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== Draft Agriculture Amendment
Chapter 3: Ecological Sustainability
Section H. Agriculture ==
Our position:
Food is a necessity and a fundamental human right. All people have a right to adequate, safe, nutritious and high quality food; and those who grow it have a right to a fair return for their labor.
Our current food system is dominated by corporate agribusiness and unsustainable practices that threaten our food security, destabilize the climate, degrade the environment, destroy rural communities, and squeeze out family farmers. Our so-called cheap food comes at the expense of the exploitation of our farmers along with the oppression of people in the developing worlds, inhumane treatment of animals, pollution of our planet.
Our agricultural system can provide a high quality of life for farmers, nutritious and safe food for consumers, and reward farming methods that drastically reduce greenhouse gases, enhance biodiversity, the quality of water, soil, and air, and the beauty of the landscape. Non-chemical, non-GMO organic farms and ranches that are energy efficient and carbon-sequestering must become the norm, rather than just the alternative.
== Green Solutions ==
Strict Organic Standards and Clear Labeling
Greens support legislation that assists new farmers and ranchers, that provides technical and financial assistance to small and medium-sized farms and ranches, that revitalizes and repopulates rural communities, and promotes sustainable organic development and stewardship.
Local, Affordable Food
We support local food and farming systems in which local farmers and ranchers can produce enough organic, affordable foods to supply the needs of local communities.
We support producer and consumer cooperatives, community kitchens, Community Supported Agriculture, urban agriculture, and community farms and gardens.
No Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
4. We advocate for the creation of a Food Policy Councils composed of farmers, including small farmers and consumers, to oversee the U.S. Department of Agriculture as well as all local, state and national food policies.
5. We support the enforcement of strict organic standards in accordance with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program.
6. We advocate shifting price supports and government subsidies to organic and transition to organic food practices while eliminating subsidies for energy intensive, water intensive, GMO, factory farm and chemically-produced food. We believe that everyone, not just the wealthy, should have access to affordable, healthy, organic food.
6. We advocate for a ban of sewage sludge or hazardous wastes as fertilizer, a carbon tax or ban on nitrate fertilizers and pesticides.
7. We support an end to irradiation and genetic engineering in all food production.
7. We support a phase-out of chemical pesticides and nitrate fertilizers.
8. We support organic farming techniques as an alternative to chemical-based agriculture.
8. Given that chemical and industrial agriculture directly produces 35-50% of climate destabilizing greenhouse gases (CO2, methane and nitrous oxide), we need to convert the 434 million acres of cropland in the U.S. to ranchland to organic practices.
9. Food prices ought to reflect the true cost of food, including the health effects of eating processed foods, antibiotic resistance, pesticide effects on growers and consumers, soil erosion, water pollution, pesticide drift, greenhouse gas pollution, and air pollution. Indirect costs, though more difficult to calculate, should be factored into the cost of our energy, chemical, and water-intensive globalized food system.
12. We support legislation that sequesters greenhouse gases, provides energy and fuel conservation through rotational grazing, cover-crop rotations, nitrogen-fixing systems, and fuel-free, clean renewable energy development on the farm.
13. We encourage states to promote net-metering to make decentralized energy production economically viable.
14. Animal farming must be practiced in ethically and environmentally sustainable ways. We need to rapidly phase out the use of confined animal feeding operations and factory farms, which not only produce unhealthy, contaminated food, but emit tremendous mounts of methane gas, a potent climate destabilizing greenhouse gas.
15. Applying the Precautionary Principle to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), we support a moratorium until health and environmental safety can be demonstrated by independent (non-corporate funded), long-term tests for food safety, genetic drift, resistance, soil health, effects on non-target organisms, and cumulative interactions.
16. We support the growing international demand to eliminate patent rights for genetic material, lifeforms, gene-splicing techniques, and biochemicals derived from them. This position is defined by the Treaty to Share the Genetic Commons, which is available through the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (www.iatp.org). The implications of corporate takeover and the resulting monopolization of genetic intellectual property by the bioengineering industry are immense.
16. We support mandatory, full-disclosure food and fiber labeling. A consumer has the right to know the contents in their food and fiber, how they were produced, and where they come from. Labels should address the presence of GMOs, grenhouse gas emissions, use of irradiation, pesticide application (in production, transport, storage, and retail), and the country of origin.
