۩National Consumer Protection Week March 6-12 & National Agriculture Week March 20-26 ۩National Consumer Protection
Week March 6-12 & National Agriculture Week March 20-26
Recommendation Leaflet
‘Recommendations for books, movies, websites,
organizations, all on the agricultural movement’
Books:
(Available at St. Johnsbury Athenaeum unless noted)
 The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found
 Vitality in Local Food by Ben Hewitt [2010]
 The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farm
workers Movement by Susan Ferriss [1998]
 All Flesh is grass the pleasures & promises of pasture
farming Gene Lodger
 Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government
Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re
Eating by Jeffery Smith[2003]
“For the past century agriculture has done more than its share to
contaminate our underground water table by combining excessive
usage of pesticides, herbicides, and petroleum fertilizers. In some
areas fish have such high levels of the pesticide atrazine that it is 
genetically altering the males, transforming them into females.
Atrazine is used on approximately 65% of the U.S. corn crop and
has been sprayed for the past 35 years. Interesting how its use is
still widespread here when it has been banned not only in the
European Union but also the very country (Switzerland) in which
it is made. For some strange reason, the EPA ruled in 2006 that
there are no severe risks or dangers in the usage of atrazine. We
use 80 million pounds of atrazine each year on our corn crops in
America.” (Son of a Farmer, Child of the Earth; Eric Herm; pg
74)
 Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of
Genetically Engineered Foods by Jeffery Smith [2007] [Not
Available at Athenaeum]
 Eating with Conscience: Bioethics for Consumers by
Michael Fox [1987]
“Factory farming systems have increased in size over the past
decade in spite of concerted national and international efforts to put banned in most countries. Whether it is from crop dusters,
an end to them. Although farms and ranches have reduced in
number, they have increased in size. For instance, beef cattle
feedlots now typically have fifty thousand to one hundred thousand
animals incarcerated in poorly drained dirt yards with neither shade
nor shelter. In many cases, dairy cow herds of three thousand to five
۩National Consumer Protection Week March 6-12 & National Agriculture Week March 20-26 ۩National Consumer Protection Week March 6-12 & National Agriculture Week March 20-26
thousand head suffer the same conditions. These big business farms
are now so commonplace that only about 10 percent to 15 percent
of our meat, dairy, and poultry products come from smaller
“family” farm operations. If this trend continues, some fifty
thousand or so mega-farm complexes will be the main source of
consumables for U. S. Consumers and for export markets. This
situation is a far cry from the four million family farms and ranches
that fed the nation only twenty years ago.” (Eating with a
conscious: The Bioethics of Food; Michael W. Fox; pg 24)
 The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four
Meals by Michael Pollan [2006]
 Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by
Barbara Kingsolver [2007]
 Silent Spring by Rachel Carson [2002]
 The Essential Agrarian Reader: The Future of Culture
Community & the Land by Norman Wirzba [2003]
 The American Farm: A Photographic History by Maisie
Conrat & Richard Conrat [1977]
The Unsettling of American: Culture & Agriculture by
Wendell Berry [1984]
 Home Economics by Wendell Berry [1987]
“Tomato, pepper, onion, garlic, and potato plants are extremely
sensitive to Roundup. One whiff and their leaves curl upward
and they are unable to produce healthy, normal-sized fruit. Very
frustrating when you begin an entire garden from seed. Money
cannot replace healthy food. What will happen as more careless
neighbors continue this practice? How will money alone nourish
a hungry belly? With a global food crisis looming, the
widespread usage of such destructive herbicides should be used
with extreme caution. As long as we continue to think Roundup
Ready crops are the only answer, agriculture is doomed.
I’ve seen trees, grass, and all green living things transformed
into a brown haze overnight from aerial application. A
neighbor’s oak tree that was over 200 years old was nearly
destroyed by a careless crop duster pilot spraying 2-4D (the
modern version of Agent Orange), a very nasty herbicide
gigantic spray rigs, or small spray rigs, just a breath of Roundup
can wreak havoc on an individual or family. It’s what we can’t
see that kills us. There will be blood spilled all across the
country as these battles continue along turning rows. We are
creating a war zone in rural fields. Roundup farmers have
sprayed this poison for so many years it is becoming second
nature. The spray boom is the 2q1st century’s version of the
plow. But even as nasty as the Dust Bowl was ceaseless
sandstorms have nothing on the worldwide disease and sickness
caused by these chemicals and crops that contaminate our soil,
water, and air. The companies who make money from their
sales couldn’t care less who suffers in the process. It is up to the
farmer to stop this calamity. (Son of a Farmer, Child of the
Earth; Eric Herm; pg 35)
Magazines
The Stockman Grass Farmer
Farming
“A sign on the wall of Johnny Flood’s butcher shop caught my
eye: “Great grass makes great beef.” This sign is distributed by the
Meat Marketing Board, which has mastered the not overly difficult
truth that in a grass-growing country [much of Ire-land is not
amenable to annual cultivation] the people should eat grass-fed
beef. In the United States, also a country with extensive areas
superbly suited to grazing, the era of cheap petroleum has produced
a long-term glut of cheap corn, ruinous both to farmland and to
farmers and this has in turn produced, according to certified experts,
an inflexible preference on the part of “the American housewife”
for corn-fed beef. So much for the preference of “the American
housewife,” I thought, looking at the sign in the Oldcastle butcher
shop, “who so uncannily prefers exactly what the American meat
industry prefers that she should prefer.” (Wendell Berry, Home
Economics)
Movies:
Food, Inc. (available at St. Johnsbury Athenaeum)
King Corn (available at St. Johnsbury Athenaeum)
The Future of Food (available at the Catamount Arts)
The World According to Monsanto
The Real Dirt on Farmer John (available at the Catamount Arts)
Polyface Farm
Fresh, The Movie
Dirt! The Movie
Fast Food Nation
“Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which are the by-
product of slicing genes from one species into the DNA of
another, is a technology fraught with unknown and possibly
disastrous consequences for our health and the environment.
۩National Consumer Protection Week March 6-12 & National Agriculture Week March 20-26 ۩National Consumer Protection Week March 6-12 & National Agriculture Week March 20-26
Those who had the most to gain, the multinational biotech
companies, propounded a very convincing message through well-
funded mass media, that biotechnology was the miracle that will
solve world famine, reduce reliance on pesticides, or cure
diseases of human kid. Although gene-spliced plants like soy,
corn , cotton, and canola were nonexistent twenty years ago,
by2002 they constituted the vast majority of the 145 million acres
of GM crops planted in the four major GMO producing nations.
That would cover nearly two and a half times the size of the
United Kingdom, not counting all the non-GM fields that have
been cross-pollinated by GM varieties. Milk in the United States
has likewise been altered through the use of Genetically Modified
growth hormone injected into cows. Most of the foods in your
local area grocery store are now contaminated with GM food
ingredients without your knowledge or consent. As many have
said, we are now in the middle of the largest feeding experiment
in history and we human beings are the guinea pigs.” (Seeds of
Deception, Jeffery M. Smith)
Websites:
centerforfoodsafety.org/
gmwatch.org
organicconsumers.org
percyschmeiser.com
responsibletechnology.org
saynotogmos.com
seedalliance.org
seedsavers.org
truefoodnow.org
wholefoodsmarket.com
organicfoodconsumers.com
permaculture.com
naturalfarming.org
Heirloom Seed Companies:
highmowingseeds.com
bountifulgardens.org
For local businesses:
organicconsumers.org
“6.It is extremely doubtful that animal factories will be able
to achieve a profit without continued cheap subsidized grain and
subsidies for manure management. Attempting to handle very
large quantities is essentially a flush toilet system just doesn’t
۩National Consumer Protection Week March 6-12 & National Agriculture Week March 20-26 ۩National Consumer Protection Week March 6-12 & National Agriculture Week March 20-26
work well without a costly sewage treatment plant or a
composting plant. Pollution calamities from liquid manure
holding ponds and pits at animal factories continue to
demonstrate that conclusion. When large confined animal
operations are required to install pollution controls as the rest of
industry and city sewage systems already must do, their costs
will rise farther above pasture-raised animals. Pasture farming
requires no manure management system. Even the practice of
dragging a harrow over field droppings to spread them out is not
necessary in most cases because it can spread the ‘zone of
repugnance’ in which the animals won’t graze. Soil bacteria,
earthworms, dung beetles, and other organisms will break down
droppings better and faster.
7. Animal confinement facilities have been so plagued by
disease pathogens that the government and the meat processors
are moving ahead on irradiation of meat. Irradiation, says Pro
Farmer Connection in its November 21, 2002, edition, destroys
95 percent of vitamin A in chicken before you cook it.
Irradiation increases mutagens and carcinogens like
formaldehyde and butane, says Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s
Dr. George Tritsch. (I’m still excerpting from the same source.)
Irradiation kills beneficial organisms that check botulism. As
Pro Farmer Connection points out, what this all means, among
other things, is that pasture-fed meat will surely sell at a
premium because knowledgeable consumers will refuse to buy
irradiated products. That’s why the industry is starting to use the
term cold pasteurization instead of irradiation.” (All Flesh is
grass the pleasures & promises of pasture farming Gene lodger;
pg 4)
Organizations:
North Country Coalition For Justice and Peace
(nccoalition@kingcon.net) Check out their newsletter for
upcoming events or email them.
‘Human Rights, not corporate rights;’
“live simply that others may simply live,” [Mahatma Gandhi]
ALFA (Area Local Food Alliance)
http://stjlocalfoodalliance.org/About_Us.html
“St. J ALFA’s mission is to strengthen our regional food system
and increase food sustainability and security, so that all
community members have access to affordable, healthy, locally
produced food.”
NOFA - Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont
Center for an Agricultural Economy – Hardwick
Farm to Plate Initiative http://www.vsjf.org/project-
details/5/farm-to-plate-initiative
To find businesses supporting local foods visit:
organicconsumers.org
“As you can well imagine, supermarket prices do not reflect a
fair and full-cost accounting of the food we buy. The real costs are
hidden from the consumer. In almost every instance consumers buy
the expense, to the demise of small family farms and rural
communities, waste of natural resources, environmental pollution,
animal stress, disease, and suffering. The federal government uses
taxpayer dollars to subsidize pesticides, irrigation, animal-feed
costs, waste management costs, and disease control. These costs are
tax-deductible business expenses, enabling agribusiness
corporations to save even more money. Examples of direct business
costs that are tax deductible include crop losses, animal diseases
that lower productivity, and high animal mortalities. The CEO of
one major agribusiness conglomerate confided to me, “Farm animal
welfare is not a moral or ethical issue. It’s an economic one.”
(Eating with a conscious; Michael W. Fox; pg 24)”
*Special thanks goes to the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum and to Catamount
Arts for their assistance in this project. This packet was compiled by J. A.
Grech of St. Johnsbury with help from staff at the St. Johnsbury
Athenaeum. For PDF file for Recommendation Leaflet email
real_f_i_g@hotmail.com.