KKFI Kansas City Community Radio Program
John Peck, ED, Family Farm Defenders, familyfarmers.org
4 to 5 pm CT
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Kansas City,
Missouri, KKFI KC Community Radio, 90.1 FM, kkfi.org
On air studio
call-in number 816 931 5534
816 931 5534
http://content.blubrry.com/kkfi901fm/Urban_Connections_2014-04-12.mp3
816 931 5534
http://content.blubrry.com/kkfi901fm/Urban_Connections_2014-04-12.mp3
Food Fight! All Lives Matter! Radio Program is a project of KC Urban Connections Radio Program and
Local to Global Advocates for Justice and its local KC project, KC Food
Justice. It’s host is Donna Morrow Wolfe and co host is Maria Whittaker.
John Peck, ED, Family
Farm Defenders, (FFD) will discuss why founder John Kinsman and other dairy
farmers in Wisconsin organized themselves to take action to reform our food and
agriculture systems, policies and practices.
ED Peck will also discuss FFD’s accomplishments, their current work and
vision for our food and agriculture systems, practices and policies as well as
the obstacles to FFD’s goals and strategies for overcoming them. For more information about FFD, visit
familyfarmers.org. (Local to Global Advocates for Food Justice (LGAFJ) and its
local KC org, KC Food Justice, is dba as the local Kansas and Missouri Chapters
of Family Farm Defenders.)
John E. Peck grew up on a 260 acre farm in central Minnesota,
has a B.A. in Economics from Reed College and a PhD in Land Resources from
UW-Madison. He has been the Executive Director of Family Farm Defenders for the
last decade, and is also a part-time instructor of Economics and Environmental
Studies at Madison Area Technical College (MATC). His graduate research focused on
community-based management of common property resources in Zimbabwe. He attended the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de
Janeiro in 1992 and participated in global justice events surrounding the WTO
meeting Seattle in 1999, as well as FTAA meetings in Quebec in 2001 and Miami
in 2003. He has been part of solidarity
delegations to Ainaro, East Timor in 2005 and Oaxaca, Mexico 2008, and also
participated in the 2007 Nyeleni Food Sovereignty Conference in Selengue, Mali,
the Fifth Conference of La Via Campesina in Maputo, Mozambique in 2008, as well
as the 2009 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Family Farm Defenders (FFD) incorporated as a non-profit
organization in 1994 and was granted permanent 501(c)(3) status by the IRS in
1999. FFD began as an outgrowth of two national grass-roots campaigns: demanding
a national referendum to end the mandatory check-off on raw milk that funds the
lobby and propaganda efforts of the corporate dairy industry; and to defend
consumer “right to know” in response to the stealth introduction of recombinant
Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) into the nation’s milk supply.
FFD's mission is to create a farmer-controlled and
consumer-oriented food and fiber system, based upon democratically controlled
institutions that empower farmers to speak for and respect themselves in their quest
for social and economic justice. To this end, FFD supports sustainable
agriculture, farm worker rights, animal welfare, consumer safety, fair trade,
and food sovereignty. FFD has also
worked to create opportunities for farmers to join together in new cooperative
marketing endeavors and to bridge the socioeconomic gap that often exists
between rural and urban communities.
What is a Family Farmer? (discussion from familyfarmers.org)
Being Family Farm Defenders, this question is posed quite
often to FFD. Worse yet, while small-scale agricultural enterprises across the
U.S. are disappearing in record numbers, the industrial agribusiness operations
that replace them often try to masquerade as “family farms” to evade regulatory
scrutiny and garner public sympathy. For instance, Cargill could conceivably
identify itself as a “family farm” since it is a private entity largely
controlled by the MacMillan family.
While many government agencies have their own definition of
“family farm” that is often tied to size or income for the purpose of
distributing subsidies or qualifying for programs, a better definition would
encompass who does the bulk of the work and who makes farming decisions. While large-scale
livestock confinement operations (aka “factory farms”) may be managed by a
family, they are often owned by outside investors, dependent upon a large pool
of non-unionized often immigrant farm workers, and have their decisions and
practices dictated by contracts and agreements with much more powerful
agribusiness corporations. For instance, the technology use agreements (TUAs)
that Monsanto requires any user of its patented Genetically Modified Organisms
(GMOs) to sign basically shifts all product liability to the farmer and takes
away their privacy rights. Similarly, the supplier contract for Tyson requires
farmers to use sub-therapeutic antibiotics in their feedstock and forbids them
from collectively organizing with other poultry growers.
John Kinsman, former President and founder FFD
We would also like to
honor Farmer John Kinsman, Former President and founder of Family Farm
Defenders, with this show. He passed away January 20th of this year, 2014, on
his family farm near Lime Ridge, Wisconsin. He was 87. Below please see a
Memorial written to honor him by the Cornucopia Institute.
http://www.cornucopia.org/2014/01/remembering-john-kinsman-president-family-farm-defenders/
I met John in 2010 in Milwaukee at my first Farm Aid
Concert, when he was about 84 and marveled at how active, sharp and fit he was (for any age, but especially
84), travelling and advocating all over the world for food sovereignty. Family
Farm Defenders was one of the first food movement groups I had the privilege to
meet and work with. They were wonderful--cooperative, supportive and inclusive
from the gitgo.
I remember seeing them don their cow costumes to protest the
eve before Farm Aid 2010, and I remember thinking, “Oh no, I am not going to do
that; that is too goofy “(and me the queen of goofiness.) (Well now I know “a
little more” and I understand how important we need real grassroots folks,
including farmers with cow costumes, out there advocating for ourselves. I am
also learning we need to find a way to make this fun and to preserve our sanity
so bring on the cow costume or whatever your medium is.)
I am grateful to Family Farm Defenders for being a
progressive voice for family and small farmers in the US and for supporting KC
Food Justice and its parent organization, Local to Global Advocates for
Justice.
While KC Food Justice is primarily a group of consumers
rather than producers, we believe family and small farmers like Family Farm
Defenders who see the big picture of our common good are critical to building
the power and providing the leadership we need to transform our food and
agriculture systems so that they work for all: consumers, farmers, farmworkers
and food workers. Family famers like FFD are critical to food, agriculture and
socioeconomic systems that are truly healthy, fair, just and sustainable and
which provide livelihoods with dignity for family and small farmers, farm
workers, and food workers alike.
Here is the Cornucopia
Memorial tribute to Organic Dairy Farmer and Lifelong social-Justice Activist
John Kinsman.
Organic dairy
farmer and lifelong social-justice activist John Kinsman passed away January 20
on his family farm near Lime Ridge, Wisconsin. He was 87. A founder and the
longtime president of Family Farm Defenders, John touched the lives of
thousands of people, worldwide, for decades as a grassroots proponent of
organic sustainable agriculture and a globetrotting advocate of food
sovereignty.
An organic farmer and forester, John helped found Family
Farm Defenders (FFD) in 1994 to promote sustainable agriculture, fair trade,
workers rights, animal welfare, consumer safety, environmental stewardship and,
above all, food sovereignty. Through FFD, John worked to relocalize food/farm
economies and forge new economic relationships between consumers and farmers.
He was also the secretary of the National Family Farm
Coalition (NFFC) and served on the Midwest Organic Dairy Producers Alliance
board of directors. John was also one of the leading voices in the U.S.
challenging GMOs and an outspoken critic of corporate globalization. As one of
the farmer leaders involved in Via Campesina, the largest umbrella organization
for farmers, fishers, foresters, hunters, gatherers, and indigenous peoples in
the world, John traveled extensively around the world to share the message of
food sovereignty.
John Glenn Kinsman is survived by his wife of 64 years,
Jean, their 10 children, and 38 grandchildren, 30 great-grandchildren, and 2
great-great-grandchildren. Details about the January 24 wake and January 25
funeral can be found at www.hooffuneralhome.com.
Family Farm Defenders will share some of John’s legacy at
the 3rd Annual John Kinsman Beginning Farmer Food Sovereignty Prize Award
Dinner to be held March 15 at University of Wisconsin, Baraboo, with Raj Patel
as the keynote speaker. Watch www.familyfarmdefenders.org for details.
“John was a good friend and trusted advisor and will be
dearly missed,” said Cornucopia’s Mark Kastel. For those who wish to learn more
about the inspirational life of John Kinsman, below are some links to recent
profiles and interviews:
2012 Interview with
John Kinsman conducted by Daniel Tucker at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum in
Chicago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_0vviyVlPo
2012 Profile of John
Kinsman by Marc Eisen for Progressive Magazine:
http://www.progressive.org/family_farm_defender.html
2012 Booklet titled
“John Kinsman: Activist Farmer” compiled by Daniel Tucker:
https://danieltucker.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/kinsman-booklet-final-singlepage-web.pdf
2102 Interview with
John Kinsman by In Motion Magazine:
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/ra11/j_kinsman_int11.html
2011 Interview with
John Kinsman conducted by Bekah Wilce of PR Watch : http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/10/11044/food-rights-network-interviews-food-farm-hero-john-kinsman
Another 2011 Interview
conducted by Daniel Tucker with John Kinsman at his farm near Lime Ridge, WI:
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/Family+Farm+Defenders
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