Judy Hatcher, ED PANNA, Food Fight! Waging Love! 4-5pm CT, Saturday, January 31, 2015, KKFI, 90.1 FM, kkfi.org

Judy Hatcher, ED Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), Food Fight! Waging Love! 4-5pm CT,  Saturday, January 31, 2015, KKFI, 90.1 FM,  kkfi.org

Food Fight! Waging Love! 

Kansas City, MO Community Radio Program

·         4-5pm CT,  Saturday, January 31, 2015

·         KKFI, 90.1 FM,  kkfi.org anywhere in the world

·         On-air call-in number 816 931 5534

Judy Hatcher, ED Pesticide Action Network North America

Judy joined Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) in June 2012. Since 1981, she has worked as a grant maker, a program manager, a consultant and a trainer for social justice groups all over the country. Previous employers include National People's Action, Amnesty International USA, the Funding Exchange, the Crossroads Fund, the Community Resource Exchange and the Center for Community Change. She was a consultant with the Grantsmanship Center and the Women of Color Fundraising Institute, among other organizations. Most recently, Judy served as Director of Programs, then Executive Director, of the Environmental Support Center, which helped build the capacity of environmental justice and advocacy organizations around the country through grants and other resources. Judy also serves on the boards of directors of the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, and the national progressive foundation RESIST. She is also a member of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Advisory Panel.  Judy has a B.A. in  Linguistics from Northwestern University. http://www.panna.org/judy-hatcher

In particular Judy will touch on the following issues: Worker Protection Standards for Agricultural Pesticides (the only federal regulations that pertain to farmworkers) http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/twor.html Farmworkers are the people the most directly and negatively impacted by pesticides. Farmers as well. And  the importance of making a fuss about the so-called "free trade" agreements--TTP (Trans Pacific Partnership) and TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). Here is a quick and dirty summary about them: http://www.sraproject.org/.../unfair-trade-ttp-and-ttip.../

 Says Judy, " I will emphasize here that I'm not a farmer or a chemist, but I can speak in broad terms about PAN's work to curb highly hazardous pesticides and to transform the global food system--and why those are social justice issues."

About PANNA! Pesticide Action Network North America works to replace the use of hazardous pesticides with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. As one of five PAN Regional Centers worldwide, we link local and international consumer, labor, health, environment and agriculture groups into an international citizens’ action network. This network challenges the global proliferation of pesticides, defends basic rights to health and environmental quality, and works to ensure the transition to a just and viable society.  http://www.panna.org/about

More About PANNA: The First Thirty Years

In 1982, the luster of the “Green Revolution” had faded. The promised dramatic increases in yields from “miracle” hybrid grains that required high inputs of water, chemical fertilizers and pesticides failed to deliver and were revealed as campaigns to sell technology to people who couldn’t afford it. The global pesticide trade was, however, yielding dramatic profits as more and more farmers were trapped on a pesticide treadmill.

That was the world when PAN was founded.

Chemical-intensive, mono-crop, irrigated agriculture, introduced in the Global South in the 1950s, boosted crop yields at first, but by the '70s, the costs in health, ecological damage, and lost biodiversity were mounting—and pests were growing resistant to pesticides. Meanwhile, transnational corporations and local elites profited at the expense of local communities who were losing control over their own food systems. Women and children shouldered more of the fieldwork—and bore the brunt of the pesticide exposure.

In the years since PAN was founded, the Green Revolution has been reassessed and new approaches have been added. When rice production was collapsing in the 1980s due to pest resurgence from resistance to pesticides, Indonesia needed alternatives. A combination of community-scale peer-learning projects recaptured Indigenous farming knowledge and wove it into new ecological pest management. “Farmer Field Schools”—today adapted to local needs in many countries—returned bountiful crops of rice while expenditures on agrichemicals were slashed. Meanwhile, Indonesia and other countries began banning PAN’s “Dirty Dozen Pesticides.” By 2002, more than a million Indonesian farmers had participated in Field Schools that became models for localized sustainable agriculture in other countries.

But the companies that profited from the Green Revolution—today consolidated into six mega-corporations—were opening a second front in their ongoing effort to control the world’s food supply. The “Gene Revolution” is designed to make farmers dependent on patented seeds “owned” by the corporations. Many of these biotech seeds are genetically engineered to withstand heavier applications of proprietary herbicides produced by the same transnationals. The goal is to colonize nature while perpetuating the pesticide treadmill. Many governments have rejected GM seed, and peoples' movements are fighting back.

PAN North America links these struggles in the Global South with similar battles in our own region. On Native lands, inside urban canyons and across the face of rural America, our scientists and partners are testing the air for pesticide drift and water for pesticide pollution. We’re joining neighbors from Canada to Mexico in resisting further imposition of genetically engineered crops. And we’re helping create a domestic Fair Trade movement to support family farms and guarantee living wages and safer conditions for farm workers. Our commitment is to a truly green revolution, one that includes not only a sustainable agriculture, but most important, expansion of human rights to food, justice and self-determination.  http://www.panna.org/about;  www.panna.org I www.pan-international.org/

PANNA's Ground Truth blogs should provide pretty good background on what makes them tick, such as these, on the TTIP, http://www.panna.org/blog/ttip-free-trade-pesticides, children's health, http://www.panna.org/blog/iowa-farmers-call-action-drift, and food sovereigntyhttp://www.panna.org/blog/us-looks-monsanto-feed-world.

In Memory of Charity Mahouna Hicks, Food Sovereignty & Human Rights Activist

"This is about waging love; we love ourselves, we love our children, we love the earth, we love all of life. So This is not a protest this is actually an act of waging love. The love we are talking about is the love of life not the love of death." 
------ Charity Mahouna Hicks

   

A call to  organize ourselves to build our collective power to  transform our power relationships with our global, big corporate, industrialized food, agriculture and socio-economic systems, in order to  build truly healthy, just, fair and sustainable  systems and livelihoods with dignity for farm and food workers and small and family farmers alike.

Artwork by Ryan Tenney.

"Poor diets kill more brothers than pistols.

We're fighting for our lives like Michael Vic's pit bulls.

Dog eat dog, America eats the young,

We die from beef, but more from meat than the gun.

Bullets for breakfast and mass murder meals.

Enemy of the state, and your plate is the battlefield

in this FOOD FIGHT!"

http://sosjuice.com/foodfight/

With Host Donna Morrow Wolfe, Urban Connections, long time KC community activist, and co-host, Maria Whitaker, Program Director, Local to Global Advocates for Food Sovereignty and KC Food Justice.

 Donna Morrow Wolfe

Maria Whittaker

Inspired by the work of The Praxis Project to strengthen the capacity of communities to create sustainable, progressive change, in 2011, Maria Whittaker founded Local2Global Advocates for Food Sovereignty  (L2GAFS) .

Whittaker, a Greater Kansas City (GKC) based attorney, horticulturalist and food sovereignty advocate, says that L2GAFS is comprised of “the individuals most directly and negatively impacted by our unhealthy and unjust food, farm and socioeconomic systems, policies and practices, committed to grassroots community organizing to strengthen their collective power, coming together, to explore the formation of, and interest in, the creation of local, national and global alliances to represent and promote their interests on issues of food and agriculture, environmental, economic and social justice.”

Their seven guiding principles of food sovereignty (La Via Campesina) are:

1. The basic human right to sufficient amounts of healthy, nutritious, culturally appropriate food;
2. True agrarian reform including the nondiscriminatory access to land, credit, training, technology, markets and everything needed to farm and garden;
3. Sustainable agriculture and the preservation of natural resources;
4. Ending the big, corporate control of food and agriculture;
5. Fair rather than free trade;
6. Ending all forms of oppression in our food and agriculture systems including the exploitation of farm and food workers; and
7. Social Peace is a prerequisite to food sovereignty.

In 2012, L2GAFS launched a local initiative, KC Food Justice,composed of community members, grassroots organizing ourselves from the bottom-up, to build our collective strength to transform the power relationships and institutional structures that determine our food, health, wealth and sustainability, through advocacy for truly healthy, just, fair and sustainable food, farm, and socioeconomic systems, policies and practices.

Tune in on the radio in Kansas City at 90.1 FM or online anywhere in the world at kkfi.org from 4 to 5 pm the last Saturday of every month to catch our new show, Food Fight! Call in with your questions and comments at 816 931 5334 to the on-air studio anytime between 4 to 5 pm CT the last Saturday of every month. 

If you would like to be a guest on the show or have suggestions or comments, we welcome you to email Maria Whittaker foodsovereignty@yahoo.com with Food Fight! in the heading. We particularly envision lifting-up the work of those most directly and negatively impacted by our food, agriculture and socioeconomic systems as well as youth.

The objectives of this show are to:

1.       Raise consciousness of the impact of our global, big corporate, industrialized, food system on our health, wealth and sustainability and especially the health, wealth and sustainability of our children; and to:

 2. Act as a vehicle for us to: 

1.1.  Organize ourselves inclusively, from the bottom-up, to take actions to change our food, agriculture, and socio-economic systems so that they serve our health, wealth and sustainability;

1.2.  Take immediate actions now to actualize our basic human right to sufficient amounts of healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and improve our lifestyles by increasing our physical activity and human relationships, by connecting people to concrete self-help programs that , provide services such as organic gardening, mobile food pantries, healthy food pantries, and healthy lifestyle support programs, including diabetes and hypertension management,  already in existence but not yet reaching them; and to:

2.3. Take collective actions on food policies such as food stamps and farm subsidies to immediately actualize our basic human right to healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food for all.

KC Food Justice list serve

The easiest way to join our list serve, kcfoodjustice@lists.riseup.net, where we share news of upcoming events, information and analyses of the nexus of modernization, capitalism, food, health, class, race, all forms of oppression and social justice, is to send an email to: 

kcfoodjustice-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

and you will be automatically be added. We send out anywhere from 1 to 9 messages a month. 

If you would like Maria to talk to your group about food sovereignty, food and health, climate justice, or any related topics, please email her at foodsovereignty@yahoo.com. She will be available for speaking engagements in the Kansas City area beginning Monday June 16, 2014.

For more information about Urban Connections and Donna Wolfe and to see a list, description and MP3’s from previous shows please visit www.kkfi.org/program/urban-connections.

For more information about LGAFS, KC Food Justice, and Maria Whittaker visit fssg.blogspot.com and foodhealthenvironmentaljustice.blogspot.com. Also check out our facebook pages, Local to Global Advocates for Justice and Food, Health and Environmental Justice Coalition. For more information about our work check out our facebook groups, Food and Health Justice KC, Sustainable Agriculture in Cuba: Growing Food without Oil; and African Food Sovereignty.