The Small Farm Development Corporation 1006 Surrey Street P.O. Box 2699 Lafayette, LA 70502 318/232-7480 At last a program that provides tools, land and technical trainmg to low income people interested in making farming their livelihood. TiTe Fa mily Farm Coopera tive (FFC) program is modeled after the Israeli "Moshav," a cooperative farming community of individually owned farms. Qualified applicants are paid to receive two years of on-sit~ training in vegetable and livestock farming, small farm management and marketing. At the end of the training period, title to individual parcels of land is transferred to the participants. FFC proVides access to housing, medical care and social services. Family Farm Cooperatives are being planned for Alabama, Florida and Louisiana. Each will eventually consist of 120 families. Four different federal agencies (Commuruty Service Administration, Department of Labour, Economic Development Administration and Farmers Home Administration) are providing funding grants to the Small Farm Development Corporation, a non-profit organization .. v fii z- '0 c:: 0( tional companies over the lives of boais fria5 (landless laborers) and minifudistas (subsistence farmers and day laborers). They document exploitation of field laborers and the inability of corporate agriculture to meet "people's most basic need (or food. " The impact of agribUSiness in the Third World cannot be separated from its effects in so-callt·d deveioprd countries. Transnational corporate ahiltty to manipulate food prices led American consumers w be overcharged by $12-15 billion in 1977 alone, according to the USDA. learly we are fighting the same enemy. NACLA Reports offers an excdlent tool for understanding the dynamics of transnational agribusiness. ~KS Needless Hunger: Voices from a Bangladesh Village, Betsy Hartmann and James Boyce, 1979, $3.00 from: Institute of Food and Development Policy 2588 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94110 " in one stroke land became pritJatc property ." "Land, the ultimate sOllree of wealth and pOUier _. . is beco ming concent rated in fewer and feUicr /ia/lds." " . . . most of the food aid goes to those who can best afford to pay tlte market price , the urban middle cla ss. " "Foreign aid dollars are dir('(tly support· ing Bangladesh's milttary and policc forces. " Sound familiar? Hartmann and Boyce do April1980 RAIN Page 9 which will operate the FFC. Implementation of the program begms summer 1980 With help from the Israel Association for International Agriculture, an organization which 'provides technical assistance on agricultural methods. The FFC is deSigned to break the cycle of rural poverty, unemployment, and migration to urban centers. If successful, the program could serve as a nationwide model for rural renewal. People concerned about the direction of agricultural policy and small farming should keep a watchful eye on the development of this program. -KS The Graham Center Seed Directory, by Cary Fowler, 1979, $1.00 from: Frank Porter Graham Center Route 3, Box 95, Wadesboro, NC 28170 1£ last month' s access from Tilth , " Seeds of the Earth," has you wondering where to turn for viable, traditional seed and plant varieties that are not distributed by subsidiaries of awesome megacorporations, the answer is the Graham Center Seed Directo ry. This beautiful little booklet lists small family-owned nurseries as well as larger but still independent ones which provide. for the most part, orgonic products. There is also a " Seed Saving Chart" in case you have seeds left over from last year, and a thorough analysis of the seed patenting crisis ~'Onfront i n g world agriculture_Important reading and useful access together m one very handy resource. Not bad for $l .00 - CC an excellent job of analYl-ing the social and economic crisis in Bangladesh (from hving there), but beyond describing the problem, their more significant contribution is in generating responses to it. They suggest: " We can work to hail military and economic assistance Ulhlch bolsters Bangladesh's narrow elite at the expense of tlte country's poor majority . . .. We must look beyond tlte symptoms of hunger to Ihe causes.. . . We must ask whether the best way to Itdp the poor is to give arms , money <HId food to the rich." "We can assist the many pepple in Ba ngladesll and throughout the third world who are wurking to mobilize the poor for development and social change. We ca rl offer fill(1 l1cial support to groups workillg in their own comm ll nities ." " We call continue to educate Ollrselves and others about th e Ileedless hrmga of millions of people thrOlig/lOllt the world." -cc
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