage these subsidies give
factory farms over sustainable livestock farms, including recommendations from
the coalition’s recently released report, Restoring
the Balance to Michigan’s Farming Landscape, available at www.MoreforMichigan.org.
Panelists
Daniel
Imhoff, Co-founder of Watershed Media
and an author and farmer—Imhoff will discuss the economics of factory farms
and the Farm Bill. He is an author, publisher and small-scale farmer in
California who has focused for more than 20 years on issues of food,
agriculture and the environment. Co-founder of Watershed Media and Wild Farm
Alliance, he has written many articles, essays, and books, including Food Fight: The Citizen's Guide to the Next
Food and Farm Bill; CAFO: The Tragedy
of Industrial Animal Factories, and Farming
with the Wild.
Gail
Hansen, Senior Officer and Staff Veterinarian, Pew
Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming, Pew Charitable Trusts—Hansen looks at
the role factory farms play in antibiotic resistance and other health impacts. Hansen
served as the state epidemiologist and state public
health veterinarian for 12 years with the Kansas Department of Health and
Environment where her work centered on infectious diseases and developing
public health policy. Prior to that, she was a
principal investigator and coordinator of blood borne pathogen studies at
the Seattle and King County Department of Public Health. She has served on or chaired numerous
state and federal infectious disease committees, served as a scientific advisor
for national and international conferences and is adjunct faculty at
Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine.
Joe
Maxwell, President of Outreach and Engagement at The Humane Society of the United States
(HSUS)—Maxwell
examines the lives of animals and farmers in the factory farm system. He grew
up on a family farm in the small town of Rush Hill, Mo., the son of a hard-working
family farmer. In his role at The HSUS, he works
directly with family farmers, helping them organize into producer groups to
open direct markets for their own products. Maxwell is a
former president of the Association of Family Farmers, an organization
associated with the Agriculture of the Middle Project, and a member of the
Organization for Competitive Markets and the Missouri Farmers Union.
Lynn
Henning, Sierra Club Water
Sentinel—Henning
will discuss the relationship between environmental pollution and farm subsidies
in Michigan. She received the 2010 Goldman Environmental
Prize for North America for more than a
decade’s worth of work tracking environmental abuses at factory farms around her
small family farm in south central Michigan. Her painstaking research is the
basis of the Less=More report, Restoring the Balance to Michigan’s Farming
Landscape. She’s been featured in O
Magazine and the 2013 water documentary Last
Call at the Oasis and appeared on Real
Time with Bill Maher in 2012.
Maynard
Beery, Beery
Farms of Michigan-- Beery raises grass-fed beef and goats in Mason, MI
and will give the perspective of a sustainable livestock farmer on how the lopsided
subsidy system affects his ability to compete with industrial livestock
operations. A former large-scale
livestock confinement operator, he switched to humane, environmentally friendly
farming more than a decade ago. He uses the Argentine grazing style of a
diverse array of perennial grasses and summer-winter annuals to meet year-round
forage needs of the animals, and his farm is in transition to organic
certification.
##
The Less=More Coalition is a group of organizations
engaged in various aspects of our food system who seek to level the farm field
for sustainable farmers in Michigan. They include: Beery Farms of Michigan,
LLC, the Center for Food Safety, Crane Dance Farm, LLC, Environmentally
Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan, Food & Water Watch, Greater
Grand Rapids Food Systems Council, Groundswell Farm, Zeeland, The Humane
Society of the United States, Michigan Farmers Union, Michigan Voices for Good
Food Policy, Michigan Young Farmers Coalition, Sierra Club Michigan Chapter and
Socially Responsible Agricultural Project.
Learn more at www.MoreforMichigan.org.
