Easton, WA, June 12th / Kinneret, Israel, June 14th
Dear All,
I’ve started writing this email at the very beginning the Hazon Cross-USA Ride. And I’m finishing it by the shore of the Kinneret, in Israel, for our Siach conference. I’m excited to be in Israel and looking forward to Siach and the start of the Cross-USA Ride was amazing.(I’ll write more about the Cross-USA Ride later in the summer but, for now, you canfollow the ride pretty much live with photos and video. I’d add that unlike our first ride 12 years ago, you can join this year’s Cross-USA Ride for anywhere between one day and five weeks. It is a really wonderful collection of people, it’s an incredible experience, and the ruach (spirit) and energy is tremendous. 19 locals from Seattle – and Hazon board member Anna Ostrovsky, visiting from New York – joined the first day ride and had a great time.)
As it says on our jerseys, we’re cycling to support sustainable food systems. Not only are riders educating themselves and communities along the route about local food, national and local food policy initiatives, and food production, but they’re collecting signatures on a petition to support sustainable food systems to be presented to the USDA in Washington at the end of the ride. Please add your name to the petition.
![[Image]](https://hazon.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2-riders-and-a-goat-224x300.png)
Riders visit Jubilee CSA Farm in Carnation, WA
- Be passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee
- Then the whole Senate (in process this week)
- Then the House Agriculture passes its own bill
- Then the whole House votes on it
- Then a committee tries to reconcile the two versions
- Then the House has to agree the new version
- Then the Senate does
- And then the President needs to sign it
I have two degrees in American History, and by the standards of most Brits I am not ignorant, in a broad sense, of the US political system, but just attempting to find out what is happening in relation to the Farm Bill – much less form a conclusion on my own view of that – has been staggeringly hard these last five years.
But I watched Bill Gates’ Harvard commencement address (given in 2007, you can watch it or read it) and it ends with a rousing charge not to be deterred by complexity. Never was that better advice than in regard to the Farm Bill.
What should you do?
It’s hard to track what’s happening but I can say this: first, the bill that gets passed – if it gets passed – will have more impact on food, and people-in-relation-to-food, and land-in-relation-to-food than anything else likely to happen in the next five years in this country.
- Start by visiting our Farm Bill Resourcesand reading our Farm Bill Blog.
- Call or email your senator to say you care. The North East Sustainable Agriculture Working Group has instructions and details on key amendments.
- Sign the Hazon petition for sustainable food systems.
- Learn More: read this article in the Wall Street Journal, Farm Bill Has N.Y. Roots, or pick up a copy of Daniel Imhoff’s book, Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to the Next Food and Farm Bill, as further jump off points.
Kol tuv, shabbat shalom,
Nigel Savage
Executive Director, Hazon
No comments yet.