Koch Brothers-Linked Group Declares New War on Unions

Bloomberg – Politics

Koch Brothers-Linked Group Declares New War on Unions

The Supreme Court decision to kill “agency” fees triggers a massive campaign to accelerate the demise of the American labor movement.

By Josh Eidelson     June 27, 2018

Supreme Court Has Brought on New Era of Labor Unrest, Rep. Ellison Says

U.S. Supreme Court Rules 5-4 Against Unions on Mandatory Fees

Following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that millions of public sector workers can stop paying union fees, a group tied to Republican billionaires long opposed to organized labor and its support of the Democratic Party has pledged to build on the landmark ruling to further marginalize employee representation.

The conservative nonprofit Freedom Foundation said that starting Wednesday, it will deploy 80 people to a trio of West Coast union bastions: California, Oregon and its home state of Washington. The canvassers were hired in March and trained this month, according to internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg News. The goal of the multi-pronged campaign is to shrink union ranks in the three states by 127,000 members—and to offer an example for similar efforts targeting unions around the country.

“Their employer isn’t going to tell them, and the union isn’t going to tell them,” said the anti-union group’s labor policy director, Maxford Nelsen. “So it falls to organizations like the Freedom Foundation to take up that mantle and make sure that public employees are informed of their constitutional rights.”

President George W. Bush (left) announces the nomination of Samuel Alito (right) in 2005. Photographer: Jay Clendenin/Bloomberg

The 5-4 Supreme Court ruling, with a majority of all-Republican appointees, threatens one of the last strongholds of America’s vanishing labor movement, a reliable source of support for the Democratic Party. Before today, public sector unions could require non-members to pay “agency” fees to fund collective bargaining efforts on behalf of all employees, since they benefit equally from representation. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito—appointed by President George W. Bush—said such a requirement violated employees’ rights under the First Amendment. The majority held that workers must affirmatively opt-in to pay any fees, making it more likely that unions will lose funding and thus the ability to negotiate wages and benefits on behalf of workers.

The Freedom Foundation has been waiting for this moment. In February, it began acquiring lists of workers and identifying public employees to feature in anti-union videos. This month, it has been assembling materials to provide to sympathetic local-government human resources departments and readying a toll-free call center.

“It just so happens that unions are the ones that stick up for the working class—whether we represent them or not.”

Now that the ruling has come to pass, the group plans a flood of social media, mail, email, cable television ads, op-eds and phone calls to spread the news about employees’ opportunity to cease paying union fees. Along with going door-to-door, the anti-union activists plan to visit government buildings at which public employees work.

Labor leaders said their members are ready to withstand the barrage. “They’re really not advocating for the employees at all—they’re advocating for unions to lose their power,” said Bob Schoonover, a heavy equipment mechanic for the city of Los Angeles who serves as president of a Service Employees International Union local there. “They want to silence the working class. It just so happens that unions are the ones that stick up for the working class—whether we represent them or not.” Schoonover said his union has been planning for the possibility of the anti-union ruling for years. “We feel that we’re as prepared as we can be.”

Charles (left) and David Koch. Photographer: Getty Images

Led by a former executive of the lobbying group, Building Industry Association of Washington, the Freedom Foundation reported a 2016 budget of $4 million. Its current assault on unions is modeled on past efforts that targeted home health aides, who in 2014 were given the option of not paying fees, and other government workers, who had a choice of paying full dues or smaller representation fees.

Nelsen declined to identify any of its donors, which he said include businesses, foundations and individuals “from all different walks of life.” All donations are “made by those who believe in our mission,” he said.

However, tax filings reveal a who’s-who of wealthy conservative groups.

Among them are the Sarah Scaife Foundation, backed by the estate of right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife; Donors Trust, which has gotten millions of dollars from a charity backed by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch; from the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, backed by the family of  U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos; and the State Policy Network, which has received funding from Donors Trust and is chaired by a vice president of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Meredith Turney, a spokeswoman for the State Policy Network, Lawson Bader, chief executive officer and president of Donors Trust, and Liz Hill, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, declined to comment on fundraising or donations. Scaife and Koch representatives didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

In records obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Bradley Foundation reported having given the Freedom Foundation $1.5 million in 2015 “to expand its union transparency & reform project,” including by opening a Portland, Oregon, office. In Bradley Foundation records obtained by the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy, the foundation’s staff recommended providing funds to the Freedom Foundation because West Coast union money “is used to subsidize the left’s national agenda and obstruct the mission and program interests of the Bradley Foundation and its allies.”

The Bradley Foundation praised the Supreme Court ruling while declining to comment on the Freedom Foundation.

“They don’t want outsiders to hurt their freedom to earn a better life.”

Past Freedom Foundation literature seeks to turn workers against unions by highlighting six-figure salaries allegedly paid to union executives, as well as sending out postcards with images of a dingy hotel and a warning echoing an Eagles song: “You can sign up anytime you like but you can never leave!”

According to the group’s documents, targets for its new “insurgency” campaign include corrections officers and teachers, who will be out of school for the summer and thus “have no interaction with their union.” Because the Oregon chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or Afscme, has been preparing members by “aggressively messaging” them, the anti-union group’s documents state, taking a more patient, less-aggressive approach with those workers will help to “demonize” the union.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan-based nonprofit that, like the Freedom Foundation, is a member of the State Policy Network and has received funding from Donors Trust, has launched a “My Pay, My Say” website that by Wednesday afternoon was informing public employees of their rights under the Supreme Court decision. The website offers an automated system for workers to generate letters to their unions opting out of paying fees or dues. Prior to Wednesday’s ruling, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the 501(c)3 tied to the Koch-backed American for Prosperity, had already launched paid Facebook ads announcing that “Workers’ rights may soon be restored” and promoting the mypaymysay.com website.

Randi Weingarten, of the American Federation of Teachers, speaking at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Photographer: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg

Afscme, which in 2015 privately estimated that half the workers it represents could be “on the fence” about whether to pay dues, said it’s trained 25,000 members who’ve helped conduct 800,000 face-to-face conversations with co-workers on the topic.

The American Federation of Teachers said that more than 500,000 of its members in the 10 states most affected by the ruling have recommitted to their union over the past six months, and that educators won’t be swayed by anti-union ads or canvassers funded by right-wing groups.

“When members find out who’s pulling the strings, they get pissed, because they don’t want outsiders to hurt their freedom to earn a better life,” AFT president Randi Weingarten said in an email. “We are confident that when members start getting harassed by these outside groups, they’ll be ready—not only to reject their assault but to become more active in their union.”

The “No. 1 goal” is to slash union support for the Democratic Party.

Other union supporters are looking to a range of strategies—including aggressive activism such as successful teacher strikes that roiled so-called right-to-work states this year, enticing members with exclusive benefits such as tuition discounts, and getting state laws passed that ease the organizing process.

But while such groups as Nevada’s casino union have flourished in the absence of mandatory fees, the big picture for organized labor is bleak following the high court’s ruling. In states with “right-to-work” laws, where it’s illegal to require workers to fund unions that are required to represent them, employees are already half as likely to have union representation—or less.

Such laws, and the Supreme Court opinion, have significant electoral consequences. “Right-to-work” laws already reduce the Democratic Party’s share of a state’s presidential vote by 3.5 percent and cut turnout by 2 percent to 3 percent, according to a working paper published this year by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Those policies, often put in place by Republican-controlled state legislatures, help dampen union political participation—the ultimate goal of anti-union initiatives at all levels of government, labor supporters said.

In a 2016 speech to American for Prosperity, the advocacy group backed by the Koch brothers, Freedom Foundation’s then-Oregon Coordinator Anne Marie Gurney said, “Our No. 1 stated focus is to defund the political left,” the Guardian reported. The prior year, Freedom Foundation CEO Tom McCabe authored a fundraising letter touting its “proven plan for bankrupting and defeating government unions” and addressing “a broken political culture” fueled by union dues.

The Civility Debate Has Reached Peak Stupidity

Esquire

The Civility Debate Has Reached Peak Stupidity

We got here around the time Newt Gingrich called for more civil discourse.

By Charles P. Pierce

Getty Images

HEN: WHO WILL EAT THE BREAD?

NARRATOR: SHE ASKED OF THE PIG, THE DUCK, AND THE CAT.

PIG: I WILL! NARRATOR: SAID THE PIG.

DUCK: I WILL! NARRATOR: SAID THE DUCK.

CAT: I WILL! NARRATOR: SAID THE CAT.

HEN: OH, NO YOU WON’T. I FOUND THE GRAIN OF WHEAT. I PLANTED THE WHEAT. I REAPED THE RIPE GRAIN. I TOOK IT TO THE MILL. I BAKED THE BREAD. I SHALL EAT IT MYSELF!

—The Little Red Hen (An old Russian folktale hijacked by American children’s authors.)

By all accounts, the most civil action taken in L’affaire Poule Rouge was the way Stephanie Wilkinson handled her refusal to serve Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. She first consulted with her staff, several members of which were gay and were angry at the administration*’s policies in that regard, and everyone was outraged by what was going on at the border. Wilkinson then took a vote on whether or not to serve Sanders. When the staff voted not to do so, she politely informed Sanders and her party that they would not be eating at the Red Hen that night. She even comped them the cheese plates they’d already ordered.

She did not use an official government Twitter account to discuss the episode, as Sanders did later. She did not use the power of the Oval Office to try and destroy someone’s business, as the president* found time to do later. She asked the staff what they wanted to do. She took a vote. She abided by their wishes. If there’s a more civil way of saying “no” to someone, I don’t know what it would be.

Getty Images

It would have remained a shiny object unworthy of pursuit had it not roiled up a good portion of official Washington, which seemed grateful to be discussing anything except hijacked migrant children. Suddenly, just as the issue of the hijacked children was beginning to bite the administration* severely in the ass, here was an event over which the elite political media could do one of its favorite traditional fan dances: the Question of Civility.

Right on cue, Fred Hiatt’s Washington Post editorial page, which has no compunction about publishing the words of torture-enthusiast Marc Thiessen, blurted out the most embarrassing single paragraph written about the events at the Red Hen. To wit:

“We nonetheless would argue that Ms. Huckabee, and Ms. Nielsen and Mr. Miller, too, should be allowed to eat dinner in peace. Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?”

How did any higher primate write this paragraph without coughing up a lung? How did any sentient mammal not red-pencil this paragraph into oblivion? How did Post truck drivers not save their employers severe embarrassment by tossing that entire day’s print run into the Potomac?

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For the benefit of those people also living in Fred Hiatt’s Land Without History: abortion providers have been stalked. Their children have been stalked. Their places of business have been vandalized. And, lest we forget, doctors who perform abortions have been fucking killed! They’ve been gunned down in their clinics, in their kitchens, and in their churches. They have not been allowed to live peaceably with their families, Fred, you addlepated Beltway thooleramawn. They haven’t been allowed to live at all. I’m no expert, but I’m fairly sure that a bullet in the head is far more uncivil than a complementary fucking cheese plate. What is wrong with these people?

I’m old enough to remember the raucous town halls of 2010, when the AstroTurfed forces of the Tea Party shouted down members of Congress while men with automatic weapons strolled around the perimeter of arenas in which the President of the United States was speaking. I’m old enough to remember when N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer of Civilization’s Rules and Leader (Perhaps) of The Civilizing Forces, was working out his Universal Lexicography of Insult for the benefit of a party that ate it up with an entrenching tool. Newt also emerged on the electric Twitter machine over the weekend, leaping to SarahHuck’s defense, and that was nearly enough to make me give up English as a hobby.

                      Getty Images

You know who would’ve been baffled by this sudden debate over “civility”? Samuel Adams and John Hancock, that’s who. They were a helluva lot less civil to the crew of the Dartmouth than Stephanie Wilkinson was to the Sanders party, and the citizens of Boston did not comp Thomas Hutchinson to a cheese plate when they ran his sorry ass across the pond. And, who knows, maybe if Elliott Abrams had been chased out of a few DC bistros in the 1980s, Archbishop Oscar Romero and four American nuns would still be alive.

This debate is stupid. It’s also dangerously beside the point. SarahHuck is the lying mouthpiece of a lying regime that is one step away from simply hauling people off in trucks. That she was politely told to take her business elsewhere is a small step towards assigning public responsibility to public officials that enable a perilous brand of politics. There are bigger steps to be taken, but everyone in official Washington is too damn timid to do what really needs to be done about this band of pirates.

So, Sarah, since I know it is hard for you to understand even short sentences, I’ll put it as briefly as I can: Take a hike.

Farming with Intentional Biodiversity

Civil Eats

Farming with Intentional Biodiversity

Klaas Martens grew up farming intensively with chemicals; now he and his wife Mary-Howell are organic devotees operating a thriving farm and grain mill helping boost the regional economy in upstate New York.

By Tamara Scully, Farmer Profiles, Farming    June 27, 2018

 

“The day will come, probably in the near future, when prophylactically killing pests and weeds with toxic chemicals and neurotoxins will seem primitive and irresponsible,” Mary-Howell Martens of Lakeview Organic Grain exuberantly predicts.

In addition to operating a feed mill, Mary-Howell, her husband Klaas, and their son Peter farm 1,600 certified organic acres of grains and vegetables in the Finger Lakes region of New York on land they both rent and own. If anyone’s predictions on the demise of conventional farming—using chemicals to control pests, diseases, and weeds—should be taken seriously, it is that of the Martens’.

Klaas, who is a third-generation farmer, and Mary-Howell started out decades ago as conventional farmers. In their early years, they relied heavily on external inputs like herbicides and synthetic fertilizers and routinely plowed soil left bare outside of the growing season.

Then, following a pesticide-related health scare more than 20 years ago, the Martens switched “cold turkey” from conventional farming. Today, they are highly successful certified organic farmers and well-respected leaders who never tire of sharing their expertise with anyone who asks, including those who doubt that organic farming can feed the world.

Frederick white wheat fields at the Martens's Farm

Frederick white wheat fields at the Martens’s Farm

The couple’s influence stretches far: Klaas was featured as this year’s OGRAIN keynote speaker, and the two jointly gave the keynote presentation at the Canadian Organic Farmers Eco Farm Days 2018. They have contributed numerous articles to sustainable farming publications, were featured in several documentary films, won the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Patrick Madden Award in 2008, and have served on various government or non-profit boards associated with sustainable farming.

The couple are keenly aware that certified organic practices are often misunderstood. Many conventional farmers don’t understand how eliminating synthetic chemicals can produce healthier crops without sacrificing yields or profits, they say. Others simply want to substitute permitted certified organic sprays into their existing system in an attempt to reap the higher pricing associated with organics—but they do not make any other fundamental changes, such as using cultivation practices as a first defense against pest and disease concerns.

The Martens are also concerned about what they see as industrial-style organic farms skirting around the USDA National Organic Program’s standards, and in their view, seemingly operating outside the fundamental tenets that have guided the organic farming community since its inception.

“Often, organic farmers are defined by the ‘shalt nots’: no pesticides, antibiotics, synthetic fertilizers, genetically modified organisms [GMOs], growth hormones, sewage sludge,” Mary-Howell says, referring to practices that are prohibited by USDA Organic regulations. “But in reality, it is the ‘shalts’ that make organic farming possible. The secret for success in organic agriculture is the substitution of a more skilled level of management and observation, rather than the substitution of alternative organically-approved materials.”

“Organic farming at its best uses management inputs in the place of outside inputs,” Klaas explains. As an added benefit, “our costs per unit of production are lower today than when we farmed conventionally.”

Yellow mustard fields are an important part of the rotational cropping system on Martens farm. The use of cover crops, biofumigant crops (such as the mustard), and double-cropping strategies are some of the ways in which organic farmers combat weeds and pests, build soil health, and control erosion.

Yellow mustard fields are an important part of the rotational cropping system on the Martens’s farm.

Cultivating Biodiversity, Patchwork-Style

When asked for a concise description that could convey the reality of organic farming, Mary-Howell has a ready reply: “intentional biodiversity.”

“A farm that practices intentional biodiversity develops multi-year, whole-farm crop rotations, including a variety of row crops, small grains, forages, and cover crops to deliberately nurture a healthy, diverse soil microbial population, break weed and pest cycles, build soil organic matters and enhance nutrient cycling, and prevent erosion and soil degradation,” she explains.

The Martens’s farm may feature amber waves of grain, but not with uninterrupted acres of a mono-crop often seen on a conventional commodity grain farm. Instead, it’s a patchwork. A field of spelt awaiting harvest may bump up against a field of soybeans ready to flower. As the Martens harvest one crop, they quickly plant another in the same location. Two crops, such as a clover cover crop planted between rows of a grain crop often share the same acreage.

“The total acreage appears to be much higher than our land base because over half of our land is double-cropped each year,” Klaas explains.

The key to this abundance is paying attention to the interaction between the crops and the role each crop plays in the farm system. As an example, Klaas highlights ancient grains—spelt, Einkorn wheat, and emmer wheat—now included in the farm’s rotations.

“Every new, well-adapted species we introduce to our system makes it stronger and more resilient,” he says. “Ancient grains have traits that make them more stress tolerant than our more highly specialized crops.” As a result, the system tolerates drought, increasing temperatures, and other less-than-ideal growing conditions much better.

Animals, too, play an integral role. The Martens raise 70 or so heifers and dry cows for nearby dairy farmers. They feed them primarily on the cover crops, crop residue, and crop by-products—clover, barley or oat residue, and corn stalks. In exchange, the animals provide manure as a natural source for soil fertility.

“The goal is to feed the animals without reducing our production of other food crops,” Klaas explains.

Because of their expertise, the Martens work regularly with Cornell University researchers on trials related to soil health and nutrition, small grains breeding, weed science, and seed propagation. They also work with the Rodale Institute, perfecting no-till best practices, including crimping and rolling rye to terminate cover crops, then planting a soybean crop into the residue.

“The overall principle that has tied all of the research together is that every agronomic problem we encounter in farming can be relieved or often eliminated by introducing the right new species into our system at the right point,” Klaas says. “Every pest, pathogen, or problem that we encounter is rooted in a chemical or biological imbalance in our farming system and is a symptom of that imbalance.”

Jeff Moyer, the executive director at the Rodale Institute, first met the Martens in the 1990s when they visited the Institute to learn. “Klaas was eager to learn everything he could about organic production, especially weed management. Learning soon morphed into teaching as both Klaas and Mary-Howell excelled in their transition  an intensive conventional approach to a dynamic organic approach,” Moyer says. “Student and teacher both at the same time, that’s Klaas.”

Building Community with an Organic Grain Mill

In addition to their focus on biodiversity, the Martens have also worked to develop economic diversity on their farm and in their community. Two decades ago, they bought a defunct mill and brought it back to life as the Lakeview Organic Grain mill, which enabled them to find multiple markets for their crops—for example, their corn and rye are used for distilling, feed, and seed; their soybeans for seed, feed, and food; and their wheat for feed, seed, and straw.

The mill also revitalized the organic farming sector in the area. “The Martens have had a positive and lasting impact on the Finger Lakes Region,” says Moyer. “By creating marketing opportunities for their own farm they’ve created opportunities for the entire region. They truly are a model for how one farm can grow an organic community.”

Chef Dan Barber, who is a longtime customer of the Martens, credits the farm with widespread impacts, chronicled in his 2014 book The Third Plate. He calls the mill “one of the most vital contributions to the town’s economy,” creating jobs and incentivizing regional farmers to grow grains like triticale, oats, and barley, which improve the health of the region’s soil.

“In just two decades,” Barber writes, “Klaas and Mary-Howell have gone from harvesting a few organic grains to complex rotations that include heirloom wheat, vegetables, and legumes—many of them farmed on leased land. They’ve added seed production to the mix, and a seed distribution company to supplement the thriving mill and grain distribution business.”

The mill sells locally adapted seed and feed crops that meet the particular needs of organic farmers in the region. It buys grains from neighboring farmers, too, providing a reliable and equitable market for local operations. And it pays farmers a fair price and does so in a timely fashion—two things often missing in commodity grain sales.

“From the very start, we envisioned Lakeview Organic Grain as a community resource, providing the tools that our upstate New York organic farmers need to be successful,” Mary-Howell says. “We intentionally build the sense that this is a community, that we are all in this together.”

As the Martens learn new techniques and insights, they also actively share them with other farmers—in online forums, in published articles, at conferences, at farm open houses and on their Facebook page. “If we can help other farmers feel more secure, hopeful, and successful,” Mary-Howell says, “then our time is well spent.”

Einkorn wheat, an ancient grain. The Martens are involved in regional efforts to revive ancient grains and make them available in the food chain for use in baked goods by commercial and home bakers alike.

Einkorn wheat, an ancient grain.

Their Future of Organic Farming

The Martens’ farm is now well into its second generation, with their 30-year-old son Peter farming independently and in conjunction with his parents since his teenage years. He has taken over the operation of some of farm’s rented land. The two farms, integrally linked, share the same shop, barn, equipment, and philosophy as father and son work the land together.

“Peter is of an interesting demographic of ‘next-generation organics’—these young people who grew up on organic farms, never learning to farm conventionally,” Mary-Howell says. “Organic farming is just normal to him.”

Soon, farming organically may be the only way, she continues.

“As the climate changes and we experience increasingly unpredictable weather and market conditions, a diversified, flexible cropping system gives us more chance that at least some of our crops will be adapted and successful each year,” Mary-Howell says.

The argument that organic farming can’t feed the world will be debunked in the near future, says Mary-Howell, as new technology allows larger-scale organic production.

Although he is a steadfast proponent of soil-based farming, earlier this month Klaas expressed an openness to gene-edited crop varietals, as long as potentially breakthrough technologies like CRISPR are used to “mimic naturally occurring varieties,” rather than serving to further corporate consolidation of seeds and expanding the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.

The Martens currently use technology such as mechanical in-row cultivators, GPS systems, and solar energy generation.

“We are trying to use GPS for planting and cultivation, and we would use much more, but that is made unnecessarily difficult because of the poor internet service and poor tech support” in their rural region, Mary-Howell states.

“With diverse and well-planned crop rotations and the right equipment, we can now be completely true to organic standards and intent and grow high-quality, high-yielding crops with effective weed control on thousands of acres,” she says. “Organic farming is now on the cutting edge, and there is nothing old-fashioned about where this is going.”

Top photo: The Martens family; from left: Klaas, their daughter Elizabeth, Mary-Howell, their son Daniel, their son Peter, Peter’s wife Hanna.

All photos courtesy of Mary-Howell Martens.

The Soil Champion Who Might Hold the Key to a Hopeful Climate Future

Civil Eats

The Soil Champion Who Might Hold the Key to a Hopeful Climate Future

In his new book, David Montgomery goes deep on the economic and climate-saving potential of healthy soil around the world.

By Claire Luchette, Agroecology, Climate  November 6, 2018

[Editor’s note: Today, the 23rd annual U.N. climate talks begin in Bonn, Germany, and this week Civil Eats continues to explore agriculture’s role in causing—and mitigating—climate change. In addition to this interview, be sure to also read an exclusive excerpt from David Montgomery’s latest book, Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life.]

Compared to sea level rise and super storms, soil is not at the center of most people’s thinking about climate change. But David Montgomery is here to change that.

For the former MacArthur fellow’s most recent book, Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Lifeand his third book about soil, Montgomery traveled the world to document the wide range of methods farmers are using to restore the health of the world’s soil. Like a travelogue for the environmental set, the book elegantly integrates Montgomery’s research with age-old wisdom about farming.

For decades, the Professor of Earth and Spaces Sciences at the University of Washington argues, soil has been degraded and taken for granted as farming practices have become increasingly industrialized. But as he spends time with farmers from the Dakotas to Ghana, Montgomery sees firsthand that soil regeneration is the key to increasing crop production and slowing climate change.

Civil Eats recently spoke with Montgomery about his book, “crazy” farmers, and what it will take to bring back healthy soil on a global scale.

You write that soil is the resource that “consistently gets overlooked or short-changed in public discourse and policy.” Why do you think those of us who aren’t farmers and scientists fail to recognize the value of dirt?

In part because we think of it as “dirt” and not “soil.” We think of it as something we don’t want to track into the house rather than the living foundation of agricultural civilizations. And we don’t tend to think of soil as something that changes because soil erosion and degradation occur slowly enough to escape notice year by year. It is only over a lifetime that one can really notice the changes to the land. Quite simply, we take it for granted.

I’m struck by the hopeful tone of the book. When you set out to research for the book, were you feeling “positive about our long term prospects,” as you were at the end of this process?

Frankly, no. I finished my previous book, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, with a call for treating the world’s soils as an intergenerational trust. But I was not anywhere near as optimistic about our potential to actually do that before I visited farmers around the world who have already restored fertility to their land and now use far less diesel and agrochemical inputs—and spend a lot less on fertilizer and pesticides.

Can you identify a turning point—a conversation or insight—during your research at which your “ecopessimism” turned around?

I really started to see that we really could turn the ancient problem of soil degradation around when my wife, Anne Biklé, and I noticed how fast all her mulching and composting was improving the soil in our garden, bringing it back to life in remarkably short order. There was one day when we noticed that the soil in our planting beds had gotten a lot darker—it was kind of like, hey remember that khaki beach sand colored soil we had, now it’s milk chocolate. This set us off to write The Hidden Half of Nature about our experiences learning about the importance of microbes in our garden—and our gut. Wondering whether soil restoration could be done as rapidly on farms started me on the path to writing Growing a Revolution.

I especially enjoyed learning about Gabe Brown’s surprising success using cattle to rebuild soil. Do you think there’s any hope for the small farm to have a come back?

Yes, I do. I was incredibly impressed with how Gabe and his son Paul have created a viable new model for a prosperous family farm. This new style of regenerative agriculture that relies less on expensive chemical inputs can help reshape the economics of smaller farms. After the second World War, American farmers got squeezed between low commodity crop prices and rising inputs costs. By improving their soil health, so that they don’t need as much in the way of inputs, farmers can improve their bottom line. The challenge, of course, is that it requires thinking about the soil differently and walking away from conventional practices to ditch the plow, plant cover crops, and grow a diversity of plants.

The book features only conventional farmers, except for the Rodale Institute. How did you choose the farmers you did?

I wanted to visit a broad range of farms, organic and conventional, large and small, and in the developed and developing worlds to find out whether the system of conservation agriculture (no-till, cover crops, and diversity) worked across the board. So I visited large farms and ranches in the U.S. and Canada, small subsistence farms in equatorial Africa (Ghana) and coffee plantations and agroforestry farms in Central America (Costa Rica). I visited the Rodale Institute to ask about whether no-till could be done on organic farms, motivated in part by hearing from conventional farmers that it couldn’t be done [because no-till generally involves controlling weeds with herbicides]. But I found that the folks at Rodale have been doing organic no-till for years.

Most of the farmers I visited were conventional because I wanted to learn what adopting this new system could do for the soil on farms practicing [growing] functional monocultures with intensive tillage and chemical use. I [also] wanted to visit farmers who had already restored fertility to the land to find out what worked and see what could be generalized from their varied experiences and stories. I found that farmers who had adopted the general principles of conservation agriculture had not only greatly enhanced the quality and fertility of their soil, but returned profitability to their farms by spending less on diesel and chemicals. I started calling them “organic-ish” farmers because they were hardly using any chemicals.

What do you think is standing in the way of wider change to how we treat our soil?

We all know that habits are hard to break. And to abandon the plow and seek to minimize the use of agrochemicals is a really different way of looking at the soil and farming. But enough science now supports the value of restoring health and fertility to the world’s agricultural soils that I’m confident that the farmers I visited are not anomalies. And their successes have already had a great impact in the regions where they live as other farmers notice that the “crazy” folks trying out new ideas are actually prospering. [Conventional] farmers are squeezed between the low prices they get for harvesting commodity crops and the high prices of the diesel, fertilizer, pesticides, and patented seeds.

I didn’t meet a single farmer who objected to the idea of paying less for diesel and fertilizer. The challenge will be to figure out how to tailor the general principles of conservation agriculture to specific practices that work for farmers in different regions, with different soils, climates, and crops. But that is a challenge that I think farmers and researchers are up to.

If it were up to you, who would be your pick for U.S. Secretary of Agriculture?

Hands down, my choice would be Howard G. Buffett. His vision of a Brown Revolution to restore agricultural soils is inspiring and he’s a farmer who knows the business side of agriculture.

Carbon Farming Works. Can It Scale up in Time to Make a Difference?

Civil Eats

Carbon Farming Works. Can It Scale up in Time to Make a Difference?

The knowledge and tools to sequester carbon on farmland have blossomed rapidly in California; now farmers and ranchers just need funding to make it happen.

 

Lani Estill is serious about wool. And not just in a knitting-people-sweaters kind of way. Estill and her husband John own thousands of sweeping acres in the northwest corner of California, where they graze cattle and Rambouillet sheep, a cousin of the Merino with exceptionally soft, elastic wool.

“Ninety percent of our income from the sheep herd comes from the lamb we sell,” says Estill. But the wool, “it’s where my passion is.”

Wool, an often-overlooked agricultural commodity, has also opened a number of unexpected doors for Bare Ranch, the land Estill and her family call home. In fact, their small yarn and wool business has allowed Lani and John to begin “carbon farming,” or considering how and where their land can pull more carbon from the atmosphere and put it into the soil in an effort to mitigate climate change. And in a rural part of the state where talk of climate change can cause many a raised eyebrow, such a shift is pretty remarkable.

Rambouillet sheep. (Photo credit: Paige Green)

Rambouillet sheep. (Photo credit: Paige Green)

Over the last two years, the Estills have started checking off items from a long list of potential changes recommended in a thorough carbon plan they created in 2016 with the help of the Fibershed project and Jeffrey Creque, founder of the Carbon Cycle Institute (CCI). The plan lists steps the ranchers can take to create carbon sinks on their property. And in the first two years, they’ve gotten started by making their own compost out of manure and woodchips and spreading it in several strategic places around the land.

They’ve also planted more vegetation in the areas of the ranch that border on streams and creeks to help them absorb carbon more efficiently, and this year they’ll be putting in a 4,000-foot row of trees that will act as a windbreak, as well as a number of new trees in the pastured area, applying a practice called silvopasture.

All these practices have allowed the Estills to market their wool as “Climate Beneficial,” which is a game-changer for them. They’ve also sold wool to The North Face, which used it to developed the Cali Wool Beanie—a product the company prominently touts as climate-friendly. The company, which has marketed several other regional products as part of their ongoing collaboration with Fibershed, also gave the Estills a one-time $10,000 grant in 2016 that the ranchers combined with some state and federal funding to help them start enacting parts of their carbon plan.

Like the Estills, the owners of dozens of farms, vineyards, and ranches in 26 counties around California have drawn up ambitious carbon plans that take into account the unique properties of each operation and lay out the best, most feasible ways to absorb CO2 over the long term. In arid ranching counties like Marin, that might mean re-thinking grazing practices, while in Napa Valley it could mean building soil in vineyards by tilling less and planting cover crops, and in San Diego County, it may mean protecting existing citrus and avocado orchards from encroaching development and working with farmers to plant more orchards.

It’s early days for the effort, but in a state that plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030—the most ambitious target in North America—these plans are laying out a solid plan to help farming and ranching become heavy hitters in the fight against climate change. They’re also helping create a model that is being watched closely by lawmakers in states like Colorado and Montana, where other carbon farming projects are coming together.

Agriculture accounts for around 8 percent of California’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but that number doesn’t quite reflect the impact of the gases themselves. Croplands in the state are the primary contributor of nitrous oxide, the most potent GHG, and account for 50 percent of the N2O that ends up in the atmosphere. While the bulk of the state’s methane emissions—25 times more damaging to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide—also originate on animal farms. On a global level, food production accounts for between 19 and 29 percent of climate-warming GHG emissions.

Lani Estill. (Photo credit: Paige Green)

Lani Estill. (Photo credit: Paige Green)

It’s not surprising then, that some farmers are eager to be part of a solution. But as the rubber hits the road in California, the big question is how farmers will fund these changes. While solutions like the ones the Estills are tapping into, which combine consumer interest with public funding, seem promising, there’s still a long way to go before the efforts scale up in earnest around the state.

The momentum may be growing, however: The Marin Carbon Project, which pioneered carbon farming in California, recently had its day in the sun with a New York Times Magazine feature. And success stories like that of the Estills may soon bring more food producers on board.

A Beneficial Partnership

For Lani Estill, everything began to change in 2014, when she developed a small yarn brand. But she was only able to sell a small percentage of the wool directly to consumers, and most of it went to the wholesale market, where it sold for next to nothing. Some years, Estill says, they’d store it to see if they could get a better price the following year.

In 2014, Estill met Rebecca Burgess, a persuasive enthusiast of California wool with a vision to reinvigorate the supply chain for regional fiber, yarn, and cloth while building a market for those things simultaneously. Burgess, who had built a statewide network of fiber producers through her Fibershed network, was connected with the Marin Carbon Project and several other nonprofits campaigning hard to make carbon farming a reality.

When the idea came up to write a carbon plan, with funding from The North Face, Estill says it took some convincing. “Ranchers have been threatened constantly by the environmental community,” Estill told Capitol Public Radio in January. “So, we had to kind of open up our minds a little bit to accept what was being offered as a genuine offer.”

Burgess had also developed the “Backyard Project” with The North Face, which revolved around creating a shirt, and then several sweatshirts, using a transparent, mostly regional supply chain. The beanie made with climate beneficial wool was a natural next step.

“We make products so people can go explore and enjoy nature. And addressing climate is obviously an important issue,” says James Rogers, director of sustainability at The North Face. Based on their own internal lifecycle assessments, the company also determined that focusing on the types of materials it uses and how those materials are made offered the most effective way to address its environmental impact.

But Rogers says that the chance to make a positive impact was also appealing. “Frankly, a lot of companies are trying to do less bad, by reducing their environmental impact. And the thing that’s so exciting about climate beneficial wool is that through those ranching practices [the Estills] are actually taking carbon out of the atmosphere and sequestering it into the soil, while at the same time making that soil more healthy and retaining more water. So instead of just trying to be less bad, we’re actually doing more good.”

The Cali Wool Beanie was the top-selling beanie on The North Face’s website when it was released last fall, suggesting that some consumers are onboard with supporting carbon farming with their dollars.

The North Face's promotion of the Cali Wool Beanie.

The North Face’s promotion of the Cali Wool Beanie. (Photo courtesy The North Face)

But Fibershed’s Burgess adds that, although the climate benefits are front and center in the marketing, the carbon plans themselves are an ongoing process. “With the beanie, we’re working toward every pound of wool representing nine pounds of carbon sequestered. But we’re not there yet,” she says. “We actually need people [and companies] to buy more wool at a re-valued price, which that beanie provides. The more wool sells, the more carbon we can sequester at Bare Ranch. And that’s actually how regenerative systems work. It’s call and response between us and the ecosystem.”

Lani Estill, who has begun to sell more of her wool at non-commodity prices, agrees. She’s also created a community supported cloth project (a CSA for wool) as a way to invite home crafters and small brands to take part in that call and response.

Mounting Evidence

The idea of crafting farm-specific carbon plans grew out of the Marin Carbon Project, a collaborative research effort between landowners John Wick and Peggy Rathmann, scientists at the University of California, and several conservation groups. Launched in 2008, the project has spent the last decade looking at the role that applied compost and grazing management practices can play in helping soil absorb more carbon from the atmosphere on the state’s 54 million acres of rangeland.

Whendee Silver, a professor of ecosystem ecology at the University of California, Berkeley, managed a team of researchers who compared the CO2 and water retained in a series of plots of land—one where a thin layer of compost was applied, one that was plowed, one where both compost application and plowing took place, and a control plot.

In 2014, the team published the first round of evidence that showed that compost applications and other carbon farming techniques have the potential to help mitigate climate change by building biomass and transferring carbon from the atmosphere back into the soil.

The researchers found that a single application of a half-inch layer of compost on grazed rangelands can increase grass and other forage plant production by 40 to 70 percent, help soil hold up to 26,000 liters more water per hectare, and increase soil carbon sequestration by at least 1 ton per hectare per year for 30 years, without re-application. And because the dairy manure the project used to create the compost would have otherwise released methane to the atmosphere, the result was particularly promising for the climate.

Spreading compost at Bare Ranch. (Photo credit: Paige Green)

Spreading compost at Bare Ranch. (Photo credit: Paige Green)

“We’ve discovered is that there’s a version of agriculture that actually could transform atmospheric carbon into carbohydrates [i.e., grass] and soil carbon,” says Wick, who has spent over a decade evangelizing the benefits of carbon farming on his own ranch and envisioning a state where such practices become the norm. “So for us the challenge is how do we communicate that? Now that we have this new understanding, how do we inspire people to put new importance on the same old things that we’ve always looked at—like sunshine, rain, and soil?”

For Wick and others, this shift in perspective feels especially urgent. He points to the latest International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) risk assessment, which makes it clear that “emission reductions will no longer stop this runaway destabilization of the climate. It says, ‘We must develop an ongoing strategy of removing carbon from the atmosphere that is sustainable.’ And that’s what we’ve done. Agriculture is the only system on earth large enough—directly under human influence right now—to actually transform enough carbon to actually cool the planet, not just stop how warm it gets, but actually reverse that trend.”

This year, Wick has returned his focus to his own land, while a handful of nonprofits such as the CCI and the California Climate and Ag Network, as well as county-level resource conservation districts (RCDs), are carrying on the change to scale up the statewide effort.

Since 2013, CCI has been working with RCDs all over the state to craft carbon plans that speak to the specifics of each farm’s geography, soil type, and lifecycle. “We’re not just spreading compost everywhere,” says CCI’s Torri Estrada. “We want to get on a farm and really understand the ecology, the farm production, and really push the envelope and give them a very comprehensive assessment.”

Nancy Scolari, the executive director of the Marin Resource Conservation District, says it has been interesting to see carbon farming go from a fairly abstract concept to an actual set of fundable practices in just a few years.

For many farmers, she says, the fact that they can’t actually see carbon in the air or the soil, made the Marin Carbon Project “hard to really appreciate at first.” But when Silver’s research was released, Scolari says it filled in some important gaps in the wider conservation world.

“The reason RCDs were created in the first place was all around soil, after the Dust Bowl. If you completely overuse your soils, you’ll feel it in the end. So to kind of reconnect with that past has been pretty interesting,” says Scolari. “All of the information around increasing soil organic matter and total carbon is like, ‘wow, this is the piece we’ve been missing for some time now.’ And it’s a piece that farmers really connect with.”

And while Estrada admits that the interest so far has mostly come from farmers who are already working outside the agriculture mainstream, in most counties the early adopters, who want to make—and execute on—a carbon plan for their farms still outnumber the local RCDs’ capacity there. Four northern California counties—Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, and Marin—have all developed templates that can be adapted in other parts of the state with rangelandsvineyardsorchards, and forests.

In Marin, 10 farms had completed carbon plans as of the end of 2017, and five more are working on them this year. But the Scolari says she only has a few small pots of potential funding—from land trusts, the state’s coastal conservancy, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resource Conservation Service—to offer farmers.

“The biggest barrier to scaling is the technical assistance of farmers,” says CCI’s Estrada. “It really requires planning assistance, implementation assistance, and then monitoring, which the RCDs and others do. But it’s really underfunded.”

For instance, planning to spread a layer of compost across every acre of your farm may sound relatively simple, but the cost of making it (or buying it), hauling it, and spreading it can add up quickly. And no farm has executed on every item in their carbon plan just yet. “We have producers doing one or two practices, which is really great. But the bottom line budget for [the whole plan] is hundreds of thousands of dollars,” says Estrada.

Piles of compost to be spread. (Photo credit: Paige Green)

Piles of compost to be spread. (Photo credit: Paige Green)

In 2017, the state set aside $7.5 million for the Healthy Soils Program and a larger Healthy Soils Act as part of its cap and trade program. That was a good start, says Estrada, but adds that Marin County alone “could spend that twice over with a full build-out of its plan.” And there are no funds allocated for healthy soils in the state’s current fiscal year budget.

Larger structural investments are also helping paving the way. Fifty million dollars from the cap and trade pool have also been made available to large dairy farms that compost their waste, at which point it can be made available to farms and ranches. And the state’s recycling agency has also set aside $72 million for new compost facilities.

When farmers are able to raise the funds to enact their carbon plans, they’re likely to see a return on their investment over the long term. “If we can increase organic matter in soils, we thereby increased water-holding capacity,” points out Scolari. And in drought-prone California, that alone has enormous value.

As John Wick sees it, money can definitely help kick-start the process of sequestering carbon on farms, but so can time.

In areas of Wick’s ranch where the soil was once losing carbon, he says, he’s seeing a slow but powerful process unfold. “Where we put compost, which we imported at first, we reversed that trend and that system is making more biomass so I can make even more compost on-site. So now making my own compost as medicine and putting a single dose on my poor soils creates even more [compost]. And so I have this sweet spot of success that’s expanding outward.”

Calla Rose Ostrander, a consultant who works with Wick as well as the People, Food and Land Foundation, acknowledges that the funding so far has been relatively small, but considering the scope of the work to be done, she believes the inflection point isn’t far off.

“It’s going to require funding from multiple places before farmers can fully get to where they are implementing this at scale on the landscape,” she says. “However, all those funding doors are open now. Now it’s just a matter of growing the size and amount of funds that come through to the ground. The pathways are built, the relationships are there, the interest is there. The crucial moment—and this happens in any movement—is how you get from, ‘we’ve got the ideas, we’ve got the policies’ to ‘we’ve got to get the money on the ground.’”

“We’ve built a new pathway from scratch,” adds Wick. “And it didn’t matter at first how much flowed through it—we’re testing it now for leaks and gaps. And so the first flow is trickling through. That’s the moment; and it’s a very exciting moment.”

Want Healthier Soil? Link it to Crop Insurance

Civil Eats

Want Healthier Soil? Link it to Crop Insurance

Scientists now say incentivizing soil health would improve food security and sustainability, especially as the climate changes.

By Elizabeth Grossman, Agroecology, Climate    June 5, 2018

 

[Update: In September 2017, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) introduced legislation that would require “all farmers who receive crop insurance premium subsidies to abide by basic conservation requirements.”]

Most farmers know that the health of their soil is important, but they don’t all prioritize it over, say, maximizing what they grow each year. Now, some scientists are looking into ways to ensure that more farmers—especially those producing commodity crops in the middle of the country—start taking soil seriously.

The world’s biggest crop insurance program, the U.S. Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) provides coverage to help farmers recover from “severe weather and bad years of production.” But recently, a pair of Cornell University scientists looked at what might happen if crop insurance were also tied to soil quality—that is, if insurance companies began considering soil data when determining rates.

In a new paper, Cornell University assistant professor of agricultural business and finance Joshua Woodard and post-doctoral research assistant Leslie Verteramo Chiu argue that tying the Crop Insurance Program to the health of a farm’s soil could make it a powerful tool for promoting more sustainable and resilient farming. Including soil data in crop insurance criteria, they write, would “open the door to improving conservation outcomes” and help farmers better manage risks to food security and from climate change.

Or, as Paul Wolfe, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) senior policy specialist, explained, “The big picture is that crop insurance could be a great way to incentivize conservation, but it isn’t now.”

Current Program Fails to Recognize Conservation Practices

What is the FCIP and why are its policies so influential? The program began in the 1930s to help farmers recover from the devastating losses of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Now it covers everything from drought-related crop losses to dips in revenue.

About 900,000 farmers participate in the program, which currently covers about 90 percent of “insurable” U.S. farmland—more than 298 million acres in 2015—with policies worth about $100 billion annually. And it covers more than 100 different crops. The program is a public-private partnership managed by the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, which has been administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Risk Management Agency (RMA) since 1996. The USDA sets insurance rates and authorizes which private insurance companies can sell policies; the costs of premiums are subsidized by the federal government to the tune of $0.62 per $1. It’s the largest direct subsidy program to domestic commercial agriculture and currently costs U.S. taxpayers about $10 billion annually.

The USDA itself has said that, “Improving the health of our Nation’s soil is one of the most important conservation endeavors of our time.” Healthy soil is also key to helping farmers manage the extreme weather—including droughts and floods—that comes with climate change.

But as it stands, the FCIP bases premiums on what a farm produces from year to year, without considering the conditions—such as soil quality—that influence those yields. “Crop insurance doesn’t really look beyond what you do in a single year,” said NSAC’s Wolfe. “Its goal is a very short-term effort based on the maximum a farmer can produce in one year,” he explained. “In some ways it discourages conservation practices with its extreme short-term view.”

This means that a farmer who puts in a cover crop to rebuild its soil capacity could end up paying more in premiums if that practice reduced his or her annual yield. Similarly, a farmer who puts marginal land into production to increase yields while increasing erosion or runoff would not pay a price for those impacts.

As Woodard writes, including soil type and quality information in setting crop insurance rates would be “a first step toward creating a crop insurance system” that could improve agricultural sustainability and “improve conservation outcomes.” But without this information, the program doesn’t provide any incentive for farmers to adopt practices that would, for example, increase soil water retention or increase soils’ organic matter—potentially increasing long-term productivity.

If soil data were part of crop insurance, it could also reduce the agricultural runoff now causing damaging algae blooms in the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, and Gulf of Mexico, said Wolfe. And it would do so “with a carrot, not a stick.”

“As a farmer, I have always resented that the price my neighbors—who don’t do a good job with conservation—pay is the same as what someone who does practice conservation [pays],” said Bruce Knight, principal of Strategic Conservation Solutions and former chief of the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Services, who raises calves, corn, soybeans—and some years, wheat, sunflowers, and alfalfa—in South Dakota.

“We’re now subsidizing riskier operations the same as less risky ones, Knight explained. Getting information about soil “incorporated into crop insurance will completely revolutionize how that works and revolutionize taxpayers’ role as well,” he added.

Critics of the current program, including the Environmental Working Group, contend that crop insurance policies actually encourage—and subsidize—poor farming practices and could lead to another Dust Bowl in regions hardest hit by drought and heat.

Challenges of Transforming the Farm Landscape

Of course, changing the farm landscape won’t be as easy as some might hope. “Every farmer knows that … improving soil health reduces risk,” explained Meridian Institute senior partner Todd Barker. “But to effect change in the crop insurance program you have to prove without a doubt, in a data-intensive way, that there’s a correlation between A and B. Insurance companies require that level of detail.”

Through its AGree program, the nonprofit Meridian has been working with academic researchers like Woodard, farmers, conservation groups, and former USDA leaders to develop ways to incorporate soil data into the FCIP.

Linking crop insurance premium subsidies to soil data and measures of soil health would be the equivalent of a safe-driver discount on auto insurance, Wolfe explained. It would reward better practices. But getting the USDA to make such a move won’t be easy. After all, the FCIP has been in place for nearly 80 years and linking crop insurance to soil data would require changes to the Farm Bill—and would require the USDA to share information about crop yields that aren’t now readily available.

“There are some people out there who don’t want to change at all,” says Wolfe. “But a lot of people, if provided the right sort of encouragement and incentives, would be moving the needle on reducing runoff, reducing soil loss, and improving water quality.”

It’s tough to say whether any of this will come to pass in the short term. FCIP changes are expected to come under discussion as the 2018 Farm Bill is debated. But, so far, the agriculture committees mainly appear interested in reducing premium subsidies for the wealthiest farmers and insurance payouts based on inflated post-disaster harvest prices.

Newly sworn-in Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has voiced support for the crop insurance program. Yet his stance on soil protection and increase resiliency to climate change remains unclear, especially given his past dismissal of climate change science and his investments in companies that sell agricultural chemicals, including fertilizer. Still, Woodard’s paper lays the groundwork to show that if and when the USDA is ready to make a move, soil quality data could play a key role in transforming crop insurance for the better.

Costa Rica is about to become the first country to ban single-use plastics!

We Can Save The World

June 20, 2018

Costa Rica is about to become the first country to ban single-use plastics!

Costa Rica Bans Plastic

Costa Rica is about to become the first country to ban single-use plastics!

Posted by We Can Save The World on Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Ocasio-Cortez Becomes Most Ambitious Climate Democrat After Surprise Primary Win

EcoWatch

Ocasio-Cortez Becomes Most Ambitious Climate Democrat After Surprise Primary Win

Olivia Rosane       June 27, 2018

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – 2018

After what CNN called a surprise primary victory Tuesday over 10-term incumbent Representative Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th congressional district, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just became the leading Democrat on fighting climate changeThe Huffington Post reported.

Ocasio-Cortez, a 28 year old Democratic Socialist, is now likely to win November’s general election in the historically Democratic district that stretches from the Bronx to Queens, meaning she will join Congress with some of the most ambitious climate plans of any current representative, according to The Huffington Post.

In an email to The Huffington Post, she explained her plans for a Green New Deal to help America switch to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035, which advocates say is our best shot of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

“The Green New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the mobilization efforts seen in World War II or the Marshall Plan,” she wrote. “We must again invest in the development, manufacturing, deployment, and distribution of energy, but this time green energy.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s climate plans dovetail with some of the other progressive points on her platform, such as a Federal Jobs Guarantee and Solidarity with Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Maria.

Ocasio-Cortez told The Huffington Post that the island would be the ideal place to test-run a Green New Deal to help with recovery efforts.

“Our fellow Americans on the island have suffered horrendous losses and need investment at a scale that only the American government can provide,” she said.

On her platform, Ocasio-Cortez also links the fight against climate change with her commitments to economic justice and immigrant rights.

“Rather than continue a dependency on this system that posits climate change as inherent to economic life, the Green New Deal believes that radically addressing climate change is a potential path towards a more equitable economy with increased employment and widespread financial security for all,” her platform reads.

Her platform also says fighting climate change is necessary “to avoid a world refugee crisis.” Concern for immigrants is a large part of her platform. She supports abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which was created in 2003 in the post-9/11 escalation of national security operations and executive power and operates outside the Department of Justice, unlike previous immigration enforcement.

The link between the potential for global warming to increase the number of climate refugees and the need to improve the treatment of current immigrants, many of which are already fleeing deteriorating environmental conditions, is something picked up by the Democratic Socialists of America, the group to which Ocasio-Cortez belongs, on the platform for its climate and environmental justice working group, according to The Huffington Post.

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Farmers in America are killing themselves in staggering numbers

Money Watch

Farmers in America are killing themselves in staggering numbers

By Irina Ivanova        June 26, 2018

“Think about trying to live today on the income you had 15 years ago.” That’s how agriculture expert Chris Hurt describes the plight facing U.S. farmers today.

The unequal economy that’s emerged over the past decade, combined with patchy access to health care in rural areas, have had a severe impact on the people growing America’s food. Recent data shows just how much. Farmers are dying by suicide at a higher rate than any other occupational group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The suicide rate in the field of farming, fishing and forestry is 84.5 per 100,000 people — more than five times that of the population as a whole. That’s even as the nation overall has seen an increase in suicide rates over the last 30 years.

The CDC study comes with a few caveats. It looked at workers over 17 different states, but it left out some major agricultural states, like Iowa. And the occupational category that includes these workers includes small numbers of workers from related occupational groups, like fishing and forestry. (However, agricultural workers make up the vast majority of the “farming, fishing and forestry” occupational group.)

However, the figures in the CDC study mirror other recent findings. Rates of suicide have risen fastest, and are highest, in rural areas, the CDC found in a different study released earlier this month. Other countries have seen this issue, too — including India, where 60,000 farmer suicides have been linked to climate change.

In the U.S., several longtime farm advocates say today’s crisis mirrors one that happened in the 1980s, when many U.S. farmers struggled economically, with an accompanying spike in farmer suicides.

“The farm crisis was so bad, there was a terrible outbreak of suicide and depression,” said Jennifer Fahy, communications director with Farm Aid, a group founded in 1985 that advocates for farmers. Today, she said, “I think it’s actually worse.”

“We’re hearing from farmers on our hotline that farmer stress is extremely high,” Fahy said. “Every time there’s more uncertainty around issues around the farm economy is another day of phones ringing off the hook.”

Finances are a major reason. Since 2013, farm income has been dropping steadily, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This year, the average farm’s income is projected to be 35 percent below its 2013 level.

“The current incomes we’ve seen for the last three years … have been about like farm incomes from early in this century,” said Hurt, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University in Indiana.

Farmers are also at the mercy of elements outside their direct control, from extreme weather events that threaten crops to commodity prices that offer less for farm goods than it costs to produce them.

“We’ve spoken to dairy farmers who are losing money on every pound of milk they sell,” said Alana Knudson, co-director of the Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis with the University of Chicago.

As America’s trading partners slap tariffs on U.S. crops, those prices are set to be further undermined. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve’s gradual raising of interest rates threatens the financing for many smaller farms.

A lot of our farmers take out operating loans so they can buy seed, fertilizer and spray. As we’re looking at increasing interest rates, this is going to exacerbate financial vulnerability,” Knudson said.

Unreliable finances are a major reason why three-quarters of farmers must rely on non-farm income, often from a second job. Health insurance access is another.

Health care and mental-health services can be critical, Knudson said, particularly in rural areas, where medical care may be scarce. The farm bill that passed the House last week threatens to undo that, she said, because it allows for health insurance to sell plans that exclude mental health coverage. The Senate version of the farm bill allocates $20 million to a program to connect farmers with behavioral health services.

Such programs are even more crucial today, said Fahy, because many publicly-funded programs that were created in the wake of the 1980s farm crisis have been chipped away over the years. She pointed to Minnesota, where a suicide hotline closed earlier this month after a budget dispute between the legislature and the governor.

“Farmer stress right now is extremely high, the farm economy is very precarious and not predicted to improve in the near future,” she said. However, she added, “When there are steps in place to address the root cause, which is usually financial and legal, the stress becomes manageable.”

Because people can feel stigma around issues of mental health, conversation is important, said Doug Samuel, associate psychology professor at Purdue University.

“When you’re looking at someone who you have a concern about,” Samuel advised, “don’t be afraid to ask, don’t be afraid to listen.”

This Performance Is a Uniquely American Brand of Authoritarianism

Esquire

This Performance Is a Uniquely American Brand of Authoritarianism

Some Trump supporters know it’s a shtick. That doesn’t make the consequences any less real.

By Jack Holmes      June 26, 2018

Getty Images

Like it or not, this country that has for so long called itself Exceptional can now take some cues from other nations—specifically, those that slid into authoritarianism.

We have a president who attacks and seeks to undermine all institutions of democracy that provide a check on his power, from an independent judiciary and the rule of law to the free press. (The Republican Congress no longer merits a mention.) He combines that with dehumanizing attacks on vulnerable social minorities, whom he blames for the country’s problems—real and imagined. He has cultivated a base of support whose members have incorporated support for The Leader into their basic identities.

And, as Filipino author Rin Chupeco put it so well in a series of tweets early Tuesday morning, all this has been met by a chattering class of predominantly white elites who deny efforts to resist the slide into autocracy on the basis they are “uncivil.”

Rin Chupeco: Speaking as someone born in the last years of a dictatorship, you Americans are already several steps in one. Ferdinand Marcos’ greatest trick was convincing people all protesters were communist animals, so when they went missing, few cared. Even after bodies were discovered.

Rin Chupeco: Speaking as someone born in the last years of a dictatorship, you Americans are already several steps in one. Ferdinand Marcos’ greatest trick was convincing people all protesters were communist animals, so when they went missing, few cared. Even after bodies were discovered.

Rin Chupeco: These white people & journalists talking about being civil? These were the rich people, the Fil-Chinese, the mestizos in the Philippines who knew they won’t be affected by many of Marcos’ policies, and therefore could ignore them even as the killings started.

Rin Chupeco: But Filipinos have always been susceptible to strongman personality cults, just like your Republicans. (Yeah don’t @ me on this one, Repubs still singing Reagan’s praises despite the fact he was FRIENDS with Marcos and helped him retain power, making it 1000x worse for us.)

Rin Chupeco: White people, journalists who insist on civility- you seem to think civility is a common ground you share with opponents like Trump et al. Here’s a clue – whenever you offer these assholes middle ground, they will invade that space & then claim you never gave them ground at all.

This was in evidence at President Trump’s rally in South Carolina Monday night, which was nominally on behalf of South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster. In reality, it could only ever be about Trump. This was a full exhibition of the Trumpian id, as he rated late-night hosts and talked up his verification-free nuclear deal with Kim Jong-un and explained that if Melania Trump had gotten a facelift, he would let you know.

But one moment in particular spoke to Chupeco’s point:

Aaron Rupar: Trump detours into telling the crowd about a backhanded compliment filmmaker David Lynch gave him, then tells his audience that they are “the super elites.”
“Look, everybody here makes money, works hard, pays taxes. Does a great job.” pic.twitter.com/pECbx0uF1K

Aaron Rupar: Trump calls the media “the enemy of the people,” then brags about a woman who was recently interviewed and said there was nothing Trump could possibly do to lose her support. pic.twitter.com/pHuDcFM4XW

Here Trump called the free press “the enemy of the people,” a suggestion it spreads false information to the detriment of Trump and, in his extended view, the country. Except he then told the story of a supporter who said she would never abandon him, which the president learned about because … members of “the media” interviewed her. This is part of a long-running performance from Trump, who has openly admitted he attacks the media as “fake” to defend himself against legitimate negative reporting, and that when he says “fake news,” he really means negative coverage:

donald j. trump: The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?

Of course, the most troubling thing about Trump’s account a fan is that she has completely abdicated her responsibility as a citizen to hold her elected representative accountable, instead pledging undying fealty to a politician. (You don’t really have to trust Trump on this—accounts like this are common among Trump supporters.) But both sides of this point to the irrelevance of facts, and even intention.

It doesn’t matter that Trump openly admits he derides legitimate coverage as fake. It doesn’t matter that this entire thing is delivered in bad faith, just like all the calls for “civility.” What matters is the performance: Trump, the strongman leader, bashing the Enemies. That includes undocumented immigrants, but it also includes the free press, Democrats, late-night hosts, and anyone else who might stand in the way of The Movement. The details aren’t important.

This has filtered down to the fanbase, which had a fascinating encounter with CNN’s Jim Acosta last night at the rally.

Chuck@Hyduch: This is just….wow. Trumpers scream at CNN, then ask for autographs, then ask for on air shout outs. Attention seeking morons
https://twitter.com/i/moments/1011402213401358336 …

At least some of Trump’s supporters understand his shtick as a performance, and they engage in it, too. That’s why they’re ready with “Build the Wall” and “Lock Her Up!” chants, even when they’re only tangentially related to whatever he’s ranting about. All the world’s a stage, and even Acosta got in on the act, signing autographs for people who just assaulted his integrity and suggested he did not belong there. And yet the performance, at its root, is a primal scream from White America in defense of a social order fast eroding under strain from monumental forces of change.

And of course, Trump’s performance has real consequences:

the realkenidrawoods: A friend, Esteban Guzman sent me this video of a racist white woman harassing him while out working with his mom.

“Why do you hate us?”
“Because you’re Mexicans.”
“We are honest people right here!”
“Haha..yeah.. rapists & animals.”

Trump supporters always reveal themselves 1/2

This reality show presidency is a uniquely American flavor of authoritarianism. Citizens from the national home of The Bachelor require only a thin veneer of reality to paper over the obvious money-grabbing deceit of the production in order to be taken in. This is our version of the authoritarian slide, in which The Leader rants about Jimmy Fallon and whether his wife got a facelift as he attacks the institutions of democracy that safeguard a free society. The entire production is carried out in complete bad faith, just like when Sarah Huckabee Sanders—who works for a man who invents demeaning nicknames for opponents, bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy,” and calls predominantly black and brown countries “shitholes”—insists we need civil discourse.

It is a way of waging the trench war against any and all constraints on the range of acceptable discourse, the range of acceptable behavior, and The Leader’s power. It’s just our American version of the same impulses Chupeco highlighted:

Rin Chupeco: So you shift the goalposts, and you enable the gaslighting, even if inadvertently. “Maybe if YOU hadn’t been so rude they wouldn’t have done that.”
Bullshit. You KNOW they’ll do it anyway because again, your goddamn status quo.

People invested in putting kids in cages don’t want your civility. They don’t want you to extend them the same courtesy they never had – and never wanted – from you. What they want is for you to retreat.

Replying to RinChupeco: People invested in putting kids in cages don’t want your civility. They don’t want you to extend them the same courtesy they never had – and never wanted – from you. What they want is for you to retreat.

Rin Chupeco: And every ground you grudgingly give, hoping that they’ll construe that as some good faith on your part, is only an incentive for them to push harder until you have no ground left. Then they’re going to tell you they’ve owned the land all along.

Chupeco’s whole thread is worth reading.

The president again suggested we should suspend due process for people captured at the border last night. He is creeping up the field, seizing first the shallow ground allotted to the most vulnerable among us. No amount of civil discourse is going to convince him to turn back, or persuade any of his supporters they have chosen the wrong path. It might be reality TV, but the supporters don’t want to know. They’re enjoying the show. The tax cuts might be reserved for the rich, but the attacks on the Other are all theirs to savor. Where will the next attack be, the next ground seized?