A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that current U. S. Department of Agriculture policy is encouraging large-scale farming at the expense of smaller, diversified farmers who raise a variety of crops and animals. The report, “Ensuring the Harvest: Crop Insurance and Credit for a Healthy Farm and Food Future,” recommends a number of reforms that are included in a bill written by Congresswoman Chellie Pingree. The release of the report today comes as the Senate Agriculture Committee is taking up a new farm bill to set the nation’s food policy.

Congresswoman Pingree with students in their garden

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree said a new grant program announced today could help Maine school districts improve access to local foods. The USDA’s Farm to School Program will provide grants in the $20,000-$100,000 range to help schools create school gardens and create other programs that bring local foods to students.

“This is going to help students connect with local agriculture, whether it’s by planting a garden on school grounds or taking a trip to a local farm,” said Pingree. “When kids have a closer relationship with local farming they have a healthier relationship with food. It’s good for their health, it’s good for their performance in school and it helps the local economy.”

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The Madison, Maine, tomato producer has plans to construct a research and development building on its River Road property to be used to test new tomato varieties and growing techniques. The new development will encompass 33,550 square feet, or about three-quarters of an acre. The greenhouse portion of the research building will total 15,200 square feet, with an additional 4,800-square-foot office building.

Backyard Farms was drawn to this rural Madison paper mill town in 2006 because of Governor John Baldacci’s Pine Tree Development Zone tax incentives, cheaper electricity, available land, and the workforce. It harvested its first crop of tomatoes in its 24-acre greenhouse in 2007.

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Drosophila suzukii male. Photography credit: G. Arakelian, Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner/Weights & Measures Department

University of Maine Cooperative Extension fruit and pest management specialists, who discovered a destructive non-native fruit fly in five Maine locations, are working with counterparts across the country to collaborate on the latest research about the tiny, spotted-wing Asian fruit fly in an effort to protect 2012 crops.

“Our concern is if you get the spotted wing drosophila in low-bush blueberries — 50,000 acres — it would be disastrous, just devastating to our current Integrated Pest Management program and the crop,” said Jim Dill, Extension educator and pest management specialist in Orono. “And it’s a question of when.”

The fly has made it to Maine just after being discovered in California four years ago.

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Ichiro Fujikake (right) meets with Jason and Chris Brochu of Pleasant River Lumber Mill to discuss sustainable wood certification and business practices in Maine.

“We are working to start our own certification system,” said Ichiro Fujikake, a forest economics professor at the University of Miyazaki and an adviser to Himuka Ishin no Kai Loggers.

Fujikake contacted Beth Ollivier, executive director of the Trust to Conserve Northeast Forestlands (TCNF), to learn more about the Northeast Master Logger Certification (NEMLC) program. TCNF then hosted the Himuka group last October as they traveled throughout Maine to learn from master loggers in action from Brunswick to Passadumkeag. Himuka wanted to see the reality of the NEMLC program, which fosters environmental stewardship. The Fujikake group included loggers, landowners, a town councilor, and an executive director of a sawmill.

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The University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s Maine Harvest for Hunger Program this year generated 179,712 pounds of fresh garden produce donated to charity by volunteer gardeners around the state.

Nearly 500 volunteer gardeners in about a dozen counties this year donated the nearly 90 tons of vegetables and fruit to 114 food pantries, shelters or charitable organizations around the state, according to Extension educator Barbara Murphy in the South Paris Oxford County office. Murphy, who oversees the program, values the produce at $303,713, based on a sales price averaging $1.69 per pound.

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“Abandoned” and its accompanying soundtrack were commissioned by The Chipotle Cultivate Foundation to raise awareness about the economic hardship family farmers face in the increasingly industrialized American agriculture system.

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On Saturday, November 12, 10 a.m.-1 p. m., the Western Mountains Alliance with support from the Maine Department of Agriculture will host Reaching Your Customer in the Electronic Age: Online Farmers Markets and Buying Clubs. The workshop will take place at the Maine Harvest Festival at the Bangor Auditorium & Civic Center.

In the last several years, farmers have stretched beyond traditional markets to reach new customers. This seminar will feature experts in social media and marketing, as well as farmer practitioners who use the Internet to market and sell their products.

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Congresswoman Chellie Pingree said today she will introduce a bill later this week in Congress that includes provisions that would significantly change the nation’s foodpolicy. The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act would expand opportunities for local and regional farmers and make it easier for consumers to have access to healthy foods. Pingree made the announcement today surrounded by dozens of farmers and local food activists at Jordan’s Farm in Cape Elizabeth.

“This is about healthy local food and a healthy local economy. When consumers can buy affordable food grown locally, everyone wins,”said Pingree . “It creates jobs on local farms and bolsters economic growth in rural communities.”

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Jim Gerritsen, of Wood Prairie Farm, is one of Utne Reader's 2011 visionaries who are changing the world.

Jim Gerritsen, a Maine organic potato farmer with a decades-long record of community involvement and activism, has been named by the editors of Utne Reader to the magazine’s 2011 list of 25 “People Who Are Changing the World.”

Gerritsen was selected for his ongoing work leading efforts by independent family farmers to protect themselves from the threat of Monsanto litigation related to the corporation’s patents on genetically modified seeds, an effort he sees as critical to the preservation of organic farming itself and organic foods as a choice for consumers and their families. Gerritsen wants to keep core seeds that are like the building blocks of each countries agricultural health preserved for generations to come. Big corporations denigrate this seed stock by cross pollination, chemicals and uniformity.

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