Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/26/2023 - 09/28/2023
9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Categories
A UU Advocacy Conference
Why focus on sustainable farming? Today’s technology can remove 178 billion tons of CO2 and reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere by 157 ppm—enough to get us back to preindustrial levels.
This is the only way to get where we need to go.
UUs for Social Justice has a Write Here, Write Now campaign, and you can participate whether or not you are coming, so please write your Senators. UU Ministry for the Earth is partnering, too—so you know this is going to be good!
If you eat food, you care about the Farm Bill—and more specifically, the Farm Bill addresses food quality, soil, water waste and contamination, food deserts, equity, and conservation.
Family farmers are struggling to survive while corporate farms get subsidies for animal feed and commodities. Soil has been degraded for decades with poisonous pesticides. The Farm Bill also includes SNAP (food stamps).
We like to think of animals on pasture in red barns, but the reality is CAFOs—concentrated animal feeding operations—that basically store animals in tortuous conditions.
For decades, the Department of Agriculture discriminated against farmers of color, so we need to ensure that everyone has equal access to government resources.
There are good programs that are underfunded and don’t last long enough. When that happens, farmers return to what they did before, which means more fertilizer, pesticides, and commodity crops. The Farm Bill needs to ensure that farmers can actually make their own choices and are not inextricably tied to “Big Ag” corporate seed and fertilizer companies.
Fact Sheet on the Farm Bill
Schedule
- Tuesday
All Souls Unitarian DC
9:00 a.m. –10:00 a.m.
Registration
10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Speakers, networking (lunch provided)
(Dinner on your own)
7:00 p.m.
Concert with Jim Scott at All Souls - Wednesday
All Souls Unitarian DC
10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Speakers, advocacy training (lunch provided)
(Dinner on your own)
7:00 p.m.
UU Service at All Souls - Thursday
9:00 a.m.
Drop luggage at St. Mark’s Episcopal (breakfast snacks)
9:30 a.m.
Capitol Visitor Center, Room 209
9:45 a.m. — 10:00 a.m.
Speaker from the Senate Agriculture Committee
10:15 – 1:45 p.m.
Lobbying, Senate offices
(Lunch on your own)
2:45 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Debrief, steps you can take back home - Registration fees:
Full conference, all events: $99
Tuesday: $40
Wednesday & Thursday combined: $70
Scholarships are available. No questions asked, contact uujec@uujec.org.
Register here.
2 Comments
Not gonna be online, for people who can’t travel to NY?
We wish we could! Hybrid events require a lot of technical expertise, staff, and equipment, and we are really not set up for that, with organizing from a distance and with less advance planning than would have been ideal. We are recording everything to post later, and will stream the evening events but did not feel secure in our capacity to be truly inclusive for a hybrid event with breakouts, etc. That is certainly a goal for the future—we have seen more hybrid events postpandemic, and they are both more affordable and have a smaller environmental impact.
Thank you for your interest—meanwhile, check out our Sept. 14th Web seminar “What’s at stake in the farm bill—food justice, the climate, and public health”.