tagged w/ Rural America
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http://www.facebook.com/#!/OccupyCanonCity
A small but passionate group of folks in Canon City, Colorado (pop. 16,000) came out to do their part to show support for Occupy.The people who show up at any progressive event in this town( the only "red" county in a now Blue state) have come across eachother before. Sometimes with all the small town bickering and clashes inherent. but like siblings when it's important, it is all put aside for the bigger issues. The group is really focused on local problems with a keen understanding of the larger picture. Rural areas truly understand "trickle down" in a way many don't experience. The poverty, "carpet baggers", con-men and grifters that plague many areas can devastate a small town. Not only of its beauty and closeness but lay a foundation of decay. In Colorado the land and water issues effect all the states down stream to the Pacific and the Gulf. Big corporations and the banks are licking their lips at the minerals, forests and every drop of oil shale they can "frack".
Canon City has a bad reputation for white supremacists, a history of KKK, con games and 14 prisons housing the worst of the worse in recent history.It is also the best kept secret on the front range. The valley is a green surprise of trees and little farms. The beauty of the region attracts many to come and stay. It has few jobs, and they are low paying, but many feel it is worth being able to live in a lovely place.
Rural america is usually hit first by economic downturns and the last to recover. Canon city is no exception. Many store fronts are empty, lots of houses for sale. The county did not grow in the last ten years according to the recent census. Rural towns have few services, poverty and drug problems. The schools struggle to hold onto music and athletic programs, libraries and business. We do the best we can with what we have and try not to blame eachother to much,it is not our fault as much as we think it is. We are inundated by high prices from speculation on Wall Street. Many, to survive and keep business' refinanced homes to stay here. Payday and quick check loans abound. We have more charities than manufacturing that the town supports with tax dollars, but the folks here won't raise taxes to help the schools, keep the jail open and their is little hope they will pass a temp tax of .25 to renovate and expand our hundred year old Carnegie library. But for all that, many hang on and stay because we can hear owls in the trees every night and see the occasional Fox, deer, racoon, bear and cougar coming through town on their way to the river for a drink. Eagles fly over, hunting is good, camping hiking and just being able to walk out the door and smell the pine trees with a big lazy moon over head and stars galoure. Seems worth it all.http://www.facebook.com/#!/OccupyCanonCity
A small but passionate group of folks in... more
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http://www.facebook.com/#!/OccupyCanonCity
A small but passionate group of folks in Canon City, Colorado (pop. 16,000) came out to do their part to show support and form a group this weekend. Although many knew eachother there were a few new faces. The people who show up at any progressive event in this town
( the only "red" county in a now Blue state) have come across eachother before. Sometimes with all the small town bickering and clashes inherent to small towns, but like siblings when it's important, it is all put aside for the bigger issues. The group is really focused on local problems with a keen understanding of the larger picture. Rural areas truly understand "trickle down" in a way many don't experience. The poverty, "carpet baggers", con-men and grifters that plague many areas can devastate a small town. Not only of its beauty and closeness but lay a foundation of decay. In Colorado the land and water issues effect all the states down stream to the Pacific and the Gulf. Big corporations and the banks are licking their lips at the minerals, forests and every drop of oil shale they can "frack".
Canon City has a bad reputation for white supremacists, a history of KKK and of con games. It also has 14 prisons housing the worst of the worse in recent history. But it is also the best kept secret on the front range. The little mountain bowl is a green surprise of trees and little farms. The beauty splender of the region attract many to come and stay. It has few jobs, and they are low paying, but many feel it is worth being able to be in a lovely place.
Rural america is usually hit first by economic downturns and the last to recover. Canon city is no exception. Many store fronts are empty, lots of houses for sale. The county did not grow in the last ten years at all and lost 650 students from the local schools, according to the recent Census. Rural towns have few services, poverty and drug problems. The schools struggle to hold onto music and athletic programs, libraries and business. It is a countrywide problem. We do the best we can with what we have and try not to blame eachother to much. Most of it is not our fault. We are inundated by high prices from speculation on Wall Street. Many, to survive and keep business' refinanced homes to stay here. Payday and quick check loans abound. We have more charities than manufacturing that the town supports with tax dollars, but the folks here won't raise taxes to help the schools, keep the jail open and their is little hope they will pass a temp tax of .25 to renovate and expand our hundred year old Carnegie library. But for all that many hang on and stay because we can hear owls in the trees every night and see the occasional Fox, deer, racoon, bear and cougar coming through town on their way to the river for a drink. Eagles fly over, hunting is good, camping hiking and just being able to walk out the door and smell the pine trees with a big lazy moon over head and stars galoure. Seems worth it all.http://www.facebook.com/#!/OccupyCanonCity
A small but passionate group of folks in... more
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“The crops that we grow are the basis of our civilization,” Todd Leake said. “If anything belongs in the public domain it is the crops we grow for food.”
President Barack Obama's administration has been investigating monopoly concentration in the seed business for over two years. But when the President spoke on the steps of the Seed Savers Exchange, an independent seed company, he didn't mention tht inquiry once. Nor did he talk about business concentration in other areas of agriculture, despite hearings held by his Department of Justice all over rural America.
Last week President Obama held a town hall meeting on the grounds of Iowa’s Seed Savers Exchange, an organization dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.
The stop was part of a larger strategy to appeal to rural voters as the campaign season begins. The president spoke about job creation and the gridlock on Capitol Hill, both issues of concern, to be sure.
But what would have really resonated with rural America is a re-commitment to working toward fairness in our farm fields.
The President should know that growing economic opportunities in rural America will take confronting the concentrated market power (and thus political and legislative power) in several agricultural industries. It will take fulfilling a campaign promise to fight for family farmers and ranchers by ensuring fair and transparent markets.
The President couldn’t have picked a better spot to make this point. His venue, Seed Savers, is home to a trove of genetically diverse seed. It is the perfect counterpoint to the alarming extent to which ownership of this vital resource is privatized and concentrated. The top three firms, for example, account for more than 75 percent of U.S. corn seed sales.
Monsanto is the largest seed company in the world, receiving royalties from nearly every acre of corn, soybeans, and cotton planted in the U.S.; it also has a hand in much of the vegetable and sugar beet seed supply. Indeed, this level of control over our plant genetic resources and the narrowing of diversity makes the mission of groups like Seed Savers Exchange so much more important.
Out of Hand
Monsanto has a lock on the soy and corn seed market.
Confronting the business concentration in the seed business is paramount for the success of farmers, especially new farmers and businesses seeking to cultivate a niche in agriculture. But just as seeds as an organism are complex, so is untangling the roots of seed concentration.
And this gets us back to President Obama’s missed opportunity at Seed Savers Exchange.
President Obama’s administration initially signaled a willingness to tackle the problem of monopoly in the seed business. His Justice and Agriculture departments held workshops last year on all aspects of agricultural competition.
These hearings were unprecedented. Farmers, ranchers, farm advocacy organizations, small businesses, and consumers were encouraged that the agencies were investigating consolidation in the seed, livestock, dairy, poultry, and food retail industries.
“We’ve waited a long time for justice in the heartland,” said Missouri state senator and farmer Wes Shoemyer at the first Justice/Agriculture workshop in Ankeney, Iowa, which focused in part on problems in the seed industry.
But the hope was short-lived. There is no indication that either agency is furthering these investigations or taking meaningful action on outcomes of the investigations. The agencies don’t even seem inclined to publish a report in response to the thousands of public comments personally delivered at the 2010 workshops.
And then the President appears at Seed Savers Exchange to talk about the rural economy and doesn’t mention seeds or any of the other issues brought up in his own administration’s workshops.
It would behoove the President to look at the comments received at these workshops before he talks about the rural economy. Tucked within the thousands of comments the agencies received are both evidence of the problems with too much concentration in the seed business and reasonable solutions.
snip
“So how do we fix the industry?” Nelson asked. “I say we disallow any monopolies and the anticompetitive activities that come with them...I think we have to re-examine the safety and wisdom of granting long-term patents on living things.”
Indeed, even the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, Christine Varney, who has since left Justice, highlighted the problem of patents in her opening remarks: “You know, patents have in the past been used to maintain or extend monopolies, and that's illegal, and you can be sure, Secretary, that we are going to be looking very closely at any attempt to maintain or extend a monopoly through an abuse of patent laws.”
Such abuse of patent law has come in a variety of forms. Nelson said he’s witnessed the misuse of confidential GMO seed contracts, aggressively enforced through patent rights.
Indiana farmer David Runyon took to the microphone to recount his experience of being wrongfully pursued by Monsanto for alleged patent infringement. It turned out his conventional varieties of soybeans were contaminated by GMO material. He laid out the need to transfer liability to the patent holder in such events so that farmers aren’t pitted against each other.
“In my case whom do I sue but my neighboring farmers?” Runyon asked. “Because they are taking the liability when they sign that contract. And that's wrong. That's why it should go back to [the] patent holder.”
Woven within many comments was a plea for USDA to protect genetic diversity in seeds and breeds, and to keep germplasm public and accessible to our public land grant universities.
“The crops that we grow are the basis of our civilization,” Todd Leake said. “If anything belongs in the public domain it is the crops we grow for food.”
Fred Kirschenmann operates an organic farm in North Dakota and also serves as a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. He told the Obama administration officials, “We have lost about three-fourths of our crop seed stock -- that is the varieties of seeds that farmers have had available -- and about 30 percent of our livestock breeds, and as we move into a more uncertain future with more uncertain climates…we're going to need more diversity, not less, that are going to be locally adapted to these local conditions.”
Kirschenmann and others also pointed out that the future of our food supply relies on bringing young people into agriculture, which means ensuring they have a fair fighting chance at a profit.
“I believe our government has an obligation written in law not to pick winners and losers but to act as a referee and ensure the laws and regulations dealing with anticompetitive practices are enforced,” Nelson said.
These farmers’ messages were loud and clear, but they appear to have fallen on deaf ears. There has been no action (or even a peep) out of the Department of Justice. And President Obama didn’t mention his administration’s two-year investigation into the seed business when he spoke at the front door of an independent seed company.
More at the link“The crops that we grow are the basis of our civilization,” Todd Leake... more
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I Present to you.... Abe Lincoln... and his cat
"Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure."
~ Abraham Lincoln ~
enjoy
Facts About the 16th President of the United States.
http://www.alincoln-library.com/facts-about-abraham-lincoln.shtmlI Present to you.... Abe Lincoln... and his cat
"Every blade of grass is a... more
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The small town of Rock Port, Missouri (pop. 1,300) is the first city in the US to be 100% powered by wind. The city's wind farm will produce about 16 million kilowatt hours annually, while Rock Port only uses 13 million. The extra power will be sold off to other communities in the area.The small town of Rock Port, Missouri (pop. 1,300) is the first city in the US to be... more
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Sonya Rinker was looking for a guy: someone who was kind, respectful and had a special place in his heart ... for tractors. She wanted a man who could share the thrill of a good tractor-pull show, who could see beauty in a shiny row of green and yellow of John Deere tractors.
Playing the dating game isn't easy in rural America: Tens of thousands of twentysomethings have moved out in recent decades, small towns have shrunk, younger farmers have become a dwindling commodity. Or to put it another way ... there's a lot of land and not that many people.
Now there's an online matchmaking service that caters to rural Americans and their way of life.Sonya Rinker was looking for a guy: someone who was kind, respectful and had a special... more
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A portrait of 80-year-old corn farmer Clarence Anderson, who has won the Iowa State Fair's "Tall Corn Contest" for 13 of the past 14 years, setting a record with an 18-foot stalk last year. Will he win again this year? Watch and find out.A portrait of 80-year-old corn farmer Clarence Anderson, who has won the Iowa State... more
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