Uprooted

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.