Rock & Roll Farm

Sunday! Mar 26 2006 // 9:11 pm //

News Updates

Website: Eat Wild the Clearinghouse for Information About Pasture-based Farming

Articles:

1. My Saudi Arabian Breakfast at TomDispatch.com

According to researchers at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an average of over seven calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that in eating my 400 calorie breakfast, I will, in effect, have “consumed” 2,800 calories of fossil-fuel energy. (Some researchers claim the ratio to be as high as ten to one.)

2. In Thursday’s New York Times, an article about the guest worker program and its relation to United States agriculture.

…according to farmers’ own estimates, about 70 percent of the 1.2 million hired workers tilling fields and picking crops are illegal immigrants….

“If not for Mexican workers,” he adds, “this country would be in chaos.”

…But the guest worker program has failed to bridge the gap between the farmers and the workers. Farmers complain that the program is simply too expensive. It sets a floor for pay ‘a regional average of the wages in several farm occupations’ that will rise this year to $8.51 an hour from $8.24 in 2005. Farmers must also house the workers and pay workers’ compensation…

For many farmers, then, illegal immigrants simply provide a cheaper alternative that involves far less bother than the guest worker program. North Carolina farmers can harvest their crops paying $6 to $6.50 an hour no workers comp, no recruitment fees to “green card” workers or “otherwise documented” workers. Those are euphemisms for immigrants unlawfully in the United States, who typically show up with a fake green card to get a job.

3. Project for Public Spaces, Funding Resources for Public Markets.

As the number of farmers markets in the U.S. increases, more funding opportunities to support them are being created. PPS is working with private and public funders to further develop grant programs for markets. Below are resources for markets that PPS has either helped to create or that have been created independently.