Dear Friends,

May flowers are here for sure, along with strawberries, lettuce, spring onions, greens, asparagus, beets, and lots of other seasonal bounty.

There is also a good crop of funding opportunities coming up. Read on for information about grants from Southern SARE, as well as the Wallace Center’s National Good Food Network.

Sustainability continues to take center stage in the U.S. and world media, from the greening (or appearance thereof) of just about everything, to global warming, shake-ups in the economy, and the quest for renewable sources of energy. This month we look at coverage of issues surrounding biofuels, and provide resources to continue the exploration.

As always, we welcome your feedback, photos, and suggestions. Feel free to drop us a line! 

--Your friends at Southern SAWG

Photo by Childress Photography

Terry and La Rhea Pepper of O’Donnell, Texas, pioneers of organic cotton production in the U.S., are the Southern Region winners of the 2008 Patrick Madden Award for Sustainable Agriculture. The Peppers courageously helped develop the organic fiber sector in the U.S. while facing opposition and social pressure from neighbors, other farmers, and the cotton industry. Among the Peppers’ many achievements, they co-founded the Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Cooperative, which established Texas as an international leader in the organic cotton industry. They went on to establish their own organic fabric company and launched the country’s first line of organic cotton personal care products.

Southern SAWG is proud to claim Terry and LaRhea Pepper as long-time friends and leaders of our organization. We were all saddened by Terry’s death last summer, but his and LaRhea’s many contributions to Southern SAWG, the organic cotton industry, sustainable agriculture, and numerous other causes, continue on.

To learn more about Terry and LaRhea Pepper, read “Pepper Farm and Cotton Plus,” featured in Farm Stories on the Southern SAWG website.

The SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) Patrick Madden Award for Sustainable Agriculture recognizes farmers or farm families who advance sustainable agriculture through innovation, leadership, and good stewardship. Every two years a winner is chosen from each of SARE’s four regions.

The Wallace Center is accepting proposals for Regional Lead Teams (RLT) for its growing National Good Food Network. Awards of up to $30,000 will be available for a total of seven teams.

The Wallace Center at Winrock International serves the growing community of civic, business, and philanthropic organizations involved in building a new good food system in the U. S. The Center focuses on advancing regional, collaborative efforts to move good food--healthy, green, fair, affordable food--beyond the direct-marketing realm into larger scale, wholesale channels.

To accomplish this, the Wallace Center is establishing the National Good Food Network, with two basic goals:

Read the full RFP.

Learn more about the National Good Food Network. 

Join other farmers and stakeholders to discuss the future of Georgia agriculture and share ideas on critical needs and programs. The event will take place at the Pettigrew Farm and Community Life Center at Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley.

The program will highlight special speakers, posters, and group discussions, which include:

The Summit is sponsored by the University of Georgia College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences and Fort Valley State University College of Agriculture with Southern SARE. For more information, call Julia Gaskin, UGA CAES Sustainable Agriculture Coordinator, 706.542.1401 or Jean Willis, Agriculture and Natural Resources at FVSU, 478.825.6268.

In  “The Clean Energy Scam,” the Time magazine cover story for March 27, 2008, author Michael Grunwald reveals the many flaws he sees underlying the use of agricultural products to produce energy. Negative impact on the environment, coupled with other issues of unsustainability, are at the top of his list, but the consequences, both short- and long-term, on farmers and food supply, are important considerations. Seeing one of the icons of the mainstream press cover this controversial issue in such a prominent way raises new questions about the use of corn, sugar cane, even switchgrass, and other farmed products for fuel.

Grunwald cites new studies showing that the worldwide biofuel boom, both for farmers and in the investment sector, is actually accelerating global warming dramatically, rather than reducing it. “Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses,” says Grunwald. “But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.”

He also raises the specter of escalating food prices and the endangerment of the food supply, especially for the world’s poor and hungry, leading to what the U.N.’s World Food Program is calling a global emergency. Says Grunwald, “The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year.”

The Community Food Security Coalition International Links Committee describes many of the same concerns in their December 2007 publication entitled  “Fueling Disaster.” The report states, “‘Biofuel’ proponents speak of meeting future energy needs while raising farm incomes and renewing rural economies. Critics, however, warn that what we are getting are ‘agrofuels,’ produced in industrial systems that extract wealth out of communities and pollute the environment.”

They also raise issues of human rights, pointing to extremely harsh working conditions for agrofuel workers in Brazil, Bolivia and other countries, including child labor, poor air quality, high quotas, overwork, below-minimum wages, inescapable debt, and even slavery conditions.

In the report’s Conclusions and Recommendations section, the authors describe agrofuels as “another step in the industrial-corporate transformation of our energy and food systems that further takes control of food and fuel resources away from communities.” Their conclusion is that the industrial production today of agrofuels is not in alignment with community food security and that it is not sustainable. Recommendations for a turnaround include further exploration of the connections between sustainable energy, food security, and rural development, exemplified by communities that have taken their energy needs into their own hands, small farmer settlements in Brazil that that are intercropping energy and food crops, and community farms in the U.S. using locally made biodiesel for farm machinery. The report also includes an extensive bibliography and suggestions for what we can do to support community food security and sustainable energy.

On another front, the Center for Rural Affairs published an article in their April 2008 newsletter entitled  “Biofuels Boom Could Burst.” Focused on U.S. production, author Chuck Hassebrook contends that the biofuels boom offers both hope and danger for farmers and rural communities, citing well-paid jobs and a commodity price boom as current benefits. But production costs are skyrocketing, and the “biofuels bubble is not invincible,” says Hassebrook. He also warns that the new prosperity is vulnerable to policy changes, and rural people should be taking the lead in shaping federal policy in a way that “sustains both the land and prosperity for the long term.”

The issues surrounding biofuels seem as numerous and potentially destructive as the fires that Michael Grunwald describes that deforested a piece of the Amazon forest in 2007 greater than the size of Rhode Island. It is clear that most of the roads being taken right now do not lead to sustainable energy and agriculture systems at home or around the world.

Read more:  “The Clean Energy Scam,” Time;  “Fueling Disaster,” The Community Food Security Coalition International Links Committee;  “Biofuels Boom Could Burst,” Center for Rural Affairs;  ”Siphoning Off Corn to Fuel Our Cars,” The Washington Post;  The Roundtable for Sustainable Biofuels;  “Who's Fueling Whom?” Smithsonian magazine;  Anaerobic Digesters and Other Biomass Options, ATTRA; Biodiesel–A Primer, ATTRA; The Complete Biogas Handbook, by David House.

Stay tuned for coverage of the “other” biofuels: biodiesel, biomass, biogas, vegetable oil used as fuel, and other alternatives.

The Southern Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program administers six different grant programs. Three of those grant programs are open for community and farm participation.

Grants for Communities
Southern SARE’s Sustainable Community Innovation Grants fund activities that link sound farm and non-farm economic development with agricultural and natural resource development.

http://www.ssawg.org

We welcome your feedback and suggestions—

please write to us at news@ssawg.org