New Farm to School Network Formed
"Farm to School" programs bring school food service and farmers together to positively address childhood obesity and low farmer income. Direct sourcing fruits and vegetables from local growers can add flavor, pizzazz and nutrition to a school lunch menu. Supplying nearby school districts with locally grown farm products builds a regional market for farmers and helps support the local economy. And integrating farm to school programs into school curriculum can teach children basic nutrition while restoring the essential knowledge of how food is grown.

In August, IATP convened 48 leaders in the Upper Midwest for a Farm to School networking meeting in Madison, Wis. Partnering with the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC), Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch and the Illinois Healthy Schools Campaign, IATP orchestrated a meeting of the minds that brought together key players involved with Farm to School initiatives, school lunch reform and food systems change. The purpose of the meeting was threefold: One, to facilitate the networking of groups working to improve school lunch; two, to share successes and identify barriers; and three, to develop paths for ongoing communication and collaboration.

For one day, farm to school advocates shared their regional success stories and talked openly about barriers to further progress. All agreed that barriers to success are enormous; lack of funding, infrastructure, knowledge and commitment make farm to school an uphill battle. Still, the success stories, as told by Upper Midwestern groups such as the Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch, Growing Hope, the Hopkins School District and the Michigan Department of Education, show that the challenges, while large, are not insurmountable.

By the end of the meeting participants agreed to form the Upper Midwest Farm to School Network. A follow-up meeting at the CFSC annual meeting in Milwaukee in October will be the next step to develop this network.

For more information, email Mark Muller.

IATP Partnering With Earth Council on WTO Literacy Program
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a deeply complicated, arcane and often intimidating institution. The Doha Round, which is the basis for the upcoming 6th WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong in December 2005, includes ten different negotiations and at least 12 areas of work. Negotiators, trade policy makers, and participants such as NGOs and the media, particularly in developing countries, face daunting challenges in developing the knowledge and information needed to steer world trade towards sustainable development.

To help governments and civil society better understand how the WTO works, IATP and the Earth Council have launched the World Trade eLearning Center, an e-learning resource that offers interactive, instructor-led courses on various aspects of world trade and WTO.

"We are very excited to be using e-learning technology to reach out to an unprecedented number of trade stakeholders around the world," says IATP President Mark Ritchie. "We have never had this opportunity to offer world-class learning to so many."

This on-line program, developed by IATP staff and consultants, will provide basic courses on the economics of sustainability. Courses are being developed with some of the world's most respected professors, including Dr. Eban Goodstein of Lewis and Clark University and Professor Emeritus Dean Abrahamson of the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota.

The World Trade eLearning Center will be hosted by the Earth Council eLearning Center.

To find out more, email Mark Ritchie.

How to Improve Consumer Input
in Setting International Food Standards
The Codex Alimentarius Commission is a global food standards setting body. It is not well known among most consumers, though Codex standards may be adopted as national food legislation designed to protect consumer health. Codex standards are presumed to conform to the World Trade Organization agreement on food safety measures in traded food. These standards can be used as evidence in trade disputes whose resolution is binding to WTO member countries.

Consumers International, of which IATP is an affiliate member, has just released a paper by Steve Suppan, IATP's Director of Research, on reform of the Codex Alimentarius Commission. The paper reviews current reform proposals in the Codex decision-making process and makes ten recommendations to Codex and its parent bodies, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, to enhance protection of consumer health and provide greater input from consumer organizations.

Read the full paper

Minnesota Pregnant Women Warned About Mercury
Minnesota's children may be at an above-average risk of ill health as the result of the federal government's failure to take steps needed to curb lake-polluting emissions of mercury, according to a briefing paper by IATP and the Madison, Wis.-based State Environmental Leadership Program. Mercury is a neurotoxin that affects fetuses and young children and puts an estimated 630,000 newborns at risk for developmental disabilities each year in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The two groups warned that Minnesota has a number of "key risk factors"—including statewide mercury warnings and a level of fishing that is higher than the national average—that could put women and children in the state at even greater risk of suffering the ill health effects of mercury pollution. The developmental disabilities issues associated with mercury pollution are seen as a major driving force in fast-rising special education costs for taxpayers in Minnesota schools.

IATP's Public Health Scientist, Kathleen Schuler, says, "Minnesota's kids are at risk for more learning problems due to mercury. Their mercury exposure comes about primarily through contaminated fish. The risk to these kids—and to pregnant moms—is tragically high and almost entirely preventable. Parents need to reckon with this public health crisis. Taxpayers need to take note as well: the money for educating these brain-injured kids—Minnesota's future—comes out of everyone's wallet."

More about Food and Health

Marie Kulick Joins IATP's Food and Health Program
IATP is pleased to announce the addition of Marie Kulick as a senior program associate in the Food and Health Program. Marie has worked within the environmental and conservation community as an advocate, nonprofit manager and skilled communicator for more than a decade.

Over the past 14 years, Marie has held a number of leadership positions for a diverse cross section of organizations. She began her environmental career working for Clean Water Action in the Chesapeake Bay region. As the Virginia program director for CWA, Marie led numerous advocacy, coalition-building and electoral efforts. Subsequent positions include associate director for the Environmental Fund for Maryland and grants manager for the Midwest office of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the job that brought her to Minnesota. Marie has an undergraduate degree in communications and a master of studies in environmental law from Vermont Law School.

"I am very happy to return to advocacy-oriented work to raise awareness about environmental pollutants in food," says Marie. "The work that IATP's Food and Health Program does is very important, and I am glad to be part of the team."

Initially, Marie will be continuing the work that Jackie Hunt Christensen had been doing to raise awareness around toxins in sewage sludge used as fertilizer to grow food. She will also work with the food subgroup of Health Care without Harm to influence the food purchasing practices of hospitals as a part of its overall campaign to transform the health care industry "so that it is ecologically sustainable and no longer a source of harm to public health and the environment."

Contact Marie at mkulick@iatp.org.

Our Fragile Food Supply
"The capacity of the world's commercial agriculture to produce sufficient food faces some severe tests," writes IATP Senior Fellow Dr. Dennis Keeney in a new commentary for the Prairie Writers Circle.

"Food is full of paradoxes. Currently there is enough produced to adequately feed the 6 billion people on the planet. Yet nearly a billion are underfed. In the rich United States, 35 million people, including nearly 13 million children, experience hunger or the threat of hunger. Yet at least that many Americans are obese.

"The best land in America produces two low-value commodity crops that are rarely directly consumed by humans: corn and soybeans. They are used instead for animal feed and increasingly for biomass fuel, such as ethanol.

Dr. Keeney is a former director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University and now emeritus professor there.

Read his full commentary

Drive to Mobilize Voters
A new wave of philanthropic players are doing more than ever before to support and organize voter-related projects during the election season. This year, IATP president Mark Ritchie has taken a leave of absence to lead one of these efforts through a national nonprofit called National Voice, a coalition of roughly 1,000 environmental, religious, peace and other activist groups that promote voting.

Ben Gose and Stephen G. Greene write in the July issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy: "With memories of the razor-thin 2000 presidential election still fresh in their minds, many grant makers and other donors are supporting efforts to bring more Americans to the polls in November—and to re-energize civic participation in the nation's democratic processes."

"This time, there are easily ten times the number of groups doing the work related to mobilizing voters than there were in 2000," Ritchie says in the article. Some of the participants in National Voice have never mobilized to register voters, but are doing so now because they realize that their own supporters have been among those not going to the polls.

Read the full article at philanthropy.com

New Fact Sheet on Open Ocean Aquaculture
Open ocean aquaculture, the farming of fish and shellfish between three and 200 miles offshore, is receiving increasing scrutiny from the public and policymakers. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has put forth a proposal that will open the door for these offshore factory fish farms, despite serious concerns about their environmental, health and social impacts.

Read the OOA fact sheet

Donate to IATP! You can help. IATP does very important work to keep family farmers on the land, to ensure the safety of our food supply and to preserve biodiversity and the environment for future generations. We cannot do this work without you. Your tax-deductible contribution will help us secure a sustainable world. Please make your tax-deductible contribution today. If you would like more information about our programs, or if you would like to discuss different contribution options, please contact Kate Hoff, Development Director, at khoff@iatp.org or (612) 870-3404. We appreciate your interest in our work. Thank you for your support.

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IATP News is an occasional publication reporting on recent events and activities at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). It is sent to board members, supporters, partners and friends. If you want to learn more about any particular item or if you do not want to receive this newsletter, send email to Communications Coordinator Ben Lilliston at blilliston@iatp.org or call: 612-870-3416. Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)
Mark Ritchie, President
2105 First Avenue South Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404 USA
Tel. 1 (612) 870-0453 Fax. 1 (612) 870-4846
Email: iatp@iatp.org Web: iatp.org