In spite of overcast skies blowing wind, rain and chill on May 8, hundreds of Bostonians came out in support of the wide array of Fair Trade education, engagement and products that Boston has to offer. Thousands more were exposed to the day’s events through our media efforts (television and newspaper), press releases, online calendars and social networking and simply encountering one of our sixteen participating World Fair Trade Day business and/or event locations. “Our work is hitched to a passionate recognition that injustices exist that threaten our world’s people, their labor and resources. Moreover, we can do something about it, and our efforts thus far have shown we are tapped into a very vital and special movement of people working towards a fairer future.” Participating locations were Ten Thousand Villages (Brookline and Cambridge), Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream (Newbury St), Crossroads Trade, Equal Exchange Café, Flat Black Coffee Company (Dorchester), JP Licks Ice Cream (Cambridge, Brookline and Jamaica Plain), Haley House Bakery Café (Roxbury), Harvest Co-op Markets (Jamaica Plain and Cambridge), Hope Central Church (also hosted SERRV), Mariposa Bakery, City Feed and Supply (Centre St) and Autonomie Project. These businesses and institutions offered Fair Trade-related promotions and discounts, music and educational presentations, Fair Trade food and drink samplings, scavenger hunts, in-store raffles and more. “Through our relationships at City Hall and our advocacy efforts, Boston’s City Council passed a resolution on May 5 affirming their commitment and support of Fair Trade. This was one of the final goals necessary to achieve “Fair Trade Town” status, a designation we should reach in the next few weeks, which would make Boston the largest city with that designation.”

PC(USA) Congregations that are interested in working on earth care are invited to participate in a webinar from PC(USA) Environmental Ministries and ENERGY STAR for Congregations called “Earth Care Congregations and How ENERGY STAR Can Help” on Wednesday, October 6…

Ha-Joon’s analysis in “Kicking Away the Ladder” helped me to understand that the United States has been trying to push on developing countries a path of development based on myth, not on the actual history of how the U.S. and European countries developed. The very trade rules we are pushing into international policy via Free Trade Agreements and the WTO would likely have thwarted our development as a country. Now Ha-Joon has done a similar analysis on our agricultural system. This summary shows how countries have successfully taken alternative approaches to the conventional ideologies pushed by U.S. institutions: ‘In the earlier stages of development, today’s rich countries had to grapple with the very problems that dog the agricultural sector of today’s developing countries – land tenure, land degradation, fragmentation of holdings, agricultural research, extension services, rural credit, irrigation, transport, fertilizers, seeds, price and income stabilities, trade shocks, agro-processing, marketing, and so on. Many successful policy interventions have gone well beyond (or even against) the scope recommended by the New Conventional Wisdom (NCW), which has ruled agricultural (as well as other) policies in the last quarter of a century: · Japan and other East Asian countries had a very successful comprehensive land reform that included strict land ownership ceilings. · Virtually all of today’s rich countries used state-backed specialized rural banks and credit subsidies, state-subsidized agricultural insurance, public provision or subsidization of warehousing facilities, and input (e.g. fertilizers) quality control · Denmark and some other European countries benefited from effective export marketing boards · The USA and Japan successfully used price stabilization measures ‘History frees our “policy imagination” by showing that the range of policies and institutions that have produced positive outcomes for agricultural development has been much wider than any particular ideological position – be it the pre-1980s statist one or the pro-market NCW – would admit.’

Since the food crisis of 2008, food justice activists have warned that governments in concert with multinational corporations have accelerated a worldwide “land grab” to buy up vast swaths of arable land in poor countries. According to The Economist magazine, between 37 to 49 million acres of farmland were put up for sale in deals involving foreign nationals between 2006 and mid-2009. A friend pointed out how the land grabbing going on now is nothing new to what Native American, Hispanic and Black farmers and communities have faced for centuries. The current scale of the land grabs is tremendous. Take a look at what is happening in this good interview of Anuradha Mittal — executive director of the Oakland Institute and keynote speaker at past PC(USA) conferences — by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

So you’ve heard about the Week of Action on Food, right? It’s October 10-17, and the Hunger Program helped put together a resource guide for congregations to use at worship, Sunday School, bible study, etc… Taking a trip to New Orleans for the Community Food Security Coalition Annual Conference would be a great way to close the week of action. The format for the conference is a little different this year. “This is not a conference to just stay in the hotel and never go outside.” That’s why they’re offering a ton of trips at the beginning of the conference to get out into New Orleans and see what there is to see in the world of food, culture and justice. Some of the more interesting looking trips include: * Food Deserts, Food Swamps & Food Access in Urban Communities * NOLA Urban Agriculture * Cooperation is the Name of the Game: the Mississippi Farmers Co-op If that’s not enticing enough, they’ve invited First Lady Michelle Obama (who’s been involved in the Let’s Move campaign to raise a healthier generation of kids) Regular registration for the conference ends October 1st. You can register for an additional fee up until October 19th. Visit www.communityfoodconference.org to learn more and register. Let us know if you’re planning on going… we’ll see you there. And check out their awesome shrimp fleur de leis. Kudos to whoever designed that!

waiting patiently for a meteorite shower to commence, I spy the single light on top of the mountain in front of me

Crops have been hit hard, so international aid is needed desperately. People can give through the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance https://www.presbyterianmission.org/give/DR000038/

“Shop To End Hunger”… So, we can end hunger by buying more products from Coca Cola? Nestle? Are these companies fighting hunger or producing more of it? (Not to mention the health impact of their products.) * What means are justified by the end to end hunger?!

Jill Richardson, who I work with via the US Food Crisis Working Group (soon to be the US Food Sovereignty Alliance – check out the launching on Oct. 16 World Food Day!) went to Mexico to see how well the…

Appalachia Rising is a mobilization to end mountaintop removal mining. The event will take place September 25-27 in Washington D.C. A conference “Voices from the Mountains,” will take place on September 25-26. This will be a time of education and…