Uprooted

Josh talks with Shefali Sharma and Laurel Levin about their experience at the COP24 in Katowice, Poland. You can read Shefali's COP dispatches from the COP here: 

Josh talks with Ben Lilliston about a recent conference on anti-trust work in the agriculture sector.  

Josh, Dr. Steve Suppan, and Karen Hansen-Kuhn were guests on AM950's Food Freedom Radio with Laura Hedlund. This show, on the NAFTA renegotiation, will air over Thanksgiving, but we're thankful to Laura for letting us put it out on the podast as well! 

Josh talks with Ben Lilliston, Director of Rural Strategies and Climate Change, about climate change initiatives on the ballot on November 6, and other activities some states are up to in addressing climate change. Update: It appears both measure discussed in the podcast have failed. 

Josh talks with IATP collaborator and sustainable agriculture consultant, Doug Gurian-Sherman, about agroecology in the context of the UNFCCC report, and the CLARA report, which he was a contributing author on, and how agroecology is not just necessary for our climate but in providing sustainable livelihoods for farmers around the world. 

Listen to a special podcast of Pakou Hang of HAFA, and IATP's Erin McKee talking about the forum and local food work in Minnesota:

Josh talks with Steve Suppan about how the aid, intended for farmers to ease the pain that was inflicted due to the trade war with China, is, in fact, likely ending up in the coffers of a Chinese owned corporation, Smithfield, and other ways in which the giant hog corporation is pushing its costs onto tax payers. 

Josh talks with IATP Intern, Kelly Kramer, about OSHA's failure to adequately address heat related death and injury in the agricultural sector, especially in the face of global warming.   

Josh talks with Shefali Sharma, Director of IATP Europe, about IATP's contribution to a report by the Climate, Land, Ambition, and Rights Alliance (CLARA). The report details how the 1.5° C target of the Paris Climate Accord is achievable in a way that respects human rights and agroecological practices. They also discuss the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  

Late on Sunday evening the text of the re-negotiated North American Free Trade Agreement was released, renamed the United States Mexico Canada Agreement, or USMCA. IATP will be producing detailed analysis of the new agreement's impacts on food and agriculture, but for a cursory analysis, Josh talks with IATP Senior Attorney, Sharon Treat, about how much of the text is from the failed Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the haphazard process through which this agreement came about. 

Josh talks with Tara Ritter about the rollback of the Clean Power Plan, which was proposed by the Obama administration and held up in the courts. The replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy Rule is a thinly veiled attempt to prop up the dying coal industry at the expense of the expanding clean energy sector, including the job boom it would create in rural areas. 

Josh talks with IATP Executive Director, Juliette Majot, about one of IATP's foundational documents, Crisis By Design, written by IATP's founder, Mark Ritchie, with Kevin Ristau. The piece showed how the farm crisis of the 1980's was the result of purposeful actions by corporate executives to undermine government policies that ensured family farmers get a fair price. They also discuss how the landscape has changed in the last 32 years, and what an update to this document might look like. 

In a quickly put together special episode, Josh and Karen Hansen-Kuhn talk about what has happened this week with NAFTA as today's deadline looms to submit the intent to sign the deal to Congress. You can read Karen's Op-Ed in The Hill here: http://thehill.com/opinion/finance/404566-opaque-nafta-talks-leave-farmers-in-the-dark 

Josh talks with Ben Lilliston about the growth of the grass fed beef market, and how global agribusiness is using labeling loopholes to sell imported grass fed beef as "product of the U.S.A." You can read Ben's comment to USDA here. 

Josh talks with Sharon Treat about the troubling food safety aspects of the latest UK government white paper on Brexit and how it may affect trade with the U.S. and Europe. 

Josh and Steve Suppan talk about the $12 billion aid package to farmers who have been affected by tariff retaliation. We're also talking about Steve's blog on how USDA helps High Frequency Traders now; promises help for farmers later, dealing with how the release of the World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimate has been changed by USDA to benefit high frequency Wall Street trading firms. 

In our recent report Emissions Impossible: How big meat and dairy are heating up the planet, we teamed up with GRAIN to analyze the greenhouse gas footprints of the largest meat and dairy corporations, and debunked the idea that decreasing emissions intensity would, by itself, lead to an overall reduction in emissions.

IATP hosted its annual board meeting from June 24-26. Three members of the IATP Board of Directors, Becky Glass, Sivan Kartha and Board Chair Pamela Saunders, joined Josh Wise to discuss how they got involved with IATP, the challenges facing the institute today and what gives them hope in today's world. 

Note: This podcast is being released a couple of weeks after it was recorded.  Josh talks with Ben Lilliston about reforms to the Farm Bill and trade policy that could help support farmers stuck in the current low-price, export-dependent system, while responding to growing consumer demand for more sustainable food. While conventional markets struggle, the U.S. has fast-growing, high-value markets and a reformed Farm Bill could help aid farmers in their transitions to access those markets. Read our full report here. 

Latin American countries have enshrined several progressive rights in their constitutions, however, the push for natural resource extraction has put those rights in conflict with the economic development pushes of their governments. Josh talks with Karen Hansen-Kuhn about the history of extractive industry in Latin America and how global trade and development policies are influencing the conflicts between industry and social movements. Karen recently attended a conference on the subject of Neo-Extractivism in Ecuador.

Josh talks with Katie Costello about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The nutrition title of the Farm Bill makes up nearly 80% of its total cost, helping to feed over 46 million people. We're talking about why SNAP works, how it improves health lifestyles, and why the House Farm Bill, which would have instituted stricter work requirements to receive SNAP, is a failing for American families. 

Josh talks with Steve Suppan about meat inspection in the United States and proposed rule change that would allow companies to do self-inspection, potentially leading to higher line speeds and greater safety concerns in an industry that already has a history of unsafe conditions.  

Today, May 17th, is the deadline set by House Speaker, Paul Ryan, to have a NAFTA agreement on paper for Congress to take it up in 2018. Earlier this week, Josh talked with Sharon Treat and Karen Hansen-Kuhn about what the endgame might be for NAFTA and if anyone actually knows what is happening in this incredibly secretive process. 

Josh talks with Tristan Quinn-Thibodeau from Action Aid USA about the two new videos they put out on supply management and factory farming in Iowa. You can see the videos here: https://www.actionaidusa.org/work/agribusiness-family-farmers/

This week, the 9th National Farm to Cafeteria Conference will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio. IATP will be sending three staffers, Director of Development and Communications Josh Wise, Community Food Systems Program Director Erin McKee, and Community Food Systems Program Associate Katie Costello to the event. 

Last week House of Representatives Agriculture Committee chairman, Rep. Mike Conway, released his first draft of the 2018 Farm Bill. The bill did not have the support of the ranking member on the committee, Rep. Colin Peterson. Josh talks with Tara Ritter, IATP Senior Program Associate, to talk about the largely negative impacts that this draft bill would have, including the proposed elimination of the Conservation Stewardship Program. 

IATP launched the first 100% fair trade organic coffee company in 1996. As the company has grown, we realized it was time to set it free to keep growing and doing good work. In this episode, Josh talks with Lee Wallace, longtime CEO of Peace Coffee, who, along with her business partner, Kent Pilakowski, has assumed ownership of the company.

This week we're talking about labeling, and the attempt to ban it, in trade agreements. Josh talks with Sharon Treat about why multinational corporations seek to undermine public health protections through the trade negotiating process, what the history of challenging food labeling has been, and what the heck is going on with NAFTA renegotiation these days.  Here, also, is a link to Sharon's blog on the subject: https://www.iatp.org/blog/lurking-in-trumps-nafta 

Last week, IATP launched the report, From the Ground Up: The State of the States on Climate Adaptation for Agriculture. Josh talks with Lachlan Anathasiou, who interned at IATP in summer 2017 about the research he did on the report and the report's findings.   

IATP often works internationally, but our headquarters is in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In this episode, Josh is joined by Filiberto Nolasco, Editor of the online news site, Workday Minnesota, to talk about what the broader issues of labor, immigrants rights, and social justice are happening in our community. 

The Trump tariffs on steel and aluminum have caused a lot of chatter and speculation. But they exist in a very complicated and interconnected system. Today, Josh talks about the tariffs, the WTO, and the rules based multilateral trading system with IATP Adviser, Sophia Murphy, Director of Trade and Global Governance, Karen Hansen-Kuhn, and IATP Executive Director, Juliette Majot.

Josh talks with Cristina Garcia, Member Mobilization Manager at Alianza Americas about the links between trade and migration. They are talking about how NAFTA and other trade policies have forced people to become economic migrants, why they choose to cross borders what trade policy would look like that respected the mobility of labor. 

The Trump administration recently released their proposed budget as well as an infrastructure plan that falls well short of the President's campaign promises. Ben Lilliston blogged about both proposals and joins Josh to talk about how they are deficient for Ag and Rural communities, and what should be done to increase resiliency for the farm and rural economy.  Ben's Budget Blog

The coal industry is on its way out. But whether coal communities experience a just transition is an open question. Josh is joined by Eric Dixon, Coordinator of Policy and Community Engagement at the Appalachian Citizens' Law Center, to talk about the rural development work that is going on in coal country and how they are working to make sure that miners and their communities have the resources to make a just transition that allows Appalachia to thrive in the 21st Century. 

Josh is joined by Jim Harkness, former IATP President, and current advisor on China. We're talking about what the Chinese agricultural system looks like, what China's growing demand for meat and other foods means on a global scale, and how sustainable farmers in China are organizing to promote better practices in the system.  You can find China Food Watch, which we talk about in the episode, here: www.chinafoodwatch.com

Why is an investment fund buying up cattle from the largest meat company in the world? Steve Suppan joins Josh to talk about commodity markets, financial derivatives of livestock, and other things that might make your head spin. But, we think we broke it down into something understandable, and understanding it is important because financialization of commodities is, like trade, a major way in which corporations make sure farmers can't receive a fair price for what they produce. Your host was in way over his head, but came out feeling very educated.

If you live in Minnesota, shaping the platform of the political parties to pay more attention to good food access and healthy, vibrant farms is something you have the opportunity to do on Tuesday, February 6 at 7pm with your fellow Minnesotans at the caucuses. Josh is joined by Nadja Berneche, chair of the St.

It's been five months since talks began on the re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. Josh is joined by Karen Hansen-Kuhn to get an update on where talks stand, what the process has been like, and what the coming months hold for our principles of fair trade in North American Agriculture. 

More and more, farm and hunger advocates are acting in coalition to protect the supply of healthy food that is accessible by all people and beneficial to community development. Josh is joined by IATP's Erin McKee, Marcus Schmit of Second Harvest Heartland, and Eric Sannerud, a farmer and organizer in Central Minnesota, to talk about the coalition that is forming to promote community food systems in Minnesota including in upcoming precinct caucuses on February 6. 

Often, state and local politicians are reluctant to wade into the international trade debate. But that doesn't meant they shouldn't. Around the U.S. and abroad, local elected officials are taking action both to weigh in on trade negotiations and to counter the negative impacts of corporate-led trade agreements. Josh talks with Sharon Treat, IATP Senior Attorney, and former Maine state legislator, about what state and local governments are doing and could be doing in this area. 

As we come up on the first full year of the Trump administration, it's clear that damage has been done to many institutions and policies. Josh is joined by Ben Lilliston to discuss IATP's upcoming scorecard of the first year, and the effect this administration has had on agriculture, rural areas, and trade. 

Josh and Executive Director, Juliette Majot, talk about what happened in 2017, what is coming up in 2018, and what IATP's role is, was, and will be.

In late November, IATP and our partners published a report on the global industrial meat complex in Brazil. Currently, Brazilian beef exports are banned in the United States. IATP Senior Policy Analyst, Steve Suppan, was in Washington DC this week for meetings on food safety inspection, specifically making the case to the Food Safety Inspection Service that the ban on Brazilian beef should stay in place. In this episode, we talk about the Brazilian case and food safety inspection in the meat industry more broadly.

The 11th World Trade Organization Ministerial begins on December 10th, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Already the event has come under fire as the Argentine government has pressured the WTO to revoke the credentials of 63 civil society experts. On this week's podcast, Josh is joined by IATP Senior Advisor, and former staff member, Sophia Murphy, from Vancouver B.C.

IATP, FASE, and The Heinrich Boell Foundation recently released a report on the industrial meat complex in Brazil. Besides the massive government corruption and environmental destruction, the human rights abuses in the supply chain are both well-documented and abundant. In this episode, Shefali Sharma interviews André Campos of Repórter Brasil about their research to document slavery in Brazil's industrial meat sector.

A few of us were in New York this week, so we decided to do a podcast about our rural work. Juliette Majot and Anna Claussen join Josh to talk about the Rural Climate Dialogues. A unique program run by IATP and the Jefferson Center that empowers rural communities to create solutions to climate change in a way that puts their perspective at the forefront in driving policies and practices.

IATP, GRAIN, and the Heinrich Boell Foundation released an infographic this week that tracks the climate footprints of the largest meat and dairy corporations. The infographic, along with an accompanying op-ed in the Guardian, has attracted a lot of attention as the Bonn Climate Summit (COP23) is underway.

A multitude of alternatives to industrial agriculture are emerging, and small-scale farmers have been the pioneers of one such alternative, known as agroecology. As an integrative interdisciplinary science, agroecology offers techniques for producing healthy food and restoring ecosystems. Rooted in ecological and human rights-based values, agroecology could be integral to a transition from our current food system to one that is equitable and sustainable.

The Farm Bill is a massive piece of legislation that affects everyone – and Congress is writing it now. It’s not surprising that, as such a wide-reaching bill, the Farm Bill has big implications for climate change. It is the largest investment in working lands and the primary method for addressing the environmental impacts of farms and ranches.

This week's episode was going to be on meat, but schedules change and we adjust! Instead, this is another back to basics episode. In our first podcast, Johan explored how trade works. Now we're doing the same for agriculture. Ben Lilliston joins Josh to talk about the difference between farms, agriculture, and agribusiness. How all of those things relate, who has power in the system, and what we are doing to shift that balance. But first, Josh gets an update on the latest round of NAFTA negotiations from Karen Hansen-Kuhn.

It's Global Fertilizer Day (who knew?)! And to celebrate, we are joined by Steve Suppan whose paper on the use of nanotechnology in the fertilizer industry was released yesterday. This is a special episode of Uprooted, and our normal podcast schedule will continue next week. You can read Steve's new blog on nanofertilizer here.