No Other Way Than to Struggle: The Farmworker-Led Boycott of Driscoll’s Berries

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Author: Felimon Piñeda interviewed by David Bacon | Published on: August 31, 2016

Felimon Piñeda is vice president of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, the independent farm workers union in Washington State. He was one of the original strikers when the union was organized in 2013. The union, together with the union of striking farm workers in Baja California, Mexico, has organized a boycott of Driscoll’s Berries, the world’s largest berry company. They demand that Driscoll’s take responsibility for the conditions and violations of labor rights by the growers whose berries they sell. Piñeda describes the life of a farm worker producing Driscoll’s berries, and his own history that brought him into the fields of Washington State. He told his story to David Bacon during an interview in Linden, Washington.

Our town in Oaxaca is Jicaral Coicoyan de las Flores. We speak Mixteco Bajo. I am 33 years old, but I left at a very young age. In 1996 I got to San Quintin [in Baja California] with my older brother. After four nights in Punta Colonet, we found a place to stay in a camp. There were a lot of cabins for people and we stayed there for six months. We planned to go back to Oaxaca afterwards, but when we’d been there for six months we had no money. We were all working — me, my sister, my older brother and his wife and two kids — but we’d all pick tomatoes and cucumbers just to have something to eat. There was no bathroom then. People would go to the bathroom out in the tomatoes and chiles. The children too.

Another man living there, who spoke another dialect of Mixteco, rented us a little house. It was one room, very small. We were there a year. We were getting home at five in the evening and the children were all eating their food cold because we couldn’t make the stove work. Then my brother said we should buy a plot between all of us, to give us a place to live. So we paid one payment, and then another. My brother is still living there, and his children are grown up now. His oldest son is 22 or 23. My niece now has kids.

In Punta Colonet life was very hard. Work was always badly paid. You had to work a lot for very little. In 1996 the wage was 45 pesos. In 2002 I worked three months there again, and in 2005 I worked almost a year. The bosses paid about 100 pesos. But the food was cheaper then. Maseca [corn flour] cost 55 [pesos]. We were not living well, but earning enough to afford it. A soda then cost five pesos. Now it costs 12 pesos.

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Meat Is Magnificent: Water, Carbon, Methane & Nutrition

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Author: Diana Rodgers, RD

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” – John Muir

There was a recent article in The Washington Post entitled “Meat is Horrible”, once again vilifying meat, that was full of inaccurate statements about the harm cattle impose on the land, how bad it is for our health, and how it should be taxed. Stories like this are all too common and we’ve absolutely got to change our thinking on what’s causing greenhouse gas emissions and our global health crisis.

Hint: it’s not grass-fed steak

In the few days since the story originally came out, I’ve been brewing up some different angle to write. I’ve written here, and here about the benefits of red meat, and how Tofurky isn’t the answer to healing the environment or our health. I keep saying the same thing over and over. Recently, I posted this as a response to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new claims that a plant-based diet is optimal. I also wrote about Philadelphia’s sugar tax here, and I don’t think a meat tax is any better of an idea, especially when the government is subsidizing the feed. I’m feeling quite frustrated.

This morning, I went back to see the post and noticed that the story has been “significantly revised to address several inaccurate and incomplete statements about meat production’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.” Most of the original points, references and charts are missing. However there are still some important pieces of information that I feel the author missed. The main one being that meat itself isn’t evil, it’s the method by which we farm it (feed lots and CAFOs-Confined Animal Feeding Operations) and how we prepare it (breaded and deep fried), and what we eat alongside it (fries, and a large soda).

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Carrying Capacity of U.S. Agricultural Land: Ten Diet Scenarios

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Authors: Research Article by Christian J. Peters, Jamie Picardy, Amelia F Darrouzet-Nardi, Jennifer L. Wilkins, Timothy S. Griffin, Gary W. Fick

Strategies for environmental sustainability and global food security must account for dietary change. Using a biophysical simulation model we calculated human carrying capacity under ten diet scenarios. The scenarios included two reference diets based on actual consumption and eight “Healthy Diet” scenarios that complied with nutritional recommendations but varied in the level of meat content. We considered the U.S. agricultural land base and accounted for losses, processing conversions, livestock feed needs, suitability of land for crops or grazing, and land productivity. Annual per capita land requirements ranged from 0.13 to 1.08 ha person-1 year-1 across the ten diet scenarios. Carrying capacity varied from 402 to 807 million persons; 1.3 to 2.6 times the 2010 U.S. population. Carrying capacity was generally higher for scenarios with less meat and highest for the lacto-vegetarian diet. However, the carrying capacity of the vegan diet was lower than two of the healthy omnivore diet scenarios. Sensitivity analysis showed that carrying capacity estimates were highly influenced by starting assumptions about the proportion of cropland available for cultivated cropping. Population level dietary change can contribute substantially to meeting future food needs, though ongoing agricultural research and sustainable management practices are still needed to assure sufficient production levels.

1. Introduction

1.1 Relationships between diet and sustainability
One of the most perplexing questions in sustainability science is, “What should we eat?” Within the food and agriculture literature, a strong case has been presented that dietary change is essential for meeting future human food needs (McMichael et al., 2007; Pelletier and Tyedmers, 2010; Godfray et al., 2010; Foley et al., 2011; Smith et al., 2013). By “dietary change,” these authors refer to eating patterns that stabilize, or decrease, livestock production, keep food system environmental impacts within ecosystem limits, and more equitably distribute food to meet global nutritional goals.

This line of thinking is not new. The equation I=PAT, conceived in the 1970s, proposes that environmental impact is a function of population, affluence, and technology (Parris and Kates, 2003). Calls for considering the environmental impacts of food consumption through changes in diet were made decades ago both in popular (Lappé, 1971) and academic literature (Gussow and Clancy, 1986). However, for most of the 20th Century the predominant agricultural science paradigm focused on increasing yield and production efficiency, expanding in the 1980s and 1990s to include ecological impacts of farming but not focusing on food systems (Welch and Graham, 1999). Likewise, nutritional sciences and dietary advice over most of the past century have been guided almost exclusively by evidence on the relationships among nutrients, foods, diets and human health (King, 2007). If strategies for sustainability must address both food consumption and production, then analyses that link agriculture and nutrition are needed.

1.2 Land as a fundamental resource
The food system exerts a broad range of ecological impacts. Biodiversity loss, climate-forcing emissions, nutrient cycle disruption, and competition for land, water, and energy are all cited as reasons to contain agriculture’s environmental impact (Godfray et al., 2010; Foley et al., 2011). Among these impacts, land use is central. Sparing land from conversion to agriculture may be important for protecting biodiversity (Balmford et al., 2005; Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2011). In addition, as highlighted in debates about the merits of biofuels, conversion of native grassland or forest to agriculture causes carbon emissions (Fargione et al., 2008; Searchinger et al., 2008). Both issues provide persuasive arguments against expanding land under cultivation. Yet agricultural yields are not on track to meet projected global increases in food demand (Ray et al., 2013). Potential (and probable) increased demand for bioenergy or carbon sequestration further confounds the land conversion question (Smith et al., 2013). Given all the challenges, understanding the impact of dietary patterns on land use is critically important.

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The King of Cover Cropping

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Author: Brian DeVore

An Indiana initiative has made the state a national leader in getting continuous living cover established on crop acres. Can it change the way farmers view soil?

Michael Werling is, literally, a card-carrying connoisseur of soil health.

“I call it, ‘My ticket to a farm tour,’ ” says the northeastern Indiana crop producer, showing off his business card. The words on the “ticket” leave little doubt what is in store for the lucky holder who chooses to redeem it. Headings at the top say, “My soil is not dirt” and, “My residue is not trash.” A third bold line of script across the middle reads, “For Healthier Soil and Cleaner Water Cover Crop Your Assets and ‘NEVER TILL.’ ” Buried at the bottom as a bit of an afterthought is Werling’s contact information. Given his excitement over the world beneath his feet and how to protect and improve it, maybe it makes sense the farmer’s card relegates his address and phone number to footnote status—soil is his identity.

Spend enough time on a soil health tour in Indiana these days and one is likely to run into a lot of farmers like Werling. Perhaps that’s no surprise, given that events like this tend to attract true believers in the power of healthy humus to do everything from create more resilient fields to clean up water.

But what sets Indiana apart is that it’s home to an initiative that has found a way to take the passion of farmers like Werling and use it as an engine for driving change on a whole lot of farms whose owners may not be card-carrying soil sophisticates—they’re just looking for ways to cut fertilizer costs and keep regulators off their backs, all the while remaining financially viable.

Werling is one of a dozen “Hub Farmers” located across Indiana who are at the core of one of the most successful soil health initiatives in the country. In just a few short years, a public-private partnership called the Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative (CCSI) has helped get around 8 percent of the Hoosier State’s crop fields blanketed in rye and other soil-friendly plants throughout the fall, winter and early spring—times when corn and soybean fields are normally bare. No other Corn Belt state is even close to having that high a percentage of its land protected with continuous living cover. Indiana’s success has farmers, soil scientists and environmentalists across the country excited about the potential CCSI holds as a national model. But first, one key questions needs to be addressed: can a state parlay all of this interest in one conservation farming technique—in this case cover cropping—into a holistic embrace of a larger soil health system?

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The Trans-Pacific Partnership Will Hurt Farmers and Make Seed Companies Richer

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Author: Alex Press

In March of 2009, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), the biotech industry’s trade association and lobbying arm, submitted a letter to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), which was in the early stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The letter came in response to USTR’s invitation for public comment to help develop negotiation objectives for the proposed trade deal, which at the time involved seven other Pacific Rim nations. The USTR broadly outlined the areas that it was interested in input on—the economic costs and benefits to the removal of tariffs, environmental and labor issues that should be addressed, trade-related intellectual property rights that should be considered—and BIO jumped at the chance to respond. “BIO will focus its comments on issues relating to (i) agricultural biotechnology and (ii) matters concerning intellectual property rights,” the six-page letter read. “BIO appreciates this opportunity to comment on the proposed TPP FTA, and we look forward to working closely with USTR as this initiative proceeds.”
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And work closely they did. While the terms of the TPP were kept secret from the public and policymakers during negotiations, USTR negotiators relied heavily on input from the corporate insiders who populate the US government–appointed Industry Trade Advisory Committees (ITACs). A representative from BIO sits on ITAC-15, the committee that focuses on intellectual property (IP) rights, and BIO spent roughly $8 million on lobbying each year while the TPP was under negotiation, paying firms like Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld $80,000 annually to lobby for “patent provision in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations.”

The results of this lobbying blitz were unknown until the final text of the agreement was released in November of last year. Signed on February 4 and awaiting ratification by its 12 member countries—Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, United States, Vietnam, Chile, Brunei, Singapore, and New Zealand—the TPP is the largest regional free-trade deal in the world. While many have scrutinized its potential for offshoring jobs, lowering wages, and raising drug prices, few have paid attention to the TPP’s impact on the sector BIO prioritized above any other: agricultural biotechnology. Experts have called the TPP a “big win” for the biotech seed industry, and many warn that the trade deal will further enrich seed companies at the expense of farmers’ rights.

Agricultural biotechnology refers to a range of tools used to alter living organisms, including the tools of genetic modification. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the major product of these tools, which are commonly known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), are produced through techniques that alter the genetic material “in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.”

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Can we feed 10 billion people on organic farming alone?

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Author: John Reganold

In 1971, then US Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz uttered these unsympathetic words: “Before we go back to organic agriculture in this country, somebody must decide which 50 million Americans we are going to let starve or go hungry.” Since then, critics have continued to argue that organic agriculture is inefficient, requiring more land than conventional agriculture to yield the same amount of food. Proponents have countered that increasing research could reduce the yield gap, and organic agriculture generates environmental, health and socioeconomic benefits that can’t be found with conventional farming.

Organic agriculture occupies only 1% of global agricultural land, making it a relatively untapped resource for one of the greatest challenges facing humanity: producing enough food for a population that could reach 10 billion by 2050, without the extensive deforestation and harm to the wider environment.

That’s the conclusion my doctoral student Jonathan Wachter and I reached in reviewing 40 years of science and hundreds of scientific studies comparing the long term prospects of organic and conventional farming. The study, Organic Agriculture in the 21st Century, published in Nature Plants, is the first to compare organic and conventional agriculture across the four main metrics of sustainability identified by the US National Academy of Sciences: be productive, economically profitable, environmentally sound and socially just. Like a chair, for a farm to be sustainable, it needs to be stable, with all four legs being managed so they are in balance.

We found that although organic farming systems produce yields that average 10-20% less than conventional agriculture, they are more profitable and environmentally friendly. Historically, conventional agriculture has focused on increasing yields at the expense of the other three sustainability metrics.

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Will Allen & Michael Colby: Dairy Marketing vs. Reality

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Author: Will Allen and Michael Colby

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Will Allen and Michael Colby, who are co-founders, along with Kate Duesterberg, of Regeneration Vermont, a new nonprofit educational and advocacy organization that is working to halt the catastrophic consequences of Vermont’s adoption of degenerative, toxic and climate-threatening agricultural techniques.

The great divide between the well-marketed image of Vermont dairy farming and its stark and toxic realities is becoming harder and harder to ignore. The marketing shows healthy cows grazing on lush pastures. But the reality is cows on concrete, being fed a diet of GMO-corn and the toxic residues from the hundreds of thousands of pounds of herbicides sprayed annually on the corn and hay fields.

Instead of addressing the toxic legacy of the very non-organic dairying that dominates our agriculture, Vermont’s two giant diary corporations, Cabot Creamery and Ben & Jerry’s, and the state’s agricultural agency that acts more as their protector than regulator, continue to hide behind the myth and the marketing. It’s a head-in-the-sand approach that is bankrupting farmers, poisoning our rivers and lakes, accelerating climate change, and producing dairy products that may contain those same toxic residues that are so abundantly fed to the cows.

Vermont can do better, much better. And it has to start with addressing the cold, hard facts. Thankfully, Vermont farmers are required to report their pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer usage every year to the state’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets (AAFM). And while some in the agency and within the agricultural community still try to spin the numbers to keep the myths alive, the reality can’t be ignored: Vermont is farming with more and more toxic chemicals.

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Revolutions Start From The Bottom

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Our food choices are deeply connected to climate change. Unbroken Ground, a compelling new Patagonia Provisions film directed by Chris Malloy, explains the critical role food will play in the next frontier of our efforts to solve the environmental crisis.

This film explores four areas of agriculture that aim to change our relationship to the land and oceans. Most of our food is produced using methods that reduce biodiversity, decimate soil and contribute to climate change. We believe our food can and should be a part of the solution to the environmental crisis – grown, harvested and produced in ways that restore our land, water and wildlife. The film tells the story of four groups that are pioneers in the fields of regenerative agriculture, regenerative grazing, diversified crop development and restorative fishing.

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These Entrepreneurs Hope to Use Garbage to Change the Way America Grows its Food

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Author: Catherine Clifford

The U.S. has a ginormous, mind-boggling food waste problem. One team of entrepreneurs, investors and infrastructure builders are trying to use some of that garbage to grow more fruits and vegetables.

Consumers, businesses and farmers spend $218 billion a year growing, processing, transporting and disposing of 62 million tons of food that never gets eaten, according to an analysis by ReFED, an organization that raises awareness of the excessive food waste problem in the U.S.

California Safe Soil has invented and patented a technology that takes organic food waste, mixes it with enzymes and creates a liquid, organic fertilizer that has been proven to grow more fruits and vegetables with less water.

The goal is to spread the innovative technology across the U.S. It’s a laudable goal, but it will require both significant infrastructure upgrades and a change in consumer behavior.

Two birds. One stone.

The beauty of the California Safe Soil fertilizer is that it both reduces trash headed to landfills and the use of toxic fertilizers.

“We all go to the grocery store every day and we all see these volumes of meat and produce that are there and we all wonder what happens on the expiration date,” says Alex Urquhart, former CEO of GE Energy Financial Services and partner of Kamine Development Corporation, a New Jersey-based family investment office that is working to commercialize California Safe Soil’s technology. “You take that waste and you add enzymes and you can produce a high-grade fertilizer that increases the yield on crops.”

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Poor Farmers Mustn’t Be the Losers in the Fight Against Climate Change

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Now that countries around the world have agreed on a global deal to tackle climate change, attention has shifted to how we’re going to do it. If we’re to meet the ambitious targets in the Paris climate agreement, we need to reduce our emissions and do it fast. Bioenergy and carbon capture storage – a plan to take carbon dioxide and trap it under the ground rather than releasing it into the atmosphere – have become a controversial part of the discussions on how we do this.

Last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the amount of biofuels to be used in the United States in 2016 and there has been much discussion on Capitol Hill of the Renewable Fuel Standard (the U.S. biofuel mandate) and its benefits in the fight against climate change. As the food versus fuel debate continues, a new study was published arguing that biofuels are actually good for food security. However, the study is seriously flawed. Not only are the authors unable to make their case that biofuels support food security, but they also fail to discredit the evidence that biofuels contribute to hunger globally. By underestimating the competition for land and ignoring the impact that such large land deals are having on local farmers around the world, the authors fail to take into account important evidence which shows that U.S. biofuels policies are increasing hunger around the world.

Where we can agree is on the importance of investing in agriculture. But the authors overlook the importance of how the investment is made and who it benefits. They argue that demand for biofuels will result in increased investment in agriculture because of higher and more stable commodity prices, which will increase food security in the long run. But private sector investment driven by high commodity prices will not be focused on food security for local communities. Instead, it will focus on increasing production, likely by using expensive machinery, or only focus on a handful of bioenergy feedstocks. This will only continue to support an agricultural model that leaves millions hungry and millions more sick from consuming too much of the wrong food.

A false solution to our energy needs

Another claim is that biofuel production will add value and diversify production, leading to higher and more stable rural incomes, and therefore reduced hunger. Increasing incomes for local farmers is important, but biofuels aren’t going to do this. Producing biofuels efficiently means growing biofuel crops at scale, which means large plantations – so poor farmers are unlikely to benefit. What ActionAid is seeing in the communities where it works across Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, is that demand for large amounts of biofuels is fueling land grabs. Local family farmers are being kicked off their land to make way for biofuels plantations. Some companies will then offer some of the displaced farmers a job, but these are often poorly paid and seasonal, meaning they can be laid off at any time. Added to this, the jobs are often not available to women, leaving them without the means to support their families.

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