Earth Day Action- Expand Farm to School Program

Today is Earth Day. Are you celebrating Earth Sunday this weekend? Whether you already observed Earth Sunday or have yet to celebrate it, you can take this action any time!

Earth Day is a time for us to come together with our communities and rekindle commitment to a better future and a thriving planet. As we face increasingly severe storms, droughts in once fertile agricultural lands, and rising seas, it is critical that we use Earth Day as a catalyst to take decisive action to ease the harm we are causing to our ecosystems. 

This year, our ecumenical partner, Creation Justice Ministries, has prepared an Earth Day resource to engage our families and congregations in conversation and action for a healthier planet through the lens of food. It is called "Have You Anything Here to Eat?" and encourages us to reflect on how food production and consumption impacts the changing climate. It includes ideas for what you can do in your day-to-day life to live lighter on the land and give thanks for the abundance of God's creation. Please click here to download this wonderful resource and share it widely with your community. 

Click here to write to your Members of Congress about food this Earth Day.

On the national scene, we are drawing attention to the Farm to School Act of 2015, which helps children and their families make informed food choices while strengthening the local economy by funding projects around the country that connect children to food production, harvest, and preparation. This program makes grants on a competitive basis for schools, nonprofits, state and local agencies, agricultural producers, and Indian tribal organizations to increase local food procurement for school meal programs and expand educational activities on agriculture and food. It educates children about ecological preservation, increases the number of fruits and vegetables they eat daily, and provides organic farmers with a market for their produce in schools. This year, we are asking Congress to strengthen and expand the program’s scope through the Child Nutrition Reauthorization.

Write to Congress in support of Farm to School here!

For many years, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has been bearing witness to the ecological devastation that humans are bringing to the planet through global climate change. Presbyterian General Assemblies have called for changes at all levels of our lifestyle – from a national comprehensive climate plan to changing the way we use energy in our homes and churches. Together, we can make a difference.

Landscape of Urban Farming: Rev. Ashley Goff Testifies before EPA

Click here to send your own comments to the EPA by Oct. 16! The U.S. must begin to reduce our carbon pollution.

The Landscape of Urban Farming: EPA Testimony on Carbon Regulations

Reprinted from God of the Sparrow, with permission.

August 1, 2014

by Ashley Goff

This past week the EPA held public hearings in Pittsburgh, Denver, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. on the proposed regulations to reduce carbon pollution by 30% from new and existing power plants by 2030.

You can read about the EPA’s proposed regulations here.

In D.C., religious leaders were organized to testify at the hearings by Sojourners, Creation Justice Ministries, and Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light. 

These hearings are an impressive process. A name is called, each person has 5 minutes as 3 EPA staffers listen intently and take notes. You are timed with a cute little green/yellow/red timer. The hearings last all….day….long.  I can’t imagine being an EPA staffer and listening all day long. Hopefully they take yoga breaks.

Ashley Goff testifies before EPA. Picture by Joelle Novey.

When I think about what’s going on in Gaza and the Ukraine, this is an incredibly well-organized, non-violent democratic process to garner feedback from the public.

I was asked by Joelle Novey of GWIPL to give a testimony. I had the 10:20 slot on July 30th.

Here is my testimony, lengthened by 2 minutes from a testimony I gave earlier this year when the EPA was gathering initial feedback prior to the now proposed regulations. Here I am giving my EPA testimony–I’m at the table on the left. 

Environmental Protection Agency

Testimony July 30^th, 2014

My name is Ashley Goff and I’m a pastor at Church of the Pilgrims, a congregation in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) in DuPont Circle, Washington, D.C. 60,000 honeybees call the backyard of Church of the Pilgrims home. Four honeybee hives are part of our urban garden called Sacred Greens. Our honeybees pollinate the vegetables and fruits of our garden, the forest oasis right next to us, Rock Creek Park, and the flowers, fruits and trees of our DuPont neighbors.

If you are within 3 miles of Church of the Pilgrims, there is a good chance our honeybees have transformed the flowers of your tomato plants to a tomato fruit.

The eggplants, green peppers, basil, beans, butternut squash, and carrots we grow for Sacred Greens, our urban garden, goes to create meals for Open Table, our lunch every Sunday afternoon for 30 or so hungry neighbors.

Our newly planted apple and pear trees, and fruit bushes, or permaculture, will soon offer a free healthy snack for anyone walking past our garden.

On Sundays our garden is poignantly alive—honeybees buzzing around seeking pollen and nectar and hungry neighbors sharing in casseroles of fresh eggplant, tomato sauce, and basil. In that moment, our backyard is host and home to living beings our society thinks are disposable: honeybees and hungry, homeless folks.

Honeybees are the most vulnerable of insects threatened by colony collapse disorder—an ecological crisis created by human agency with pesticides and climate change. Hungry people are the most socially vulnerable of humanity, starving off the lack of access to affordable and healthy food.

Since 2006, commercial beekeepers have lost 30% of their hives each year. According to your friends over at the USDA, about one mouthful in three in our diet directly or indirectly benefits from honeybee pollination.

According to DC Hunger Solutions, in 2008-2012, 30.5 percent of households with children in the District of Columbia said they were unable to afford enough food. This is the second worst rate in the nation, exceeded only by Mississippi.

Climate change suffocates God’s planetary design.

We designed our backyard because of our trust in the Holy one and in a Christian Ethic with a moral vision: our garden symbolizes how we are to live as people of God’s Way and shows our intention for living. Psalm 104 states we are to renew the face of the planet.

And right now the planet is poor from climate pollution impacting humans and an insect like the honeybee.

Oikos is the Greek work for house or household. Oikos is also root for the words ecology and economics. For Christians of the ancient Church, Oikos was not limited to the private home but was referring to the planet itself as the World House, God’s home.

Oikos sets Church of the Pilgrims intention in how to be a sacred neighbor; that we are a shared household where all who are born belong and all who live co-habitat; where humans and all of life live into each other’s life and die into each other’s death in a complex pattern of relationships that can nourish, or destroy, creatures like honeybees and vulnerable humans.

There is no way around our inter-connnectedness. We are of one household and tethered across inhabited landscapes. It’s the Way of God and Life.

Oikos, the household, also assumes limits. The well-being of the planet doesn’t come from a short-term vision of life with a never-ending inhaling of goods, services, and energy. Oikos demands limits on how we as humans live on the planet.

Oikos demands a long-term vision that incorporates what we can imagine to be of future generations, particularly the future generations of honeybees and folks who are starving. A long term vision of life calls for us to live as part of the web of life: prophetically reduce carbon production that exacerbates climate disruption that impacts the life of insects, food production, health, and the sheer beauty of nature.

The role of the EPA is to regulate the commons. At Church of the Pilgrims, we are doing just that—tending to our eco-location with intentionality to reflect our place in society and God’s home.  Church of the Pilgrims charges the EPA to care for the household, the World House, by requiring a 30% reduction in carbon pollution from power plants by 2030.

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Join Ashley in her witness. Send your comments to the EPA here.

Click here to see Sojourners’ Flickr of the Hearing Day in DC.

Year-end Farm Bill Update

It appears that House and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders are close to a Farm Bill deal. While we have not seen legislative language, it is our understanding that under the working agreement on the farm bill, the nutrition title would include $8-9 billion in cuts to SNAP made by taking the House level cut to the Heat and Eat program, concentrating the full impact of the cuts in the 16 states that participate. Leaders had hoped to unveil the deal this week, but a key budget analyst was snowed in in New Jersey and unable to provide the necessary Congressional Budget Office scores in time for action before the House adjourns tomorrow, Friday, Dec 13. As such, Ag Committee leaders announced their intention to move the bill in early January.

The House has introduced legislation providing a short-term farm bill extension through January. House Ag Chairman Lucas (R-OK) wanted the legislation in case it looks like Congress won't be able to wrap up the full farm bill reauthorization in early January. In the meantime, Senate leaders have stated explicitly that they will not take up an extension, hoping to maintain pressure on Congress to wrap up negotiations and vote on a final farm bill in early January. One major concern that arises by not passing a bill by December 31^st is that dairy programs will revert back to 1949 farm law, which required USDA to provide price supports at a much higher level than today and which could lead to a significant spike in milk prices. However, Secretary Vilsack has assured negotiators that, provided they take action in early January, he will hold off on implementing permanent law and milk prices will not be impacted.

Agriculture Committee leaders met Tuesday and are scheduled to meet again today. While the House is not in session next week, Chairman Lucas and Ranking Member Peterson (D-MN) are expected to come back next week to finish up negotiations with Senators Stabenow (D-MI) and Cochran (R-MS) to finalize the framework. Staff would finish writing legislative language to match the framework deal before Congress returns in January. In January, the conference committee would have a public meeting to vote on the conference agreement. Some amendments may be concerned at the conference committee level to allow members who are unhappy with certain elements of the legislation to raise their concerns. The bill would then move to the House and Senate floor for final passage. 

Many thanks for all of your tremendous advocacy efforts. Together with our partners, we generated over 4,000 calls to Congress last week and Presbyterians alone sent over 2,000 emails in the last three weeks calling for a Faithful Farm Bill. To read more about PC(USA) advocacy for a comprehensive and faithful Farm Bill, visit our blog.

We will share additional legislative details as they are made available. In the meantime, members of Congress are heading home for the holidays. It's a great time for you to invite them to worship, to volunteer in your food pantries or feeding programs, and to continue to elevate the issues of hunger and ongoing need in your communities.  In a season when we are celebrating the coming a Savior to all people, the stark inequalities become startlingly apparent.  Make sure your elected officials understand the importance of protecting and strengthening nutrition programs and of completing a comprehensive, sustainable Farm Bill.

Farm Bill Deadline Approaches

As the year draws to a close, Congress has many must-pass items left on its plate.  Perhaps most pressing are the budget and the Farm Bill.  The House is scheduled to adjourn for the year next Friday, Dec. 13, but the Senate does not even return from Thanksgiving recess until next Monday, Dec. 6.  This leaves one week for them to wrap up the first session of the 113^th Congress. 

Of course, that it not to say that conversations are not ongoing.  Indeed, bicameral conference committees on both issues are in the midst of delicate and intense negotiations.  Leaving aside the question of the budget for now, for after all, Congress does have a few weeks into the New Year to come to agreement before the next manufactured fiscal crisis, the focus of the faith community has been on the Farm Bill.

Our nation’s food and farm policies, as embodied in the Farm Bill, impact people and communities from rural America to big cities to developing countries. In the Farm bill are provisions that authorize SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly Food Stamps), international food aid, conservation programs, initiatives that support new and minority farmers and ranchers, rural development programs, sustainable energy research, farm subsidies, crop insurance, just to name the most famous.  In all, the Farm Bill is a mixed bag of policies, some of which promote a more just food system and some that trap us in a vicious cycle of subsidized commodities and under-nutrition.  Nevertheless, the Farm Bill is must-pass, if for no other reason than that it authorizes SNAP and promotes environmentally sustainable practices on working farmlands.  

Write to your Members of Congress to urge a just and comprehensive Farm Bill this year.

In the current budget climate, which incorrectly functions from an assumption of scarcity, the Farm Bill’s limited resources must be effectively targeted where need is greatest. And people are hungry -- the U.S. and around the world. Programs and policies that curb hunger and malnutrition, support vibrant agricultural economies in rural communities, and promote the sustainable use of natural resources must be prioritized.  At the same time, we should be shifting away from investment in programs that subsidize factory farms and promote major commodities as the most viable crops for food and fuel.

Earlier in the year, serious threats were made to the funding of SNAP and on Nov. 1st, SNAP benefits were cut as a 2009 funding increase ran out.  Far from there being room to cut SNAP, most SNAP beneficiaries find that their benefits run out by the third or fourth week of the month and turn to private charity to fill gap.  If anything, we need to invest more in Food Stamp benefits.  SNAP is designed as a counter-cyclical program that expands to meet needs when the economy is bad and people lose income and become eligible.  When the jobs outlook and economy improve, it contracts as participants cycle off the program. 

So, Congress must reauthorize the SNAP program without the proposed cuts.  There is simply no way to achieve significant cuts without affecting benefits and nutrition education programs.  Write today to your members of Congress.

During the week before Thanksgiving, hundreds of Presbyterians, including our leaders Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons, Moderator Neal Presa, and Executive Director Linda Valentine, are taking the Food Stamp/SNAP Challenge.  The Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons reflects on his trip to the grocery store in this article and Linda Valentine allowed the News Service to publish her journal from that week here.  Days after their SNAP Challenge concluded, they sent this letter to Congress.

With the PC(USA)’s long-held convictions about food justice and fair food and farm policy, our interests in the Farm Bill, while very concerned with the nutrition programs, are also much broader that.  In a joint statement with interfaith partners, the PC(USA) called on Congress to pass a Farm Bill that:

• Protects and strengthens programs that reduce hunger and improve nutrition in the United States.
• Promotes investments and policies that strengthen rural communities and combat rural poverty.
• Provides a fair and effective farmer safety net that allows farmers in the U.S. and around the world to earn economically sustainable livelihoods.
• Strengthens policies and programs that promote conservation and protect creation from environmental degradation.
• Protects the dignity, health, and safety, of those responsible for working the land.
• Promotes research related to alternative, clean, and renewable forms of energy that do not negatively impact food prices or the environment.
• Safeguards and improves international food aid in ways that encourage local food security and improve the nutritional quality of food aid.

Write to your Members of Congress here.

To read more about the PC(USA) Office of Public Witness’ advocacy around the Farm Bill and SNAP, visit our farm bill blog.