Archive for March 18, 2010
Farms & Food On The Cutting Room Floor? NY State
Please post this petition widely, especially to friends in New YorkState. This needs to turn into a perfect storm of stakeholders voicing their demands of their elected officials. Sorry for any cross posting. Thanks very much.
IF THERE ARE NO FARMS, THERE WILL BE NO FOOD
A sizable crowd spent Monday in the bad air and lighting of the bowels of Albany’s EmpirePlaza lobbying for Food, Farms and the Environment, including a busload of eaters who made the trip up from NYC and representatives of over 70 different organizations. We met with State Senators and Assemblymen who will be drafting the final budget for New YorkState for 2010. They are about to make some dramatic, disproportionate, potentially deeply destructive and nonsensical cuts to farm, food and environmental appropriations, which is already a relatively tiny, 4 tenths of 1% of the entire state budget, obliterating a good deal of state support for what we have accomplished these last years. Aside from being in the good company of other activists, growers and eaters – I believe we succeeded in getting some legislative attention and converts. The pressures will be intense during these last weeks, please add your voice – for good food, clean water, farmland preservation and healthy communities – today.
You can really make a difference on this:
1.) Sign the petition.
2.) Pick up the phone, it will take a few minutes and is so very important. To find your representatives: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/, http://www.nysenate.gov/districts/map.
Monday, NO Farms, NO Food! came in the top 10out of a field of 2,500+ ideas on Change.org: No Farm No Food: Save the Land that Sustains Us.
Farms & Food On The Cutting Room Floor?
Targeting: The NY State Senate and The NY State House
Started by: Gianni Ortiz
http://www.change.org/actions/view/farms_food_on_the_cutting_room_floor
It’s clear that NY State is in a serious financial crisis and sacrifices need to be made, waste removed. The priorities of our ‘representatives’ become crystal clear when making tough budget decisions –. The state budget is $134B, farming receives a scant .4 of 1%, about $100M of that. This tiny fraction of our taxpayer dollars helps to make it possible for us to meet our most basic needs – real food and clean water.
Ironically, the budget is due on April FOOLS Day – just who wins and who looses will show who the joke is on… and how we will be voting in upcoming elections.
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This is the letter that will be sent to your representatives:
Farms & Food On The NYS Budget Cutting Room Floor?
Greetings,
It’s clear that NY State is in a serious financial crisis and sacrifices need to be made. The priorities of our ‘representatives’ become crystal clear when making tough budget decisions. The total state budget is $134B, appropriations for farming are a scant .4 of 1%, about $100M. This tiny fraction of our taxpayer dollars helps to make it possible for us to meet our most basic necessities – real food and clean water.
Agriculture is the brightest sector in our dismal state economy, providing truly deep green jobs that can’t be exported outside of our borders. The local ‘multiplier effect’ of dollars spent in farming is tremendous; feed, equipment, building supplies, groceries, restaurants, movie theaters… The proposed cuts are profound and for some extremely cost effective, hugely successful fresh veggie and farm viability programs – there’s 100% elimination of funding. At a time of growing numbers of food insecure (read hungry) families and job loses, we need more local and safe food made available – not less. We need increased farmland preservation – not less. We need increased protection for our water and environment – not less. Currently, we are loosing 2 acres of precious farmland every single minute of every single day and when those soils are gone – they’re gone. Strip malls and creeping suburbia will not feed us or future generations and will only increase our dependence on imported food, which is all too often dangerously contaminated.
These proposed cuts are extremely short sighted and will result in the misuse and permanent destruction of our greatest natural resources, our crop fields, our pastures, and topsoil. When you go into conference – to best serve those you represent – we are asking that you fight in earnest to protect our farms, our environment, real food for our children, and the very fiber of our communities by insuring the continued, modest funding contained in the 2008 state budget (http://www.farmland.org/documents/NFNFWaterEnvironmentDescription2-24-10.pdf).
Gianni Ortiz
Real Food Campaign
gianni@realfoodcampaign.org
www.realfoodcampaign.org
518.392.8545
