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

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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.

Farm Bill Update from NSAC

Last week, we posted an update on the Farm Bill that focused largely on the Nutrition section of the bill. On Friday, the National Sustainable Agriculture blog had a helpful piece on of our other concerns in Farm Bill negotiations.  Read it all here or see the Farm Bill excerpts below:

Farm Bill and Budget Deal Moving Forward

December 13th, 2013

Farm Bill

Behind closed door action on the farm bill this week did not yield the expected announcement of an agreed upon framework, but did seem to push closer toward a final package.  There has been a very noticeable uptick in discussions and decision making on numerous issues that had, in earlier negotiations, been left open.  And by most accounts, budget estimates for the emerging commodity title of the farm bill have just been completed that suggest they are close to their overall spending and deficit reduction goals for the commodity subsidy portion of the farm bill.

Negotiations are expected to continue next week, even with the House having left for the holidays, with the goal of having everything ready for a formal meeting of the conference committee on January 8 or 9.  At that time, the conferees will vote an any issues that have not been settled behind closed doors, and then vote to adopt the final conference report.  At this point in time, that is expected to be a one-and-done meeting of the conferees.

To the best of our knowledge, some major issues remain open and under active debate.  Those include:

• commodity program payment limit reform (including closing the loopholes that allow farms to collect unlimited subsidies) that is included in both bills, yet still faces backroom opposition by anti-reform forces;
• nationwide sodsaver protection (crop insurance reform to reduce subsidized destruction of grasslands) included in the Senate bill;
• an assault on fair market competition in the livestock sector that would eliminate most of USDA’s authority to maintain a fair and competitive market and to protect the rights of farmers and ranchers, an anti-farmer provision included in the House bill;
• reversing consumer-right-to-know country of origin labeling for meat, also included in the House bill; and
• the King amendment, another House provision, that would curtail the rights of states to regulate food, agriculture, and natural resources.

Some of those, if still unresolved after next week, could possibly go to a public vote when the conferees meet in January.  We expect some of these to be worked out next week, eliminating the need for specific votes.  Other unresolved issues might also be added to the list of issues requiring votes.

It appears that the big issues that have taken up much of the time in the so-called gang of four negotiations between the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are close to finished.  That includes the widely reported, though still not officially confirmed, cut to the SNAP or food stamp program of $8-9 billion over the next 10 years.  All or nearly all of the reduction is reportedly coming from forcing states to give low-income families receiving heating assistance more money before they can use that heating benefit as a deduction to qualify for a higher SNAP benefit.  The food stamp title of the bill is also expected to include some job training pilot projects in lieu of the House-passed work requirement.

It also includes the new commodity program that would give grain and oilseed producers a choice between revenue protection payments or counter-cyclical payments.  Both will be based on an updated version of historic “base” acres and will not be based on actual planted acres in the future.

Assuming a final bill gets mostly wrapped up next week and is then presented to the conferees on January 8 or 9, and assuming that after voting on the remaining open issues, a majority of the conferees support the final bill, it will then presumably be scheduled for floor action in the House and Senate later in January, about the same time, perhaps, as the final omnibus appropriations bill is also headed for floor action.

The latter must be passed by January 15 in order to avert a second government shutdown.  The farm bill, on the other hand, does not have such a hard deadline, but will have the threat of antiquated permanent commodity program law kicking in and causing market mayhem.  The House in fact this week passed a one-month extension of the old farm bill in order to defend themselves against charges of allowing those old farm programs to kick in.  The Senate, wisely, is not taking up the extension, choosing instead to focus on getting the new farm bill finished and passed.  A farm bill extension back on October 1, when the old farm bill expired, would have been a positive thing.  But at this point in time, it is too late to be helpful, and could seriously harm the momentum that is building to get the new farm bill finished.

The vote on a final farm bill could turn out to be a close vote, and for sure will require substantial Democratic votes to pass.  Aware of that reality, and upset that the budget deal did not include an extension of unemployment compensation benefits, some Democratic leaders are pushing to use a portion of the savings to be generated by the farm bill to offset additional unemployment benefits.  Benefits otherwise expire at the end of this year for many of the long-term unemployed.  Whether that play moves forward or not will depend in part on how many Republican votes can be rallied to support passage of the final farm bill.

It will be a busy week next week, with a Senate vote on the budget deal, with appropriators getting to work on the final spending bills for this year as soon as the Senate passes the budget, and with intense work on the details of all the titles of the farm bill.  Then everyone will depart from the Hill, go home and drink lots of eggnog, and come back for what is shaping up to be a momentous January.

Stated Clerk Writes to Congress about Comprehensive Farm Bill

From the Office of the Stated Clerk:

On Friday, July 26, 2013, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, the Reverend Gradye Parsons, sent a letter to members of Congress urging them to complete a comprehensive Farm Bill that ensures access to food for hungry people, provides an ample safety net targeted to those small and mid-sized farmers who most need it, builds up rural communities and their economies, and protects the integrity of God’s creation through robust conservation programs and sustainable agriculture. 

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has a long history not only of providing food and shelter for those in need in our local communities, but also of supporting a strong public-private partnership, where government ensures that vulnerable populations have access to a strong social safety net maintained by our collective commitment to the common good.  As a church, the PC(USA) has also long supported strong, rural communities, sustainable agriculture, and the promotion of conservation on working and vulnerable lands.

Last year, Congress allowed the Farm Bill to expire, even though it has historically been a strong bipartisan bill, drawing support not only from Democrats and Republicans, but also from those representing rural and urban districts. 

“Indeed, it would be more fitting to call this bill our Food Security Bill,” the letter reads in part, “because its implications are much broader than farm policy.”

The Stated Clerk’s letter urges Congress to maintain the symbiotic connection between the programs that provide food to hungry people and the programs that support food production. He also appeals to the witness of the 220th General Assembly (2012), which directed the Stated Clerk and the Office of Public Witness to “orient their advocacy and programs concerning agriculture and food supply in accordance with the following principles and goals: renewability, sustainability, resilience, minimized carbon emissions, participatory research and decision-making, revitalized rural communities, strong local food economies, security of food supply, ethical treatment of animals, and fair and dignified treatment of persons working throughout the food chain.”

For more information on the PC(USA)’s witness around healthy food and healthy farms, visit the official blog of the Office of Public Witness and the website of the Presbyterian Hunger Program.

The full text of the letter:

July 26, 2013

  

The United States Congress

Washington D.C.

Dear Members of Congress:

I write on behalf of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to urge you to complete a comprehensive Farm Bill that ensures access to food for hungry people, provides an ample safety net targeted to those small and mid-sized farmers who most need it, builds up rural communities and their economies, and protects the integrity of God’s creation through robust conservation programs and sustainable agriculture. 

With respect to current political debate, it is essential that the nutrition title be brought back into the larger Farm Bill.  It is no accident that the Farm Bill connects food production with hungry people and stewardship of our fields and rivers.  Long-term food security for our nation demands that the three be interconnected and considered together.  Indeed, it would be more fitting to call this bill our Food Security Bill, because its implications are much broader than farm policy.

In 2012, the 220^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) directed me and our Office of Public Witness, in Washington, DC, to “orient [our] advocacy and programs concerning agriculture and food supply in accordance with the following principles and goals: renewability, sustainability, resilience, minimized carbon emissions, participatory research and decision-making, revitalized rural communities, strong local food economies, security of food supply, ethical treatment of animals, and fair and dignified treatment of persons working throughout the food chain.”

The same Assembly stated our conviction “that protection of the environment is a vital part of the Christian faith,” and supported the Land Institute’s Fifty Year Farm Bill, which proposes the perennialization of crops and protection for biodiversity, with the goal of social and ecological sustainability.

Hunger, food production, and care for our natural environment are inextricably linked.  We need a Farm Bill that ensures that food reaches hungry people, safeguards the environment, revitalizes rural communities, protects the security of food supply, enables strong local food economies, and empowers a sustainable agriculture movement.  I urge you to stop using the Farm Bill as a tool for partisan conflict and enact legislation that meets our calls to stewardship, sustainability, and the common good.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact Leslie Woods, Representative for Domestic Poverty and Environmental Issues in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness at (202) 543-1126 or leslie.woods@pcusa.org. 

Sincerely,

The Reverend Gradye Parson

Stated Clerk of the General Assembly

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Principles for a Faithful Farm Bill

Principles for a Faithful Farm Bill

From God’s initial command to care for creation to the prophets’ call for justice among governments and nations, people of faith in every age are called together to work for the common good. Inspired by our faith traditions’ commands to care for poor and vulnerable people, we join together to support policies that promote local food security in the U.S. and around the world, strengthen rural communities, and care for the land as God’s creation.

Our nation’s food and farm policies as embodied in the Farm Bill impact people and communities from rural America to developing countries. In the current budget climate, the Farm Bill’s limited resources must be effectively targeted where need is greatest. 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.

Together, we will urge Congress to take the opportunity presented by the reauthorization of the Farm Bill to reduce hunger and poverty in the U.S. and around the world and encourage sustainable stewardship of our resources. To this end, we support the following principles for the 2012 Farm Bill:

·         Protect and strengthen programs that reduce hunger and improve nutrition in the United States.

·         Promote investments and policies that strengthen rural communities and combat rural poverty.

·         Provide a fair and effective farmer safety net that allows farmers in the U.S. and around the world to earn economically sustainable livelihoods.

·         Strengthen policies and programs that promote conservation and protect creation from environmental degradation.

·         Protect the dignity, health, and safety, of those responsible for working the land.

·         Promote research related to alternative, clean, and renewable forms of energy that do not negatively impact food prices or the environment.

·         Safeguard and improve international food aid in ways that encourage local food security and improve the nutritional quality of food aid.

Signed by:

American Jewish World Service

Bread for the World

Catholic Relief Services

Church of the Brethren

Church World Service

Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach

Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM)

Disciples Home Missions of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility

Jewish Council for Public Affairs

Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns

Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Washington Office

National Catholic Rural Life Conference

National Council of Jewish Women

National Council of Churches Poverty Initiative

NETWORK

The Office of Social Justice of the Christian Reformed Church

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness

United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries

Union for Reform Judaism

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops